Here's a cool video from one of the vendors at the Towards Carfree Cities Conference (my review here), StreetsFilm. These guys have pretty awesome content and are great advocates for alternative transportation. Check out their blog at www.streetsblog.com
I hope you all will consider the bicycle as at the minimum an option for some things like picking up groceries and going over to friends' houses.
Remember, carfree means "freedom from addiction and the ability to take the most responsible mode of travel possible". For us with our 4 week old infant, we still use the car, but if it's just us on a leisure ride or a grocery run, we'll take the bike and put our groceries in it.
I just got back from the World Carfree Networks conference, Towards Carfree Cities. Man, there was some interesting things being thrown around.
I only attended two seminars, but they had walking and biking tours all around. I caught the last half-hour of Obbie and Roz's presentation "The Transportation Liberation Roadshow: How to Save Money, Save Your Sanity, and Save the Planet by Not Driving". That was very enlightening. I've learned quite a bit that could be applied to city living, and what I'm hoping to do is to be able to turn this into solutions for rural and country living.
The second seminar was a workshop-- ah hell, I'll just copy/paste it because of the good links:
Towards Carfree Families: Transportation Solutions for Families in a Car-Oriented World Moderator: Angela Koch, Director, Safe Routes to School, Bicycle Transportation Alliance, Portland
So you see, it's actually very cool! What I learned was that there's a
big question among the carfree bicycling activist community about how
to share the road with automobiles in a better way.
Some thoughts that came from the conference:
Here's a video from the first seminar I went to:
Looking at the recent flood disaster in
the Midwest will tell you that anybody who was relying on their own
home garden plots will be either sorely disappointed, or hungry (likely
both). The fact is that, as good and tasty and cheap as localized food
sources are to us, recent climate changes and unpredictable, heightened
levels of disasters makes me wonder if there's not something to this
whole industrialized farming after all.
Industrialized agriculture came about along with the industrial revolution and matured through the application of efforts of wartime manufacturers in WWII to industrialized farming. With the development of refrigerated railcars, it became possible to ship goods extremely long distances. Couple this with the fact that science created higher-than-ever crop yields and you have increased supplies causing a decreased price. The ability to ship goods from hot climates to colder regions also extended the growing seasons of vegetables far beyond their natural (read: local) "lifespan". This convenience would be something that a busy "nuclear family" of the baby-boomer age would love, causing people- I imagine- to abandon their victory gardens in favor of the One-Stop-Shopping centers.
So why the harsh words against agribusiness? Why the whole "eat local" movement? I know, I know- industrialized farming works against not only the little guy, but the very soul of farming. With assholes like Monsanto suing people who save seeds (a several thousand year old farming technique), it's a wonder they don't just say that farming is "hazardous to your health".
Agribusiness has another gripe though. It is personally responsible for topsoil loss (great picture here), pollution of the waterways (via cattle waste run-off), less biodiversity- which causes massive crop vulnerabilities (remember the tomato scare going on right now?), and cripples the availability of real food-- seeds within your fruits and vegetables that will regrow into plants that produce food (Ellen informed me that this is a reality in this article, and gives a solution).
Imagine a world where you didn't have to fear that
what you were eating still had poison on it, or that you didn't have to
feel guilty over the amount of gasoline used to truck your strawberries
a thousand miles to your doorstep. Such a culinary experience exists
with the 100 mile diet and far surpasses any kind of traditional, cardboard-tasting
freeze-fest that traditional farming could ever offer to your taste
buds; it has the bonus of being far healthier for you- if for no other
reason than that you will actually eat healthier because you like brussels sprouts. . . fresh brussels sprouts.
There's plenty of reasons to avoid the agribusiness and industrialized processes, and I would love to go on and on about them. . . however we must realize that when a large-scale natural disaster hits, it is the ability to truck in, at a moments notice, tens of thousands of pounds of food and distribute it in an organized manner that helps mitigate post disaster-related deaths. Of course, the downside to all of this is that agribusiness is somebody else. This "somebody else" is the guy that deals with every social problem in America today, "oh, don't worry, it's somebody else's problem" they say. There's no accountability because any issues raised will be the fault of "somebody else". Simplify the solution: DIY.
by Jessica Folwick
My first blog article was a fun
piece to write. Bicycling will become a hobby on my long list of
joyful activities. Our library runs have my husband and I check out
books about bicycling. We have a baby daughter who's less than 6
months old. We'll expose her at an early age about personal
responsibility and relying on your own equipment. The equipment of
hands and feet that God made on every human to work out in the garden
for our food, ride a bike or walk to nearby places, and using her mind
& wit with people to solve an issue (like Batman-mmm Christian
Bale). The first idea on our list of family activities that we want to
do with our daughter is bicycling together. My mom-in-law purchased us
a jogging stroller + bike trailer for our daughter. That doesn't have
the best restraints for a baby who's ALMOST a month old. I searched in
google on ways to transport a newborn/early infant around on a
bicycle. I couldn't find anything. Does anybody know how to transport a new infant (less than 6 months old) on a bicycle?
Off the subject of bikes, I want to write about daily lessons I learn
as a mother to a beautiful daughter. These articles won't be a script
of lectures from Dr. Spock or Phil. Any readers who are parents can
comment and share their stories or ideas with me on the posts.
I repeat after the digression of future subject ideas, if any readers
have any ideas on transporting my daughter with my bike? A nice hello
will be great too! Take care! Adieu Adieu! Parting is such sweet
sorrow
By Charla Bear
Morning Edition, June 11, 2008 · Wayne County, Mich. — home to Detroit — has been hit especially hard by the mortgage crisis.
The county has inherited thousands of unwanted properties, leaving plot after plot of vacant land. So a nonprofit group pitched an idea: Take that unused land, and grow food for the needy.
This year, the group — called Urban Farming — will take 20 derelict properties in Wayne County, then pull weeds, lay fresh topsoil, and plant fruits and vegetables.
The gardens aren't fenced off, so anyone can wander through and take their pick — for free. Any leftover produce is donated to food banks.
'A Huge Boon'
Neighborhoods in Wayne County are littered with boarded-up homes and vacant land that's covered in knee-high grass. Demolished apartment complexes have left empty lots the size of football fields.
That's why Urban Farming founder Taja Seville says Detroit was the perfect place to start working on farming projects. The city has long suffered from a glut of available property, and last year it topped the nation in foreclosures. Wayne County now has about 7,000 idle plots. Seville saw that as an opportunity.
"I've lived in L.A., N.Y., Connecticut, London, Minneapolis, and been around a lot, seen a lot of cities. But I've never seen these long stretches of unused land," says Seville.
Under the 20-plot pilot program, volunteers will tend the garden, and the city of Detroit will pitch in water.
Wayne County Treasurer Raymond Wojtowicz says that's a huge boon.
"It won't cost the county anything. We're donating the land. If a person wants to purchase the lot, it will be for sale. Perhaps it will be an inducement," says Wojtowicz.
'I Want to Garden There'
Wojtowicz says the biggest benefit, though, is less blight in the neighborhood. And residents say that, unlike abandoned houses, the gardens aren't targeted by vandals.
Detroit resident Eric Parrish says that those who live around the gardens respect the farming projects. "They see we're doing something to help the community," he says.
Parrish says he recently started gardening with Urban Farming because it helps turn things around in his city.
"You can tell people are struggling. So when I do see these plots of land it makes me say, 'I want to garden there,' " he says.
Parrish says most people are grateful for the gardens, although at first a few were concerned they would attract pests.
Turns out that urban farms do attract people, says Gail Carr, one of Detroit's city managers. She has houses boarded up nearly every day and sees what a dramatic difference the gardens have on communities.
"People are coming out of their homes who wouldn't come out under other circumstances because they didn't think there was still a community or a neighbor or a friendly person nearby," she says.
Wojtowicz says the county is watching the program and hopes to expand it.
Seville isn't waiting to expand. She plans to plant hundreds of gardens in at least a dozen other struggling cities this season.
First posted by Francine Hardaway on June 12th, 2008 on Earth911.org, article here.
More and more evidence is coming out that sustainable practices can make companies more profitable in addition to saving the planet. For the first time, one of the “Big Four” accounting firms has tied product stewardship to higher gross margins, higher returns on assets and stronger cash flow, according to a recent report, “The Food, Beverage, and Consumer products Industry - Achieving Superior Financial Performance in a Challenging Economy - 2008,” from GMA and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The analysis was based on 60 large companies, 27 that reported sustainability data and 33 that did not.
The ones that reported sustainability data had the highest gross margins and the greatest return to shareholders, because their operating and investment decisions were geared to reducing waste and optimizing resources.
After finding this post over at Green Bean Dreams, I decided that it was important enough to do a Green Budget Hacks post. This post contains all the awesome green hacks that you can use to "Trim your Waste Line".
A few from Green Bean Dreams:
A couple of awesome tips she's discovered:
All
of these tips are awesome, high-impact tips with potential to save you
a lot on your purchases and- on the other end- your garbage bill. I
thought that today I would add in my own Green Hacks.
These are all some dirt-cheap/free ways to decrease your carbon footprint without giving up your lifestyle. Some other ways:
What are your Green Hacks?
