Sustain-a-Links #6
September 6th, 2006 | Posted in Recent Readings
Yesterday was a doozy. I tell you what, holidays really throw me off. At least it’s a short week. So much good stuff in this issue, so little time. You will not believe how many great articles I found but had to leave out of this issue. Seriously, you will not believe it. In fact, the number is so mind-boggling I won’t even tell you, basically to save you from yourself. Thank me later.
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Building | Croxton Collaborative and Gould Evans Team Up to Design Florida’s First LEED™ Gold Building | This article is a couple years old but I thought it was interesting. It details Florida’s first LEED building, has some great photos and talks in depth about how the building represents multiple approaches to sustainability. | AIArchitect
Bush Adminstration | Gore Predicts Shift in Bush Climate Policy | “Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore predicted on Tuesday that President George W. Bush would shift to do more to fight global warming, under Republican pressure from California to New York.” | Alister Doyle, Reuters
Clothing | Spiritex | Pretty hip store located in Asheville, North Carolina. “Spiritex is dedicated to using the collective knowledge and expertise of its management team to facilitate the creation and expansion of markets for responsibly produced fabrics, apparel, and home products. The adherence to a “direct to the source” approach, on all levels of production, optimizes competitive pricing advantages.” Apparently these clowns looked up some fancy business terms to throw into their “Commitment” section. Whatever, their stuff is cool so buy it.
Ethanol | Ethanol Plant May Not Be in Our Best Interests | What? The “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified a number of hazardous emissions from these facilities, including a wide variety of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), voluble organic compounds (VOCs), methane, acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, methanol, toluene, solvents, denaturing compounds, sulfuric oxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide.” My theory used to be is if I can’t pronounce it it can’t hurt me. Then one day the Lithuanian kid in grade school beat me up. One great point made in the article is that corn sucks for ethanol production, which I’ve said before. We’ll keep advertising the hell out of it though and it’ll probably instrumental in the demise of Ford. | Jay Burney, RedOrbit
Farming | Sustainable Crops For Farmers In The Sertão, Brazil | Small scale sustainability makes me think of the days before the industrial revolution. I have fond memories of the olden days. Ahem . . . for farmers in Brazil, “a farm is sustainable if it enables them to feed their family and animals.” Not quite the capitalistic mega-farm mentality of the U.S. but sophisticated nonetheless. What’s being done in Brazil to promote sustainability “enables farmers to understand how their farming systems function, by placing their sustainability criteria in a grid that includes biomass flows and resource balances.” Kickin’! | Medical News Today
Fossil Fuels | Gulf oil discovery may be bigger than Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay | This actually kind of sucks. Just when the tides were turning toward renewable energy stupid Chevron finds a giant well of oil four miles beneath the ocean floor. How the hell do you look for something that far down to begin with? It’ll take a few years for the oil to start flowing but the pessimist in me says this will mitigate the rise in gas prices (the article says otherwise) and the SUVs will start rolling. | CNN.com
Git ‘er Done | Secret of success: Be a bulldog | The advice presented in this article is invaluable. You’ve heard it before in many forms . . . creativity is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. The point is get off your butt and do something. Go to the environmental events in your community, support sustainability on every level. These are the things that matter. You and all your MENSA buddies can sit around all day with your thumbs up your wahoos and it won’t do the world a lick of good. | Jeffrey Pfeffer, Business 2.0
Invention | EcoKettle | The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have quantified how important this is with the following statement: “If everyone boiled only the water they needed to make a cup of tea instead of ‘filling’ the kettle every time, we could save enough electricity to run practically all the street lighting in the U.K.” Amazing!
Publication | The Healthy Planet | This magazine’s “mission is to help our readers and their families improve the quality of their lives. We promote all that is healthy, natural, organic, earth-friendly and socially-responsible.” It can be borderline fru-fru but is very informative. Oh yeah, it’s focused on St. Louis but many of the articles are general interest.
Urban Density | Greater Number of Smaller Grocery Stores the Key to Revitalizing St. Louis? | What does it take to increase urban density. Patterson offers a look at what small, neighborhood grocery stores have done for Toronto’s urban core, and what they could for St. Louis’. Another interesting take from one of my favorit urban blogs. | Steve Patterson, Urban Review
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Well, thar she blows. Hope you enjoyed it. I’ll be trying to publish a couple of features in the coming days. Have a good one.
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