The Sustainable Future

How to find the best carbon offsets

When it comes to buying carbon offsets to neutralize the amount of CO2 our energy consumption creates, all options are not created equal. Here's an article in The Seattle Times with some tips on making an informed, effective choice about your carbon offsets purchase.

The tips include...

Peek behind the curtain. Don't accept claims of carbon-offset providers at face value. Ask questions: Who are their partners and endorsers? Do they undergo independent audits to confirm that the money helps the right projects? How do their prices compare with other providers? Which industry standards do they use?

No double-dipping. Make sure a carbon-offset provider's projects offer what is known in the industry as "additionality." In other words, they should not be projects that would have happened anyway without the funding from carbon offsets (such as projects mandated by a government).

Think twice about trees. While they may help the environment in other ways, tree-planting or reforestation projects are the most controversial types of carbon-offset projects. Trees absorb CO2, but scientists disagree on the effectiveness of tree-planting to reduce global warming.

Look in your own backyard. When carbon-offset providers or projects have Northwest roots, you may have more of a connection and greater accountability.

Power up. You can also "think globally and act locally" by joining the green power programs offered by local utilities.

First things first. Before you invest in carbon offsets or green power, make sure you've done all you can to reduce your environmental impact: Drive less, insulate your home, install energy-efficient appliances and buy less stuff. Carbon offsets will never replace good old-fashioned conservation.

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Vermiculture: Apartment composting with worms

One of the downsides of living in an apartment is a lack of yard space to compost food scraps. Well, fear not! All is not lost. All you need is a plastic bin, a drill, some shredded paper, and a bucketload of red wrigglers (that is, worms).

Add your food scraps and voila! In a matter of weeks you've got compost fit for a king's (or queen's) garden. Give it to your green thumb friends. Use it on your plants. Whatever you do with it, it's better than adding your food scraps to our ever-expanding landfills.

Here's an excellent video giving you a vermiculture how-to.

If you want to dig even deeper (pun intended, though probably not terribly funny), here are a couple articles for you to read:

Cheap and easy worm bin

Composting with red worms

Off the shelf worm bin (pdf file)

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How to green your sex life

OK. Let's play a word association game. I'll say a word, and you say the first word that pops into your mind.

Ready? OK. First word...

Sex

What was the first word that popped into your head? Was it green? No? Come on! I thought you cared about sustainability! ;-)

Here's an interesting post over on TreeHugger on How to Green Your Sex Life. It was too irresistible not to post. Hurry on over there and you'll get tips for your amorous endeavors like...

• If your sex toy of choice is a power tool, buy a rechargeable one or use your own rechargeable batteries.
• ...showering together can save water (if things get steamier, we suggest taking it to the bedroom and not leaving the shower running).
• Slinky, slippery, sexy. These are all good things when it comes to some sassy skivvies for the bedroom. Organic cotton, hemp silk, bamboo, and other renewable fibers make ultra-sexy lingerie and underwear.

As they said in the post's intro, "It might not be the first thing we think of while working towards a sustainable and graceful life on this fragile planet, but there’s a lot we can do to make our sex lives greener."

What's not to love about that?

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Green cleaning ideas

Do you ever find yourself wincing when you realize just how toxic those cleaning products you use to get things shiny and clean are? Need another option? The folks at the Guide to Green Living have put together a great list of natural cleaning ideas.

Thoughts of green cleaning must be in the air. LA Green Living offers up some green alternatives from the Co-op America  "Real Money" newsletter with the "basic ten" for making your own green cleaners. Those ten are...

1. white vinegar (this stuff has a million uses!)
2. baking soda (keep it in the fridge to deodorize, and clean with it)
3. borax (check out the v. old box in the pic)
   
4. hydrogen peroxide (not just used for blonde locks)
   
5. club soda (not just used for cocktails)
   
6. lemon juice (we're lucky - we have two lemon trees in our backyard)
7. liquid castile soap
8. corn meal (this can also be used to, like, cook stuff from scratch, right?)
9. olive oil
10. pure essential oils

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Alternative gifts for sustainable holidays

OK, so I'm probably a bit late with this for most of you. But for the last minute shoppers among you, this may be just the ticket.

Joel Makower points to a great holiday gift source at Alternative Gifts International. As they put it...

For the price of an iPod:
Provide an ox for a farmer in Bolivia that will double the food output for a family in need.

For the price of a video game:
Provide medicine for 100 impoverished, people in Central America who lack access to even the most basic health care.

For the cost of dinner and a movie:
Provide screening, eye surgery and glasses for women and children threatened with blindness in Nepal or Bangladesh. 

For the cost of a necktie:
Provide medicine and therapy to a child in Rep. of Georgia suffering from cystic fibrosis, whose every breath is a struggle.

Happy Sustainable Worldchanging Holidays!

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Have a sustainability question? Google it here!

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Creating a sustainability habit

I have to admit, ignorance is easier than awareness. Ever since I started my alternative energy blog, and now especially since I started this blog, I've been more aware of the impact of the decisions I make. Sometimes I act on that awareness (I get up and turn off the light in the other room), sometimes I just feel a niggling sense of guilt (I ignore all the thousands of miles the bananas have been transported and buy them anyway).

Either way, I'm thinking about it. Just about everything I do, and every choice I make has a sustainability impact. I'm far from hardcore about it, but it is beginning to enter into the picture. Bit by bit, I'm starting to develop a sustainability habit.

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10 easy ways to protect nature

I just ran across the David Suzuki Foundation website. It's an excellent resource.

On the site, he throws down the Nature Challenge with these ten things you can do to protect the environment.

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%
2. Choose an energy-efficient home & appliances
3. Don't use pesticides
4. Eat meat-free meals one day a week
5. Buy locally grown and produced food
6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle
7. Walk, bike, carpool or take transit
8. Choose a home close to work or school
9. Support alternative transportation
10. Learn more and share with others

Each of them has a link to more information. The challenge is to pick three of them and do them within the next year. Pretty easy, right?

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It starts with a small step

There's so much that needs to be done on the sustainability front. It's easy to look around and feel helpless in the face of it all.

The fact is, most of us will never be able to make a huge individual impact (the kind where the Forces of Evil crumble into little bits and the Good Guy smiles and rides his white hat off into the sunset).

For most of us, making a difference is all about doing the little things, and it's all about volume - lots of people taking small steps. As a good place to start, The New American Dream web site has  suggestions for ten easily implemented steps each of us can take (a program dubbed Turn the Tide). They're easy, and with enough people, they have the potential to make a real difference. As the folks at The New American Dream say on their site:

None of Turn the Tide’s [ten] actions involve drastic changes in your life, yet each packs an environmental punch. In fact, every thousand participants prevent the emission of 4,000,000 pounds of climate-warming carbon dioxide every year.

Not too shabby, eh?

And this is a no-brainer point, but one that's still worth making...thinking small and taking steps is infinitely better than thinking big and doing nothing.

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