If you've been reading GreenGrandma's blogs on various websites, you will be tickled to finally meet the grandBaby online in her little shop, and see some of the organic gardening she's been boasting of.
There are only a few designs right now, but I really love the rhubarb nest of wrens eggs. Fresh, and green without kitsch.
The same Washington Post newspaper that so courageously uncovered the Watergate assault on American values now investigates the way Vice-President Cheney secretly manipulates the enactment of environmental policies to make sure his supporters wring the last drop of water, coal, power and cash from the natural world Americans depend on. He reroutes rivers, fills in valleys, drills where the polar bear should roam - a little asthma or cancer never seems to have hurt anyone he ever met....
This is great news for the homeowner or contractor who wants to do the green thing but has been balked by complex rating systems or the lack of a connection between consumer and builder. Saint Paul Colllege in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is partnering with the builder of the first LEED Platinum certified remodeled home in America (and Minnesota GreenStar Gold-rated) to cut through the pedantic clutter and train remodelers and contractors to rehab homes into sustainable houses.
WCCO-TV, a CBS affiliate, completes its coverage of Live Green Live Smart's The Sustainable House project - the first US Green Building Council LEED for Homes project to receive a platinum rating for home remodeling. The rambler was slated for teardown, but was instead recycled into one of the most energy efficient and healthy homes in the nation. This short transcript and video show the progress, and reportage from esteemed experts in energy and sustainability. Live Green, Live Smart will launcha green builder certification program in partnership with Saint Paul College.
It's easier to live green when we are living in a sustainable home - but it's not often that we focus on home when we are trying to make the planet more sustainable. This White Paper on The State of Shelter gives a good context for sustainable home-making, and some great ideas for greening your shelter. And as a bonus, it's available for free re-publication.
The Green Suburbanite tells how he has found satisfaction working with ecological garden design in a sustainable house project. From native plants to carbon capture rain gardens he sees a new lawn and garden evolving.
The Sustainable House by Live Green, Live Smart is being reviewed by numerous publications and visitors - and one of the features most commented on is the House's use of dual-flush toilets and water conserving shower heads and sink faucets.
The builder used products by TOTO and Grohe, and found that there is no need to sacrifice style when building a more sustainable water management system for a sustainable home.
Sustainability begins at home, where our environmental footprint is heavy. More than 30% of our carbon emissions are produced by our shelters. Live Green, Live Smart™ was founded to help ordinary people find ways to make practical changes in their daily behavior and in their shelters to preserve, protect, and restore the earth’s environmental integrity.
For a quick primer - about 20 pages - with a lot of statistical evidence, try this White Paper on The State of the Planet. This is an assemblage of third-party info suitable for informing skeptical relatives or as a starting point for research on issues around global climate change. It's also available for free reprint or republication.
Sfter lunch with a business friend, the Green Grandma meditated on the meaning of sustainability both for business and for her grandBaby:
"Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development does imply limits - not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities."
Our Common Future: From One Earth to One World
A friend - a businessman who is devoted to educating disadvantaged children, who contributes his own money and time out of his life to get them into good schools and change policies that keep them in poor ones - expressed some exasperation toward "greenies" over lunch recently. I told him about my involvement in the sustainability movement, and he said he hoped I wasn't doing anything that would interfere with free markets. I assured him that I am, just a mother and grandmother, unlikely to have much sway over markets.
The Green Grandma feels challenged to consider what has been lost: cheap gas, green meadows, great places, and her innocence. She experiments with mass transit in a community not exactly noted for its rapid transit - in a metropolitan region tied with Los Angeles for sprawl and highway gridlock, she takes the bus and gives it mixed reviews.
Four fully-produced PowerPoint presentations are available to download and use, courtesy of Live Green, Live Smart, an enviromental organization dedicated to promoting a sustainable planet through education, linking of resources, and fostering a global green community.
The titles available at this time are The Sustainable House; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle; Understanding Global Warming, and What is Green Building? More titles will be added in coming weeks.
The Sustainable House can be yours today, with these plans and off-the-shelf technology. This team of green builders is working to set new standards for green residential building. The Sustainable House is a demonstration in the LEED for Homes Pilot Project, and is racing to be the first Platinum certified LEED remodel in America. Instead of a teardown, SKD architects and Live Green, Live Smart recycled a post-war rambler to show that green living can be quality contemporary living compatible with existing neighborhoods.
While intergovernmental negotiations hobble forward and political parties snipe, the rest of us can make an impact in practical, every day ways to live green and live smarter. Here are fifty things (more than fifty, I counted) to do without a ton of money or scientific expertise to green up your contribution to life on earth. It turns out that our own homes (well, everyone's own homes combined) account for more than 30% of resource use, pollution and carbon load.
