Highly acclaimed author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, Michael Pollan, raises the question: “why bother?” in his article of the same title.  With the world population rocketing to seven billion, one can be left feeling quite insignificant and helpless to bring about environmental change.  While many in the United States are starting to conserve energy and resources, there are those across the globe in rapidly urbanizing countries such as China that want our standard of living—they want to drive cars and consume more resources.  So, many ask the question:  “Why go green when others are going the opposite direction?”

It is all too easy to settle into a lethargic comfort zone and ignore the problems facing our globe.  Pollan claims that, instead of accepting reality and diligently looking into environmental issues, many just turn to the popular entertainment and high tech gadgets in our society as a means of escape.  One could say:  “Why rock the boat?  The human race has made it this far; we’ll survive.”  Instead of driving to the gym to work out, people can plant and tend a garden—this will provide much needed exercise in our sedentary society.  According to Pollan, “Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment.”  Besides, we would have to resort to finding alternative sources for food if a disaster ever removed us from the power grid; taking proactive measures now can help us stay a step ahead.  Even if living in a city, you can create an indoor garden or hang some pots outdoors.  Do some research, and be creative.

In addition to individual sustainability efforts, collective efforts are necessary.  Garry Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farms, the leading organic yogurt producer, claims the success of sustainability lies in business.  Hirshburg states, “Business is the most powerful force on Earth.  Unlike governments, which are usually bound by consensus and convention, business can lead.  Unlike churches, community groups and nonprofits, business has money to back up its ideas.”  Corporations around the country are becoming aware of the benefits of going green.  According to the authors of Green to Gold, “Instead of focusing mainly on environmental costs and risks or corporate social responsibility, more and more companies have come to see opportunities for growth and profit through focus on environmental sustainability.”  Hirshburg has proven with his organic yogurt that a sustainable business can be very successful and can have a marketing advantage over competitors by selling a unique product.

Businesses can make a large impact, but individuals and community groups can still make a difference.  Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, proves that an individual can make a difference.  Schlosser’s book was one of the first to question the industrial food system, and has influenced millions, either directly or indirectly, to make wiser, educated decisions.  Community groups have been formed, businesses pressured and local, state, and national governing bodies petitioned to start legislating change.  Although a perfect sustainable society is far from being obtained, you can make a difference by staying alert and informed, sharing information with others, and becoming an active participant in making our communities and earth a greener place to live.

Babies are cute and snuggly and just the sight of a baby can bring a smile to most peoples’ faces.  Babies are also expensive and create tremendous volumes of waste as any parent will tell you.  By one estimate, “over his/her lifetime, each American born in the 1990s will produce an average of 3.1 million pounds of CO2,” the equivalent of 413 plane trips from New York to Tokyo.  American children in particular tend to have a greater impact on the environment than other children around the world.  For example, “one American child generates as much CO2 as 106 Haitian kids.”  There are several ways to reduce the impact your bundle of joy will have on the planet, however.

New parents quickly get the hang of diapering their baby perhaps because they do it so often.  Ninety-six percent of American babies wear disposable diapers while only six percent of Chinese and only two percent of Indian babies wear them.  It takes a disposable diaper 550 years to decompose, a staggering length of time especially when one considers the number of diapers that the average child goes through in a lifetime.  Aside from the dramatic impact on the environment that disposable diapers cause, they are expensive.  For a relatively simple and effective step toward greening your baby, try switching to cloth, reusable diapers.  While they are obviously not as “user friendly” as disposable diapers and take considerably more effort and clean up on the part of mom and dad, you can save a small fortune while helping alleviate some of the strain disposable diapers put on the environment. 

Along with diapers comes baby wipes.  Nearly as expensive as diapers, babies can often go through twice the number of wipes as diapers.  If you’re thinking of lessening baby’s impact on the environment, consider making your own baby wipes.  Homemade baby wipes can be as effective as store bought ones and the process for making them is quite simple and quick. 

Baby food can also create tremendous amounts of waste and leave your bank account feeling the strain of the expense.  Aside from the waste and expense, food recalls can often create panic in even the most laid back parents.  Many parents are now making their own baby foods to avoid all of the above mentioned problems with store bought foods.  Weelicious.com is a great site featuring great recipes for making your own baby food at home.  From simple one-ingredient recipes to creative combinations like Mango Banana Puree, “Catherine,” a mom of two who runs the website, provides parents with a healthy, affordable, and green alternative to store bought baby foods.  Most of Catherine’s recipes can be frozen in reusable containers which mean no more glass jars to dispose of. 

In the first years of baby’s life, he or she grows so quickly that some clothes never get worn before they are too small.  Consignment shops and thrift stores can be a great way to save some money on baby’s clothes while helping the environment by re-using what’s already been gently worn.  Another great way to save money and leave less of a footprint on the environment is to team up with other parents to swap clothes. 

Today’s children are perhaps more environmentally knowledgeable than any generation prior.  Once kids get to school, they quickly begin coming home and reminding their parents that the aluminum cans go into the recycling bin and not the trash can and providing other helpful lessons to encourage their own parents to be greener.  By focusing on green values from infancy, parents can encourage environmental consciousness in their children which will only increase as they reach school age.

Photo taken from Discovery Magazine article: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/055

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) explains that “the Arctic is global warming’s canary in the coal mine.”    This environmentally sensitive area of the globe has been in danger for decades but recent images provide visual proof of just how dire the situation is.  The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado provides a daily update on the declining volume and size of Arctic sea ice.  The daily images show where the sea ice boundary currently is with an orange line showing where it was in 1979.  The NSIDC reports that as of August 16, “Arctic ice extent was 5.95 million square kilometers.”  This may seem like a massive amount of ice but as NSIDC notes, this represents a decrease of some 1.68 million square kilometers below the 1979 to 2000 average for the season. 

Though Arctic sea ice does melt during the Arctic summer (a time when the region experiences 24 hours of sunshine), this season’s melt has been dramatic.  A recent Washington Post article explains that “After going into the melt season with more ice over a larger area than recent years, sea ice extent plummeted by a daily rate of 26,000 square miles per day during May, which was the highest rate of loss ever observed for the month since satellite records of sea ice began in 1979.”  On his blog, Nick Sundt, Director of Communications, Climate Change Program at the World Wildlife Fund, put this figure into perspective writing, “That is an area roughly half the size of the entire United States (including Alaska)…”  As if the analyses from satellite images was not startling enough, however, researchers studying the region are finding that the situation is worse than even the satellite images are showing.  In a Time Magazine article earlier this year, David Barber, an Arctic climatologist at the University of Manitoba, describes his experience in visiting the area:  “Some of what satellites identified as thick, melt-resistant multiyear ice turned out to be…’full of holes, like Swiss cheese.  We haven’t seen this sort of thing before.’”

An overwhelming volume of evidence shows that Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate that outpaces the melting in previous years.  What may be less obvious, however, is the long term impact of so much melting ice.  The most obvious and discussed impact of melting sea ice in the Arctic region is the impact on polar bears.  In May 2008, the U.S. Department of the Interior classified polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, a move that many researchers had been encouraging for years.  There are other, less obvious consequences, however.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides some thorough information on the anticipated impact of this situation.  For example, melting Arctic glaciers contribute to rising sea levels around the world which in turn creates a tenuous situation for wildlife and people living on the shorelines surrounding the Arctic region.  Further, melting Arctic ice “will have implications for biodiversity around the world because migratory species depend on breeding and feeding grounds in the Arctic.” 

As the Natural Resources Defense Council points out, the Arctic is global warming’s “canary in the coal mine.”  With this in mind, one must consider the situation in that region from the perspective of what it means for the rest of the world.  If the Arctic is experiencing such dramatic consequences of global warming, it stands to reason that it is perhaps only a matter of time before the effects of this phenomenon begin to leave their mark as dramatically on the rest of the world.

Electronic gadgets and appliances such as cell phones, MP3 players, computers, and microwaves are commonplace in today’s global society.  Additionally, the air is filled with radio and wireless internet waves.  Although designed to make life easier, some researchers suggest electronic devices contribute to something far more ominous: electrosmog.

According to the Detect & Protect website, electrosmog is the invisible electromagnetic radiation that is emitted from cell phones and their towers, as well as other common electronic gadgets and appliances.  These electromagnetic fields (EMFs) surround the aforementioned devices, and according to the work of Sam Milham, MD, there is an even more sinister EMF:  “…a relatively new suspected carcinogen known as high-frequency voltage transients, or ‘dirty electricity.’  Transients are largely by-products of modern energy efficient electronics and appliances—from computers, refrigerators, and plasma TVs to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and dimmer switches—which tamp down the electricity they use.”  Thus such devices created to save energy and money appear to have their drawbacks in the adverse affects they have on human health.

Milham investigated a La Quinta, California middle school after 16 out of 137 staff members developed 18 cancers from 1990 to 2005. His final report assisted by L. Lloyd Morgan in 2008 in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine  concluded:  “Cumulative exposure to transients in the school increased the likelihood a teacher would develop cancer by 64%.  A single year of working in the building raised risk by 21%.”  Additionally, according to the study, the risk for young children was probably greater, although not included in the statistics of the study.  Although EMFs seem to be the cause of the high cancer rate, other possible carcinogens in the school environment appear to be absent from the study.

Many concerned German doctors were led to sign the Freiburger Appeal  in 2002 based on their observation of the rise in cancer, chronic diseases and mental disorders among their patients, which they believed were linked to high-frequency microwave radiation (HFMR).  This appeal called for the reduction of these waves “on a justifiable scale, especially in areas of sleep and convalescence.”  Additional stipulations called for a ban on cell phone use among small children and restrictions on adolescent use.

On the other hand, there are those who disagree that cell phones and other devices are harmful to human health.  A CNN article from 2008 relates the stance of the cell phone industry:  “…the overwhelming majority of studies that have been published in scientific journals around the globe show that wireless phones do not pose a health risk.”  It is difficult to find the truth because “Cell phones have been wildly popular for only a matter of years, and it can take at least a decade for cancers to show up.  Studies contradict each other, and scientists bicker.”

So, what can you do until the studies are completed?  Objective sources are difficult to find; many are advocates for electronics corporations, others often want to convince you that you need to buy something to lessen or nearly eliminate the dangers of electronic radiation.   I encourage you not to take just anyone’s word about whether or not electrosmog is dangerous without first being educated on the subject.  Additional information about Electromagnetic fields can be found at the World Health Organization’s and Dr. Mercola’s websites.

Even if you are not a golfer, it is likely that you know at least several people who enjoy the game.  In the United States, golf has a tremendous economic impact.    According to the 2007 Golf 20/20 economic impact report, golf was a $76 billion industry.  Golf courses have come under close scrutiny within the environmental preservation community.  The volume of water needed to keep courses looking green and lush is tremendous and many courses use various pesticides and other chemicals which can harm the environment.  The typically large amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers used on most golf courses create substantial concerns regarding run off into local rivers and lakes. 

Several golf courses, however, are beginning to acknowledge these issues and many are changing their ways to be more diligent stewards of our delicate environment.  San Francisco’s Harding Park, a Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) golf course, is one example.  Administrators at Harding Park employed a team of entomologists and other scientists to help determine ways in which they could reduce water and pesticide usage while still maintaining a golf course that people would like to visit.  An article in Science Daily details how Harding Park is greening their operations and one of America’s favorite pastimes.

Groundskeepers at the course now “use microbes to knock out fungus, they use soap to get rid of weeds, they hand pluck wild daisies, flush out moles with hoses, and use traps to catch cockroaches.”  Thanks to these efforts, Harding Park holds the unique distinction of using “much less chemical pesticides and fertilizers than any other golf course in the U.S.”  As a city-owned golf course, Harding Park must abide by San Francisco’s stringent pesticide-reduction rules. 

Other courses across the country have followed Harding Park’s lead and are also moving towards a more eco-friendly golf experience.  Greenopia.com has a listing of the “Seven Most Gorgeous Eco Friendly Golf Courses.”  Included in the list are Tournament Players Club in Dearborn, Michigan; Isla Viveros in Panama; Vineyard Golf Club in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; and, The Old Collier Golf Club in Naples, Florida. 

Tournament Players Club, designed by Jack Nicklaus, stands out as a shining star among this group.  Ford Motor Company initiated the plans for this course on what was once a dump site in Detroit’s suburbs.  With the help of Audubon International, an organization that helps golf courses protect the environment while still providing an enjoyable golfing experience, Ford managed to create a beautiful and eco-friendly course.  The course sits on a flood plain so it uses less water than most other courses and is not only a championship course but also a certified wildlife refuge. 

Vineyard Golf Club is another stellar example of how to green the game of golf.  A links style course, it is designed to “take advantage of the land it sits on rather than changing it.”  Additionally, the course is planted without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides.  These efforts have paid off: the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America awarded the course’s superintendent, Jeff Carlson, the President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship. 

The next time you’re in the mood for a round of golf, I encourage you to take a minute to think about the environmental impact of this popular leisure activity.  Perhaps you will consider playing a course that has proven its respect for the environment by taking steps to reduce the usage of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and even water.

John Muir (1838-1914) was one of America’s earliest environmental advocates. Born in Scotland, Muir migrated to the United States with his family in 1849. As an adult, he pursued his lifelong interest in the natural world and quickly became one of the nation’s most staunch advocates for environmental preservation. He spent many years living in Yosemite where he enjoyed the serene beauty of the area. He was an early advocate for making Yosemite into a national park and lobbied Congress to give Yosemite the same designation as Yellowstone National Park. In 1892, Muir founded the Sierra Club over which he presided until his death. Muir’s advocacy for a system of national parks was carried on by the Club after his death and generations since his death have continued to benefit from his efforts. The above quote is representative of Muir’s vision of and affinity for nature and is a great reminder to all of us that all things in nature are connected – we cannot touch one piece without touching the entirety.

For some of us, summer time means camping trips and camping is a wonderful way to get out and enjoy the great outdoors.  The idea alone makes you think of the beauty of the environment, campfires, marshmallows, hot dogs on sticks…  Since camping involves being part of your outdoor environment, it’s best to attempt to arrive, maintain, and leave the area as you found it.  The “Leave-No-Trace Camping” method is growing in popularity as we all become more aware of the importance of preserving our wilderness.  Why not try some of the easy ideas below.

Biodegradable soaps and detergents.  If you plan to bathe, wash dishes or laundry on your trip, use biodegradable soap to reduce added pollution to the area.  Most manufacturers of biodegradable soaps also use processes which produce little waste in production.

Reusable dishes and cutlery.  Bring reusable dishes and cutlery to reduce the amount of waste to dispose of.

Keep your campsite clean.  Food and trash which is left out can entice wildlife putting them at harm if they consume anything, risking them being destroyed if they become a nuisance, and can also increase their need to become dependent on human food items.  Properly dispose of any trash that is produced by using designated trash receptacles, or by taking it with you.

Use local firewood.  Bringing in your own firewood could introduce toxic chemicals or foreign critters to the native area, which could harm the environment.  Many campgrounds sell local firewood and if you are camping in a remote area, there may be lots of fallen trees that you can use; use only fallen pieces, do not chop native trees down.

Stay in designated hiking and camping areas.  If you plan a hiking trip, try to stay on the designated trails to avoid and protect animals such as snakes and birds. When trails are built and maintained properly they also decrease the impacts of erosion to the surrounding areas.  By avoiding off-trail areas, you’ll stay safe and be less impactful!  Also, set up your tent in the designated camping site.  This will protect native plant life.  It is also important to keep children and pets to these designated areas as well.

Avoid cooking stoves and grills, and cook with a campfire.  When cooking, the most ecological way to do so is to use a campfire.  However, be careful and heed warnings, and you should never attempt to light a campfire if the fire warnings are high.  When you’re finished using the campfire, extinguish it using safe measures.

Most importantly, enjoy the great outdoors and leave little trace that you were there at all!

According to the UN-World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourism is one of the largest industries in the world, increasing exponentially over the past twenty years.  While many of us see it as a vacation, it is also a benefit to the economy of the community in which we are visiting.  Tourism has helped to promote economic growth, the opportunity to diversify those economies, and promote entrepreneurs, many of these business owners are women.  Tourism also helps to promote a connection with other countries and can improve local government.  An important factor to remember is that many of these countries have some of the most environmentally diverse places in the world and should remain so.

The UNWTO defines Sustainable Tourism as “an enterprise that achieves an effective balance among the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism development in order to guarantee long-term benefits to recipient communities.”  In layman’s terms, it is essentially promoting socially responsible and respectful tourists while boosting the economy of the host community.  It is also not about the destination, per se, but factors in how travelers get to their destination, how they interact physically and culturally with their destination environment, and how the local community is affected by the travelers visit.

The Global Sustainable Tourism Alliance (GSTA) is an agreement which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the purpose of the agreement is to “advance the state-of-the-practice in sustainable tourism development and allied fields; and to assist USAID Missions and other operating units to design and implement innovative, integrated, and market-based tourism approaches that will foster sustainable futures for individuals, local communities, and societies in USAID-presence countries.”  Some of the GSTA projects have included upgrading local processes, improving products, increasing bargaining power by improving cooperation, conserving biodiversity, and promoting sustainable tourism development standards.

The United Nations Foundation is also increasing sustainable tourism awareness.  They have created the World Heritage Alliance for Sustainable Tourism along with Expedia, Inc. and UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre, and their hope is to change the travel industry.  They’ve partnered with 32 organizations to develop standards for sustainable tourism businesses.  They hope their standard can help to minimize rapid development which can ruin natural areas.  Certifying tourism businesses will help to ensure that those businesses comply with certain standards which will help to protect local wildlife and indigenous communities.

So how can we be socially responsible tourists?  If you visit a location where water is scarce, try to conserve your use.  Conduct your own research before you book your hotel and find out if the hotel is a socially conscious establishment; ask if they participate in environmental practices like energy-saving measures or waste disposal systems.  They may even have eco-credentials like the Green Globe certification.  Overall, an attempt to book your travel using airlines, hotels, and car rental companies which are socially conscious will have a positive impact.

 Many of us have become accustomed to using paper napkins.  We enjoy the idea that we do not have to clean as much when something we use is disposable.  In recent years though, we have also become aware of the climate crisis at hand.  Paper napkins are an easy fix many of us, but are the source of a much larger problem at hand: garbage needlessly sent to landfills. While paper napkins are easier to use, a far less wasteful practice is using napkins made of cloth.

Using paper napkins, seems easier than cloth napkins.  Of course you can throw it out after one use, and it doesn’t get stained the way cloth napkins do.  It is disposable right after you use it taking a person less time to clean.  However, they are far more costly to the environment because of the waste they create in garbage entering a landfill.

While cloth napkins cost more up front, they are cheaper to use than paper napkins in the long run.  One can easily wash a cloth napkin by slipping it into a normal load of laundry.  Additionally, the act of reusing cloth napkins saves an individual countless dollars in the long run while ultimately saving needless garbage from entering a landfill.  Cloth napkins look nicer on a dinner table, too.

While paper napkins allow for easy clean up, it is also important to understand that they add significant garbage to landfills that doesn’t need to be there.  Switching to cloth napkins will save the consumer a lot of money in the long run and helps the consumer do his or her part to help the environment.

One of the first things that might come to mind when you think about going green at the grocery store is reusable grocery bags.  These are great and certainly reduce the amount of plastic bags that can end up in our landfills.  However, there are also many other green options in your grocery store.  Using just a few of these ideas will help and the best part is that they are easy.

Make a list.  Lists are great guides to keep us on track and prevent us from buying things we may not need.  They aren’t the “be all, end all” of course (who doesn’t give in to temptations in the candy aisle?), but a thought out list can help you avoid those unnecessary purchases to reduce additional waste while also keeping our receipt totals to a minimum.

Buy room temperature items.  Foods that do not need to be stored in the refrigerator or freezer are an eco-friendly option because they do not require energy to store them until they are ready for your use. Also, when shopping in the freezer section, limit the time you stand with the door open. This will reduce the cooling needed to keep products frozen.

Buy produce from your local farmer’s market.  These foods come from your local farms and neighbors and do not travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to get to you.  They are at their peak freshness and usually cost much less.  The freshness cannot compare and you are supporting your local farms – always a good idea!

Buy organic.  Now this is a big one because in today’s economy we are all trying to watch our budgets and organic foods can cost more.  If you’re not buying organic products from your local farmer’s market, try to buy the items you can afford.  The Daily Green offers a list of 12 foods that you should be eating organic and includes meat, milk, and vegetables including celery, strawberries, bell peppers and potatoes.  These are among the dirtiest foods in regard to pesticides.  A related article can be found on foods that you don’t have to buy organic.

Buy eco-friendly cleaning products or use homemade cleaning concentrations made from vinegar and baking soda among other items you probably already have at home.

Avoid using the plastic produce bags, or reuse old ones.  You’re going to wash your produce really well when you get home anyway, why not skip the bag altogether?  Also, if you are only buying a few things that you can carry without a bag, skip taking a grocery bag, too.

Next time you are at your grocery keep these simple ideas in mind to create better and green habits.  Together these can make the difference in your and the environment’s health.