living green
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A decadent chocolate cake for your sweetie, minus the animal products
In the many years I worked in the restaurant world, Valentine’s Day meant whipping up confections for other people’s sweethearts. The pressure was steep: People scramble for reservations on the romantic holiday, and desserts are expected to impress. This year, I’ll be at home — and focusing on a Valentine’s Day sweet for my very […]
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This weekend's NBA All-Star Game to be greenish
The NBA All-Star Game on Sunday will be the greenest yet -- perhaps not such a tough bar to reach, but still worth a note.
Greenish plans include, of course, carbon offsets. They also include PSAs about recycling, starring figures from the host team Phoenix Suns; lotsa recycling bins; and "sustainable" T-shirts for volunteers. Bigger-scale projects include construction of a local playground from post-consumer materials. The Suns themselves are also greening up their act, with plans to install solar panels at their arena later this year.
As we've seen before, Phoenix is surprisingly sustainable in its way, despite the whole water-sucking-city-in-a-desert thing. Hosting (and boasting about) a high-profile green sports event is another point in its favor, small though it be.
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The benefits of a carbon-free vacation
This is my cousin Tom's idea of a vacation:
He takes a bus across the Golden Gate Bridge to Rodeo Beach. He's wearing hiking boots, jeans, and a windbreaker. He carries a small backpack, volume of John Muir inside. And a sandwich. He hikes up the Coastal trail to Wolf Ridge, bundled against the morning fog, then down to Tennessee beach. Seagulls caw and whirl. Sandwich, book, nap on the beach to the sound of crashing waves on California's north coast. Stretches, shakes the sand out of his hair, hikes over the ridge to Pirate's Cove, then down to Muir Beach. Checks into the Pelican Inn. Has a cold Lagunitas Lager and reads a few pages of Muir, soaking in the clawfoot tub. Down to dinner, then a nightcap with locals. Really, Jerry Garcia used to play here? And you filled in on harmonica? Nip of night air and impossible stars before turning in. And that's just day one. There are three more days until Olema.
A carbon-free vacation sounds pretty good, don't it? He's got tips, trail maps, and community here.
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Green lifestyle blamed for England's rodent woes
Britain is experiencing an explosion in its rat population, and green living is to blame.
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Umbra on bamboo origins
Dear Umbra, Sustainably grown bamboo is a very good choice for fabrics. But how does the consumer know it is harvested sustainably? After all, some bamboo is clear cut from old-growth stands. Even in cultivated bamboo there are some very unsustainable practices (for instance, harvesting too young). How can you know if the bamboo fabric […]
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14 Green Couples
It seems everyone’s going green these days — but some couples are doubly committed to the cause. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we take a look at 14 prominent pairs who share a certain planetary passion. Brad and Angie Yes, the ever-expanding footprint of this family might raise a few eco-eyebrows, but they make up […]
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Ditty Bops nominated for Grammy thanks to sustainable CD packaging
Remember when album art mattered? My college band, Groove or Die, had the idea of one-upping the Rolling Stones by making our album jacket out of an actual pair of pants.
That idea, like most things Groove or Die-related -- including actually recording music -- never quite made it out of the dining hall.
This trip down memory lane was brought on by the Ditty Bops, whose efforts to create an album out of recycled materials and soy-based inks earned their album Summer Rains a Grammy nomination for "Best Recording Package" (that's what they're calling album art in this post-vinyl age). As I have seen them perform wearing nothing but recycled plastic bags, in a sense they one-upped Groove or Die by wearing album material instead of making album material out of what they wear. -
Movement for metro pollinators spreading
Let loose the bees! Like the surging movement for backyard chickens, bees also have urban anthropic allies, and Denver is the newest metropolis to allow beehives in town. Led by the intrepid Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) crew, bees will now be invited to pollinate mile-high metro-veggies, just like in Seattle, Minneapolis, and San Francisco.
Enjoy the ordinance's entertaining rules on how hives are to be kept at DUG's site, but consider that native bees are also to be encouraged.
Check out this article on Sacramento's Urban Bee Project, which tries to bolster biodiversity and urban pollination through the planting of vegetation favored by native bees, such as the cantankerous 'headbonker.' Me, I'd plant any damn thing if I thought something by that name might come bumbling by.
