The Green Festival Man says ‘Festival Season is Upon Us’

This year I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint at Glastonbury Festival by living by 10 Carbon Busting Green Festival Tips.

Recently a number of GreenGuys and GreenGirls have written about the environmental and health benefits of going vegetarian. Some reports even say vegetarians have half the carbon footprint of their meat eating counterparts.

People go vegetarian for many different reasons, but for me it’s about the environment.

I’m looking for 15 other meat-eaters to join me between the 25th - 29th June 2008, and try out vegetarianism.

WILL YOU JOIN ME?

Join in the fun at http://www.pledgebank.com/GoVegetarian

OR text ‘pledge GoVegetarian’ to 60022 (in the UK only)

The idea has already generated a lot of lively debate on eFestivals and fits in nicely with Glastonbury’s attempt to lead the way in Green Festivals in 2008. Much of their marketing material carrying the strapline ‘Leave no trace, Love the farm’.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be reviewing a number of the latest eco-camping products and publishing my 10 Greener Festival/Camping Tips on GreenGuysGlobal.

I’ll be writing from the festival on my environmental finds, and asking people what they are doing in their lives to help reduce their carbon footprint, and finding difficult about making changes in their lives.

Join the group ‘Follow The Green Festival Man’ on Facebook, and become a friend of the Green Festival Man on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/GreenFestivalMan.

Look forward to chatting with you soon.

GreenFestivalMan
(aka GGG Editor Gareth)

PS Keep watching this website for my GreenFestivalTips later in the week.

GM crop, global hunger, world food.

Frankenstein foods, biodiversity loss, corporate takeover of the countryside. These have all been given as reasons to hate GM. That’s my experience in the UK.

Some Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in poorer countries support the use of GM crop. These NGOs see it as another problem: the gap between the rich and the poor, between people that grow in order to survive, and those that grow for profit.

Corporate names like Syngenta and Monsanto have become dirty words for opponents of GM crop. Sometimes options are limited, drought, pest resistant GM crop? or famine? Some can not afford the choice. GM producers need vision to survive. If they want to help create the future perhaps they could identify ways to work closer with local communities to tackle food and environmental challenges together. Perhaps they could grow back the rain-forests, or grow plants on the moon? All companies can pursue ethical profit.

World food prices are on the up. Globally this means more people starve to death. But with that comes resource wars, famine, and mass immigration. Oh and the price of bread goes up in your local shop. (Ahhh - That’s why developing countries like GM crop).

GM food could still provide solutions. such as better use of natural fertilizers and local crop varieties. A UN report in April 2008 called for more local food production (1) . Developing countries will need to adapt quickly to survive in a world without the same levels of trade in cash crops with developed countries addicted to unseasonal, flown in food. I only hope that the World Bank accounts for this in their policy making.

Why do we hate those GM crops so much? Well at heart we’ve always been a nation of farmers in the UK (and many other countries). We can still afford the luxury of non-GM varieties. For the moment I prefer vegetables that haven’t been produced so intensively. Those that have used natural fertilizers, as opposed to those generated from oil.

Developed countries don’t have the same concerns as non-developed ones. We do not have wide-scale hunger and nutrition problems. But we do have a legitimate concern for our environment.

I love those local varieties of crop, those that help regional agriculture and resist the development of crop mono-cultures. They make me feel humble. I’m proud of Jersey Potatoes and British Strawberries. I support fair-trade for our farmers. I don’t want to see one type of wheat, I want choice.

The argument against GM is not one against feeding the needy, its one against the alteration of our national natural environment.

(1) UN report demands urgent action on soaring food prices. The Independent, April 2008.

Guest Editor Adam Beazley - Energy Efficiency: Greener than Green

When talking green, people naturally tend to focus on vehicles, but the fact is vehicle emissions have nowhere near the impact that the building industry does.

Buildings and homes use more energy and are responsible for over 35% of all man made greenhouse gases and energy used worldwide. By “greening” every structure with existing technologies and techniques, the world would see a reduction in CO2 by over 1,800 megatons per year. That is equal to the amount of CO2 released by all planes and vehicles in North America last year.

With energy cost rising at a steady pace, energy efficiency renovations are the most cost effective ways to green a home or building, even more so than investing in alternative energies. Increasing efficiency does not have to be a daunting task, there are plenty of quick and easy things you can do which are not very involved. Below is a list of 10 things you can do to increase your efficiency and they are listed from cheapest and easiest to more expensive and involved.

10 steps to Energy Efficiency:

1. Reduce Phantom Loads - phantom loads are those unforeseen “standby” electrical loads that rob about 11% of annual energy consumption. Most electrical products have standby electrical loads which use electricity even when the product is turned off. DVD players, TV’s, Computers, phone chargers, and many other products all use electricity on a constant basis. The solution is to plug these things into surge protector strips and turn the strip off when they are not in use.

2. Seal Up Leaks - Air infiltration is a major cause of increased energy usage. When a structure is not properly sealed, heat will be lost during the winter and gained during the summer, driving up heating and cooling cost. The solution is to perform a pressurization test to locate air leaks and use some sort of caulk or silicon sealant to seal the air leaks in your walls and ceilings.

3. Weatherize - Weatherizing is very similar to sealing air leaks, however, it is different in that it is applied to moving parts such as doors and windows where a caulk type sealant will not work. Weatherizing doors and windows require special products such as v-channel, foam strips and sweeps. For a more detailed tutorial about sealing and weatherizing your home or business, check out “Air Leaks & Energy Exchange” over at NeutralExistence.com.

4. Change Lights - Inefficient lighting is responsible for not only wasted electricity, but added heat gain. The incandescent light bulbs of yesterday are slowly being phased out to more energy efficient Compact Florescent bulbs and LED lightbulbs. A new energy efficient CFL bulb can save about 150 kWh of electricity annually and save you approximately $37 over the life of the bulb. LED lightbulbs, although more expensive up front, will last much longer than CFLs and use less energy as well.

5. Control Radiant Heat - Radiant heat is the most efficient form of heat transfer and in order to increase a structures heating and cooling efficiency, radiant heat transfer must be stopped. Radiant heat is responsible for excess heat gain in the summer and heat loss in the winter. The only way to stop radiant heat transfer is by using a radiant barrier which is a sheet of low emisivity, high reflectivity foil. Although radiant barriers come in many shapes and sizes, but be sure to find a well made, durable, two sided (for winter and summer protection), perforated radiant barrier. I highly recommend Ra-flect radiant barrier as a cost effective quality product (www.raflect.com).

6. Increase Water Efficiency - Massive amounts of energy are used to treat and move potable (drinkable) municipal water, so reducing water usage very energy efficient. There are a variety of things you can do to reduce your potable water usage such as using low flow faucet and shower fixtures, taking shorter showers, only running dishwashers and washer machines when they are full, not leaving the water running needlessly and using water banks in toilet tanks to reduce water used to flush toilets.

7. New Insulation - Insulation retards the passage of convective and conductive heat and is rated in R-values, which is the measure of the rate that heat energy is transferred through a material. If your insulation has been pressed down over the years or the R-value is not the proper value for your location, re-insulating your home is well worth the expense. In order to choose the most efficient insulation for your home or building check out the Energy Star website to find out: www.energystar.gov

8. Window Renovation - Windows are generally the most significant energy sink in almost every structures due to lack of insulation. Windows come in a variety of configurations such as single pane (not efficient), double pane, gas filled, mirrored, etc.. In cooler climates gas filled double pane windows with high R-values are excellent and well worth the cost of replacing old single pane windows. In hotter climates, these same windows are not as effective as they only reduce convective and conductive heat gain but fall short in stopping radiant heat gain. Stopping radiant heat gain in hotter climates requires exterior shading elements or the use of an energy film which helps to block the suns UV rays. Window energy films are applied directly to the glass with soap and water and will essentially make an existing window perform like that of an energy star rated double pane gas filled window.

9. Energy Star Products - Energy star is a governmental rating system which gives its seal to products, buildings, homes and devices which meet minimum requirements of energy efficiency as compared to the norm. When buying new devices such as refrigerators, washer machines, dishwashers and home electronics be sure to purchase products with the Energy Star seal as they will use less electricity than their competition. For more information about energy star and there rating system please see their website (www.energystar.gov).

10. Build Green - In order to increase your energy efficiency build green instead of buying an already made home or business. The benefits of having an architect design a green home or business for you are too many to count. Some benefits of building green include increased energy efficiency, better interior air quality, higher resale value, higher rental rates and occupancy rates for businesses and not to mention, you get the house or building that meets YOUR needs, not some generic home or building which may not be sized appropriately.

Efficiency IS greener than green

Anyway way you look at it, there is no getting around energy efficiency if you really want to green your lifestyle. Efficiency does not have to stop at your home or business, the idea of efficiency can be used in every aspect of your life, from shopping for products to driving around town, efficiency is the key to being green,

Adam Beazley is a LEED accredited professional and green architectural designer, who focuses on green, energy saving design techniques. He is also the founder of Neutral Existence, which is an environmental website dedicated to helping individuals green their life and save money in the process. The website has a plethora of tutorials, articles and products to help individuals reduce their energy consumption, entire environmental footprint and reliance on non renewable resources.
www.NeutralExistence.com

Imagine

This video made my day. It’s small, it’s real, it’s brilliant.

It’s a great example of how media is changing from something through which to disperse information to becoming a tool for (collective) action. It’s a little long, but worth the patience.

“As citizens and as consumers, we may not be able to wield a great deal of power. But when we do things together, our power is ridiculous!”

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

How To Create A Energy Efficient Computer

Wanting to make your computer faster without buying a new computer? Well there are several things you can do.

The first thing and best thing is to upgrade your memory. Before buying new memory check what kind of memory is in your computer/laptop so you don’t buy the wrong memory and also check your computers manual to see what the maximum size of memory your computer can handle. If you are unsure what memory you need try asking a someone that knows about computers or try a local computer shop. There are many places you can buy memory from places like local dealers to hundreds of online places like tigerdirect and newegg or E-bay.

Next you should get the latest patches, drivers, security updates from Microsoft or if you own a mac make sure that you run software update. Also make sure that you download other drivers that were not downloaded by Microsoft or Macintosh that you may need which can be downloaded directly from the manufactures web page. Next you should remove programs that you rarely use or never use by accessing add/remove programs by going to Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs and also you should remove any unwanted files that are taking up unnecessary space. Next thing after downloading updates and removing unwanted items is to defrag your computer. If you have never defraged your computer in a long time it could take a few hours depending on your system and hard drive size. To accessing Defrag click Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter and choose the drive you want to defrag.

Next monitor should have the brightness on your monitor turned down all the way or down enough so you can still read what is on your monitor. If you are still using a CRT monitor you should go out and buy a Energy Star flat panel monitor and properly dispose of your CRT monitor at a nearby recycling program that takes CRT monitors (some places will take your CRT monitor for a small fee).

Also make sure that your computer is plugged into a outlet strip and make sure that you turn off the switch when not using the computer and turn it on when you do use your computer (Your computer still uses power when not turned on). Lastly if you use window 2000, XP or Vista your computer should be able to use hibernation. Hibernation makes your start up time drop dramatically and extends the hard drive life span. For more information on how to configure this XP users, Win 2000 users. For windows vista it should be already enabled by default (I’m unsure about hibernation in vista since I have never used vista).

Guest Editor: Scott James - 5 Easy & Inexpensive Guerrilla Marketing Strategies for Fair Trade Organizations

Guerrilla marketing is one of the most effective methods available to small businesses and nonprofit organizations for increasing sales or expanding the reach of your cause. These unconventional techniques are designed to produce maximum results using minimal resources.

Today, the Internet provides the best medium to use guerrilla marketing in fast and easy ways. The most effective strategies are:

1. Email Marketing

You must give visitors to your website a reason to leave their email address and give you permission to continue communicating with them. Offer a free subscription to a newsletter about your niche within the Fair Trade movement or provide another type of bonus.

Use an autoresponder service to capture visitor sign-ups and send out follow-up messages and newsletters to your list. For my company that sells Fair Trade soccer balls online, I route our emails through the free tools available at Gmail (look at their Vacation Settings for the autoresponder functionality). Be sure to provide valuable information, not just blatant advertising. By developing a rapport with your readers, you’ll build a larger and larger list of responsive subscribers.

2. Blogging

Blogging has taken the online world by storm. Blogs (short for “web logs”) are dynamically editable websites people use to talk about topics important to them.

Post to your blog as often as you want and include links pointing to your website. This frequently changing, unique content and the numerous incoming links are extremely favorable to the search engines.

You can use Blogger.com to set up an attractive template for your blog and post messages right away. The best part, it’s free. I personally use WordPress – an open-source platform with lots of community support – on our blog at www.fairtradesports.com, as well as FeedBurner to make subscribing to our blog fast and easy for our website visitors.

3. Forum Marketing

Forums give people a place online to congregate and talk about what interests them. To find forums in your niche, just Google “[keyword] forum” and see what you get.

Once you sign up for a forum, post messages regularly. This is a great way to build relationships. Post questions. Answer questions. Tell people where to find good information. Putting blatant advertising in your posts is against the rules. But you are allowed to put a link to your website in your forum signature. Consider changing your signature based on the forum to which you are contributing. For example, this is my standard signature for any forum related to Fair Trade:

- Scott James
Fair Trade Sports
Blog: www.fairtradesports.com
Fair Trade soccer balls!

I use a different signature for forums related to the eco-aspects of our sports balls, my work with the abolitionist Not For Sale Campaign, or my work with the sustainable MBA school, Bainbridge Graduate Institute.

4. Direct Link Building

Search engines – Google, in particular – favor pages with lots of incoming links, both one-way and two-way links, because it increases your website’s “popularity” across the Internet.

A simple example of one-way linking is the kind of link you get when you submit an comment on someone else’s blog. Your comment can have a link to your site in it, and the comment can be picked up by related websites and ezines if the topic is interesting.

For two-way links, you can contact other website owners within the Fair Trade movement and ask to trade links. Or, just Google “[keyword] trade links,” and you’ll get back a bunch of sites that are offering to do a link exchange with you. Then, you can add them to a section on your site titled “Related Links,” “Resource Center,” or something similar. It’s that simple.

Go through the list and start asking if you can trade links. Slow and steady wins the race. Do a little every day and pretty soon, you’ll grow your links a lot. The key is to reach out to others with authentic sites doing work to further the Fair Trade movement.

5. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites are wildly popular with people under 25, and several (like MySpace, Facebook, and Ning) have become some of the most visited sites on the web.

Squidoo.com is different from other sites because you can sell blatantly without worrying about being shut down.

Squidoo lets you create what’s called a lens, which is an information portal about your topic. The secret is to provide helpful information for people in your niche. Along the way, you can point them to your website, getting you laser-targeted traffic. We made one to alert Squidoo readers of Fair Trade products available on the web (http://www.squidoo.com/shopfairtrade).

By implementing these guerrilla marketing strategies, you will be spreading the word about your product, your organization and your cause across the Internet in ways that will have both an immediate impact and a long-term effect for years to come.

by Scott James
Founder, Fair Trade Sports
Bringing you eco-certified Fair Trade soccer balls and more!

Guest Editor: Nigel Berman - Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: “It starts from home”

I run an online eco retail shop and am committed to helping the earth in whatever way I can. I firmly believe that we as individuals can all make a difference by making greener and more ethical choices. For me, saving energy is a priority because this will not only save money, but it will also help preserve our planet. It means a change of attitude and giving up old habits, but ultimately it’s something we’re all capable of doing. Here are my top energy saving tips:

Don’t use stand by
Gadgets left on stand by are responsible for producing 4 million tonnes of excess carbon dioxide (CO2) each year. An average family can save 150kg of CO2 a year just by turning off appliances. Appliances in standby mode account for around 10% of UK household energy use. If we switch off or unplug devices when not in use, or invest in a standby saver, you’ll save around £40 per year.

Use energy efficient lighting
In most homes, lighting accounts for 10 to 15% of the electricity bill. If we use a smart meter to compare the power consumption of normal light bulbs with that of low energy and energy saving light bulbs, we save about 80% of the energy of normal bulbs. It’s simple - use energy saving light bulbs!

Recharge those batteries
We throw away over 650m batteries every year in the UK, polluting the soil and clogging up landfill sites. Rechargeable batteries save energy, and the slightly higher cost is recovered in the first five charges. Recharging costs are also minimal.

Watch your washing
I try not to wash my clothes on a setting above 40C. A wash at 60C uses 30% more energy, as 90% of the energy used by a washing machine is used to heat the water. I also use Eco Balls or a natural laundry soap called Soapods to minimise the effect of harmful chemicals being released into the environment.

Defrost your freezer
It’s a messy job, but I try to defrost my fridge and freezer on a regular basis to maintain efficiency. I acquired a saving device developed in conjunction with the Department of Energy that helps me save up to 20% of my fridge’s energy by better regulating its power use. When fitted, it helps my fridge or freezer run more economically by adjusting the electricity supply according to the motor’s needs.

Lower the thermostat
I like woolly jumpers - wearing one means I can turn down the heating. Lowering the thermostat by just 1.5C can save up to 10% on heating bills and reduce the greenhouse gases households produce by up to a tonne.

Go to my website for more eco-friendly ideas and to see the full range of products available.

By Nigel Berman – Founder of www.nigelsecostore.com

Bottled water : Environmental disaster?

According to research behind a recent BBC Panorama programme called ‘Bottled Water – Who needs it?’ (1), a litre of a well known French mineral water, generates 600 times as much Carbon Dioxide as a litre of London tap water.

I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to buying the stuff. Ironically I only buy bottled water for the bottle. One for the gym, one for a walk… I keep them knocking around until I lose them or simply get fed up of the sight of them.

It’s crazy when you think about it. Many developed countries, where most of the bottled water is sold, have safe tap water. Over a billion people on this world do not have access to safe water (2), yet when it is flowing freely in our own taps we still find the need to buy it.

Just as crazy is the bottled rain water featuring on the show. The pleasantly named ‘Cloud juice’, comes all the way from King Island, New Zealand. According to the Cloud Juice website the water comes from ‘11,100 km off the Great Southern Ocean where trade winds evaporate pure, clean water into rain clouds that don’t touch land until they meet King Island’ Sounds like a dream doesn’t it? That’s because that’s exactly what they want you to think. Advertising often attempts to link our emotions to a product. Just read a book on Neuro linguistic programming or advertising, and you’ll find that out. However that doesn’t stop London’s Claridges Hotel selling it for £9 ($18) per bottle.

Here’s my own poetic skew on the sales basics of the bottled water industry…

Plastic comes from oil,
Water is free,
Wrap the water in oil,
And sell it to thee.

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that our America uses more than 70 million disposable plastic bottles a day. Just over 60 million of these end up in landfill (3), and the the market in Britain alone is worth £2 billion.

According to the National Geographic if you imagine your water bottle a quarter filled up with oil that’s how much oil it takes to create the bottle. (4) Recyclenow.com reports that recycling one plastic bottle can conserve up to enough energy to light a 60w light bulb for up to 6 hours. (5)

There are pioneers like ‘Belu’, (6) that have started to make bottles out of corn. Not only that they are the first bottled water manufacturer that doesn’t contribute to climate change, but all their profits go to clean water projects as well. If you feel compelled to buy water, even after the World Heath Organisation has given the water supply in your country the green light, buying from companies like Belu is a step in the right direction. Next time I go to the gym I’ll think twice about the volcanic energy, my drink alleges to give me.

(1) BBC Panorama – Bottled water – who needs it? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7247130.stm
(2) WaterAid - Charity Number 288701 http://www.wateraid.org/
(3) Container Recycling Institute - http://www.container-recycling.org
(4) National Geographic Kids - http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/SpaceScience/Water-bottle-pollution
(5) Recycle Now - http://www.recyclenow.com/facts/interesting_facts/index.html
(6) Belu, Penguin approved natural mineral water - http://www.belu.org/home.asp

Applied Green by Russell Davies

A must read for everyone interested in green marketing is Russell Davies’ presentation at Applied Green that took place last year. Russell is the big daddy of planners and communications strategists in the UK as well as globally. He brilliantly discusses potential routes to reinvent consumer capitalism, a cultural and economic phenomena/reality that has such a devastating effects on the environment yet it is fairly naive to hope to eliminate it all together.

Fantastic read.

Labels are confusing and can be misleading…

A few days a go I had found a article in Good Housekeeping which talked about what are these fancy names we put on products in the store like “natural” and “no CFC’s” and what they really mean to the consumer. I had read this article and knew about most of the labels and learned some about these labels but there was one that I was curious what it really means when it is labeled so I thought I would do some some research on this label. The label I was curious and done some research on was “organic” the information I had found online was kinda interesting. So heres what I had found out about organic labels.

Organic is a agriculture product made without pesticide, harmful chemicals, hormones. You can find “organic” on most anything but most of the time it is not completely organic unless you see one of many logo’s like these.

These logo’s on products found in groceries stores are quite hard to get placed and certified on a product because they test just about everything from fertilizers to what the wood was treated with on fences and if one thing that is tested as “modified” the produce won’t be certified to sell as organic. Only 100% organic products may use the organic seal. if a product is 95% is organic they can’t put the organic seal but they can say it is a organic substance. If the product is at least 70% they only can label up to three items that are organic. finally if a item has less than 70% organic they can’t say its organic anywhere on the item. for more information visit this site http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/FactSheets/Backgrounder.htm Heres the actual chart that was in the magazine Good Housekeeping. In other words your best bet will be finding a product that has a certified seal that states that it is certified “organic” on the product you want to buy.

Before you buy something try to remember what the correct labels for a item should be and what labels you should not buy into on a certain product.

I’m not sure any of this information applies to people in the U.K. but it certain it does apply to the people in U.S.A.