Frankly Green

Will Your State's Tree or Flower Continue to Grow in Your State?

Thanks to my friend Kevin H. for this link to the National Wildlife Federation’s site -

Plants across the nation are affected by global warming. You have probably seen that many plants in your backyard are blooming earlier. Global warming will mean that many native and iconic plants may no longer find suitable climate conditions in major portions of their historic range. Click on this link and select your state to see if your official State Trees or State Flowers may be affected.

Organic vs. Conventional: What Do Experts Say?

By Amy Spindler
CookingLight.com

Full Text Article

The organic market is growing at a steady pace of nearly 20 percent annually, and that translates into organic alternatives in nearly every grocery aisle -- from snack foods to frozen meals to baked goods. "Everyone wants to be healthy and these foods convey an aura of health," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and author of "What to Eat." Here, experts compare some of the benefits and drawbacks of going organic.

Environmentally Friendly Cleaning Products

Here is a list of environmentally friendly cleaning products that I have compiled from a number of sources. I have tried many but not all of the products on this list. If you have any opinions on any of the products, please make a post and share them. Also feel free to email me with others to add to the list.

Ecover - Dishwashing, Laundry, Household, Personal Care

Seventh Generation - Dishwashing, Laundry, Household, Personal Care, Baby, Paper

Shaklee - Dishwashing, Laundry, Household

Mountain Green - Laundry and Household

Method - Dishwashing, Laundry, Household

Nellie’s Laundry Products - Laundry

Mrs. Meyers - Household, Laundry, Pet

Ecos - Household, Laundry, Personal Care, Pet

Dr. Bronner’s - Soaps and Body Care

biokleen - Dishwashing, Laundry, Household

 

And here is a site with good information and suggestions on how you can conserve resources when doing laundry - Project Laundry List Here is one item from the site:

Top Five Reasons to Hang Out Your Clothes:

Electric dryers use five to ten percent of residential energy.

1. Clothes last longer.
2. Clothes and sheets smell better.
3. Save energy, thus preventing pollution.
4. Save money.
5. You get some exercise and can do this activity outside.

More Retailers Go For Green - The Eco Kind

By Jayne O'Donnell and Christine Dugas, USA TODAY

Full Text Article

Happy to see this trend - Home Depot announced plans Tuesday to offer more environmentally friendly products and make it easier for consumers to find them. Included are more than 2,500 items ranging from all-natural insect repellents to front-load washing machines. Products that meet the criteria will be tagged Eco Options to make them easier to find.

The move by the country's second-largest retailer comes after the largest, Wal-Mart, kicked off an environmental initiative last fall that favors suppliers who restrict carbon emissions and embrace sustainability.

In the past two years, many retailers have started going greener in the way they build stores, use direct mail and package their products.

"What's new is that they are moving to thinking about what they are offering in terms of environmentally friendly products and what they expect from consumers," says Madison Riley, retail strategist at consulting firm Kurt Salmon Associates. He cites Ikea's recent move to charge customers for plastic bags.

"We know that the demand is there and the awareness is building," says Lowe's spokeswoman Jennifer Wilson.

Big-Box Retailers See Green as Eco-Consciousness Grows

Mark Chediak
Sentinel Staff Writer
April 20, 2007

Full Text Article

Retailers have for years sold eco-friendly goods, but now big-box stores and other chains are increasingly tapping into the billion-dollar market for organic produce, energy-efficient appliances and power-sipping light bulbs.

Part of the reason: Green is in, particularly after former Vice President Al Gore's documentary on global warming won an Academy Award in February.

But some community activists say there's another reason: Big chains want to deflect the criticism they sometimes encounter when their sprawling stores move into a new neighborhood.

Latest Gourmet Offering: Tap Water

To burnish their green image, chefs ditch bottles and spiff up faucet

By KATY MCLAUGHLIN
April 14, 2007; Page P1
Full Text Article

If you have read any of my past newsletters, you know how I feel about bottled water – it is a HUGE waste!! So, I am happy to see that restaurants are taking action

At Incanto restaurant in San Francisco, every meal begins with a free gift from the restaurant's kitchen. It's a local ingredient that has been filtered, chilled, and, if desired, carbonated. It's tap water.

Restaurants are in a bind these days as "green" pressure mounts to cut down on the plastic and glass waste from the bottled waters that have become popular in recent years. Yet many feel tap water isn't fancy enough. So they're dressing up plain old spigot water by installing expensive triple-filters and "reverse osmosis" systems. They're filling carafes with Japanese charcoal, running water through special stones to add minerals, and serving house-made seltzer.

Of course, taste isn't the only reason people order bottled water: Americans drank 8.3 billion gallons of the stuff in 2006, up nearly 10% from the prior year. This is in part because many believe it to be healthier than tap, according to studies conducted by the American Water Works Association Research Foundation, a Denver-based organization that studies public water systems.

But that isn't the case, some experts say. "A common misconception is that bottled water is better than tap water. All drinking water has to meet the same standard," says Dale Kemery, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Eau de Municipal

Below, a sampling of restaurants that are gussying up tap water. Tasting notes are from Wall Street Journal reporters who visited the restaurants and evaluated the offerings.

RESTAURANT/CITY	ON TAP	COMMENT
Chez Panisse Berkeley, Calif.	Filtered tap water and fizzy water coming soon	Owner Alice Waters banned bottled water three weeks ago, citing her sustainable-food principles. Taster enjoyed the slightly bitter, mineral taste of the filtered tap water.
Grace and BLD Los Angeles	Flat water filtered through a reverse-osmosis system	Taster found the filtered water at BLD more subtle than tap, though it had a slight chlorine smell. An order of Panna-brand bottled water had no off smell.
L'Étoile Madison, Wis.	Filtered tap water	In the past year, bottled-water sales have skyrocketed after a series of impurity scares with the local tap water, co-owner Traci Miller says.
Il Buco New York	Carbon-filtered flat water	The free filtered tap water had no mineral or chemical aftertaste and a slippery, soft texture. But taster liked the extra-smooth $6 Lurisia flat water even better.
San Domenico New York	$8 bottles of filtered flat and fizzy made in-house	Rents a Natura filter for about $400 a month to make the $8 water, and also provides free tap water filtered through Japanese stones.
Susanna Foo Gourmet Kitchen Radnor, Pa.	Purified tap water	The five-month-old restaurant spent about $50,000 on a high-tech purification system. The water makes for better coffee and sweeter tea, owner Susanna Foo says.
Coi San Francisco	Filtered tap water	Coi originally served no bottled water but added Antipodes from New Zealand, $8. Also sells its own water, dosed with cucumber and rose aromas, for $6 a glass.
Incanto San Francisco	Filtered water, flat and carbonated	Taster found the carbonated less bubbly than San Pellegrino, which owner Mark Pastori says is his goal, to avoid distracting from the food.
Restaurant Nora Washington	Tap water filtered with salt, then carbon, then paper	Taster found the water nondescript, with no aftertaste and a medium mouth-feel. "Good water is really boring," says co-owner Steve Damato.

Oil Profit May Fall, but U.S. Drivers Help to Keep it From Hurting

By RUSSELL GOLD
April 21, 2007; Page A2

Full Text Article

The half-dozen Western companies that put the "big" in Big Oil are to report their first-quarter earnings starting this coming week, beginning with BP PLC Tuesday and followed by Exxon Mobil Corp. Thursday. Profits are expected to be down about 10% from a year earlier, largely because of crude-oil and natural-gas prices that have eased a bit from their highs.

Profits easily could have fallen more. But Big Oil has received a major assist from U.S. drivers, who have kept the pedal to the metal even as gasoline prices have climbed 23% since the beginning of the year. Brisk demand in the U.S., combined with refinery outages, has slashed gasoline-inventory levels and is pushing pump prices over $3 a gallon in some markets.

An Inconvenient Truth...or Convenient Fiction?

April 14, 2007

San Francisco Journal

In a Filmdom Premiere, a Foe for Gore

By JESSE McKINLEY

Full Text Article

Thanks to my father for sending this. Perhaps Mr. Hayward should read the report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wherein a leading group of international climate scientists called global warming “unequivocal.”

SAN FRANCISCO, April 13 — The screening here on Thursday night had many elements of a classic film-world shindig. There were gift bags and television cameras, cold cocktails and hot popcorn. Ushers showed V.I.P.’s to their seats, and local politicos rubbed shoulders with the movie’s backers and flacks.

In fact, according to the movie’s star, Steven F. Hayward, there was only one thing missing from what could have otherwise been a typical Hollywood opening: liberals.

“I don’t know how much of the enemy we have here tonight,” said a smiling Mr. Hayward, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, based in Washington. “San Francisco is usually a target-rich environment.”

The occasion for the festivities was the world premiere of Mr. Hayward’s filmic debut, “An Inconvenient Truth...or Convenient Fiction?” It is a point-by-PowerPoint rebuttal of former Vice President Al Gore’s global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” which played last summer in nearly 600 theaters, won two Academy Awards (including the one for best documentary) and grossed nearly $50 million worldwide.

Mr. Hayward’s movie is aiming somewhat lower, with a handful of free screenings planned over the next month, including one next week at the offices of the Heritage Foundation, another conservative Washington research group, where the film was shot. Mr. Hayward said the point of his 50-minute movie — basically a lecture like “Inconvenient Truth,” though half as long — was to dispute Mr. Gore’s depiction of potentially devastating consequences of global warming.

“I agree that we’re warming,” he told a reporter, “and I agree that we’re playing a role in it. What I disagree with is his overall pessimism.”...

Not everyone, however, was thrilled by the movie. Judith Anderson, 46, a local artist and self-described “free-market fan” who had come to see the film because she was “interested in the rebuttal” to Mr. Gore’s movie, gave the flick the ultimate thumbs-down.

“It was terribly boring,” Ms. Anderson said. “I didn’t get his point.”

Courts and Greens - NYT Editorial

April 14, 2007
Editorial
Courts and Greens
Full Text Article

Thanks to my father for sending this along!

A little over four years ago, when the forces of deregulation were riding
high, this page observed that the federal courts could turn out to be the
last, best hope for slowing the Bush administration’s assault on the body of
bipartisan environmental law established over the last four decades and, by
extension, on the environment itself.

As things have turned out, this is pretty much what has happened. In the
last few weeks alone, federal judges at the district or appellate level
have:

Rejected efforts to weaken protections for the national forests, including
the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Overturned a government plan that would have hastened the decline of
endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Rebuffed challenges to clean air laws governing pollution from older power
plants.

Invoked the Clean Water Act to prevent mining companies from laying waste
to streams and valleys in Appalachia.

In some cases the courts have done more than just play defense. In the
Supreme Court ruling on global warming two weeks ago, the court not only
protected existing law but aggressively enlarged its reach, ruling that the
Clean Air Act all but required the Environmental Protection Agency to
regulate emissions of greenhouse gases.

See link above for full text of the editorial.

Eco-Friendly Garden Design

   
   

First Prize for Rainwater Harvesting Goes to...
Latest Garden Rivalry Is Eco-Friendly Design;
Now, Nowhere to Play

By TROY MCMULLEN
April 20, 2007; Page W1

Full Text Article

Dick Cline's grandchildren aren't thrilled with his new yard.

To eliminate the use of pesticides and other chemicals on his property, last year the Wheaton, Ill., financial planner replaced much of the grass on his three-acre spread with a rough mix of meadow plantings that also require less maintenance and mowing. The problem? His grandchildren are forced to go over to the neighbor's yard to find a lawn to play baseball.

As part of the current infatuation with all things green, eco-minded businesses are pressing sustainable landscaping -- designs that they say save energy, conserve water and reduce the need for chemicals and pesticides. This spring, landscapers who specialize in green gardening are reporting a sharp increase in business and growing interest in complex systems that capture and recycle rainwater and snowmelt. Another area seeing stepped-up activity is eco-friendly "hardscaping." Some homeowners are ripping up the blacktop and concrete on their driveways and patios and putting in permeable paving materials that allow water to pass through to the ground beneath, reducing runoff that can create soil erosion and flood municipal sewer systems.

The company says it expects tap-water usage for irrigation to be cut by almost 30% and is currently considering a similar residential development for Arizona.