The “Green-Clean Challenge” Begins

According to the Washington Toxics Coalition, the most dangerous chemicals in the world are right under our sinks. They include corrosive drain cleaners, oven cleaners, and acidic toilet-bowl cleaners. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in oven, carpet, and other cleaners containing Toluene, Nitrobenzene, Chloride, Methylene, and Ethylene glycol have been shown to cause asthma, cancer, skin rashes, permanent eye damage, and serious long-term organ damage. I decided it was time for a change.

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Growing Citizens and Leaders through Organic Gardening

In addition to finding out that worms are pretty amazing creatures, the kids in the Children’s Vegetable Garden program learn about organic farming and get some firsthand experience with the benefits of hard work. We talked with program director, Hector J. Hernández, Youth Gardens Coordinator for the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Bexar County, to find out more.

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Organic Farming Yields the Finest Wines

Walk through the garden gate at C. Donatiello Winery, and aromas of raspberries, peaches, and fragrant flowers waft to your nose. Take your time. Stroll along, sipping from a glass of Maddie’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, made with organic grapes grown nearby. Savor the experience. You’ll soon understand why owner Chris Donatiello treats the land and the grapes in his vineyards with the care of a loving parent.

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Don’t Give More, Give Better

During the nineteenth century, merchants began encouraging a greater focus on holiday gift-giving because, of course, it fostered gift buying. Two centuries later, we are confronted with holidays overwhelmed by consumerism. According to Grist magazine, “Nearly a quarter of all retail goods move out of stores and into homes between Thanksgiving and Christmas (and, we suspect, often into landfills by January).” All the stress and anxiety of shopping, combined with other struggles that holidays often bring, leave many of us secretly wishing it were January already.

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Karen Nichols, Contributing Writer

Originally from Mississippi, I’ve called Iowa City home since 1991. I became interested in environmentalism after getting more involved in hiking and backpacking during my 20s and 30s. As a parent, I want to create a home environment where my son is encouraged to appreciate and care for the earth and to draw strength and inspiration from nature.

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Rewards for Recycling

I know your kind. You recycle. You care about the planet. You might even be a tree hugger. You don’t want to dump things in the landfill if there’s a way to extend their lives for another go. But not everyone can be bothered. If the environmental mess we’re in isn’t enough to motivate them, what will? That’s one of the questions Ron Gonen had to figure out while developing the business model for his innovative, young company, RecycleBank.

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We’re Dreaming of a Green Holiday

Between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, Americans take an additional 25% of waste to the curb. That amounts to over 25 million tons of trash for the holiday season.
If every family reused just 2 ft. of ribbon from holidays past, that would save 38,000 miles of ribbon — enough to literally tie a big bow around the entire planet. 2.7 million holiday cards are sent across the country too — that’s enough to fill an entire football field 10 stories high!

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Ecopreneur Makes Paper in Paradise

“Waste is a resource. But when people think of waste, they usually think of it as trash, rather asking, What can we do with it?

“Everything we use at Costa Rica Natural paper products is totally disregarded material,” says Harry Johansing, the company’s founder. “There’s no other use for it. When I approach a new fiber, I look at it as, Is this completely trash? and then I ask, How can I use it?

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Green Technology Improves Air Quality

You wouldn’t know it by the smell, but there are 2,000 hogs living about 10 feet away from where we’re standing, in rural Johnson County, Iowa. Swine production has a reputation for producing one of the most unpleasant odors in the farm business. But with installation of a biofiltration device manufactured by Odor Cell Technologies (OCT), many hog and poultry farmers are becoming better stewards of the environment — and better neighbors.

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Renewable Energy, a Tool for Social Equity

A dozen volunteers swarm the yard of the Villareal house on the east side of Austin, Texas. The atmosphere is jubilant, almost celebratory — a real coming together of people with a purpose. By the time the volunteers leave today, the home will have been retrofitted with energy-saving improvements that the family could not have afforded to make themselves.

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Green Carpenter “Turns Liabilities into Assets”

“If you’re building a LEED-certified house in Iowa, but you fly the bamboo flooring in from California or China, that’s not green,” says carpenter Roger Gwinnup. “On the other hand” he points out, “you can pull up the oak flooring in an old house that’s being torn down, then drive across town and nail it in place in another house. That’s greener.

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Keeping Recyclers in the “Green”

With the economic downturn, the markets for recyclable materials is shrinking. But there’s still hope for this green industry. “Keep bringing us your clean recyclable materials. And follow the guidelines for sorting. The economy will recover, and if we can keep our expenses in line, we’ll still be here once the market improves,” says Brian Holtz, vice president of sales and marketing at City Carton in Iowa City.

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Love is Green

To us, and to other environmentally minded people, saving rain forests and sea turtles and song birds and whales and all of nature is important — essential, in fact. But we must not lose sight of the urgency of caring for our fellow humans.

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Doreen Hock, DVM, Contributing Writer

Doreen Hock, DVM received her Veterinary degree from Oregon State University in 1987. After working as Chief of Staff at the Emergency Veterinary Hospital in Eugene, Oregon she discovered the effectiveness of acupuncture in dogs when her own dog was cured of a back problem by acupuncture alone.

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Green Living Pet Care: A Holistic Look at Vaccinations

If your veterinarian follows drug company recommendations, you probably have your pets vaccinated every year to prevent disease. But, in my opinion, that’s not beneficial to the health of most companion animals. For most pets, the greater danger lies in over vaccination.

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Emmalyn Kayser, Contributing Writer

Emmalyn Kayser reads books. Sometimes the books she reads change her life. Something in her clicks, and she decides her life mission is to let others know how important our environment is, and why we should live in harmony with it.

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Sustainable Living Profile: Jessica Klein

When Jessica Klein gets hungry for organic produce, she doesn’t have very far to go. “I have my own little sustainable garden,” she says. That’s a bit of an understatement, as Klein raises a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs on a bit less than acre of land. She and her husband, Brett, live on the southern exposure of Tiger Mountain, near Issaquah, Washington.

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Brooklyn, California, Age 4

Brooklyn, California, age 4: “Please don’t cut down trees because we need oxygen to breathe.”

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Salvage Goes Glam in Vintage Stores

Walking into Atomic Garage is like traveling back in time. You won’t find any CDs here, just shelf after shelf of LP records. Want an authentic Motley Crue tour shirt? Or is KISS more your style? The friendly sales staff will be happy to dress you up in a glamorous ’70s pantsuit, if you like, or make you sweat in some double knit polyester. Complete your outfit with over-the-top costume jewelry that will get you attention in any crowd. Step out of your comfort zone and into a time machine of treasures.

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A New Alchemy: Turning Heat into Power

Look at the sky over any city or town on a winter day. See those columns of steam or smoke rising from the chimneys? What you’re looking at is wasted energy. Amazingly, at least 56% of the energy produced in the U.S. is wasted. It escapes as heat, radiating out of boilers, leaking through the roofs of power plants, and billowing out of smoke stacks and steam pipes. But that will change, if Loy Sneary has anything to say about it.

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