Rich celebrities are hard on the environment

Interesting slide show from the Chicago Tribune about anti-green celebrities. They report that an MIT class "estimated that Bill Gates' impact is about 10,000 times that of the average person." Are we really surprised by this? Any celebrity, no matter how what their efforts to green their lifestyle is going to create a much larger environmental impact than the average person. The more we consume, the greater our impact. Certain key areas, like housing, transportation, and food are where each of us can make the most impact. Living in a large house with water hungry landscaping or frequently flying around the world dwarfs other changes one might make.

New site provides green wedding registration

When I was married four years ago, I registered with a few well known retailers. I wanted my wedding to be fun and easy, not a hassle for my guests. I wish All Green Wedding had been around then. We tried to make our wedding low impact, but green gifts would have been fabulous

Sustainable Eating in Oregon

Eating local is the latest crazy in sustainability. Across the West innovative restaurants have advocated eating fresh, local foods for many years. Some early innovators in the San Franscisco Bay area were Greens, a classic vegetarian restaurant opened in 1979, in the Fort Mason Center and Alice Waters' famous Chez Panisse, opened in 1971, in Berkeley.

For folks not familiar with the philosophy behind local cooking and eating, I happened upon this video (from Cooking Up a Story) of Stu Stein, describing the philosophy behind his new Portland restaurant: Terroir. It sounds like a great project. Stu also collaborated on this cookbook The Sustainable Kitchen and another restaurant in Ashland, the Peerless.

Another new Portland eatery has taken sustainable eating in different direction. Tired of drive throughs, Evan Dohrmann created the Little Red Bike Cafe with it's "bike-thru" window. Customers on bikes get a 50 cent discount. Oregon Live gives the homestyle breakfasts and lunches high marks.

Book Review: Green This! Greening Your Cleaning

Green This! Greening Your Cleaning by Deidre Imus (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007)

The good
Green This! is an excellent primer on toxins in the home. The book begins with Deidre Imus's own commitment to reducing her toxic burden and then presents the facts behind such topics as indoor air pollution and health problems caused by environmental toxins in the home. green This! then takes a room-by-room approach to cleaning, providing green alternative to cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living areas, and the laundry room.

The book is punctuated by brief but interesting (and hair-raising) "toxic interruptions" in which Deidre Imus presents facts about chemicals in everyday products. For example, she warns readers about phenol, "a known mutagen and suspected carcinogen":

Oral exposure to large amounts of phenol has been linked to anorexia, reduced fetal body weight, abnormal development, and growth retardation.

Phenol can also interfere with the ability of the blood to carry oxygen and cause bronchitis to develop. . . Despite these perils, phenols are used in many different consumer products: throat lozenges, ointments, ear and nose drops, and mouthwashes. Household cleaners that may contain phenols include disinfectants and all=purpose cleaners, furniture polishes and waxes, metal polishes and cleaners, and laundry detergents.

The resources section at the end of the book provides a glossary of terms used in the book, places to purchase green cleaning products, a glossary of chemicals found in conventional cleaning products, tips on reading labels, and a note on sources of more information on the issues raised by the book.

100% of the author's profits from the book benefit the family's Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer.


The (potentially) bad
The book isn't written for the do-it-yourselfer, in that there are relatively few recipes for environmentally friendly cleaning products you can make at home, and you may already know of some of these recipes--for example, using salt, warm water, and lemon juice to clean copper and brass. Instead of providing recipes for cleaning everything in the home, Imus offers a resources section at the back of the book that lists companies that manufacture green cleaning products--including, of course, her own company.

A few reviewers at Amazon.com have found the book to be preachy, but I found myself nodding along with Imus's concerns. Sure, there were a few moments where I felt Imus was a bit brusque (e.g., on microwave ovens: "I don't approve of them, but if you have one and inist on using it. . ."). If you're already on board with the green movement and you can overlook these occasional scoldings, your reaction likely will be similar to mine: when there's good information to be had in a book, the author's celebrity (and accompanying occasional arrogance) means little to me.


Book-buying advice
Put aside any hard feelings you may have toward Imus's family (she's married to the former shock jock Don Imus), and purchase the book for yourself or for friends and family. Consider it an investment in your health or theirs.

Purchase at Amazon.com.

Purchase at independent bookseller Powells.com (e-books also available at this link).

(A note about book reviews: At Green West Magazine we seek to find and review books of interest to our readers. The links we place at the bottom of each review are affiliate links; we receive a very small percentage of each sale price from our bookseller partners. That said, our reviews are 100% honest; if we don't like a book, we'll say so.

While you're welcome to purchase the book at your favorite bookseller, if you enjoy our book reviews and would like to see them continue, and if you do decide to purchase the books we review, we'd appreciate it if you'd do so by clicking on the links above, both of which usually offer to both new and used copies of the books. Many thanks!)

Green links from around the web

Green design superstars? In a review of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum's exhibition Design for the Other 90%, Christopher Hawthorne posits that the sustainable design movement needs some young superstar designers. He acknowledges that the products and solutions on display are quite good but argues that the movement needs its Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid.

Gratuitious green consumerism: Inspired by a New York Times article, Ianqui meditates on "Eco-Snackwellism."

Nature in Los Angeles: If you haven't read Jenny Prices's now year-old, two-part article "Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA," you're missing out: Part One, Part Two.

DenoueDenim-ment: Check out what the California Academy of Sciences is using to insulate their new building.

Peak oil play: Derek Williamson of the Powerhouse Museum interviews the creators of the online game World without Oil.

Going batty: Those of you with a creative streak (or, OK, an architectural background) should check out the competition to design a bat house for London.

Vacation planning? Consider a toxic tour.

V-G Day: No, not victory over Germany--I'm talking about the resurgence of Victory Gardens. This time planners have a different kind of victory in mind.

History lesson. Check out this terrific glossary and timeline of green urbanism from The Next American City website.

Organic herbicides

I'm a highly successful gardener--but only if judged by my ability to grow weeds. With a dog, a toddler, and a general aversion to poison, I don't like to spray herbicides--nor do I like to pull up weeds in the heat of a Sacramento Valley summer. (Besides, if I pulled up all the weeds, we'd pretty much only have a bare patch of dirt in the yard, as weeds constitute about a third of our "lawn.")

But what if I did get ambitious and wanted to target areas of the backyard that are especially weedy? Are there organic weed killers out there?

Some people say you can indeed make homemade herbicide, but before you try it, you should know that some of these herbicides aren't selective--they will kill grass and other plants as well as weeds. Here are a couple of solutions:

1. From ReadyMade blog: use 20 percent distilled vinegar on broadleaf weeds.

2. From Recipe Zaar: Mix together 4 cups white vinegar, 1/4 cup salt, and 2 teaspoons dish detergent. Spray on weeds.

3. Weekend Gardener offers four articles on organic weed killers, including a nifty tip about using corn gluten meal to stop weeds from germinating.

There are also commercial versions of organic weed killers. Simply search for "organic herbicides" in your favorite search engine.

(photo by Dylan Duvergé, used under a Creative Commons license)

EDRA Sacramento

(photo by Patrick Dirden, used under creative commons)
This week I attended the Environmental Design Research Association Conference in beautiful Sacramento. EDRA is a professional organization for anyone who works to improve the physical environment for people. At the meeting architects, planners, interior designers and researchers discuss how to make the places we live, work, and play more comfortable and sustainable. Thursday morning Sim Van der Ryn spoke about creating a culture of sustainability, which will involve not only changing our physical environment, but also basic modes of thinking. (To hear Sim speak for yourself, listen to his podcast on The Pattern that Connects.)

I also heard about healing gardens for hospitals and redesigning schools to both fit LEED standards and the needs of teachers and kids. Several presenters discussed the trade offs involved in choosing where to live, particularly for families with children. Many parents choose to live in the country because they want their kids to have time around nature and to keep their families safe from crime. Unfortunately, this often results in increased auto dependency. Families find themselves spending their days shuttling kids to and from their various activities. Kids may spend two or more hours a day in the car, rather than outside playing.

Since there were so many concurrent sessions I missed a number interesting talks, for example, a panel on how to make green houses affordable and a whole series of panels on enhancing workplace environments through design. Luckily, next year's EDRA will take place in beautiful Veracruz Mexico, which will surely attract many presenters and attendees.