Eco-Mamas

Heartland Community Destroyed by Tornado Goes GREEN

By Sherwood Martinelli

If you do a couple of Internet searches, (Eco-Town and Greensburg) you'll see that a small town in America's Heartland, Greensburg Kansas, is getting a whole lot of attention. That's exactly what they need, since the tornado that strolled down Main Street, destroyed more than 80 percent of the city's infrastructure.

My own involvements with the community began some weeks ago when a close friend of mine, Bill Thomas of Green Home Solutions rang me up in the middle of the night and said, “I had a dream, and you and I are going to go spend a week in Kansas helping the people of Greensburg rebuild their town.” My first thought was, “Why Greensburg?” I mean any town or city devastated by a natural disaster deserves all the help we can give them--but too often there just does not seem to be enough help to go around, with the best known example being New Orleans, and the Ninth Ward--so why Greensburg?

CT and NY-based Involvement

All communities ravished by natural disasters deserve attention, and a growing group of us here on the East Coast have recently formed a new organization aimed at helping Greensburg, and other communities recovering from natural disasters to not only recover, but to re-build using green building materials, to rebuild a more eco-friendly sustainable community. Green Helping Hands will help get GreenTown what it needs.

The town and GreenTown want to build an eco village with six green homes cited in the village, another six built at other locations throughout the town, thus creating a real life model of sustainable green living that others can visit and study, which in turn will create eco-tourism for this small rural community.

So far, Green Helping Hands has the attention of GEM motorcars, manufactured by Chrysler, and McGraw Hill Publishing.  We are also raising donations of green building products, books for the new library, and more.

Many Hands, Many Minds

Green Helping Hands has proposed to have a competition wherein the best architectures in the world could compete to have their plan chosen for these green home builds. The idea has been well received, so stay tuned or better yet, come and join us!

   

The Graying Of The Greens

ERIN WALRATH and her fiancée, Peter Mariano, chat during Fairfield County Green Drinks, a cocktail party at the Westport Arts Center for people interested in environmental issues. (MICHAEL KODAS / February 13, 2008)

With Aging Memberships, Environmental Groups Reach Out To Younger Members

by STEVE GRANT |  The Hartford Courant

Something's happened to Connecticut's venerable environmental groups. They're aging, often dominated by members and leaders well into their 50s and beyond. Greens gone gray.

It has them worried. "The environmental community must make room for younger, more creative and less bureaucratic individuals who will stick their neck out on important issues and who will have the energy and expertise to galvanize the public into action," said Allan Williams of West Hartford, a longtime environmental activist and member of the Sierra Club.

Fearful of a loss of relevance, concerned they might lose influence in shaping state policy, long-established groups like the Connecticut Audubon, the Connecticut chapter of the Sierra Club and the Connecticut Forest & Park Association are now reaching out to attract younger members, employees and board members.

"We certainly do want to attract younger people," said Adam R. Moore, executive director of the forest and park group. "We've been working on that, just like every environmental group has been."

 

Kids Campaign: If You're Stopped for More Than 10 Seconds...

Alex Scaperotta and Jordan Reichgut noticed that many people in the school pick up lines idle their cars.  They learned through research that unnecessary idling wastes gasoline and releases CO² into the atmosphere, which accelerates global warming.  They thought that a good place to start would be to get parents of Cider Mill School students to commit to not idling their car in the pick up line or anywhere else. Their message is simple:  IF YOU IDLE YOUR CAR FOR TEN SECONDS OR MORE, YOU ARE USING MORE GAS THAN TURNING YOUR CAR OFF AND ON.  In addition, they learned that idling is unnecessary to “warm up” your car (the best way to warm it up is to drive it) and idling is in fact harmful to engines – causing more gasoline residue to build up in the engines, exhaust system rusting, and more.

Ripples in a Pond

There certainly is a lot to be fearful about these days. Even so, this project has nothing to do with fear. Not only is there "nothing to fear but fear itself," but fear paralyzes us into sitting by idle each day until the end of our lives when we are left to face that which is far worse than even sweaty-palms, lump-in-the-throat-fear----our regret.

The veil of denial about my own personal impact on climate change evaporated while viewing An Inconvenient Truth. I watched with my eyes open wide and dry from not wanting to miss a second.  "Before you jump from denial...to despair...stop in the middle...and do something," struck a chord so deep inside that it rolled around, percolated, and echoed in my mind until CTGreenScene was born.

"At present most of us do nothing. We look away. We remain calm. We are silent. We take refuge in the hope that the holocaust won’t happen, and turn back to our individual concerns. We deny the truth that is all around us. Indifferent to the future of our kind, we grow indifferent to one another. We drift apart. We grow cold. We drowse our way to the end of the world. But if once we shook off our lethargy and fatigue and began to act, the climate would change. Just as inertia produces despair—a despair often so deep it does not know itself as despair—arousal and action would give us access to hope, and life would start to mend: not just life in its entirety but daily life, every individual life. At that point we would begin to withdraw from our role as both the victims and the perpetrators. …

We would no longer be the destroyers of mankind, but rather, a gateway through which the future generations would enter the world. Then the passion and will that we need to save ourselves would flood into our lives. The walls of indifference, inertia, and coldness that now isolate each of us from others, and all of us from the past and future generations, would melt, like snow in spring. …"

—Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth

Start a Recycling Program at Your School!

It's Back-to-School and what better time to kick off a great year by starting a school-wide recycling program! Check out these tips from Treehugger.com

1. Find out who else in your school is passionate about recycling and is willing to help!

2. Decide what can be recycled in your school district. Items such as paper, plastic, printer cartridges, batteries or clothing are all fair game.

3. Form a recycling club to be responsible for the program.

4. Determine who will get the recyclables to the transfer station. Some potential candidates include custodians, parents, volunteers or in many areas the trash company or town itself.

5. Decide where to store your schools recyclables until transport.

6. Find out how many classroom, lounge and cafeteria recycling containers will be needed, and then raise money for their purchase.

7. Have committee or club members make presentations to each classroom about the importance of recycling.

8. Weigh and measure recyclables and post this information for the entire school to see to encourage more recycling.

9. Hold contests and competitions between grade levels or classrooms to see who can recycle the most.

10. Find fun things to do with the funds raised by collecting bottle-return money!

11. Write to CTGreenScene and let us know how you made out!!!

One man, One sign, One Worldwide Movement

What will you start?

Reduce the Negative Effects of Stormwater

If you haven't already, you should read our post about how stormwater runoff affects our water supply. Thankfully, there are several simple ways to reduce the effects of stormwater in your yard and neighborhood as suggested by EPA and written up in the Spring 2007 issue of The Habitat, the official newsletter of the Connecticut Association of Conservation and Inland Wetlands Commissions, Inc.

Keep litter, pet wastes, leaves and debris our of street gutters and storm drains, which lead directly to lakes, streams, rivers, and wetlands.

Use organic fertilizers and herbicides. There are lots of great options out there.**

Truly Green Transportation

I was driving home from the store the other day and saw a man riding his bike with a tee-shirt that read " ONE LESS CAR". It reminded me that hybrids have nothing on this nearly two-hundred-year-old mode of transportation.

But thanks to an organization called the Central Connecticut Bicycle Alliance (CCBA),the Greater Hartford area is starting to see more people commuting into the city by bikes and leaving their cars at home. The program, called “Bike to Work,” continues to grow and the organization is looking to take it to the next level by promoting construction of bike lanes, greenways and bicycle friendly roads. The CCBA plans different activities each month, such as a breakfast in downtown Hartford, for bicycle commuters to socialize and share their ideas. In addition, the organization offers “Bike Buddies” that can answer questions about how to make a bike commute-ready, routes to take, and how to safely ride in traffic. “Bike Buddies” can even accompany commuters on a ride. The idea is to educate people that riding a bike to work is healthy and that it can be safe. Source: TreeHugger

Measure Your Footprint

According to the Connecticut Climate Change website, "Your carbon footprint is a representation of the effect you, or your organization, have on the climate in terms of the total amount of greenhouse gases you produce (measured in units of carbon dioxide). Many of your actions generate carbon emissions, which contribute to accelerating global warming and climate change. By measuring your carbon footprint through such tools as the Safe Climate Carbon Calculator, you can get a better sense of what your individual impact is and which parts of your lifestyle deserve the greatest attention. Armed with such information you can more readily take effective action to shrink your carbon footprint, thereby minimizing your personal impact on the climate."

B-Greener @ Home Tip

These B-Greener @ home tips come from “POWER TO THE PEOPLE: How to fight global warming, lower your utility bills, and take a stand for a more sustainable future,” compiled by The Audubon Society and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Seal Air Leaks for better heating and cooling. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that air leakage accounts for up to 10 percent of a homeowner’s energy bill. You first priorities are to seal your attic and basement. Then seal windows, doors, vents, electrical sockets, and anywhere else air is escaping. If you’re having trouble finding leaks, you can hire a professional to find them with a blower door test or infrared technology. CL&P and the Energy Star program offer this service. Cost: $100 (Do-It-Yourself) - $600 (professional). Annual Savings: $60 - $70. Payback: 1.4 – 10 years.

Cheat Your Water Heater. Water heating can account for roughly 19 percent of a home energy bill and some estimates say that CO2 emissions from running that heater are double your car emissions! The majority of U.S. houses have gas water heaters, but almost 40 percent use doubly expensive electric systems. Make your water heater work more efficiently: wrap it with an insulating jacket; insulate hot water pipes; turn the heater off when you're on vacation; install timer controls that switch off heater when your at work or sleeping; add anti convection valves and loops; and turn the temperature down to 120 degrees F or less. Cost: $80 - $100. Annual savings: $57 - $123. Payback: 0.7 - 1.9 years.

Slay Vampires. An energy vampire is an electronic device--a TV, phone, fax, computer, or cell phone charger--that draws energy even when it's in "standby mode." These vampires can suck up to seven watts of energy per hour. How do you conquer them? Buy energy efficient appliances that use one less watt per hour in standby mode, plug computers into smart strips that sense when you shut down power to certain receptacles. Ordinary power strips can also be easily switched off when electronics are not in use. Cost: $0. Annual savings: $5 - $34. Payback: Immediate.

Read all 21 useful tips.