Musings For A Darkened Room

It seems like everywhere you turn these days companies are trying to “go green” and make their product “all natural”. And while I applaud the efforts that are being made, I feel that a lot of programs and a lot of green living advice goes undiscovered. As consumers we are lead to believe that reusable grocery bags, CFL’s, organic products, and hybrid cars are all there is to help make a better tomorrow. But one important factor that most people aren’t aware of is the value in choosing local farms and suppliers when we buy our groceries.

When you buy locally there are a few advantages. First, you cut back on the amount of pollution caused by transportation of the item. Many items we buy are shipped from all over the U.S. and the rest of the world through various forms of transportation. Local products do not travel as far, if at all, and therefore do not have the same impact that a national supplier may have. Buying locally also helps stimulate your local economy. You are contributing to jobs and the welfare of people who live in your community. And finally, in the case of produce, you get a fresher product. If a fruit or vegetable doesn’t have to be trucked across the country it’s going to be a lot fresher when you get it.

How Can I Find Local Products?

There are a few ways to find out what’s available in your area. First, and probably the easiest, would be to check with your local grocery store. See if they know if any of their products or produce are from a local farm or vendor. Another option would be to go to a grocer that you know specializes in holistic living or local farming. Henry’s Farmers Market, which is the store I frequent, actually labels local products and produce. In fact the chain has devoted itself to helping support local growers and suppliers. Another grocer, Whole Foods Market has become a very big name in the holistic community and offers a number of organic and sometimes local products.

Farmers Markets

Another way is to support local growers and suppliers directly through farmers markets. Farmers Markets are often held on a regular basis in communities and they are a direct connection between farmers and the public. They are great way to not only get fresh produce, but another great way to support your local community and the environment.

Community Supported Agriculture

But perhaps the most interesting way of supporting local growers and suppliers is through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). CSA allows people to invest in small farms through a subscription or membership and in turn they receive a weekly or monthly delivery of produce, flowers, fruits, eggs, milk, meats, or any sort of different farm products. Again this provides you with fresher food since it comes straight from the farm. You also save a substantial amount of money on produce because you remove the middle man from the business. You pay the farm directly and don’t deal with the price hike you see at grocery stores. Finally you decrease your impact on the planet. Smaller local farms tend to use fewer chemicals on their crops and often use organic farming practices. They also grow a smaller amount of crops because they have a more predictable number of consumers to sell to, which cuts back on packaging and on wasted crops.

For more information on farmers markets in your area and Community Supported Agriculture, visit LocalHarvest.org. There you can search for farms and farmers markets in your area. You can also get more information on Community Supported Agriculture and farms in your area that you can help support.

Content writing advice blogger Jeremy Rivera shared a story with me this morning which seems to have pretty much flown under the blogosphere radar undetected. Yesterday, Internettrees.com became the center of a controversy on both Sphinn and Twitter on the basis that the concept of the site was immoral. The site offers to plant a live tree to help restore damaged forests and a virtual tree in the form of a link on their site for a donation of $2 ($1 for each tree). The controversy? The second dollar clearly isn’t a charitable donation and thus winds up in the owners pocket. This has lead many to believe that this is all just a way to make money and not really about the charity. I say, who cares?

Let’s be honest here the concerns people have brought up about the fact that profit is being made off of what is posed as a charity are warranted. But at the same time IT’S ONLY $2! And are we forgetting that you are getting something in return? You get a link back to your website AND you help the planet that we live on. Nobody is losing here people! So what if this guy is making a little bit of money, at least he’s doing it in a way that benefits the environment.

Some will argue that if you’re trying to help the environment why not do so directly through the Arbor Day Foundation? Well, because the Arbor Day Foundation isn’t going to give you a link, and let’s face it, most of the people going to this site are not doing so because they are hoping to plant a tree. Furthermore, a number of the people who would buy a link probably wouldn’t think to donate to this cause. In this instance the site capitalizes on those who seek out links while benefiting their charity of choice. So again I ask you, what is there to lose?

An additional concern that Jeremy brought up in his post that wasn’t part of the original debate was what kind of stance Google would have on a site that is essentially selling links. And honestly I think they are going to look the other way on this one unless someone makes a big stink about it. First off they are not promoting the site as a site that sells links. They are simply providing a link to those who donate. The site is also trying to direct its efforts towards bettering the planet, and Google is clearly an eco-friendly company.

The biggest kicker about all of this is the fact that this site and the stories related to it were so quickly shot down by various outlets. Sphinn.com quickly took down the site saying that it was no relevant to SEO. Then Jeremy’s post which was sphunn was also taken down, followed by the debate that continued on twitter after the bashing on Sphinn. There are bigger fish to fry and I don’t think that slamming a guy who is trying to provide a means to sustain the environment while making a couple bucks is really who you should be attacking. How about the spammers, hackers, and various other internet scammers that aren’t providing anything of value through their sites or services? If you’re helping the environment who doesn’t profit from it? It’s one more way to sustain a greener planet for generations to come.

So today Misty and I were supposed to go to the Whole Children Whole Planet Expo up in Nothridge, CA. But unfortunately a small feud and a late start ruined our efforts and after seeing how horrible traffic was while trying to leave Corona we decided against it.

Though we missed out on some great opportunities on green and natural family living, I still did my part today to make myself and now others more aware.

While at Target I stopped by the snack bar to get an Icee and some nachos. Sadly this will probably be the last time I order nachos from Target. I discovered that instead of pulling a serving of chips from a large bag, they have the chips pre-packaged by serving. This clearly creates significantly more plastic waste than one large bag would create.

In addition to finding out about Target’s nacho serving practices and my decision to no longer order their nachos as a way to help cut back on the amount of waste we produce, I decided to try and go green with one of my favorite beverages today. While shopping at Cost Plus World Market I discovered Blue Marble Organic Pilsner; an organic beer that is brewed here in California. The beer it self has a nice full flavor and the cost wasn’t bad for a six pack. I am definitely going to consider buying this beer again in the future.

The advantages to switching to an organic beer are not only that I am putting nothing but organic ingredients in my body, but also that the farming done for the ingredients is done organically without harmful pesticides or chemicals. The beer is also brewed here in California, meaning that the short distance required to transport the beer cuts back on the pollution caused by transporting goods from one place to another.

As the year progresses Misty and I also progress with our strive to live as green and as natural as possible given our current living situation. Switching to more organic produce, making sure we recycle everything we possibly can, and cutting back on waste have been some of our biggest changes.

So Earth Day came and went this past week, and with it came everyone’s yearly attempt to make a difference. Sadly, for many this effort only lasts the week of earth day. Regardless I was happy to see that my hometown of Corona, California decided to do its part and host an earth day festival. Unfortunately my enthusiasm ended after the idea itself, as the event turned out to be quite a disappointment.

The Green Valley Earth Day Festival was put on by GIVE (Green Institute for Village Empowerment) and held on April 19th at one of Corona’s newest developments; Dos Lagos. The bulk of the event took place in the heart of Dos Lagos in some grassy patches just past the centers two lakes. And featured a number of booths purchased by local groups and vendors, and a performance/symposium in the centers amphitheater.

The event was advertised as having vendors there who were out to promote Green Living and their efforts to better the environment. Sadly, about 50% of what I saw there was made up of local businesses looking for nothing more than to get their name out there. Furthermore, my wife and I arrived at about the midpoint of the event and it appeared that many of the vendors that had booths had either already packed up and left or simply never showed. Many booths displayed signs for vendors, but nothing was actually displayed at the booth, nor was anyone there to promote a product or service.

Fortunately, the handful of green living and environmental groups that were there had some very useful information and were actually worth the little bit of time my wife and I spent at the event.

GIVE itself actually had a very friendly and very knowledgeable young girl working their booth. The girl gave us a lot of information about the organization that both my wife and I had never heard of. The organization, which strives to educate and promote sustainable lifestyles put on the event and though the event itself was a disappointment their efforts to spread their message were successful and I am now quite interested in what the organization has to offer.

Another great organization that we talked with was The Sierra Club. I had heard of the organization before, but never really knew what they did or what their purpose was. The folks working the booth were very friendly and provided us with a lot of information related to The Sierra Club and its events. They discussed the advantages of becoming a member and talked about the local hikes that members often take as part of being the club. Their overall presentation was great, and again this is definitely something I am going to be looking into further.

A handful of other organizations and companies also captured my interest, but not nearly as well as GIVE and The Sierra Club. Southern California Edison was on site giving out energy saving light bulbs to their customers, The Gas Company provided water saving shower heads and faucet adapters to its customers, and the California Department of Conservation provided some interesting information on recycling and land protection, as well as some interesting information on children’s recycling programs.

There were a number of other vendors that were in fact green living related, but since my wife and I don’t own a home yet they weren’t of much use to us. However, the remaining booths were simply local businesses hocking their wares and services. Chiropractics, massages, wine, and a hobby store, don’t exactly fit into the Green Living or environmental categories as far as I’m concerned and sadly the majority of the booths consisted of garbage like this or were simply empty.

My recommendation for next year, try harder to market the event to businesses and services related to the festivals subject matter. Maybe even filter out businesses like Hobbytown USA who offer nothing to the environment as a business. I’m sure they dumped you some money for the booth, but honestly they didn’t provide me with anything of relevance to why I came to the event. More people than ever are finally realizing the impact we have on the planet and our local communities. If GIVE is committed to education then provide us with as many resources as possible at events like this. I appreciate your work and I appreciate what your organization does, but next year let’s try and make the event more educational and resourceful.

So with Earth Day on Tuesday I decided I wanted to post a top five list of things I have done in 2008 to become more environmentally friendly. It’s a little late, but relevant none the less. Nature and the environment have always been things I have respected and felt needed to be preserved. So at the beginning of the year my wife and I decided that we were going to make a solid effort to do our part to become more environmentally friendly. Here are the top five things we have done this year to be more eco-friendly:

5: Though we’ve always actively recycled we made a more conscious effort to recycle items from all rooms of our home. Before the focus was mainly on beverage containers.
4: Switched to environmentally friendly cleaners from companies like Method and Seventh Generation
3: Invested in the reusable cloth shopping bags. This will cut back on the number of plastic bags stores distribute.
2: Switched to organic and environmentally friendly soaps and shampoos.
1: Switched to organic produce where possible. Obviously organic produce is still up and coming in the grocery markets, but whenever possible we buy local and organic to cut back on the pollution from pesticides and transportation.

So one of the days I was home last week I caught a glimpse of the Today show, and they were doing a feature on an elementary school class in Massachusetts that did their part to eliminate not only unwanted mail, but wasted resources as well.

By using a new online service called Catalog Choice, they canceled 4,175 unwanted catalog subscriptions in a single month. Catalog Choice was established so that you can cancel any unwanted catalog subscriptions without having to call or contact the various companies you receive the catalogs from in order to be removed from their mailing lists. Simply sign up with Catalog Choice and select those catalogs which you no longer wish to receive. Best of all IT’S FREE!

So how does this help save natural resources? Well not only does it free up space in your mailbox, but it helps preserve natural resources. Kate Sinding of The Natural Resource Defense Council reported on the Today Show that over 19 billion catalogs are mailed in the U.S. each year. These catalogs equate to 53 million trees!

Since it’s start, almost 500,000 people have signed up and have opted out of nearly five million catalogs. This alone saves nearly 225 Olympic swimming pools worth of water, the same amount of energy it would take to power 3,500 homes on an anual basis, and is roughly the equivalent of taking 6,000 cars off the road in a year.

If you’re interested in participating in this new service I strongly encourage it. It’s easy, it’s free, and all you need is one of your catalogs handy to fill out the information on the website. For more information visit http://www.catalogchoice.org. If you’re interested in seeing the report from the Today show you can watch the whole segment at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/2282050822820508.

If you work at a school, or your kids are in school and are interested in making a difference like the students in Massachusetts did, The Today show wants to know. Visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22811067/ and let them know how your school or class did! Perhaps you can beat 4,175!

You know that we live in a sad world when news like this comes out. News broke yesterday that residents in Boiling Spring Lakes, North Carolina are cutting down trees at an alarming rate to protect their land from an endangered woodpecker species. You’re probably wondering what kind of threat a woodpecker poses, residents in the area fear that if the woodpeckers nest in their trees it will be impossible to further land development in their area. Since February Residents have been swarming City Hall to apply for lot-clearing permits. The mentality behind the clearing is that if there are no trees to support the woodpecker habitat the federal Fish and Wildlife Service would not be able to set aside the land as a woodpecker habitat.

Currently the agency has issued a map marking 15 active woodpecker “clusters,” and announced it was working on a new one that could potentially designate whole neighborhoods of this town in southeastern North Carolina as protected habitat, subject to more-stringent building restrictions.

The red-cockaded woodpecker was once an abundant species in the region. They could be found in longleaf pine forests from New Jersey to Florida. Now the number of birds in the wild has been cut down to numbers as low as 15,000. What makes the red-cockaded woodpecker so distinct from other woodpeckers is that it nests solely in living trees.

Sadly the same people who are out to destroy potential homes for the red-cockaded woodpecker are the same people who created homes for it in the past. The trees that stood in the forest before it was turned into a town were used to collect sap to make turpentine. Locals carved V-shaped notches in the pines to drain the tree’s sap and collect it. These wounds allowed fungus to infiltrate the tree’s core, making it easier for the woodpecker to excavate its nest hole and probe for the beetles, spiders and wood-boring insects it prefers.

What makes this story even more saddening is the amount of time it takes for this woodpecker to even complete a nest. It can take a red-cockaded woodpecker up to six years to create a single nest hole. While this may seem like an extremely long time to create a nest the work is not done in vain. Unlike most birds the red-cockaded woodpecker actually passes down its nest generation to generation.

Pete Benjamin, supervisor of the federal agency’s Raleigh office told The New York Times that, “Landowners have overreacted. Having a woodpecker tree on a piece of property does not necessarily mean a house cannot be built there, Mr. Benjamin said. A landowner can even get permission to cut down a cavity tree, as long as an alternative habitat can be found. For the most part, we’ve found ways to work with most folks.”

While the federal Fish and Wildlife Service have an optimistic outlook on the woodpecker “problem” others are not so sure. A resident in the area named Bonner Stiller has been holding on to two wooded half-acre lakefront lots for the last 23 years. When the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker, Stiller stripped both lots of longleaf pines before the government could issue its new map. Stiller a Republican member of the state General Assembly told The New York Times, “They have finally developed a value, and then to have that taken away from you?”

For many this just sounds like a story of residents protecting their assets, but what most people aren’t looking at is the whole picture. While the residents have cut down the trees to prevent the woodpeckers from nesting they have also destroyed the homes and habitats of other species. What is to become of the insects and numerous other creatures that use these trees as shelter from the elements? Furthermore if they force the woodpeckers to other regions that do not provide the proper habitat they risk endangering the woodpecker further. By forcing it into areas that do not provide adequate nesting grounds or introduce new threats or predators to the species.

I stumbled upon this story at an interesting time in my life, as I am focusing much of my energy on becoming a better person and grounding myself in nature. I am currently thumbing through the pages of The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in The Rhythms of Nature by Starhawk. The book discusses many issues like this one. Stories where people focus solely on bettering the situation for themselves and do not think about the long term consequences their decisions may have on the land or on the people and animals that live on that land.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to find their place in the “Big Picture” that we call earth. The small section of the book I have already read has already opened my eyes greatly to the huge difference that small changes can make. For more information and to read a brief excerpt of this visit Amazon.com.