Green Drinks

If you didn't raise a pint of green beer for St Patrick's Day, or you're already impatiently counting down the days till next year, you might be surprised to learn your next green drink could be sooner than you think.

Every month, in cities around the world, thousands are meeting up for Green Drinks. Admittedly the drinks aren't usually green, but the conversations are. Green Drinks is a social happy hour taking place in an ever increasing number of cities around the world (currently 355 according to their website) bringing together people who care about being green.

I must admit that I haven't been to a Green Drinks recently due to another socially responsible architectural pursuit, however I was always pleased by the dynamic turnout at the happy hours I have attended. While that city's Green Drinks was sponsored by the local AIA chapter (a good way to save some green too), I was pleased to meet a diverse crowd of students, professionals and regular citizens. Some people were simply curious, and others found it enjoyable to finally meet other people who "get it". I met a homeowner looking for ways to improve her home, and an engineer who was looking for ways to convince his boss that going green was smart business. Sometimes it was just people who wondered why so many of us were crowded into the balcony and having such a good time in an otherwise empty bar.

Thankfully my previous scheduling conflict has changed, so when Green Drinks is in my city next month I should be able to attend. I hope I see you there.

GREEN GIFT GUIDE: Gifts That Give Back

by Jill and Emily

It’s easy to get “wrapped up” in the holiday gift giving (and receiving) spirit. The holidays are about giving to those you love, so why not extend that tradition with one of these gifts that give back, which will benefit not just your loved ones but millions of others around the world. Here are some great choices, from trees to magazines to solar-powered flashlights - even jewelry - all of which give back to global citizens in need.

BOGO SOLAR FLASHLIGHT (Buy One Give One)Give the gift of light this year with the BOGO light - a fabulous solar-powered flashlight that costs just $25 - AND with your purchase of the flashlight, one is donated to someone who needs it in a developing country. We’ve written about it before because we love the product and the idea. Give the gift of light! $25 from Bogolight
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ADOPT AN ANIMAL FROM WWF AND GET A CUTE PLUSH TOYAdopt an animal from the World Wildlife Fund, and you will get a cute plush toy version of your animal. Every donation you make to WWF helps save some of the world’s most endangered animals from extinction and supports WWF’s conservation efforts. We think this is a fabulous way to encourage conservation efforts, by encouraging a love of animals in children! And if you can’t think of a good benefactor for your stuffed owl, wolf, chimpanzee or polar bear, you can donate your stuffed toy to a needy child, with WWF’s toys for tots program.$50 from World Wildlife Fund

$22 from Uncommon Goods.ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD XO COMPUTERHere’s a gift that truly gives back. The beautifully designed One Laptop Per Child computer is the greenest computer around - combing education and social development with ingenious energy efficient product design. Best part? When you buy one of these beautifully designed uber-green computers for a needy child in a developing country, you get one for a little one in your life as well. Donate-One-Get-One offer lasts through Dec 31st.

AID TO ARTISANS TOTE BAGAid to Artisans is an amazing organization that supports craft production and local economies worldwide. This tote bag supports their Friends of India Handcrafts project, which helps women’s craft cooperatives in rural Tamil Nadu in southern India. These craft cooperatives provide employment for widows, abandoned mothers, and unmarried women. The bags are crocheted with nylon wire by hand, and contribute to the livelihood of more than 250 families. $19 from Aid to Artisans
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DESIGN 21 ALLUMONDE RINGSupport Design 21, which promotes design for the greater good, with this gorgeous ring designed by Richard Hutten. The sleek design comes in stainless steel, gold, silver, and a few other stunning materials to suit any budget, and proceeds go to Design 21, UNESCO, and a nonprofit of your choice.
$25-$2,500 depending on material from Design 21
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DESIGN LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN BOOK This groundbreaking book on humanitarian design from around the world is a must for ALL designers. Inspire the designer in your life and feel good about donating to a worthwhile cause while you are at it. All proceeds from the book go to funding Architecture For Humanity’s important work providing shelter in impoverished and disaster-relief areas. $35 from Architecture For Humanity.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL APPAREL Support the international aid organization with great t-shirts for you and your little ones. We love the “I’ve Got Rights” onesie and Instant Karma t-shirts, which feature John Lennon’s face (there’s a great CD as well). All apparel is sweatshop-free and sales help support Amnesty International’s life-saving human rights work.
$14 and up from Amnesty International.

ARCHITECTURE FOR HUMANITY - OWN THE DAY SPONSORSHIPDonate one day’s salary and sponsor a day’s worth of humanitarian design. You can dedicate a day to a loved one, and pick any day on the calendar - all the money goes to support Architecture for Humanity’s great projects around the world, and your recipient gets their name proudly displayed on AFH’s website all day on the day they own. $100 or more from Architecture for Humanity

ADOPT AN ACRE AND GET A NATURE CONSERVANCY CALENDARMake a donation in someone’s name your to adopt two acres of rainforest land from the Nature Conservancy, and your gift recipient will receive a 2008 Nature Conservancy calendar featuring stunning nature images. Here’s a great example of a gift that feels good to give and receive. $100 from Adopt an Acre
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PLANTABLE ECO CALENDARGive the gift of time AND flora with this plantable calendar, which will please your planning and planting friends alike. Each month is its own page, so after the month is over, plant your page and watch it grow into blossoming blooms!
$19.95 from Botanical Paperworks.

GOOD MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONGOOD just announced their new nonprofit partners, which include everyone from Teach For America to Room To Read, Kiva (see below), and the Acumen Fund. A year’s subscription (six issues) is just $20 and ALL subscription costs go directly to the charity of your choice. What better gift could you give than the gift of GOOD and $20 to a great cause? $20 from Good Magazine .

TREES FOR THE FUTUREFor a mere $45, have 450 trees planted in your friend or co-worker’s name. Trees For The Future, a non-profit dedicated to planting trees to help the environment and rural communities, has restored sustainably productive life to over 56,000 acres of land in Asia, Africa, and Central America. Your gift includes a Treeplanting Certificate and bumpersticker, plus the warm and fuzzy feeling of knowing you’ve done something good for the planet. $45 from Trees For The Future.

KIVA MICROLOAN GIFT CERTIFICATESFund a self-starting citizen in a developing nation - and get your money back! Kiva’s microloan model allows individuals to fund other individuals a world away to start their business, open a store, expand their farm, etc. Give the gift of a Kiva Gift Certificate for your loved one to invest. $25-$5,000 from KIVA .

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FOR MORE OF INHABITAT’S GREEN GIFT GUIDE, CLICK HERE >
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Should I Buy a Fake Fir?

Should I Buy a Fake Fir?Or is it better for the environment to cut down a real Christmas tree?By Brendan I. KoernerPosted Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007, at 7:34 AM ET

Please help settle an argument that's threatening to tear my family apart this holiday season: What's worse for the environment, a real Christmas tree that lasts just a few weeks, or an artificial one that we can haul out every December for the next 15 years?

Crunching the numbers on this quandary is tough, if only because so much of the public information is skewed in favor of natural trees. America's Christmas tree growers have a fearsome lobby, one that's spent the past few years demonizing the artificial competition; check out this hilariously alarmist FAQ by the National Christmas Tree Association, which lambastes fake firs and pines as beetle-infested fire hazards descended from toilet brushes. (According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the NCTA started going on the attack in 2004 in response to declining sales.)

Despite its hyperbolic rhetoric, the real-trees industry makes at least one excellent point when denigrating the fakes: The needles on artificial trees are usually made from polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, which is anathema to Greenpeacers and their ilk. As the Lantern discussed two weeks back, PVC is widely reviled as a major source of dioxins. To make matters worse, cheap PVC is sometimes stabilized with lead, which can break free as harmful dust as a fake tree ages.
Growing concern over PVC has led fake-tree manufacturers to develop polyethylene needles; according to one prominent treemaker, 20 percent of artificial Christmas trees are now PE rather than PVC. But watch out for sleight of hand when it comes to "eco-friendly" fake trees; most of those 20 percent still contain PVC interior needles in order to create a fuller look.
As you note, the chief environmental selling point with fake trees is the fact they can be reused, which means that energy doesn't have to be expended year after year getting the product to market. But how much transportation fuel does an artificial tree really save? Let's make an estimate based on shipping each type of tree to a decidedly average American burg: Lebanon, Kan., claimant to the title of Geographic Center of the Lower 48.

The vast majority—at least 85 percent—of fake trees come from Asia, so we'll base our estimate on a Shanghai-to-Long-Beach, Calif., voyage aboard a container ship. A large ship capable of holding 2,125 40-foot containers will consume about 1,000 metric tons of fuel during its two-week journey across the Pacific Ocean. Let's say that there's only one container of fake trees on that ship, which means the trees' share of that fuel is roughly 1,037 pounds. On the last stretch of the journey, from Long Beach to Lebanon, the Yuletide cargo travels on a truck that gets six miles per gallon. On that 1,160-mile road trip, the truck will consume about 193 gallons of gas, which weighs around 1,158 pounds. Total for the trip from Shanghai to north-central Kansas: 2,195 pounds of fuel.

Now let's compare that fuel usage to 15 years' worth of real trees. (The Lantern is actually skeptical that most artificial trees last that long—especially the cheapest ones—but let's go with it.) In order to consume 2,195 pounds of fuel, your real trees would have to average a farm-to-retailer journey of 146.3 miles, assuming they are transported on the same six-mpg trucks mentioned above.* And even though the NCTA likes to point out that tree farms operate in all 50 states—yes, even in Florida—odds are the trees at your local lot traveled farther than that.
Yet the Lantern is still going to cast his vote for real trees: PVCs are just too worrisome, and so is the disposal issue. It's easy to track down a local program that will turn your real tree into mulch, but even the hardiest plastic tree is doomed to wind up in a landfill, where it will remain intact for ages. As for the fakes' advantage in terms of transportation energy, you can minimize this by being an informed consumer and trying to buy as locally as possible. (Also, don't worry about deforestation—98 percent of American trees are farm-raised, and they are usually replaced on a 3-to-1 basis after each harvest.)

The Lantern realizes, though, that raising Christmas trees may not be the most efficient use of land, and that pesticides are an integral part of the farming process. You may also blanch at the idea of killing a living thing solely so you and yours can enjoy a few weeks of pine-scented joy. In that case, lessen your guilt by buying a tree that you plan on planting after the holidays, complete with roots; just make sure you don't keep it indoors for more than a week, or it might become so acclimated to your living room that it won't survive outdoors.

There are also a few cities, like San Francisco, that offer rent-a-tree programs; they'll bring you a potted tree, then take it back after the holidays and plant it somewhere that needs a dash of green. A smart idea, but traditionalists beware: The trees on offer don't look like the ones you grew up with, but are rather very young Southern magnolias and small-leaf tristanias. They certainly don't appear capable of supporting that massive Three Wise Men ornament you inherited from Grandma.

Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com, and check this space every Tuesday.

Correction, Dec. 18, 2007: This piece originally stated that real trees would have to average a farm-to retailer journey of 4.1 miles in order to consume 2,195 pounds of fuel. That distance is actually 146.3 miles. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for Gizmodo. His first book, Now the Hell Will Start, will be published by Penguin Press in May 2008.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2180086/

E-cards: Love ‘em or Hate ‘em

One thing I’ve noticed this holiday season is the flood of e-cards in my work email inbox. I LOVE IT! While it does make it a little more difficult to display my popularity to the world, it saves lots of time, effort, money, and resources!
I remember at my first job laying out hundreds of cards, labeling, stamping, and signing. It took DAYS! And then extra time to go back and forge my boss’s name because he didn’t have time to do it himself. And let’s not forget that I was not the only one working on this task. Sure, my billing rate was lower those days, but it certainly wasn’t cheap.
In addition to the cost of the cards and the labor cost of signing and mailing them, there is a huge environmental cost: the resources that go into making the paper and ink AND the carbon output of the mail delivery service process.
And the cards will simply be thrown in the trash (or potentially recycled).
My company this year sent out an e-card to all of our contacts…on “99.999% recycled electrons.” Labor costs were much lower as the only task was updating our electronic contact list (something we would have done for paper cards anyway). And, there’s no trash!
Of course, I am a huge hypocrite and still sent real cards as part of my personal holiday celebration (note: I bought them at the end of the season last year)…but, maybe next year I’ll be part of the digital revolution.
How do you feel about e-cards?

Green Elephant Gifts

I realize that I posted an entry about sustainable gift-giving a couple of weeks ago, but my coworkers and I had a brilliant idea.

Our group has decided to do a "white elephant" exchange (where everyone puts a gift into the pile and then take turns either selecting a wrapped gift or stealing a gift that has already been opened) - with a sustainable twist.

We're calling it the "green elephant exchange." The rules are that you have to give a gift that is not purchased (either something from your home, a found object, or a regift) and that it must be wrapped in a sustainable manner (reused gift bag, fabric bag, reused newspaper/gift wrap, etc.). I can't wait to see what the gifts are!

In a related exercise, at an old job, my coworkers and I used to regularly have "swaps" where everyone brought in nice things that they no longer wanted and traded for new things. Some of the items exchanged included candles, notepads, holiday decorations, etc. Anything that wasn't taken by the end of the day was donated to charity.

Please suggest other good ways to reuse/regift great items!

Holiday Giving

Many companies have the tradition of giving holiday gifts to their clients and/or employees. A lot of this ends up being food…and most of it unhealthy. Here are some ideas for more sustainable gifts – better for the environment and the belly, too.

• Charitable donations in honor of the gift recipient


• Locally grown produce or other locally made products


• Things that people can use either at the office or at home: canvas shopping bags, reusable drink containers, compact fluorescent lightbulbs


• Green energy donations – buy wind power offsets for a week, a month, or even a year


• Gifts that require no packaging

If you can think of others, please share!

Also check out these websites for ideas for both corporate and personal gift-giving ideas:
http://www.eartheasy.com/give_sustainchristmas.htm
http://www.planetfriendly.net/gifts.htmlhttp://store.greenfeet.com/gifts.asp?gclid=CKuZ2_P53I8CFQlxOAodfyzg9Q

Kill the Vampire: Use the Sun

As I sit here with my cell phone plugged in and draining the grid, I remembered a cool product I ran across this weekend: a solar-powered messenger bag - what a great way to remove vampire electric suckers...ipod, cell phone, blackberry, etc!

Since I couldn't remember the manufacturer, I did a quick google search - there are tons of options out there:

Voltaic: http://www.voltaicsystems.com/
Eclipse: http://www.eclipsesolargear.com/
Solar Style: http://www.solarstyleinc.com/index.php

A couple of my coworkers have tried solar phone chargers with mixed success, but I think this might be worth a position on my holiday wish list!