Category: Direct Action

Be an Environmentalist Everyday

It’s easy to show that you care about the environment (and by extension the health of those around you).

The Nature Conservancy has compiled a collection of ways that you can be an environmentalist daily.

Remember when “environmentalist” meant…recycling?

It’s not so simple anymore. Being an environmentalist today calls for a whole new level of greener thinking — from what you choose at the grocery store to how you commute to work every day.

The list includes riding a bike, taking the stairs, compost, and keeping bees in line.

Dreaming in Green

The Guardan has a well written article that looks at the emergence of academic green thinking in the UK. The article looks at the advancements being made, but does so in a way that ensures we keep our feet on the ground.

Fortunately, he points out, students are starting to take action for themselves, with campaigns including student organisation People and Planet’s Green League Table last summer, which gave universities degrees according to their environmental awareness. The results were surprising. Oxford and LSE both got 2.1s, while York and Glasgow scraped 2.2s: the top three were Leeds Metropolitan, Plymouth and Hertfordshire. “That really shook a few vice-chancellors,” says Patton, smiling. “I imagine that resolutions were made not to come that far down again.”

But the biggest problem is that, in the end, this is not just an issue for universities. This is going to be a problem for all of us. Paul Allen, development director at the Centre for Alternative Technology, is very anxious about the blindness of the academics. “Do they realise that we need to have a huge reskilling for Britain, that in the years ahead we are going to have to learn how to do things very differently? Are they planning courses that are going to re-educate our young people? No. They’re teaching young people in buildings where the lights are on all the time, in buildings where the energy is badly managed, where no one has even thought about approaching green electricity providers.”

5 “Unusual” Reasons to be Vegetarian

A blogger has outlined the top reasons that he’s vegetarian. Like me, he loved to BBQ when he ate meat, but now the thought isn’t so appetizing. His reasons for being vegetarian are nearly identical to mine, so hopefully he can convince you to at the very least eat less meat.

Here’s a sample from his list:

I am boycotting the least efficient food product to create. Pound per usable pound, meat costs us 30 to 100 times more water than it’s nutritional equivalent in plant foods, not to mention the plants that are also fed to the animals (food consumption of animals is a heated topic because some farmers use recycled waste material with their feed to reduce their figures, so I’m not even going to try to add some figures here). Why isn’t meat more expensive if it costs so much to make? Read on to find out.

Take the Stairs and Save Energy

Caludio sent me an email with a simple message:

Hi guys,
January Green Thing

Take the stairs instead of the elevator, even if it looks like
climbing the Himalaya

Thanks Claudio!

Claudio just told me that “Dothegreenthing.com has been shortlisted for the 6th annual Yahoo! “Finds of the Year Awards” so we need people to vote, vote, vote for us as the People’s Choice here”

Turn a Lack of Resources Into a Strength

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Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek has some advice for people who are questioning a jump into something new because they question if they have the resources to do it. Granted, he’s talking about starting a business, but I think that his advice can be applied to everyday living as well. He argues that by concentrating on what you have, you can do better – basically think positive to turn a lack of resources into a strength.

Excuses not to jump into the unknown are a dime a dozen. In the case of entrepreneurship, the “I don’t have” list — I don’t have funding, I don’t connections, etc. — is a popular write-off for inaction.

Little do most people know how often lack of resources is the ingredient that creates great companies.

It forces you to be clever, to dissect problems instead of throwing cash at them, and to innovate instead of imitating better-funded competitors.