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Archive for May, 2009

You Can Learn a Lot From a 4th Grader About Sustainability and Water Conservation

Caed sailingOne of the cool things about running the Water – Use It Wisely conservation campaign are all of the great notes and videos we receive from concerned Earthlings.  In fact, just last week someone sent us a video about the water conservation merits of taking a bath with a friend (A bit creepy to show here).

Today, we received this incredibly thoughtful letter from a fourth grader in Chesterfield, MI, and I just had to share it with you.

Dear Water Use It Wisely,

Water is getting wasted more and more each day. I want to help out and teach people how to conserve water. Please continue reading because your organization is very influential. I had an idea if you could send some workers from your organization to schools all around the world, and they could inform the students about water usage.

Did you know that every minute, 1,000,000,000 (0ne billion) tons of water falls to the earth from rainfall? We are lucky for rainfall water. It helps fill up our lakes. There is about 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 (326 quintillion) gallons of water on Earth. Yes, this is tons, but it is getting wasted. I want to keep this number BIG.

Everyone needs water – so why waste it? I think it is very irresponsible to let the water run when you are not home. The core democratic value, Common Good, supports my issue. This means that we can all work together as a community, country or even continent!

Water conservation is very important. We can use water with respect by making good choices. Take a shower instead of a bath, use an automatic dishwasher instead of hand washing. You can buy Earth-friendly window cleaner spray, so that the bacteria doesn’t get in our drinking water and make it dirty. If your washer isn’t full then don’t start it. With water being wasted every day, by the time we get to the 3000′s we are going to have to survive on milk and juice!!! Won’t that be boring?!?!? That means we have to give our dogs a bowl of juice instead of water with their food. I mean, c’mon, we’re talking real life here!!

Water wasting needs to come to a stop and without delay. Water Use It Wisely, PLEASE inform people about their water usage! It is a big role in my life. It would be really awesome if you take part in spreading the news about this! Thanks tons!!

An impatient fourth grader waiting for a reply,

Mya

We should all be so passionate and eloquent about our good green Earth.

The Globe Is Heating Up While The Economy Has Cooled Down. So Why Not Smile And Be Happy?

colin2

Ok, so your 401k has taken a plunge like a polar bear on a shrinking ice sheet. Unemployment is skyrocketing while the sky is falling under our own gigantic carbon footprint. We’re all dog paddling in this environmental and economic sewer we’ve created.

I earnestly believe this economic meltdown is the best thing that could have happened to our planet and ourselves.

Sure, it’s scary as hell. And I feel badly for those who have been significantly impacted through loss of retirement savings, jobs, and self-esteem. But it’s a major wake up call.  We need to spend more time with each other and less time making fortunes. The economy is forcing us to consume less, while compelling us to be more industrious to live with what we have.

Organic gardening is booming. Automakers are finally being browbeaten into building cleaner-burning cars. Factories are spewing out less consumer crap and the pollution it creates. Neighbors are getting reacquainted in their neighborhoods. In a New York Times article on Sunday, “Nice” is  back in vogue. Have you been to a networking event lately? People are actually open to networking now.

What Happy People Know

what-happy-people-knowDan Baker, Ph.D. wrote “What Happy People Know: How the Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life for the Better.” The book explores our biologically hardwired brains that bombard us daily with survival instincts based on fear. The trick is to consciously deflect these fight or flight impulses we inherited from our cave cousins with rational optimism from our neocortex, or higher brain. It’s this higher level brain that separates us from all other mammals, and this is where we find our happiness.

“In the ultimate analysis, human beings have only two essential, primal feelings: fear and love. Fear impels us to survive, and love enables us to thrive. This complementary pair of feelings has been the driving force of human history.

Fear is the product of the reptilian brain, hardwired into every fiber of our being, and love is the product of the neocortical higher brain, where spirit and intellect reside. Thus, the dance of the spirit and reptile – the shifting balance between the neocortex and the reptilian brain – is the dance of love and fear.”

The book outlines the five “Happiness Traps”

  1. Trying to buy happiness
  2. Trying to find happiness through pleasure
  3. Trying to be happy by resolving the past
  4. Trying to be happy by overcoming weaknesses
  5. Trying to force happiness

The trick to being happy is to have and make empowered choices. If you’re sitting around thinking that you’ve been victimized by carbon-belching industries and greedy Wall Street nitwits, that you’re entitled to a better life and that someone is going to rescue you, or that everyone else is to blame, then you are surrendering your unique power and gifts to control your own life. You are surviving, not thriving.

It’s not all doom and gloom out there. It’s how you choose to deal with it. Are you a caveman or woman fleeing for survival? Or are you empowering yourself to make a difference in your life, which ultimately impacts the lives around you? Always has.

I found this book to be hugely inspirational, because it helped me better understand the biological inner-workings of my noggin that I can now better control. I can choose to substitute fight or flight with folly and freedom.

I hope you choose to read it, and when you do, please let me know how it impacted your life and happiness.

You Can Build A Tribe For Your Green Cause: Seth Godin At TED Conference

Are you ready to be disruptive and commit to creating a sustainable cause? Seth Godin’s recent talk at the TED Conference is sure to motivate you to do just that. It’s the best 17 minutes you’ll spend today (or over the long weekend) to help focus your green efforts.

Here’s what all tribal leaders have in common:

  1. They challenge the status quo
  2. They build a culture, “A 7-second handshake”
  3. They connect people
  4. Leaders have charisma, but you don’t have to have charisma to become a leader
  5. They commit to the cause, the people, the tribe

This Beer Coaster Deserves a Toast For Its Green Marketing Folly

fat-tire-smI love to be surprised by clever green advertising in surprising places. That’s why I’m raising a frosty golden mug to New Belgium Brewing.

They created this wonderful beer coaster/postcard that just happened to be under the beer I was sipping with my new son-in-law KC, at Newport Pizza in Ocean Beach, California.

(BTW, if you need a great, hardworking and HONEST plumber in the San Diego area, call KC Montgomery, Monty’s Plumbing, 619-823-5662… OB’s's only green plumber).

I had no idea the brewers of Fat Tire beer were so steeped in sustainability. The coaster got me to their website, which informed me about all of their green ventures, right down to being completely wind powered.

What I liked the most though was the time and care they spent creating the coaster. Most marketers would look right past what appears to be a pretty basic bar item. Not New Belgium. They exploited it as a wonderful table-top billboard that spoke as much about the company’s brand personality and mission, as it does to raise awareness for wind power and other renewable energies.

The terrific copy on the back describes their “Follyosophy”:

Follow your folly? But isn’t a folly a lack of good sense; a foolish act or idea? Au contraire we say at New Belgium. Folly is freeing. A folly laughs at the status quo, protests mediocrity, sings in the blind alley and celebrates the wild hare. It’s relevant irreverence. It’s living like there is a tomorrow.

Our Folly is Beer. Really good beer. Our folly is also a near-constant tinkering with our company practices to make them more sustainble. Employee-owned since 1996. Wind powered since 1998. Striving to honor nature at every turn of the brewery. Tastes great, Less Landfilling.

FollowYourFolly.com

fat-tireDefinitely check out their website above. It’s a beautiful extension of their green campaign and branding.

New Belgium Brewing represents the kinds of clients we like to work with, and the kind of company consumers should applaud.

Three cheers to you Fat Tire folks.

Some added value in this post:

New Belgium’s Tour de Fat Schedule for 2009″

19 Steps To Launching Your Green Blog That Just Might Help You Save The World

19-stepsBE HEARD!

If you were meant to be a wallflower in life, then your God wouldn’t have blessed you with a brain, voice and ten wonderful little digits to share your thoughts with the world. He/she has even bestowed on all of us a FREE global voice called the internet.

So, are you ready to build a sustainable tribe around your environmental cause? Is it time to start sharing your wonderful green insights to help people make a difference? Ready to unleash that enviro-writer inside of you? Here’s how to get your life changing, and perhaps world changing, eco-friendly blog up and running.

  1. Download and install the latest version of WordPress: My blog is built with the WordPress blogging software. It’s widely used, well supported, and free. Version 2.7 is the latest as of writing this document.
  2. Design and code custom theme: Designing a custom theme is critical for your online brand. Include a screenshot for theme selection page in the admin. Here are six design tips when creating your theme.
  3. Install Google Analytics plugin: Set up a Google Analytics account (if you don’t already have one) to configure the plug-in. The Google Analytics plugin will track visits and traffic on all your posts.
  4. Install Feedburner plugin: Set up Feedburner account and configure (if one does not yet exist). Feedburner will track your feed readership.
  5. Install and configure the Akismet plugin: The Akismet is essential to filtering comment spam. You will need your WordPress API key to configure.
  6. Install and configure the SEO plug-in: This takes care of your meta keywords and descriptions, increasing your visibility to search engines.
  7. Set up a social media implementation: There are several very good social media plugins for wordpress to help you link your blog to your social media networks. We recommend making connections with Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and Linked In.
  8. Set up necessary user accounts and roles: Decide who is going to be blogging and editing the post, and set up appropriate roles for each. We recommend writers who are not as experienced go through an editorial process before they post.
  9. Enter appropriate tagline: Choose an appropriate, descriptive tagline to let visitors and search engines know what your blog is about.
  10. Set up correct time zone: It’s important to have the correct time zone set, especially for scheduling blog posts.
  11. Create appropriate categories: Not only do categories act as a navigation tool for the blog, they also compose your URL. Picking appropriate categories and categorizing your post correctly is essential to search engine ranking and user experience.
  12. Set up and decide how to handle comments: Comments are a great way to increase traffic to your site, create conversation, and gain feedback. Our recommendation is to leave comments open for anyone, but there are options to turn them off or be approved.
  13. Configure white and black lists: Enter any domains or IP’s that you have experience with spamming you.
  14. Insure uploaded images are going to appropriate directory
  15. Insure blog is visible to search engines: Have this setting turned on.
  16. Configure permalink settings: Permalinks are vital to constructing accessible urls for your blog. Permalinks are customizable, but we recommend leading with the category title then post name.
  17. Create a content strategy: The information you write about will attract visitors to your site, so you want to focus your writing to capture the right audience. What do your customers want to read about? Narrowing your content down to specific topics will have greater impact than writing on broad ones. Including important keywords within your writing is also crucial to attract traffic from search engines. These keywords also help you pick appropriate topics to write about. Conducting an analysis from a search optimization professional is the best way to identify keywords.
  18. Create a blogging schedule: Ideally, you want to post something at least once a day. Have one in-depth post once per week, preferable with small posts in-between. This keeps your content fresh and visitors coming back. It helps if you have more than one person contributing content.
  19. Do it all the way, or not at all: Sustainable blogs take a lot of work to be successful. If you don’t maintain them, they can become ineffective quickly.  Done correctly, they can position you and/or your company as an expert in environmental causes and drive quality business leads.

What is the 20th step you might recommend to help a reader launch their blog?