Urban Agriculture Blooms
Urban Farming Grows Up
Showing posts with label going green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label going green. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
100 Foot Diet - Freedom Gardens
Grow what you eat, eat what you grow
With a nod to the 100 mile diet (spearheaded by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon) and other eat local challenges, Freedom Gardens is presenting a challenge to bring food even closer to home. The 100 Foot Diet Challenge reduces the traveling distance from field to table from miles to a few steps—right outside your back or, even, front door.
You don’t even need acreage to be a “farmer.” Use your yard (or balcony or porch steps) not only to grow your diet but also to cultivate a healthier and more fulfilling life.
In the spirit of courage and “we-can-do-it” attitudes of previous generations who planted gardens in their front and back yards to support their countries’ war efforts, today we undertake the challenge to declare independence from corporate food systems and start a living protest right in our own back/front/side yards by planting for freedom!
■The challenge is simple. Begin as soon as you can; prepare a meal at least once a week with only homegrown vegetables, fruit, herbs, eggs, dairy products or meat, using as few store bought ingredients as possible.
■The purpose is plain. The undertaking of an all-out struggle for freedom from the forces that keep you dependent on the system of petroleum fueled food. The degree to which you rely on today’s artificial corporate structure determines the extent of your vulnerability. Resolve to lessen your dependence on outside food sources.
■The result is revolutionary. As you take back responsibility for your food supply, you’ll experience the empowerment and fulfillment that comes from learning the basic skills of providing for yourself and your family.
By planting a Freedom Garden and taking on this challenge, you, your family, and the planet will benefit.
■Eat more nutritious food, which leads to better health
■Reduce your exposure to unwanted, toxic pesticides
■Reduce the number of miles your food travels, lessening your dependence on fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions
■Increased food security
■Improved quality of life through living in harmony with nature and eating with the seasons
■Save money; make money (see DerVaes Gardens)
■Reduce excessive packaging
■Combat global warming
■Get involved in your local food community
■Become independent of corporate food systems
Together, let us declare our independence and sow the seeds of freedom. This is a true revolution!
With a nod to the 100 mile diet (spearheaded by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon) and other eat local challenges, Freedom Gardens is presenting a challenge to bring food even closer to home. The 100 Foot Diet Challenge reduces the traveling distance from field to table from miles to a few steps—right outside your back or, even, front door.
You don’t even need acreage to be a “farmer.” Use your yard (or balcony or porch steps) not only to grow your diet but also to cultivate a healthier and more fulfilling life.
In the spirit of courage and “we-can-do-it” attitudes of previous generations who planted gardens in their front and back yards to support their countries’ war efforts, today we undertake the challenge to declare independence from corporate food systems and start a living protest right in our own back/front/side yards by planting for freedom!
■The challenge is simple. Begin as soon as you can; prepare a meal at least once a week with only homegrown vegetables, fruit, herbs, eggs, dairy products or meat, using as few store bought ingredients as possible.
■The purpose is plain. The undertaking of an all-out struggle for freedom from the forces that keep you dependent on the system of petroleum fueled food. The degree to which you rely on today’s artificial corporate structure determines the extent of your vulnerability. Resolve to lessen your dependence on outside food sources.
■The result is revolutionary. As you take back responsibility for your food supply, you’ll experience the empowerment and fulfillment that comes from learning the basic skills of providing for yourself and your family.
By planting a Freedom Garden and taking on this challenge, you, your family, and the planet will benefit.
■Eat more nutritious food, which leads to better health
■Reduce your exposure to unwanted, toxic pesticides
■Reduce the number of miles your food travels, lessening your dependence on fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions
■Increased food security
■Improved quality of life through living in harmony with nature and eating with the seasons
■Save money; make money (see DerVaes Gardens)
■Reduce excessive packaging
■Combat global warming
■Get involved in your local food community
■Become independent of corporate food systems
Together, let us declare our independence and sow the seeds of freedom. This is a true revolution!
Visit this site to learn more about Freedom Gardens and to join this revolution!
I already attempt to eat as much locally produced food as possible, but even for me, this really is a challenge. Especially in the winter in Kentucky. As I mentioned in my last post, I recently bought a grow light to assist with growing sprouts and wheatgrass indoors, and to have my seedlings ready to plant come spring. I also always have at least one jar of sprouts growing at a time, whether alfalfa, lentil, clover, or some kind of bean or pea or grain. I have some potted herbs, but the lack of sunlight in the winter has been hard on them.
I always buy local first (local honey and apples are available pretty much year round, as are local raw cheeses and butter.) If I cannot find local, then I buy organic. I try not to buy things out of season, but I just love avocados and have a hard time going without. I have been buying winter greens, such as kale, which is actually cheaper than other greens this time of year.
This is my challenge for myself:
1. Grow and eat as many sprouts as possible until I can plant my garden.
2. Buy local/organic first, then organic, and seasonal produce as much as possible.
3. Make my own rather than buying (sauerkraut, kim chee, kombucha, mead, yogurt, etc.)
4. Grow the largest garden I can this spring and summer using heirloom and organic seeds.
5. Plant a fall and winter garden and maintain a passive solar greenhouse over the winter.
6. Set up rain barrels, use ocean water, and minerals on all garden plants.
7. Plant wild flowers because they are pretty and they attract bees to pollenate my garden.
HOMEGROWN REVOLUTION - Radical Change Taking Root
As I watched this video, I suddenly became aware that I had tears running down my face - tears of joy, tears of inspiration. This is my goal - to live self-sufficiently and sustainably. To grow as much of my own food as possible. Since I was very young, I have always felt a calling back to the land, although I was not quite sure until more recent years just what that calling was.
It is radical to grow your own food. To be independent. To put your love and intention into the food you grow and eat. Growing your own food puts you back in control of your life, your health. You control what foods you grow and how they are grown. No pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or genetically modified crops. Organic and heirloom variety seeds; seeds which you can save and replant year after year.
I have recently purchased a grow light and will be starting the seedlings for my first large-scale garden as soon as I can. I also grow sprouts indoors year round, and with the light, I will be able to grow pea shoots, sunflower shoots, and wheatgrass in my kitchen. I have plans for building a greenhouse utilising passive solar heating during the cooler months. I have some garden experience (we always had one growing up) and I plan on visiting my grandparents often to learn from them. They have always had a nice sized garden as far back as I can remember. Every year they grow tomatoes, peppers, beans, lettuce, green onions, corn, squashes, cucumbers, and more. And they always have way more than they can eat themselves. I plan on learning the valuable art of canning and jarring from them this year. This is very exciting, but also somewhat overwhelming. I have to build raised beds, till up the soil in my back yard, mix in compost, learn about adding ocean water and minerals, and more. I feel like I am taking on such a challange, but one that will be well worth it in the end.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Biodynamic Agriculture
Biodynamic agriculture, a method of organic farming that has its basis in a spiritual world-view (anthroposophy, first propounded by Rudolf Steiner), treats farms as unified and individual organisms,[1] emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a closed, self-nourishing system.[2] Regarded by some proponents as the first modern ecological farming system,[3] biodynamic farming includes organic agriculture's emphasis on manures and composts and exclusion of the use of artificial chemicals on soil and plants. Methods unique to the biodynamic approach include the use of fermented herbal and mineral preparations as compost additives and field sprays and the use of an astronomical sowing and planting calendar.[4]
The development of biodynamic agriculture began in 1924 with a series of eight lectures on agriculture given by Rudolf Steiner at Schloss Koberwitz in what was then Silesia, Germany, (now in Poland east of Wrocław). The course was held in response to a request by farmers who noticed degraded soil conditions and a deterioration in the health and quality of crops and livestock resulting from the use of chemical fertilizers.[5] An agricultural research group was subsequently formed to test the effects of biodynamic methods on the life and health of soil, plants and animals. In the United States, the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association was founded in 1938 as a New York state corporation.
In Australia the first biodynamic preparations were made by Ernesto Genoni in Melbourne in 1927 and by Bob Williams in Sydney in 1939. Since the 1950s research work has continued at the Biodynamic Research Institute (BDRI) in Powelltown, near Melbourne Australia under the direction of Alexei Podolinsky. In 1989 Biodynamic Agriculture Australia was established, as a not for profit association. It has well over 1100 members and has local and regional groups throughout Australia. It publishes the biodynamic journal News Leaf quarterly and is the largest organic growers association in Australia.
Today biodynamics is practiced in more than 50 countries worldwide. The University of Kassel has a dedicated Department of Biodynamic Agriculture.[6]
Biodynamic method of farming
Biodynamic agriculture conceives of the farm as an organism, a self-contained entity with its own individuality. "Emphasis is placed on the integration of crops and livestock, recycling of nutrients, maintenance of soil, and the health and well being of crops and animals; the farmer too is part of the whole."[7] Cover crops, green manures and crop rotations are used extensively. The approach also attempts to consider celestial (i.e., astrological) influences on soil and plant development and to revitalize the farm, its products, and its inhabitants.[8] Seeds are planted at certain lunar phases.[9]
Treatment of pests and weeds
Biodynamic agriculture sees the basis of pest and disease control arising from a strong healthy balanced farm organism. Where this is not yet achieved it uses techniques analogous to fertilization for pest control and weed control. Most of these techniques include using the ashes of a pest or weed that has been trapped or picked from the fields and burnt. A biodynamic farmer perceives weeds and plant vulnerability to pests as a result of imbalances in the soil.
Pests such as insects or field mice (Apodemus) have more complex processes associated with them, depending on what pest is to be targeted. For example field mice are to be countered by deploying ashes prepared from field mice skin when Venus is in
Seed production
Biodynamic agriculture has focused on open pollination of seeds (permitting farmers to grow their own seed) and the development of locally adapted varieties. The seed stock is not controlled by large, multinational seed companies.[11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture
The development of biodynamic agriculture began in 1924 with a series of eight lectures on agriculture given by Rudolf Steiner at Schloss Koberwitz in what was then Silesia, Germany, (now in Poland east of Wrocław). The course was held in response to a request by farmers who noticed degraded soil conditions and a deterioration in the health and quality of crops and livestock resulting from the use of chemical fertilizers.[5] An agricultural research group was subsequently formed to test the effects of biodynamic methods on the life and health of soil, plants and animals. In the United States, the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association was founded in 1938 as a New York state corporation.
In Australia the first biodynamic preparations were made by Ernesto Genoni in Melbourne in 1927 and by Bob Williams in Sydney in 1939. Since the 1950s research work has continued at the Biodynamic Research Institute (BDRI) in Powelltown, near Melbourne Australia under the direction of Alexei Podolinsky. In 1989 Biodynamic Agriculture Australia was established, as a not for profit association. It has well over 1100 members and has local and regional groups throughout Australia. It publishes the biodynamic journal News Leaf quarterly and is the largest organic growers association in Australia.
Today biodynamics is practiced in more than 50 countries worldwide. The University of Kassel has a dedicated Department of Biodynamic Agriculture.[6]
Biodynamic method of farming
Biodynamic agriculture conceives of the farm as an organism, a self-contained entity with its own individuality. "Emphasis is placed on the integration of crops and livestock, recycling of nutrients, maintenance of soil, and the health and well being of crops and animals; the farmer too is part of the whole."[7] Cover crops, green manures and crop rotations are used extensively. The approach also attempts to consider celestial (i.e., astrological) influences on soil and plant development and to revitalize the farm, its products, and its inhabitants.[8] Seeds are planted at certain lunar phases.[9]
Treatment of pests and weeds
Biodynamic agriculture sees the basis of pest and disease control arising from a strong healthy balanced farm organism. Where this is not yet achieved it uses techniques analogous to fertilization for pest control and weed control. Most of these techniques include using the ashes of a pest or weed that has been trapped or picked from the fields and burnt. A biodynamic farmer perceives weeds and plant vulnerability to pests as a result of imbalances in the soil.
Pests such as insects or field mice (Apodemus) have more complex processes associated with them, depending on what pest is to be targeted. For example field mice are to be countered by deploying ashes prepared from field mice skin when Venus is in
Seed production
Biodynamic agriculture has focused on open pollination of seeds (permitting farmers to grow their own seed) and the development of locally adapted varieties. The seed stock is not controlled by large, multinational seed companies.[11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture
U.S. Green Building Council Helps Builders and Companies Go Green
More companies are beginning to see the benefits of having energy-efficient buildings and physical plants. Cleaner, more efficient office buildings and work spaces not only help the environment but can save a company money, improving that company's -- as well as all of society's -- bottom line.
One organization helps companies to realize the benefits of greener building.
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a nonprofit coalition for "advancing buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work," according to the organization's website. The USGBC operates the "Green Building Rating System" for new buildings and the "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System" to grade the sustainable operation of existing buildings.
More than 5,500 companies and organizations are members of the council, which had certified more than 200 million sq. ft. of commercial space as LEED certified.
Companies that are certified by USGBC are then able to tout their environmental stewardship, and also will save money in the long run for having built cleaner operating, more energy-efficient buildings.
For example, recently USGBC certified the new technology and operations campus of KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY), outside of Cleveland, with a green certification. The company will realize an energy savings over the years, and the environment will benefit immediately: According to KeyCorp, the new buildings emit 2.7 million pounds less greenhouse gases, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury. This is equal to removing 130 cars from the road or planting 378 acres of trees. The new campus was built on a former "brownfield" site.
KeyCorp is a bank with more than 900 branches in 12 mostly midwestern states, and has nearly 20,000 employees. The company says it plans to use green practices in its branches as well. KeyCorp's sales were more than $5.5 billion in 2004.
Governments are getting in on the act too -- recently the mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona, announced that all public buildings in that city were to be certified "LEED Gold," the USGBC's second-most stringent certification for existing buildings. Certification levels are Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/1500
One organization helps companies to realize the benefits of greener building.
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a nonprofit coalition for "advancing buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work," according to the organization's website. The USGBC operates the "Green Building Rating System" for new buildings and the "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System" to grade the sustainable operation of existing buildings.
More than 5,500 companies and organizations are members of the council, which had certified more than 200 million sq. ft. of commercial space as LEED certified.
Companies that are certified by USGBC are then able to tout their environmental stewardship, and also will save money in the long run for having built cleaner operating, more energy-efficient buildings.
For example, recently USGBC certified the new technology and operations campus of KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY), outside of Cleveland, with a green certification. The company will realize an energy savings over the years, and the environment will benefit immediately: According to KeyCorp, the new buildings emit 2.7 million pounds less greenhouse gases, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury. This is equal to removing 130 cars from the road or planting 378 acres of trees. The new campus was built on a former "brownfield" site.
KeyCorp is a bank with more than 900 branches in 12 mostly midwestern states, and has nearly 20,000 employees. The company says it plans to use green practices in its branches as well. KeyCorp's sales were more than $5.5 billion in 2004.
Governments are getting in on the act too -- recently the mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona, announced that all public buildings in that city were to be certified "LEED Gold," the USGBC's second-most stringent certification for existing buildings. Certification levels are Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/1500
Green Cleaning Required in LEED for Existing Buildings
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) first released LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED-EB) in November 2007. The reference guide for the system is due out in June 2008, and, as of July 1, all projects seeking certification must register under the new version.
Among the many changes are the addition of a green cleaning prerequisite and two points in a green cleaning credit requiring verification of custodial effectiveness. According to David Holly of the Ashkin Group, a green cleaning consulting firm, the prerequisite is a sign that the importance of cleaning is gaining recognition.
The new points, which are awarded for achieving a certain level of cleanliness, also represent a shift away from thinking about green cleaning as a set of products towards thinking about it as a set of best practices that include making a cleaning plan, using less-toxic chemicals, and using energy-efficient equipment.
The new points, which are awarded for achieving a certain level of cleanliness, also represent a shift away from thinking about green cleaning as a set of products towards thinking about it as a set of best practices that include making a cleaning plan, using less-toxic chemicals, and using energy-efficient equipment.
To achieve the performance-based points, a building must meet standards set by APPA, which provides guidelines for educational facilities. The Ashkin Group is working with APPA and USGBC to adapt the guidelines to other types of facilities; the resulting guidance will appear in the LEED-EB reference guide.
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/37513
http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/37513
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Ten Best Green Jobs for the Next Decade
By: Anya Kamenetz
Massive investments in clean energy promise to keep farmers, urban planners, and green-tech entrepreneurs in business for the next decade. This guide to sustainability focused career paths will help solar-charge your work life.
"It's time to bail out the people and the planet," says Van Jones, author of The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. We agree, and this guide to to sustainability-focused career paths will help retrofit and solar-charge your work life.
Farmer
America has only two million farmers, and their average age is 55. Since sustainable agriculture requires small-scale, local, organic methods rather than petroleum-based machines and fertilizers, there is a huge need for more farmers -- up to tens of millions of them, according to food guru Michael Pollan. Modern farmers are small businesspeople who must be as skilled in heirloom genetics as marketing.
Schools: University of Vermont: Center for Sustainable Agriculture; Stone Barns Center For Food & Agriculture in New York State; University of Oklahoma: Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture; Evergreen State College: degree in Sustainable Agriculture.
Related careers: urban gardener; farmers market and CSA coordinator; artisanal cheesemakers; and other food producers.
Forester
Modern forestry a complex combination of international project finance, conservation and development. According to the World Bank, a staggering 1.6 billion people depend on the forest for their livelihoods. Foresters help local people transition from slash-and-burn to silviculture--teaching cultivation of higher-value, faster-growing species for fruit, medicine or timber, for examples while carefully documenting the impact on the environment. Deforestation, which causes around a quarter of all global warming, is also likely to be a leading source of carbon credits worth tens of billions of dollars.
Schools: Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; Duke University: Nicholas School of the Environment; University of Michigan: School of Natural Resources & Environment.
Companies/organizations: The Nature Conservancy; New Forests Inc.
Solar Power Installer
Making and installing solar power systems already accounts for some 770,000 jobs globally. Installing solar-thermal water heaters and rooftop photovoltaic cells is a relatively high-paying job--$15 to $35 an hour--for those with construction skills. And opportunities are available all over the United States, wherever the sun shines. Currently over 3,400 companies in the solar energy sector employ 25,000 to 35,000 workers. The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts an increase to over 110,000 jobs by 2016â even more if anticipated tax credits are accelerated.
Companies: Akeena Solar; Sungevity; Sunpower; Full list at SEIA.org.
Energy Efficiency Builder Buildings account for up to 48 percent of US energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. LEED, the major green building certification, has over 43,000 accredited professionals. But the cutting edge in efficient buildings goes far beyond LEED. Buildings constructed according to Passivhaus and MINERGIE-P standards in Germany and Switzerland, respectively, use between 75% and 95% less heat energy than a similar building constructed to the latest codes in the US. Greening the US building stock will take not only skilled architects and engineers, but a workforce of retrofitters who can use spray foam insulation and storm windows to massively improve the R-value (thermal resistance) of the draftiest old houses. A study by the Apollo Alliance recommended an $89.9 billion investment in financing to create 827,260 jobs in green buildings -- an initiative supported by the Obama stimulus package, which specifically mentions energy retrofits.
Schools: Arizona State University School of Architecture: Energy Performance Climate-Responsive Architecture; University of Michigan: Alfred A. Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning; The Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Wind Turbine Fabricator
Wind is the leading and fastest-growing source of alternative energy with over 300,000 jobs worldwide. Turbines are 90% metal by weight, creating an opportunity for autoworkers and other manufacturers to repurpose their skills. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the industry currently employs some 50,000 Americans and added 10,000 new jobs in 2007. Their job board is an excellent place to start looking for opportunities.
Companies: Vestas; Siemens; GE Energy.
Conservation Biologist
The granddaddy of diversity, E.O. Wilson, famously called conservation biology -- discipline with a deadline. The urgent quest to preserve the integrity of ecosystems around the world -- and to quantify the value of -- ecosystems services -- leads to opportunities in teaching, research and fieldwork for government, nonprofits, and private companies. The forthcoming economic stimulus package from the Obama administration offers the prospect of increased federal support for science and research.
Schools: Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington and the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. At the small College of the Atlantic every student gets his or her degree in human ecology; it's been called the most sustainable college or university in the world.
Green MBA and Entrepreneur
The concept of the triple bottom line has migrated from the margins to the mainstream of the business world. A recent report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Mayors Climate Protection Center found that business services like legal, research and consulting account for the majority of all green jobs -- over 400,000. This includes everything from marketing to the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) segment, to serving as a VP of sustainability within a large company, to piloting a green startup like Method or Recyclebank.
Schools: Stanford School of Business; San Francisco's Presidio School of Management; Leeds School of Business; University of Colorado at Boulder -- Deming Center for Entrepreneurship; the Bainbridge Graduate Institute in Wash.
Recycler
The total number of recycling jobs in the United States is at more than 1 million, according to recent reports (PDF, right click to save). Although the market for paper and plastic has slowed down recently due to the economic downturn, demand for steel is still strong -- 42 percent of output came from scrap in 2006 -- and recycling remains the economical alternative to high disposal fees. Worldwide more than 200,000 people work in secondary steel production, and the US is a major center of production. New laws and regulations are also creating a need for specialized companies that can close the loop by recycling and repurposing e-waste, clothing, plastic bags, construction waste, and other materials.
Companies: Rumpke; Greenstar North America.
Sustainability Systems Developer
The green economy needs a cadre of specialized software developers and engineers who design, build, and maintain the networks of sensors and stochastic modeling that underpin wind farms, smart energy grids, congestion pricing and other systems substituting intelligence for natural resources. Coders with experience using large scale enterprise resource planning have an edge here, as well as developers familiar with open source and web 2.0 applications.
Companies: IBM, V2Green, WindLogics
Urban Planner
Urban and regional planning is a linchpin of the quest to lower America's carbon footprint. Strengthening mass transit systems, limiting sprawl, encouraging use of bicycles and deemphasizing cars is only part of the job. Equally important is contingency planning, as floods, heat waves and garbage creep become increasingly common problems for metropolises. Employment in this sector is projected to grow 15 percent by 2016, and the jobs are mainly in local governments, which make them a slightly safer bet for the downturn.
Schools: Penn Institute for Urban Research; Harvard: Department of Urban Planning and Design; Portland State University: Nohad A Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning.
http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2009/01/best-green-jobs.html?page=0%2C0
Eat Local - Community Supported Agriculture
Intro to Community Supported Agriculture
CSA - Farmer Shares Info About Her CSA Program
CSA - Farmer Shares Info About Her CSA Program
Appeal of 'green products' growing despite recession -- survey
Greenwire, 21 January 2009 - "Green products" became more popular last year, according to a new survey by researchers who see the trend continuing despite the sharp global economic downturn.
The Boston Consulting Group survey of some 9,000 consumers in East Asia, Europe and North America found that more shoppers deliberately sought and bought green products in 2008 than in the year before. Their research also suggests consumers are becoming more willing to pay higher prices for green products than they were in the past.
Overall, 34 percent of those surveyed said they "systematically look for and purchase green products," up from 32 percent in 2007. And 24 percent said the higher price premium for buying green is acceptable, up from just 20 percent the year before.
The findings, published yesterday in the group's new report, "Capturing the Green Advantage for Consumer Companies," is good news for companies selling eco-friendly products. Seventy-five percent of consumers surveyed said that it is important or very important for companies to provide information on the environmental impacts of their products, and 66 percent said companies should routinely offer green products.
Health and safety concerns still trump the environment with shoppers. Eighty-one percent said companies should spell out their goods' risks and safety issues. But that does not necessarily bode ill for green products, say report co-authors Felix Muennich and Catherine Roche, researchers with BCG offices in Germany.
"Green is also a proxy for health and safety in many products (e.g. foods, skin creams, children's toys) and that will continue to be something that consumers are concerned about when shopping," they said in an e-mail.
The group questioned 9,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 65 in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and China in face-to-face interviews in major cities. In national comparisons, Europeans ranked among the most environmentally conscious consumers, while East Asians ranked among the least.
About 34 percent of Europeans said last year that they routinely sought green products. Italians topped the chart, with 20 percent saying they actively seek green products, compared to only 15 percent in the United Kingdom, the lowest proportion for the region.
Sixteen percent of U.S. consumers last year reported being "systematic shoppers of green products," compared to just 11 percent of Japanese.
Most popular goods
Worldwide, the most popular green or perceived green products seem to be organic food and environmentally friendly household cleaners. Health concerns may explain why these goods are bought at a greater frequency than other green items.
The report says companies may stand a better chance of marketing green goods, especially food and cosmetics, if they can convince shoppers that their products are of higher quality and better for their health. The survey shows most consumers already believe that green products are generally of better quality than mainstream products.
The report also suggests that households worldwide are taking care to be more environmentally friendly, at least in inexpensive ways. About 75 percent said they shut off appliances that are not in use to save electricity, recycle waste or reuse products as often as possible. A little more than 50 percent reported that they strive to use their cars as little as possible now, but about 80 percent say they will work to do so in the future.
Among the least common consumer green practices today include eco-friendly investing and owning hybrid vehicles. Only about 7 percent report owning a hybrid car, while a little more than 10 percent say they invest in environmentally friendly funds.
Many industry watchers question whether buying for the environment will continue to grow in popularity as the United States, Europe and Japan enter deep recessions. Most past studies of consumer green sentiment found shoppers willing to purchase green products only if it did not cost them much more.
Indeed, this latest study shows that, even though shoppers say they are willing to pay more for green goods, companies can charge only about 5 percent to 10 percent more for such products before their popularity begins to slip fast.
Still, researchers say their overall findings leave them confident that the green product industry should weather the current financial storm nicely.
"We expect appeal to remain strong," they said. "But one caveat -- consumer willingness to pay large price premiums for green products is constrained even in good times and will likely be more so in a downturn climate."
http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MzMxMDM
The Boston Consulting Group survey of some 9,000 consumers in East Asia, Europe and North America found that more shoppers deliberately sought and bought green products in 2008 than in the year before. Their research also suggests consumers are becoming more willing to pay higher prices for green products than they were in the past.
Overall, 34 percent of those surveyed said they "systematically look for and purchase green products," up from 32 percent in 2007. And 24 percent said the higher price premium for buying green is acceptable, up from just 20 percent the year before.
The findings, published yesterday in the group's new report, "Capturing the Green Advantage for Consumer Companies," is good news for companies selling eco-friendly products. Seventy-five percent of consumers surveyed said that it is important or very important for companies to provide information on the environmental impacts of their products, and 66 percent said companies should routinely offer green products.
Health and safety concerns still trump the environment with shoppers. Eighty-one percent said companies should spell out their goods' risks and safety issues. But that does not necessarily bode ill for green products, say report co-authors Felix Muennich and Catherine Roche, researchers with BCG offices in Germany.
"Green is also a proxy for health and safety in many products (e.g. foods, skin creams, children's toys) and that will continue to be something that consumers are concerned about when shopping," they said in an e-mail.
The group questioned 9,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 65 in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and China in face-to-face interviews in major cities. In national comparisons, Europeans ranked among the most environmentally conscious consumers, while East Asians ranked among the least.
About 34 percent of Europeans said last year that they routinely sought green products. Italians topped the chart, with 20 percent saying they actively seek green products, compared to only 15 percent in the United Kingdom, the lowest proportion for the region.
Sixteen percent of U.S. consumers last year reported being "systematic shoppers of green products," compared to just 11 percent of Japanese.
Most popular goods
Worldwide, the most popular green or perceived green products seem to be organic food and environmentally friendly household cleaners. Health concerns may explain why these goods are bought at a greater frequency than other green items.
The report says companies may stand a better chance of marketing green goods, especially food and cosmetics, if they can convince shoppers that their products are of higher quality and better for their health. The survey shows most consumers already believe that green products are generally of better quality than mainstream products.
The report also suggests that households worldwide are taking care to be more environmentally friendly, at least in inexpensive ways. About 75 percent said they shut off appliances that are not in use to save electricity, recycle waste or reuse products as often as possible. A little more than 50 percent reported that they strive to use their cars as little as possible now, but about 80 percent say they will work to do so in the future.
Among the least common consumer green practices today include eco-friendly investing and owning hybrid vehicles. Only about 7 percent report owning a hybrid car, while a little more than 10 percent say they invest in environmentally friendly funds.
Many industry watchers question whether buying for the environment will continue to grow in popularity as the United States, Europe and Japan enter deep recessions. Most past studies of consumer green sentiment found shoppers willing to purchase green products only if it did not cost them much more.
Indeed, this latest study shows that, even though shoppers say they are willing to pay more for green goods, companies can charge only about 5 percent to 10 percent more for such products before their popularity begins to slip fast.
Still, researchers say their overall findings leave them confident that the green product industry should weather the current financial storm nicely.
"We expect appeal to remain strong," they said. "But one caveat -- consumer willingness to pay large price premiums for green products is constrained even in good times and will likely be more so in a downturn climate."
http://www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=MzMxMDM
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Cities May Sprout Vertical Farms
Proposed high-rise greenhouses could help solve a looming food crisis, professor says.
Farming would seem to be a horizontal occupation. Iowa corn or Kansas wheat pokes up from flat fields that stretch to the horizon.
That’s why the idea of “vertical farms” seems ripe for humor. When its biggest advocate appeared on the faux news show “The Colbert Report” earlier this year, comedian Stephen Colbert prefaced the interview by guessing it would have something to do with corn that grows sideways or perhaps “Chia blimps” that float overhead.
Such teasing hasn’t deterred Dickson Despommier, the Col umbia University professor of public health. He sees putting crops into skyscrapers as a better way to feed a hungry world. Professor Despommier’s website, verticalfarm.com, features architectural concepts of high-rise buildings that could grow fresh produce in urban areas while at the same time being much more environmentally sustainable than conventional agriculture. [Editor’s note: The original story misspelled Dr. Despommier’s first name.]
The trouble is, he concedes, none of the beautiful drawings would work exactly as shown. “They all look pretty,” he says. “[A]t least it means they’re thinking in the right direction.”
What’s needed before millions of dollars are spent to construct or renovate an existing 30-story building into a vertical farm, Despommier says, are prototypes just a few stories high. They should be built at leading agricultural universities and tinkered with until the concept is proved. “Once it does, drive it out of the showroom and take it home,” he says.
While Despommier has won admirers around the world for his innovative thinking, skeptics still wonder how he’s going to handle the problem of solar energy – bringing necessary light to the interior and lower floors of his agri-towers. “As soon as you go vertical, you compound that problem of getting that [solar] energy to the plant,” says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Dr. Giacomelli likes the audacity of vertical farms, but says a lot of problems must be solved first. Despommier, he says, “is a forward thinker. He’s challen ging all of us to try to make it happen.”
The challenges also include finding and training indoor “farmers” who can operate what is likely to be a complex system. “There’s nobody at the moment,” Giacomelli says. The technical problems aren’t insurmountable – crops are being grown indoors at the South Pole, albeit at great expense, he says. But, he adds, “There are many more ways to fail [at indoor agriculture] than to grow a crop correctly and succeed.”
The world is going to need vertical farms because conventional agriculture can’t handle what’s to come, Despommier says. By mid century, the world is expected to add another 3 billion people, pushing its population close to 10 billion. Feeding all those extra mouths will require finding an area of agricultural land larger than Brazil – without cutting rain forests needed to stabilize the world’s climate.
Heading skyward, under the controlled conditions of an indoor greenhouse, has many advantages, Despommier says. “You can control nothing outdoors, and you can control everything indoors,” he says. That means no floods, wildfires, hailstorms, tornadoes, or droughts. Plant diseases and pests are more easily controlled, too, meaning less need for herbicides and pesticides.
And indoor agriculture is more efficient. One indoor acre of strawberries can produce as much as 30 outdoor acres can. In general, indoor acreage is four to six times more productive, in part because of the year-round growing season. “Outdoors, you might get one crop [per year]; indoors, you might get four or five crops per year,” Despommier says.
By bringing high-rise agriculture to urban areas, transportation costs are eliminated, and the produce is fresher.
The problem of bringing light to the plants could be solved through artificial lighting, powered by solar, wind, or other methods, Despommier says. All cities have a huge source of unused energy: human sewage. It could be burned to create a significant energy source.
“It’s not a perpetual [motion] machine because you’ll have to supplement from the outside,” he says. But the energy requirements would still be lower than those of conventional farming, with its use of heavy machinery, fertilizers, and long-haul transportation.
Critics remain far from convinced. “The notion of filling a building [with plants] and artificially supplying the light for the plants … from any kind of energy system is one of the weirdest ideas I’ve ever heard of,” says Richard Register, author of “EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.” “It’s not serious agriculture. It’s just not…. It’s an intellectual plaything.”
A better answer is to develop, over time, more compact, energy-efficient cities along the European model, he says. That would free up land near urban areas for conventional agriculture with “100-percent-free solar energy” falling on it. Urban community gardens and high-intensity conventional commercial gardens could also supply part of the need.
Despommier’s students, in fact, first looked at using rooftop gardens to feed Manhattan. They found that farming on flat rooftops could supply only about 2 percent of the island’s food needs. That’s when Despommier hit upon using some of the city’s abandoned buildings to create vertical greenhouses.
He received further inspiration from a children’s book his wife gave him. “Old MacDonald Had an Apartment House,” by Judi Barrett, tells the story of an apartment building supervisor who fills his building with vegetable plants and farm animals as tenants. While Despommier doesn’t see cows or pigs moving into vertical farms anytime soon, he thinks aquaculture could be part of the mix.
“You can start with mollusks – mussels and clams,” he says. Shrimp, striped bass, catfish, and flounder are other possibilities – or chickens, ducks, and geese. “This will have to be done in a way that’s agreeable to consumers, so consumers will set the standard,” he says.
The first working vertical farms are likely to be built outside the United States, Despommier says, where the need is greatest. He’s received interest from Shanghai, China, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and is currently on a trip to India to address the Indian Institute for Architecture in Bangalore.
Next spring, a class at the Massa chu setts Institute of Technology will look into the idea. Some 15 to 20 seniors majoring in civil and environmental engineering will form teams and create design projects to see just how vertical farming might be accomplished.
“The potential for doing something is great, but frankly I don’t know yet what’s going to happen,” says Herbert Einstein, the engineering professor who will conduct the class at MIT. “If there’s something viable, hopefully we’ll know more by the end of the spring term.”
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/12/24/cities-may-sprout-vertical-farms
Farming would seem to be a horizontal occupation. Iowa corn or Kansas wheat pokes up from flat fields that stretch to the horizon.
That’s why the idea of “vertical farms” seems ripe for humor. When its biggest advocate appeared on the faux news show “The Colbert Report” earlier this year, comedian Stephen Colbert prefaced the interview by guessing it would have something to do with corn that grows sideways or perhaps “Chia blimps” that float overhead.
Such teasing hasn’t deterred Dickson Despommier, the Col umbia University professor of public health. He sees putting crops into skyscrapers as a better way to feed a hungry world. Professor Despommier’s website, verticalfarm.com, features architectural concepts of high-rise buildings that could grow fresh produce in urban areas while at the same time being much more environmentally sustainable than conventional agriculture. [Editor’s note: The original story misspelled Dr. Despommier’s first name.]
The trouble is, he concedes, none of the beautiful drawings would work exactly as shown. “They all look pretty,” he says. “[A]t least it means they’re thinking in the right direction.”
What’s needed before millions of dollars are spent to construct or renovate an existing 30-story building into a vertical farm, Despommier says, are prototypes just a few stories high. They should be built at leading agricultural universities and tinkered with until the concept is proved. “Once it does, drive it out of the showroom and take it home,” he says.
While Despommier has won admirers around the world for his innovative thinking, skeptics still wonder how he’s going to handle the problem of solar energy – bringing necessary light to the interior and lower floors of his agri-towers. “As soon as you go vertical, you compound that problem of getting that [solar] energy to the plant,” says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Dr. Giacomelli likes the audacity of vertical farms, but says a lot of problems must be solved first. Despommier, he says, “is a forward thinker. He’s challen ging all of us to try to make it happen.”
The challenges also include finding and training indoor “farmers” who can operate what is likely to be a complex system. “There’s nobody at the moment,” Giacomelli says. The technical problems aren’t insurmountable – crops are being grown indoors at the South Pole, albeit at great expense, he says. But, he adds, “There are many more ways to fail [at indoor agriculture] than to grow a crop correctly and succeed.”
The world is going to need vertical farms because conventional agriculture can’t handle what’s to come, Despommier says. By mid century, the world is expected to add another 3 billion people, pushing its population close to 10 billion. Feeding all those extra mouths will require finding an area of agricultural land larger than Brazil – without cutting rain forests needed to stabilize the world’s climate.
Heading skyward, under the controlled conditions of an indoor greenhouse, has many advantages, Despommier says. “You can control nothing outdoors, and you can control everything indoors,” he says. That means no floods, wildfires, hailstorms, tornadoes, or droughts. Plant diseases and pests are more easily controlled, too, meaning less need for herbicides and pesticides.
And indoor agriculture is more efficient. One indoor acre of strawberries can produce as much as 30 outdoor acres can. In general, indoor acreage is four to six times more productive, in part because of the year-round growing season. “Outdoors, you might get one crop [per year]; indoors, you might get four or five crops per year,” Despommier says.
By bringing high-rise agriculture to urban areas, transportation costs are eliminated, and the produce is fresher.
The problem of bringing light to the plants could be solved through artificial lighting, powered by solar, wind, or other methods, Despommier says. All cities have a huge source of unused energy: human sewage. It could be burned to create a significant energy source.
“It’s not a perpetual [motion] machine because you’ll have to supplement from the outside,” he says. But the energy requirements would still be lower than those of conventional farming, with its use of heavy machinery, fertilizers, and long-haul transportation.
Critics remain far from convinced. “The notion of filling a building [with plants] and artificially supplying the light for the plants … from any kind of energy system is one of the weirdest ideas I’ve ever heard of,” says Richard Register, author of “EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.” “It’s not serious agriculture. It’s just not…. It’s an intellectual plaything.”
A better answer is to develop, over time, more compact, energy-efficient cities along the European model, he says. That would free up land near urban areas for conventional agriculture with “100-percent-free solar energy” falling on it. Urban community gardens and high-intensity conventional commercial gardens could also supply part of the need.
Despommier’s students, in fact, first looked at using rooftop gardens to feed Manhattan. They found that farming on flat rooftops could supply only about 2 percent of the island’s food needs. That’s when Despommier hit upon using some of the city’s abandoned buildings to create vertical greenhouses.
He received further inspiration from a children’s book his wife gave him. “Old MacDonald Had an Apartment House,” by Judi Barrett, tells the story of an apartment building supervisor who fills his building with vegetable plants and farm animals as tenants. While Despommier doesn’t see cows or pigs moving into vertical farms anytime soon, he thinks aquaculture could be part of the mix.
“You can start with mollusks – mussels and clams,” he says. Shrimp, striped bass, catfish, and flounder are other possibilities – or chickens, ducks, and geese. “This will have to be done in a way that’s agreeable to consumers, so consumers will set the standard,” he says.
The first working vertical farms are likely to be built outside the United States, Despommier says, where the need is greatest. He’s received interest from Shanghai, China, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and is currently on a trip to India to address the Indian Institute for Architecture in Bangalore.
Next spring, a class at the Massa chu setts Institute of Technology will look into the idea. Some 15 to 20 seniors majoring in civil and environmental engineering will form teams and create design projects to see just how vertical farming might be accomplished.
“The potential for doing something is great, but frankly I don’t know yet what’s going to happen,” says Herbert Einstein, the engineering professor who will conduct the class at MIT. “If there’s something viable, hopefully we’ll know more by the end of the spring term.”
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/12/24/cities-may-sprout-vertical-farms
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
How You Can Start a Farm in Heart of the City
By Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, Process Media. Posted January 9, 2009.
Sick of flavorless, genetically modified, pesticide-drenched frankenvegetables? It's time to start growing food in your back yard.
Imagine sitting down to a salad of peppery arugula and heirloom tomatoes that you grew yourself. Or a Sunday omelet of eggs laid that morning, served with a thick slice of fresh sourdough, butter and apricot jam -- all homemade, of course. Or imagine toasting your friends with a mead made from local honey. Where would you have to move to live like this? A commune in Vermont? A villa in Italy?
My husband Erik and I have done all of this in our little bungalow in Los Angeles, two blocks off of Sunset Boulevard. We grow food and preserve it, recycle water, forage the neighborhood, and build community. We're urban homesteaders.
Though we have fantasies about one day moving to the country, the city holds things that are more important to us than any parcel of open land. We have friends and family here, great neighbors, and all the cultural amenities and stimulation of a city. It made more sense for us to become self-reliant in our urban environment. There was no need for us to wait to become farmers. We grow plenty of food in our backyard in Echo Park and even raise chickens. Once you taste lettuce that actually has a distinct flavor, or eat a sweet tomato still warm from the sun, or an orange-yolked egg from your own hen, you will never be satisfied with the pre-packaged and the factory-farmed again. Our next step down the homesteading path was learning to use the old home arts to preserve what we grew: pickling, fermenting, drying and brewing. A jar of jam that you make of wild blackberries holds memories of the summer, and not the air of the Smucker's factory.
When you grow some of your own food, you start to care more about all of your food. "Just where did this come from?" we'd find ourselves asking when we went shopping. What's in it? At the same time, we began to learn about cultured and fermented foods, which have beneficial bacteria in them. Few of these wonder-foods are available in stores. The supermarket started to look like a wasteland.
A little history
The idea of urban farming is nothing new. Back in the days before freeways and refrigerated trucks, cities depended on urban farmers for the majority of their fresh food. This included small farms around the city, as well as kitchen gardens. Even today, there are places that hold to this tradition. The citizens of Shanghai produce 85% of their vegetables within the city, and that's just one example of a long Asian tradition of intense urban gardening. Or consider Cuba. Cubans practiced centralized, industrial agriculture, just as we do, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Overnight, Cubans were forced to shift from a large, petroleum-based system to small-scale farming, much of it in cities. Today, urban organic gardens produce half of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed by Cubans.
The United States once was a nation of independent farmers. Today most of us do not know one end of a hoe from the other. In the last half of the 20th century, a cultural shift unique in human history came to pass. We convinced ourselves that we didn't need to have anything to do with our own food. Food, the very stuff of life, became just another commodity, an anonymous transaction. In making this transition, we sacrificed quality for convenience, and then we learned to forget the value of what we gave up.
Large agribusiness concerns offer us flavorless, genetically modified, irradiated, pesticide-drenched frankenvegetables. They are grown in such poor soil -- the result of short-sighted profit-based agricultural practices -- that they actually contain fewer nutrients than food grown in healthy soil. Our packaged foods are nutritionally bankrupt, and our livestock is raised in squalid conditions. The fact is that we live in an appalling time when it comes to food. True, we have a great abundance of inexpensive food in supermarkets, but the disturbing truth is that in terms of flavor, quality and nutrition, our greatgrandparents ate better than we do.
There is a hidden cost behind our increasingly costly supermarket food. The French have a term, malbouffe, referring to junk food, but with broader, more sinister implications. Radical farmer José Bové, who was imprisoned for dismantling a McDonald's restaurant, explains the concept of malbouffe:
I initially used the word 'shit-food', but quickly changed it to malbouffe to avoid giving offense. The word just clicked -- perhaps because when you're dealing with food, quite apart from any health concerns, you're also dealing with taste and what we feed ourselves with. Malbouffe implies eating any old thing, prepared in any old way. For me, the term means both the standardization of food like McDonald's -- the same taste from one end of the world to the other -- and the choice of food associated with the use of hormones and Genetically Modified Organisms as well as the residues of pesticides and other things that can endanger health. -- The World is Not for Sale by José Bové and Franois Dufour
So what are the strategies urban homesteaders can follow to avoid malbouffe? Farmers' markets, co-ops and natural food stores serve as good supplements to the urban homestead, but we've found that growing our own food, even just a little of it, rather than buying it, not only results in better quality food, it has changed our fundamental relationship to food and to the act of eating itself. Now, now not only do we know our crops are free of pesticides and GMOs but we discovered an entirely new world of taste and flavor that big agribusiness had stolen away from us. Growing your own food is an act of resistance. We can all join with José Bové in dismantling the corporations that feed us shit.
We've also shifted from being consumers to being producers. Sure we still buy stuff. Olive oil. Parmigiano reggiano. Wine. Flour. Chocolate. And we're no strangers to consumer culture, not above experiencing a little shiver of desire when walking into an Apple computer store. But still, we do not accept that spending is our only form of power. There is more power in creating than in spending. We are producers, neighbors, and friends. Think you don't have enough land to grow your food?
Change the way you see land.
Before you start thinking that you have to move somewhere else to grow your own food, take another look around. With a couple of notable exceptions, American cities sprawl. They are full of wasted space. As a homesteader, you will begin to see any open space as a place to grow food. This includes front yards as well as backyards, vacant lots, parkways, alleyways, patios, balconies, window boxes, fire escapes and rooftops. Once you break out of the mental box that makes you imagine a vegetable garden as a fenced-off parcel of land with a scarecrow in it, you'll start to see the possibilities. Think jungle, not prairie. The truth is that you can grow a hell of a lot of food on a small amount of real estate. You can grow food whether you're in an apartment or a house, whether you rent or own.
Do you have 4' ? 8' feet of open ground? If you don't have a yard, do you have room on a patio or balcony for two or three plastic storage tubs? If you don't have that, then you could get a space in a community garden, a relative or neighbor's house, or become a pirate gardener, or an expert forager -- some of the tastiest greens and berries are wild and free for the taking.
Think you don't have time? Think again.
We homestead at our own pace, to suit ourselves. Some things, like bread baking, have become part of our regular routine. Other kitchen experiments, like making pickles, come and go as time allows. More ambitious projects, like installing a greywater system, take time up front, but save time once implemented. It's unlikely that we spend any more time on our food-producing yard than we would on a traditional lawn-and-roses-type yard. You can set up your urban (or suburban) farm so that it takes minimal time to keep it going -- we talk about ways to do that in this book.
Sometimes, when life gets too crazy, we don't do anything beyond the barest maintenance, and eat a lot of pizza. Nothing wrong with that.
Besides saving time, with the exception of a few ambitious projects, like converting to solar, everything we talk about in this book is also cost-effective. Homesteading is all about reusing, recycling, foraging and building things yourself. Seeds are cheap, composting is free. Nature is standing by, waiting to help. And as oil prices continue to rise along with the cost of food, learning to grow your own may be one of the wisest investments you can make.
The paradigm shift
Urban homesteading is an affirmation of the simple pleasures of life. When you spend a Saturday morning making a loaf of bread, or go out on a summer evening after work to sit with your chickens, or take a deep breath of fresh-cut basil, you unplug yourself from the madness. Many of us spend a lot of each day in front of a computer. Homesteading hooks us into the natural world and the passing of the seasons, and reminds us of our place within the greater cycle of life.
Our style of homesteading is about desire. We bake our own bread because it is better than what we can buy. We raise our own hens because we like chickens, and we think their eggs are worth the trouble. Erik bicycles everywhere because that's a thrill for him. There's mead brewing in our guest bedroom because you can't buy mead at the corner liquor store -- and because fermentation is the closest thing to magic that we know.
Maybe you aren't so into gardening, but would like to brew your own beer. Maybe you'd like to tinker with a greywater system for your house. Maybe you want to make your own non-toxic cleaning products. Try it! Start by doing just one project, one experiment, and you may well unleash the homesteader within.
The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
http://www.alternet.org/story/118483/?page=2
*I have added italics.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Real Estate Investors benefit from Green Building Momentum
by JEFF SIEGEL
Every year around this time, I get the itch to move far away from the cold, gray streets of Baltimore. It's not that I dislike Charm City, but when the mercury falls below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the lure of warmer climates becomes overwhelming. So to ease the pain of last week's cold snap, I decided to browse the real estate listings in California. What I found blew me away.
I ran a search for a few select zip codes in and around the Los Angeles area. About 90 percent of the listings were foreclosures! Here in Baltimore, where folks still believe their $80,000 rowhomes built in the 1920s are worth $250,000, it's easy to forget what's going on in the real world. Though look back at the charts of what were at one time some very profitable REITs, and it'll quickly come rushing back to you.
The fact is, 2008 was an absolute blood bath for real estate investors. Though the green building sector did manage to gain ground last year.
According to McGraw Hill Construction, green building has actually grown in spite of the market meltdown. In its 2009 Green Building Outlook, the company noted that the value of green construction increased from $10 billion in 2005 to almost $50 billion in 2008. The study also suggested that by 2013, green construction could be valued at nearly $150 billion.
Of course, even with that bit of positive news, there are still those who argue that green buildings carry a heftier price tag. And in most cases, they're right.
In 2003, California's Sustainable Building Task Force reported on the costs associated with its green buildings. That report found the cost premium averaged less than 1 percent for basic LEED certification, 2.1 percent for Silver certification, 1.8 percent for Gold, and 6.5 percent for Platinum. And in a separate 2008 report, which included contributors from Boston College, The Brookings Institution, and PNC Financial Services group, researchers found that green buildings cost less than 4 percent more than conventional buildings, with the highest premium concentrations being no more than 1 percent.
Still, when you realize the cost advantages over the life of the building, it's really a no-brainer. The green California EPA Headquarters Building is a perfect example.
With systems calibration, monitoring, and maintenance for energy performance, the building delivers annual savings of nearly $200,000. After-hours heating and lighting controls as well as the building's exterior lighting systems add another $110,000 of yearly savings.
Just these few efficiency upgrades resulted in savings of more than a quarter of a million dollars per year for that building. And those don't even include the annual savings from grounds management, water-efficient landscaping, elimination of garbage can liners, collection of recyclables, occupant recycling, reduced landfill disposal costs, and entryway cleaning to prevent particle and dirt buildup. Overall, $500,000 was invested in efficiency upgrades, operations, and employee practices, which generated a total of $610,000 in annual savings. That initial investment was recovered in less than a year. And according to the building's USGBC project profile, using an 8 percent capitalization rate, the annual cost savings have increased the asset value of the building by nearly $12 million.
While there isn't enough room in these pages to quote every green building study ever conducted, there is certainly little doubt that the economic benefits of green building are very real. And as we move forward, digging ourselves out of one of the worst economic meltdowns in recorded history, investors would be wise to follow this trend – as it really does represent what will one day be the status quo of building and construction.
This is not some random, green niche. This is the future.
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/real-estate-investors-benefit-from-green.php
Sunday, January 11, 2009
No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.
In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.
“You don’t think about temperature — the house just adjusts,” said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents’ home of roughly the same size, he said.
Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.
The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.
And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.
Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed, because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency.
“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand,” said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. “This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating.”
There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses around the world, the vast majority built in the past few years in German-speaking countries or Scandinavia.
The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a local physicist, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.
The industry is thriving in Germany, however — for example, schools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.
Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.
The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks.
“Awareness is skyrocketing; it’s hard for us to keep up with requests,” Mr. Hasper said.
Nabih Tahan, a California architect who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United States for his family in Berkeley. He heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers working to encourage wider acceptance of the standards. “This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people,” Mr. Tahan said. “Why not reuse this heat you get for free?”
Ironically, however, when California inspectors were examining the Berkeley home to determine whether it met “green” building codes (it did), he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device that is still uncommon in the United States. “When you think about passive-house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way,” he said.
Buildings that are certified hermetically sealed may sound suffocating. (To meet the standard, a building must pass a “blow test” showing that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, passive houses have plenty of windows — though far more face south than north — and all can be opened.
Inside, a passive home does have a slightly different gestalt from conventional houses, just as an electric car drives differently from its gas-using cousin. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of air and temperature. The air from outside all goes through HEPA filters before entering the rooms. The cement floor of the basement isn’t cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.
Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are swung open, you see their layers of glass and gas, as well as the elaborate seals around the edges. A small, grated duct near the ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there is no furnace, but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler, containing the heat exchanger.
Passive houses need no human tinkering, but most architects put in a switch with three settings, which can be turned down for vacations, or up to circulate air for a party (though you can also just open the windows). “We’ve found it’s very important to people that they feel they can influence the system,” Mr. Hasper said.
The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others. “I grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I knew I wanted to make something different,” said Georg W. Zielke, who built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now designs no other kinds of buildings.
In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.
But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.
Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding windows are hard to seal.
Dr. Feist’s original passive house — a boxy white building with four apartments — looks like the science project that it was intended to be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. The Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues to conduct research, teaches architects, and tests homes to make sure they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain and the United States.
Still, there are challenges to broader adoption even in Europe.
Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep cool air in and warm air out.
And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to insulate and heat.
Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another design.
“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well, that’s a different discussion.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=world
DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.
In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.
“You don’t think about temperature — the house just adjusts,” said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents’ home of roughly the same size, he said.
Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.
The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.
And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.
Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed, because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency.
“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand,” said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. “This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating.”
There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses around the world, the vast majority built in the past few years in German-speaking countries or Scandinavia.
The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a local physicist, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.
The industry is thriving in Germany, however — for example, schools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.
Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.
The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks.
“Awareness is skyrocketing; it’s hard for us to keep up with requests,” Mr. Hasper said.
Nabih Tahan, a California architect who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United States for his family in Berkeley. He heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers working to encourage wider acceptance of the standards. “This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people,” Mr. Tahan said. “Why not reuse this heat you get for free?”
Ironically, however, when California inspectors were examining the Berkeley home to determine whether it met “green” building codes (it did), he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device that is still uncommon in the United States. “When you think about passive-house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way,” he said.
Buildings that are certified hermetically sealed may sound suffocating. (To meet the standard, a building must pass a “blow test” showing that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, passive houses have plenty of windows — though far more face south than north — and all can be opened.
Inside, a passive home does have a slightly different gestalt from conventional houses, just as an electric car drives differently from its gas-using cousin. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of air and temperature. The air from outside all goes through HEPA filters before entering the rooms. The cement floor of the basement isn’t cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.
Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are swung open, you see their layers of glass and gas, as well as the elaborate seals around the edges. A small, grated duct near the ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there is no furnace, but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler, containing the heat exchanger.
Passive houses need no human tinkering, but most architects put in a switch with three settings, which can be turned down for vacations, or up to circulate air for a party (though you can also just open the windows). “We’ve found it’s very important to people that they feel they can influence the system,” Mr. Hasper said.
The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others. “I grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I knew I wanted to make something different,” said Georg W. Zielke, who built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now designs no other kinds of buildings.
In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.
But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.
Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding windows are hard to seal.
Dr. Feist’s original passive house — a boxy white building with four apartments — looks like the science project that it was intended to be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. The Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues to conduct research, teaches architects, and tests homes to make sure they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain and the United States.
Still, there are challenges to broader adoption even in Europe.
Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep cool air in and warm air out.
And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to insulate and heat.
Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another design.
“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well, that’s a different discussion.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=world
California Scientists Create E.Coli-based Fuel That's Much More Efficient Than Ethanol
U.S. scientists say they can turn E.coli, a strain of bacteria present in the human digestive tract, into a fuel that is twice or three times more efficient than ethanol. The scientists, attached to theUniversity of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) managed to create a strain for the first time that generates alcohol with five carbon atoms per molecule instead of the regular two or three. That´s important because the larger, longer chain molecules contain more energy, something of a "holy grail" for the fuel industry.
The scientists published the results of their studies in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). They speculated that in the near future they might be able to create alcohol molecules with eight carbon atoms.
E.coli, which is mostly found in dangerous quantities on polluted beaches, can be altered so that each cell can generate "long-chain alcohol". The bacteria that result from this process excrete a type of fuel that can be used in the airline industry. Gas and other petroleum products also stand to benefit from the excretion process.
This energy efficiency in turn is a significant factor in helping reducing global warming. "We wanted to create larger, longer-chain molecules because they contain more energy," the researchers comment in their study, adding that they proved that humans are not limited by what nature creates.The researchers point out that they believe E.coli is best suited to be used with organic materials in the same way that ethanol is extracted from an organic (food) product like corn. "This is significant in the production of gasoline and even jet fuel," the scientists assert. By comparison, ethanol has only two carbon atoms per molecule.
The E.coli´s genetic system is relatively well known. The authors of the study said they also liked it in particular because it grows quickly and can be engineered easily. But the scientists added that their method opens the door to many more possibilities because it can be used on many different organisms. That means that manufacturers of polymers for instance gain from the insights produced, as does the drug manufacturing industry.
http://www.enn.com/sci-tech/article/39036
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Beijing's New Year resolution: Scrap Polluting Cars
Published December 31, 2008 09:09 AM
(Reuters) - Beijing, beset by choking traffic and heavy air pollution, will take more than 350,000 high-polluting vehicles off inner city streets from Thursday, local media reported.
China's capital has banned cars from the roads on one out of five weekdays based on the number of license plates as part of a six-month trial in the wake of broader restrictions during the Olympic Games in August that cleared skies and eased congestion.
Drivers of high-emissions vehicles, known as "yellow-label" cars, would be fined 100 yuan ($15) if found to be driving within the city's Fifth Ring Road, a highway on Beijing's outskirts, after a three-month grace period, the Beijing News said.
The measure stands to take about 10 percent of the city's cars off the road. Beijing currently has about 3.5 million registered cars.
The government had also drafted a compensation scheme that will give drivers up to 25,000 yuan ($3,600) if they proactively give up their cars during 2009, the paper said.
The city would also provide preferential loans to shipping and transport companies to upgrade their vehicle fleets to meet low-emission standards, the paper said, citing the city's traffic bureau.
Beijing authorities have credited cleaner skies above the capital in recent months in part due to the traffic restrictions, as well as decreased emissions from shuttered factories in the city's outskirts.
Car ownership along with rising incomes has skyrocketed in Chinese cities in recent years, posing head-aches for town planners already struggling to build roads and public transport to meet burgeoning urban populations.
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Ian Ransom)
(Reuters) - Beijing, beset by choking traffic and heavy air pollution, will take more than 350,000 high-polluting vehicles off inner city streets from Thursday, local media reported.
China's capital has banned cars from the roads on one out of five weekdays based on the number of license plates as part of a six-month trial in the wake of broader restrictions during the Olympic Games in August that cleared skies and eased congestion.
Drivers of high-emissions vehicles, known as "yellow-label" cars, would be fined 100 yuan ($15) if found to be driving within the city's Fifth Ring Road, a highway on Beijing's outskirts, after a three-month grace period, the Beijing News said.
The measure stands to take about 10 percent of the city's cars off the road. Beijing currently has about 3.5 million registered cars.
The government had also drafted a compensation scheme that will give drivers up to 25,000 yuan ($3,600) if they proactively give up their cars during 2009, the paper said.
The city would also provide preferential loans to shipping and transport companies to upgrade their vehicle fleets to meet low-emission standards, the paper said, citing the city's traffic bureau.
Beijing authorities have credited cleaner skies above the capital in recent months in part due to the traffic restrictions, as well as decreased emissions from shuttered factories in the city's outskirts.
Car ownership along with rising incomes has skyrocketed in Chinese cities in recent years, posing head-aches for town planners already struggling to build roads and public transport to meet burgeoning urban populations.
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Ian Ransom)
Friday, December 19, 2008
LEED Certification and Green Design
LEED Certification and Green Design
by Erin Brennan
LEED Certification is a Green Building Rating System developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
LEED buildings are third-party independently certified and are "the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings," (1). LEED offers certification for new building designed to meet green standards. LEED also certifies older buildings which have been redesigned or remodeled to meet certain criteria making them more energy efficient. LEED offers certification standards for commercial interiors, schools, healthcare facilities, and retail outlets, as well as homes, apartment buildings, and condominiums. Through the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED offers neighborhood development, design, and planning focused on sustainability and smart growth (1).
LEED certification indicates a property’s sustainability by awarding points for almost any different element of 'green design'. Sustainable features such as energy-efficient lighting and low-flow plumbing fixtures, rainwater collection and reuse systems, and even bicycle racks are all given points. The points are then totaled to award different levels of LEED certification ranging from Silver and Gold to Platinum, the highest (2).
LEED programs are used by "architects, real estate professionals, facility managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers, lenders and government officials," (1). Municipal and State Governments are beginning to use LEED to plan and construct public buildings from libraries to police stations. Government agencies at the federal level are using LEED as well. LEED projects are in progress in 41 countries around the world (1).
LEED certification provides third-party verification that a building or project meets both green building and performance criteria. The benefits to LEED certification are both environmental and financial in nature(1).
According to the U.S. Green Building Council,
LEED-certified buildings:
•Lower operating costs and increased asset value.
•Reduce waste sent to landfills.
•Conserve energy and water.
•Healthier and safer for occupants.
•Reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
•Qualify for tax rebates, zoning allowances and other incentives in hundreds of cities.
•Demonstrate an owner's commitment to environmental stewardship and social responsibility.
According to a study done by the CoStar Group, a Commercial Real Estate Information Group, LEED certified buildings outperform similar non-green buildings in not only energy efficiency, but sale price, rental rates, and even occupancy. Sometimes the margins are pretty large. According to the CoStar study, LEED building have rent premiums on average $11.33 higher per square food than non-green buildings and have over 4% higher occupancy rates. Additionally, buildings certified by EnergyStar (another energy efficiency rating system) sell for an average of $61 more per square foot than non-green buildings. However, LEED certified buildings astonishingly sell for an average of $171 more per square foot than non-green buildings (2). According to Andrew Florance, president and CEO of CoStar, "Green buildings are clearly achieving higher rents and higher occupancy, they have lower operating costs, and they’re achieving higher sale prices," (2).
LEED has emerged as the building industry’s top sustainability rating system above the possibly better know EnergyStar, and has become virtually synonymous with the term 'green building'. For this reason, "There’s a bit of urgency now that the value of buildings could be affected if they are not LEED-certified," says Mark Bennett, a senior attorney with the Miller Canfield law firm which specializes in green building and climate change issues (2). According to the National Green Building Finance and Investment Forum, a conference involving financial sector and property investment leaders, "If you’re building today without LEED, you’re building in obsolescence," (2).
1. U.S. Green Building Council, http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19
2. CoStar Group, http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=D968F1E0DCF73712B03A099E0E99C679
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Increasing Energy Efficiency - Winterizing the House
A simple way to go green at home and to save money on expensive heating bills this winter is to insulate your windows. Most older, single pane glass windows are incredibly energy inefficient. Windows can either leak heat to the outside or, due to poor seals, allow cold air to blow inside.
We have recently taken up the task of weather-proofing our house for the winter. Once the weather turned cold, we realized how poorly insulated our home is and how drafty our windows are. We moved into this house at the end of the summer, so we rarely used our air conditioning and did not turn on our heat until it was absolutely necessary. Once we did, however, we realized that our house was being bombarded by cold drafts coming from the windows - which are probably from 1970 or earlier. Many of the windows do not even seal properly.
We found some cheap and easy to install supplies at the hardware store and sealed our windows to keep the warm in and the cold out. We bought foam piping to plug the area between the window sill and the frame and we got weather stripping for our doors. We also bought plastic sheeting to tape over our windows. Window insulating kits are available, but are much more expensive as you have to buy one for each window. We probably spent about $10 total on supplies which, by this point, I'm sure have paid for themselves in savings to our energy bill.
We researched thermal curtains, which are essentially very thick double layered curtains meant to keep heat or cold from penetrating. The cheapest we could find a panel for was about $20 each. At this price, it would have cost us upwards of $400 to purchase curtains for every window in our house. Instead, I visited the fabric store and found double layered upholstery fabric in many different styles and patterns in the clearance area. I chose some nice, neutral colors, and for about $130 I bought enough fabric to make curtains for each window in our house - and a slipcover for our couch.
So far, it seems that our winterizing efforts have paid off. Our house is much warmer than before and now I don't have to wear my coat inside to be comfortable. Thanks to the insulation and the thick curtains, our windows are no longer drafty. I feel certain that our investment of about $150 total (window insulation, fabric, and curtain rods) will pay for itself in savings to our winter heating bills.
Diesel, Made Simply From Coffee Grounds (Ah, the Exhaust Aroma)
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Published: December 15, 2008
In research that touches on two of Americans’ great obsessions — coffee and cars — scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno, have made diesel fuel from used coffee grounds.
The technique is not difficult, they report in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, and there is so much coffee around that several hundred million gallons of biodiesel could potentially be made annually.
Mano Misra, a professor of engineering who conducted the research with Narasimharao Kondamudi and Susanta K. Mohapatra, said it was by accident that he realized coffee beans contained a significant amount of oil. “I made a coffee one night but forgot to drink it,” he said. “The next morning I saw a layer of oil floating on it.” He and his team thought there might be a useful amount of oil in used grounds, so they went to several Starbucks stores and picked up about 50 pounds of them.
Analysis showed that even the grounds contained about 10 to 15 percent oil by weight. The researchers then used standard chemistry techniques to extract the oil and convert it to biodiesel. The processes are not particularly energy intensive, Dr. Misra said, and the researchers estimated that biodiesel could be produced for about a dollar a gallon.
One hurdle, Dr. Misra said, is in collecting grounds efficiently — there are few centralized sources of coffee grounds. But the researchers plan to set up a small pilot operation next year using waste from a local bulk roaster.
Even if all the coffee grounds in the world were used to make fuel, the amount produced would be less than 1 percent of the diesel used in the United States annually. “It won’t solve the world’s energy problem,” Dr. Misra said of his work. “But our objective is to take waste material and convert it to fuel.” And biodiesel made from grounds has one other advantage, he said: the exhaust smells like coffee.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/science/16objava.html?_r=1&ref=earth
Commentary by Erin Brennan
While this solution will not solve all of the energy problems the world might have, I think that this kind of innovation is a good step in the right direction. Rather than filling up our landfills, food waste such as coffee grounds can be converted into fuel. This is exactly the lines of thinking we should be headed toward in the future - turning previously unuseable waste products into something useful and even profitable.
Living sustainably and in harmony with the planet needs to become priority. There are so many green options available today - from green design, to composting, biodegradable containers and recycling programs, to solar, wind, and geothermal energy - that everyone is given the opportunity to live more ecofriendly. Daily, we are presented with new and increasingly more innovative ideas as to how we can integrate modern technology with compassion and care for the ecological wonders around us. It is becoming increasingly more profitable for companies to "go green," and with energy costs on the rise, more individuals are seeking out ways to lower costs and increasing energy efficiency at home and on the road.
And of course, when sitting in traffic, I would rather smell the rich aroma of coffee than noxious chemical fumes coming from the car in front of me!
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