When Was the Last Time You Heard a Solar Panel
dumped 4.5 million galls of oil
into one of America's harbors?

Sometimes bright ideas are just that.

VOTE FOR

POLITICIANS

THAT SUPPORT

RENEWABLE

ENERGY

NOW

OSAMA FOUND LIVING IN ZERO NET ENERGY OFF THE GRID COMPOUND

CLICK ON IMAGE ABOVE TO MAKE LARGER

MEDIA ADVISORY: THIS WEB SITE IS FULL OF SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION

New Green Blog Pokes Fun at Green World While Delivering Real News & Advocacy

It's called MrGreenie. His tag line is "It's a Green World. You might as well Rant with it"

MrGreenie.com just launched and it is a web site anyone interested in the green world should check out. An unusual but effective (disaffected?) combination of real news, commentary with blatant attitude, fake green news and excellent cartoons, MrGreenie takes you to a place unlike any other.

MrGreenie is a bid mad. Mad and Mad. The Onion meets Grist or TreeHugger meets Mad Magazine. We skyped with the anonymous blogger. He refuses to go public with his identity he said "Unless you invite me out for a drink. Better yet, let's meet at the next Green Drinks and then you can take me out to dinner and I'll show you my real passport."

Inspired by other web sites and green advocates, MrGreenie is one man's take on all things green. Deliberately uncensored in terms of style and content. "I can't help be myself" said MrGreenie "One day I might want to write a about a real issue like recycling in NYC or write a travel column and the next day I might feel like making fun of something or commenting about some experience I had that I needed to vent about."

Indeed the web site is somewhat schizophrenic but it somehow works because the writing is so raw and good. There is a deliberate lack of design. The background color and format make you feel like you are looking in an old brown paper journal where someone traveling around with a backpack would jot things down hurriedly on a train or bus.

"I know lots of the other big green bloggers out there now. At first I thought I was completely insane for trying to blend the real with the surreal but then I thought, who cares? If I fall flat on my face it wouldn't be the end of the world. The world is doing enough to speed up our mutual destruction. There's no need for me to worry about that."

FUTURE WORLD IS NOW

MrGreenies Travel Guide to the Green World

New Mexico Here We Come

There's a lot of talk out now about eco travel. But what exactly is Eco Travel? Is it increasing your carbon footprint by flying to Costa Rica (with the thousands of other people), to look at wild life in a preserve that had to be preserved because so many people like you were going there to see the nature in it's pure form?

That kind of eco traveling some how seems like a self defeating kind of green adventure. It almost makes me want to turn into a hermit who never left his hometown and listen to the Moody Blues sing "Thinking Is the Best Way to Travel"

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not a green washer but hardly a green fanatic either. I'd love to go to Costa Rica asap and I promise to seek out the most eco friendly place to stay. The closest I have ever been to Costa Rica was the pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Near where they filmed the movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien" . I want to go back desperately because the little surfer town I stayed in for a month without leaving once was so fantastic. I don't want to tell you about it because if I do it might become more popular.

That's not fair - it's called Puerto Escondido which means Hidden Port in Spanish.

A great web site about the town and surrounding area is www.tomzap.com/escondio.html

If you want to go and have questions you can email me but you can also email Gina the information Godess in Puerto E (GinaInPuerto@Yahoo.com) . She's great and is a handy person to know if you want to explore.

But getting back to Eco Travel. Is Eco Traveling telling the hotel staff that they do not have to wash your sheets every day, thus reducing your carbon foot print? Hotels are now offering this "service", which is more a lack of service ie cost reduction. (Maybe they could try solar water heaters and solar electric PV to offset all the energy it takes to wash sheets every day?)

Is Eco Traveling drinking local Organic Vodka Martini's after having bought a local bamboo T Shirt from the "indigenous" gift shop run by single mother artists from the local culture that were not displaced when the European eco hotel chain bought the waterfront land you are currently staying on? Is Eco Traveling escaping life or running right into the arms of it? Is it forgetting about the daily life you are in or reminding yourself what that is and how to make every day a green vacation?

Well, heck, I don't know all the answers! I'm just here to tell you what cool eco friendly green travel ideas I'm finding out about. Mostly what I want to do is tell you about inspiring places I've been or heard about and/or people I've met or want to meet because they inspire me. Eco Travel is all about traveling with a conscience and looking for inspiration. Maybe it's getting away and "being here" all at the same time.

When it comes to conscience and inspiration you need to know about a place in Taos New Mexico called Worlds Nest.. I originally found out about it from a man named Gene Johnson aka HYDROGENE who is a Hydrogen advocate and was on Governor Schwartzenegger Hydrogen Energy Task Force.

Check out HYROGENE's web sites:

http://www.h2nation.com/past_issue.htm

http://www.h2ohydrogene.com

World's Nest is a fantastical experiment in living sustainably and 100% off the grid. They grow their own food using water from a gray water waste system. They use a combination of solar hot water, solar PV, passive solar and wind to completely power the space age complex. They have their own Hydrogen source (from solar-hydrogen system) and a hydrogen fueling station. They even have a Hydrogen Hummer! You gotta love it!

Billed as a "sustainable energy demonstration showcase", Worldsnest is the sister project to a nearby place called Angels Nest and was built by Robert Plarr and Victoria Peters. It addition to the wind and solar power and renewable hydrogen fueling station, it also has integrated greenhouses and a gray water recycling system. (Can I say again it It is 100% self sustaining and off the grid?)

If you go to WorldsNest make sure you take some of their ideas home with you and see how you can integrate some of this kind of sustainable living into your current footprint. We are not all going to be able to go off the grid like that so easily, but staying a few days at Worldsnest will show you truly that the future is now and the best way to eco travel and live green is not just by thinking about it while listening to a Moody Blues song but to get out there and see real people really doing it and just make it happen.

Accommodations: There are three rooms in the sprawling complex that are rented out per night at a rate of $399.000 The price might seem a bit steep but it includes a guided tour of the sustainable systems and considering what they have accomplished I would say going there was well worth a whole day of looking at how they pulled it off, especially since it includes a night's stay as well as.

Conferences and lectures in the green world can easily cost you $399 per day and that is to hear lectures in hotel ball rooms or speeches in exhibit halls. To stay comfortably in the desert of New Mexico at a posh luxurious space pad and learn how it all works sounds like a bargain to me. One suite even has a separate bunk room and accommodates up to 4 people.

Contact:

Russ - Nightly Sustainable Rentals 505-613-4169

www.Worldsnest.com

Tra La La La

All the Bottles, Plastics and Cans used in New York City Office Buildings Are Thrown Into A Landfill.

How many of you New York Office workers know that and want to do something about it?

I was recently called by a company I consult for to see if I could speak with a man who called them for some info about how to green an office. The man worked for a California based company who had an office in New York. They wanted to know how to get a certified green office in NYC.

I told them that there that there were no official local, New York based groups or municipalities that could certify an office green, like there are in California where the company was based. In California, for instance there are groups like the Bay Area Green Business Program that helps businesses go green and is part of the local government.

I told this company that there is the USGBC's LEED for commercial interiors program that could certify they have a green commercial interior but that would most likely take some serious renovations and significant changes to the physical part of their office and they were hesitant to do that because they were thinking of moving to larger offices in the near future. That was something they would definitely be interested in the next move.

Meanwhile, they really did want to be green and were looking at the whole picture - how the employees used the office, the lighting, electric use, paper use, computers, use of products with recycled content, and very importantly, what to do with their recycling. It seems their refuse cater did not require them to recycle and in fact did not want the garbage sorted into waste and recycles.

At first I was surprised because, mistakenly, it was my understanding that, pursuant to NYC's local law 87, recycling was required in NYC since 1992. I remembered that at one point part of the recycling program shut down because of budget crisis. But then it started again.

Little did I realize that recycling, except for paper, was never required in office buildings or offices without their own food service operations. It is only required in residential buildings or in commercial offices located within residential buildings.

All the recyclable materials (except paper) from office buildings in NYC are thrown into the garbage and never recycled.

I found this out when I called the NYC office of Samantha MacBride, Deputy Director, Recycling, Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling, New York City Department of Sanitation. When I fist called I left a message and a short while later a man, who just identified himself as a colleague of Ms MacBride, asked me the nature of my call.

I told him I was a writer and green consultant and I was researching a story idea about recycling requirements in NYC and I was a bit confused because I thought (mistakenly) that after reading the NYC Government web site about recycling that recycling was mandatory in New York City, including in office buildings pursuant to local law 87. I mentioned the inspiration of my call was a NYC office that was concerned about their recycling, or lack thereof.

The man on the phone said "No - it does say on the city web site that only paper is required to be recycled in office buildings in New York." Incredulous, I asked if that means all the bottles and cans and plastics end up in a landfill he said "That is correct"

He told me "This is an insignificant amount of materials and it was less than 1% of the overall waste." Silently I found the words insignificant amount of materials problematic and I wondered how all that potentially recyclable garbage from all those offices, in all those office buildings - how all those many millions of people in those millions and millions of square feet of space in NYC could be generating only an insignificant amount of materials. And I wondered where the "less than 1% of waste" figure came from. Think of all those people who stop on the way to work and bring breakfast, who order food and drinks during lunch and at night when they are still working.

This man also told me that if the garbage was recycled in all off those office buildings the truck traffic associated with the recycling would be far more hard on the city." as it would cause traffic jams and increase congestion. Silently I wondered how this would be since the same garbage was now taken out by trucks already and just not separated by categories of waste and different recyclables.

On an optimistic note he did say that there were plans to put recycling bins for office workers in public places so that all that garbage from all those office buildings could be separated and recycled appropriately. When he said this I wondered how effective that would be as it would make much more sense to just have the recyclables separated in the offices and disposed of by each building that has all those offices. Basically what he was saying was that all those items brought into the office building need to be brought back out and put in public waste receptacles on the street. That just does not make sense. I asked when this might happen and he said "It is all dependent on funding"

So I asked this unidentified man who returned my call if I could get his name and number in case I needed more info and he said he was Robert Lange, The Director, of Recycling, Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling New York City Department of Sanitation. He never once asked who I might write for and did not seem concerned one way or the other.

Do any NYC landlords want to talk about this problem? Can't the owners and managers of the commercial buildings in NYC take the lead and start addressing this serious issue?

I hate to think that all those cans and bottles and reusable plastic take away items are just going into a land fill because all that garbage is slipping through the cracks.

Do the citizens of NYC really want to be sending all that garbage out there just to be buried in a land fill?

What kind of message does that send to the rest of the world?

Aren't we a better city than that?