the greener side

Media get greener

Was that signature chartreuse hue emanating from the eerie walls of Prada stores a Gilded 90's warning of the haute greenness set to overwhelm popular culture? Mass marketing and media outlets are glowing green, striving for a rosy ecological outlook. Even Superbowl ads were "super green" this year. Is this cooling trend sustainable, or another bubble set to culture-pop?

Working behind the scenes in Hollywood, the Environmental Media Association gets star power to spotlight ecological issues. You'll soon see green beaming from checkout lines when Vanity Fair focuses on sustainability (and shoots green bloggers) for Earth Day, and a recycled-paper Elle features ecologically correct products when its May issue hits the stands in April. 

As for the paperless world, if you associate Steve Case only with the lame, CD-wasting AOL.com, you might rub your eyes at  his Revolution venture, which declares, "Change will come, and we aim to accelerate it." Revolution is behind the Lime network, a window to a green world on the web, TV, and radio.  The website features terrific wordsmiths like Amanda Griscom Little. Sirius satellite plays Lime content on radio channel 114, such as Danny Seo's "Simply Green," Josh Dorfman's "Lazy Environmentalist", and a plethora of self-helpy shows involving psychic/angel/miracle elements.

Efforts to make the idiot box less moronic include Lime content via the Dish network, such as the "Orgasmic Organic" cooking show and documentaries including "The Next Industrial Revolution." Then there's the monthly "Sierra Club Chronicles" on progressive satellite Link TV. Dish TV features Current TV, Al Gore's hard-to-locate DIY network offering some green content, as Sustainablog explains. "Building Green," a "This Old House" for the global warming century, is coming to PBS this summer. Canadians are getting the Code Green reality show this spring, following 12 homeowners racing to spend $15,000 each to reduce their use of energy and natural resources. Mr. "Super Size Me" Morgan Spurlock tried living off the grid on FX's "30 Days," which is gearing up for its second season. Alas, as Exuberant Pantaphobia points out, a producer behind many ecological shows on the Discovery Channel is leaving, and as far as I can tell, the BBC green makeover show "No Waste Like Home," loved by City Hippy, doesn't have another season.

Update, 3/6: As for truly grassroots media, don't forget the Internet. Treehugger TV just debuted on Google Video and Youtube. You can use these and other sites to seek and find oodles of eco-related shorts, shows, and home movies. Google Video has way more content with the keywords such as "environment" or "recycling" than "offroading" or "nuclear," but guess where the action is?

On the big screen, Sundance featured "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and Al Gore's global warming opus, "An Inconvenient Truth." Check out more than two dozen movies, most traditional nature documentaries, at the DC Environmental Film Festival next month. Santa Monica hosts the Inspiration Film Festival in Santa Monica in April.  What new green media things am I missing?

Anti-shopaholics get global attention

We're not the only ones jawing about the Compacters, San Franciscans who have made a vow of shopping via resale or not at all. The concept is getting a response around the world that some of the group's charter members find "insane." Some  responses are positive, others constructive criticism, but then there's the vitriol. What's the big deal about a few people opting not to buy shiny new things? The SF Chronicle followed up last week:

More than 350 people have joined the Compact, and chapters are appearing in virtually every U.S. city, as well as London, Sydney, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Toronto, Edmonton, New Zealand, Spain, Romania and other international locales.
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But, like all instant celebrities, the Compact has been subjected to ridicule and criticism as well. There is even an anti-Compact group that has sprung up on an Internet news and discussion site.

The original Compacters aren't sure what to make of the backlash. They were never out to convert anyone, start a political movement or inflict dogma on anyone else. The intention was merely to "reduce the impact of consumer culture in our lives" in a light-hearted and social manner.

New: greener quizzes

I love quizzes, so to be merciful for when you're sick of reading, I just added links to a bunch of little  "greener quizzes" to the left side of this page. Go ahead, look to the left to look up your ecological footprint, your cell phone's radiation, your eco-efficiency, how much pollution your next plane trip will cause, and much more.

Zaadz' seeds of green social networking

It's embarrassing that I joined Friendster years ago in a morbid bout of "where-are-they-now" curiosity, yet I was too square for the now-unkinky Tribe and I proudly raise my cane about skipping MySpace and Facebook. (Ha! it's also embarrassing that I misspelled "embarassing" for half the year in this post.) Ah, youngsters. Any term ending in "-ster" clogs my large intestine. Nevertheless, curious again, I'm outing myself for having signed up at Zaadz, a social networking site for cultural creatives, after a nice reader pointed it out. The profiles of 1,453 active "Zaadsters" each list two astrological signs--hence many stargazers/yogis/techies /Reiki-people/Burning Man devotees with interests that include green building, evolution, and felting. One guy describes himself as "a love light Padawan;" one woman calls herself a "psychoactive bodhisattva." Get it?

Will Zaddz' mission to fuse capitalism with world-changing attract swarms of green people? Zaadz is marked by an absence of cynicism, so even its form buttons are polite (right), but users such as this one gripe about censorship. To join, you must agree to either respect the "sacred space" or leave it. Hm. The site's only in private beta (testing) mode, so expect quirks. Tagging and other web 2.0 plans are in the works, as are hopes for Zaadz-branded spas and books. For now, you can peek at people and search a bank of quotes by some of "the world's greatest thinkers (59 of the 60 most-quoted are male)."

Life by chocolate: organic cocoa comparison chart

So I promised that we’d rate and test so much organic, fair trade chocolate in time for Valentine’s Day. That was a half-truth, because midnight is upon us and most V-Day victims are in bed. The tasting crew included Miguel, Fausto, Romina, and Sarah. I really did eat all of these, but ran out of time and only elaborated on two brands. Here’s the obsessive comparison chart (click to enlarge):

Belated Adult Expo report, in time for Valentine's

Did I forget to mention that alongside other nerds in Las Vegas last month for the Consumer Electronics Show, I headed across the Sands Convention Center hall for the Adult Entertainment Expo 2006? Both events share the same space, an annual source of amusement. The Sands center becomes a hub of business suits, skintight bodysuits, and bejeweled birthday suits.

The week's after-hour parties were a nightmare-inducing mix. Combine Microsoft flacks in spaghetti straps, steroidal SoCal pornsters, and wannabe Ludacris groupies. Add the backdrop of a high-up hotel suite, TV screens embedded in mirrored walls, marble hot tubs, bubbles, and a bar nearly as long as the private bowling lane.

Ya think the sex and tech industries care about clean technology? Finding some green products was my mission as I parted the curtain and entered the Adult Expo. Was there anything for your Valentine? Keep reading...

Somehow, amidst the boobs of both mannequins and real people who consider themselves dolls, I spotted the booth for Naked Scents lubes and oils right off the bat. Unlike lubricants that use stuff found in antifreeze, these are natural enough to whip up in your kitchen. The essential scents--like cinnamon vanilla--make you hungry and the texture of the lubricants is light, while the pleasure butters are rich enough to butter bread.

Company multitasker Carrie Wheeler said the plant ingredients nourish your skin and repel germs. She showed how the fragrances take on your unique signature, smelling different on her wrist than on mine. Then she handed me articles about the health benefits of healthy sex. The company, one of the first of its kind, is revamping its packaging to attract hipper customers.

Around the corner, Cheryl Flagel showed off Kama Sutra oils, which offer few eco-friendly selling points (and which I spied at said after hours party). But their corn-starch-based honey dust, which comes with a feather duster and pouch, is the bee’s knees. It's also free of talcum powder, which is linked to cervical and ovarian cancers.

Prolube was introducing its silicon lube, the medical kind (not industrial) used to grease up hospital needles and aid in artificial insemination. Flavorless, odorless, hypoallergenic, it maintains its consistency without getting tacky or, like water-based types, requiring more H2O to revive it. Siliconepro is ok for latex and other condoms, but not with silicone accessories. It supposedly helps avoid irritating skin, throwing pH out of whack, or cultivating infections. Here are some rival brands. The company already has Walgreen’s distribution.

At the Tantus booth, sex-positive pioneer Diana Cage (left), author of Box Lunch and former On Our Backs editor, showed off a dizzying array of high-end, silicone dildos. After a while, they all start to look like bookends you might find in Jeff Koons’ house. Unlike Koons’ “Michael Jackson with Bubbles,” Tantus’s works are oilable, dishwasher safe, and bleachable (but I say keep that Clorox away no matter how well it disinfects).

Said Cage of the less discriminating sex toys standing at attention throughout the convention: "You’re putting this in your mucous membrane. It goes int o the bloodstream…People don’t understand that sex toys aren’t safe…why wouldn’t you think about what we put in our bodies?"

oops--gotta run--will cap this off in a bit...

technorati tags: sustainable sex green

Eco-casualties and cashmere

As Miguel points out about the Compacters’ pledge to buy nothing new, it’s a luxury to have the choice to reject the latest worldly goods, and buying used stuff is no sign of nobility or hipper-than-thouness. The Compacters might sound like a joke if you rely on a flea market for kitchenware or Goodwill for furniture, especially beyond college (if you’ve made it there). Not to belittle their pledge or anything, since it does appeal to me.

Still, this brings back some old school memories…what scholarship kid wants to listen to a classmate with a $10,000 seasonal shopping budget gush about “stealing” a Calvin Klein coat for $80? For that matter, who wants to hear me chitchat about half-off cashmere?

People in the developing world want shiny, new things like anybody else, but the planet can only take so much waste. The digital divide can be summed up in ones and zeros: score a point for the haves, scratch for the have-nots. Same goes for the lusty spread between the resource-rich and the polluted poor. Our landscapes pit brownfields against a greener side. There's much work to be done, most of it unsanitary and untrendy, to clean up the material and emotional consequences of abusing land and people.

Over the next seven weeks, check out Grist’s series of stories on poverty and the environment. Don’t miss a walking tour through a Mississippi town where backyards bump up against rotten land toxified by an Agent Orange factory explosion.

Would you join the Compact?

Maybe you've heard of Buy Nothing Day, the culture-jamming antidote to day-after-Thanksgiving shopping madness. What if you turned that into Buy Nothing New Year? A bunch of San Franciscans are doing just that, by pledging to join the Compact. No, it's not athrowback to a Bay area cult or commune of the last century. It's just a group of about 50 folks (with a blog) who vow to get off the consumer grid by not spending money on anything new unless it's for food, health, or safety. As the SF Chronicle explains:

Compacters can get as much as they want from thrift shops, Craigslist, freecycle.org, eBay and flea markets, as long as the items are secondhand. And when they're in doubt, they turn to their fellow Compacters for guidance...American consumerism, they say, has led to global environmental and socioeconomic crises, and the only way to reverse it is to stop buying into it.

What do you think? I already buy most things used or on sale, though I splurged on half-price cashmere last week. Should I go for it? Gulp. What's stopping you?

What color are your gadgets?

They're probably not green, are they? But studies show that shoppers want greener tech. When are greener electronics headed to your local Best Buy--or is eco-friendly tech already lurking on store shelves without announcing itself? Get a new cell phone every year? Unless you recycle the old one through a service like Recellular, it probably just creates more toxic e-waste, which makes up as much as five percent of the world's trash.  The Sustainable Industries Journal does a great job explaining how plastics made from corn, and Europe's strict laws, are forcing electronics to get cleaner.

RSI is a form of e-waste

When it comes to sustainable technology, we normally think of how human inventions and habits affect our health and the well-being of our ecosystems. These concerns usually deal with broad issues such as chemical pollution and climate change.  However, sometimes we overlook the everyday wear and tear that technology inflicts upon our bodies. Until I can roll up a computer and put it in my pocket, it's an instrument of torture. Electronics pile up in landfills, sure, but they also litter the land with RSI sufferers.

Computer work is manual labor, no matter how cushy a desk job is next to picking fruit. Making technology more sustainable must also mean redesigning computers that don't debilitate our digits through repetitive stress injuries. Why do we still use QWERTY keyboards? How lame that the tech industry isn't paying enough attention to designing products for people with special needs. Even Stevie Wonder used his free concert at the Consumer Electronics Show to beg the well-heeled, hopping audience to keep blind people in mind.

Just as CES was short on green technology, the "premier launchpad for emerging technologies," Demo 2006, seems to have offered paltry few products for people with disabilities.  Tech vendors had better hurry up, because our population is aging, and there's lots of money to be made catering to baby boomers around the world. Notice how I omit altruism here. That doesn't seem to motivate enough, or my grandmother would be able to dial a phone or maybe even get online by now.   

Many ordinary maniacs push too hard at a keyboard. Over time, mouseclick by mouseclick they disable themselves at an early age. For the first time, I'm using speech to text software so that in the future I'll still be driving a car, brushing my teeth, holding a purse, and scratching the cat's chin. Digital dictation is an awkward process, as it's hard for me to think out loud.  I usually type while abusing the backspace key, and write on paper with an embarrassed pen that changes its mind and blacks out half the words on the page. Here, I have to utter "backspace" outloud to erase a dudly thought.

You might start to notice more errors in these posts.  I don't have an editor, and dictation software is still pretty quirky here's an example: will know what I'm saying microphone off don't spell microphone off just turn it off.

See, still need the keyboard and the pesky, self-censoring backspace key.

Neurotic attachment to tech and to over-achievement is unsustainable, personally and globally. Slowing down the workpace goes hand in hand with shrinking our commutes, slowing down our meals, and rethinking what progress, success, and conservation really mean. We have the right to long vacations unpoisoned by e-mail.  Spaniards should boycott all work until they get back the siesta, now abolished by law. Bring back napping! Individuals should learn to slow down, but  we also need to demand and make products that don't hurt us.