Smells Like Green Spirit

One of my favorite things about walking around Chicago is the network of alleyways the city has weaving through the city, very fun to duck through, often laden with treasures like discarded bedside tables and old record players.

Mayor Daley is now going through with his Green Alley initiative, where alleys will now be outfitted with environmentally sustainable material. Water will be able to penetrate the permeable concrete or porous asphalt, get filtered in the underground stone beds, and rejoin the underground water table or Lake Michigan rather than becoming polluted runoff.

Created from recycled materials, the green alleys will reflect heat (rather than absorbing it) in the summer and stay warmer in the winter, and the alleys will even be outfitted with new lighting to conserve energy. Congrats to Mayor Daley for helping Chicago get greener and greener!

For more info:

New York Times Article

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I think one of my biggest complaints about eco-friendly clothing (no offense to anyone here) is that most of it looks too flowy and hippie to me. What about the chic eco-friendly clothing? What about the eco-friendly mods and punks? The eco-friendly yuppies? The green clothing industry has properly outfitted the hippies, now what about everyone else?

A boutique in Houston, called Green by Adeline, is a “high fashion” boutique in the Galleria area where everything is made from all-natural materials like bamboo, corn, soy, hemp, and wood pulp. The store features a bamboo floored runway for future fashion events, fluorescent and halogen lighting to cut down on energy consumption, and is located at 5136 Richmond Ave.

Endeavoring to be relatively affordable (prices range from $30 shirts to $700 gowns), Adeline makes sure her products follow through on their promise to be made from what they say they are.

If you’re in the Houston area, check out the long awaited high fashion green boutique!

Website: www.greenbyadeline.com

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In North America alone, around 30-35 million trees are sold for the holidays…luckily though, the jolly trees are a recyclable, renewable source of holiday joy as typically around 3 seedlings are planted for every Christmas tree cut down, and as around 93% of Christmas trees purchased are estimated to be recycled.

Recycled Christmas trees are used for a variety of purposes, including for chipping (for mulches and to line trails), for enrichment of fish habitats, for the reduction of beach line erosion, for the stabilization of the shorelines of lakes and rivers, and for the management of river delta sedimentation.

 Although perhaps the best idea for the holidays is a living Christmas tree that is planted in your yard, dug up for the holidays and then replanted, choosing a real Christmas tree over an artificial one means using a recyclable product versus a likely unrecyclable artificial tree, and supporting North American businesses. (Most Christmas trees are grown in Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington whereas most artificial trees are produced in China.)

For more info and pro live Christmas tree propaganda, visit the website of the National Christmas Tree Association.

And, here are a list of locations to drop off your Christmas tree in Chicago:

Bessemer Park: 8930 S. Muskegon Ave.

Devry Institute: 3401 N. Rockwell

Forestry Site: 900 E. 103rd St.

Garfied Park: 100 N. Central Park Ave.

Grant Park: 900 S. Columbus Dr.

Humboldt Park Boathouse: 1440 N. Sacramento Blvd.

Jackson Park: 6300 S. Cornell Dr.

Kennedy Park: 11320 S. Western Ave.

Kelvyn Park: 4438 S. Wrightwood Ave.

Lake Meadows Park: 3117 S. Rhodes Ave.

Lincoln Park: Cannon Dr. at Fullerton

Margate Park: 4921 N. Marine Dr.

Marquette Park: 6700 S. Kedzie Ave.

McKinley Park: 2210 W. Pershing Rd.

Mt. Greenwood Park: 3721 W. 111th St.

North Park Village: 5801 N. Pulaski Rd.

Norwood Park: 5801 N. Natoma

Portage Park: 4100 N. Long

Riis Park: 6100 W. Fullerton

Rowan Park: 11546 S. Avenue L

Sheridan Park: 910 S. Aberdeen St.

Warren Park: 6601 N. Western Ave.

Wentworth Park: 5625 S. Mobile Ave.

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So…we’ve all heard of green or live roofs (if not, here’s my post about them) but you have to go here and look at this company’s living walls!!!

Other Than Just Being Cool, What are the Benefits of a Living Wall?

The name of the company is ELT Easy Green Living Walls System, and they say their living walls conserve energy through insulation, filter the air, and look amazing..

They apparently require very little maintenance, and you can even grow vegetables like lettuce, beets, radishes, carrots and herbs on the walls of your home!

Oh…if only I didn’t live in a tiny Chicago apartment…sigh…

Here’s that link again: www.eltlivingwalls.com

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One of the most wasteful things about giving presents this time of year is all of the wrapping paper that gets thrown right into the garbage after the unwrapping.

Here are some alternatives you can use to cut down the unnecessary waste:

*Newspapers - My relatives this year are getting many of their presents wrapped in the newspaper my mother subscribes to! All except for the things that might get dirty from the newsprint like the white purse I’m giving my sister in law. (I hope she’s not reading this.) The comics are a fun thing especially for wrapping the kids’ presents in.

*Old drawings or posters - The presents I mailed to my dad and step mom I wrapped in old drawing paper I had lying around that I was never going to use, and once my friend Joe wrapped a present he gave me with a Beastmaster 2 poster, something I still enjoy to this day.

*A gift inside a gift - What about putting a gift inside a bag that your recipient can reuse as an alternative to plastic bags, something like a canvas totebag? ( PS If you need any inspiration to stop using plastic bags visit this No Plastic Bags Blog.) You could even wrap the gift in a t-shirt or a pillow case. (I can always use new pillowcases if anyone is wondering.)

*Hide a gift - This is especially fun for kids, but if someone did this for me in my adulthood, I’d be delighted. Instead of wrapping the gift, hide the gift so that your recipient will either stumble upon it of their own accord, or you can play the “Hot and Cold” game to help them find it. My mom used to hide our Christmas stockings when I was little, and I convinced her to keep doing it until I left home at age 17 because it was really fun!

There are an infinite number of other alternatives, use your creativity to reduce the wrapping paper waste that goes straight to our already overflowing landfills!

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In yesterday’s post, I mentioned some information I’d read many times, online and in magazines. (A two-headed gorilla told it to me in a dream also, but that doesn’t seem so important, really.)

A geneticist named Dr. Patricia Hunt had found that when washing the (polycarbonate) plastic cages of her mice with an extremely harsh detergent, the plastic leached BPA, which led to chromosomal aberrations in the mice (a jump from an incidence of 1-2% to 40%).

Some then took this information to mean that Nalgene bottles made from Lexan (which is a form of polycarbonate, or plastic #7) were also leaching BPA and were disrupting our endocrine systems, putting humans at risk for birth defects.

However, Nalgene and those who sell Nalgene products want us all to be very clear on this issue:

*Nalgene bottles made from Lexan are composed of FOOD GRADE polycarbonate, which leaches minimal (read: basically inconsequential) amounts of BPA into our bodies. The cages for the mice were not made of food grade polycarbonate. (Who wants to eat food out of a mouse cage, anyways?)

*Hunt’s scientific data and conclusions have yet to be reliably reproduced by her peers.

*Nalgene-outdoor.com claims that Sierra Magazine allegedly made the leap from reading Hunt’s study to publishing an article warning consumer’s about Nalgene bottles without consulting enough sources.

IS THIS JUST NALGENE PROPAGANDA?

I don’t know. Maybe the amount of BPA that the bottles put into our water really doesn’t matter all that much. Maybe it does. I suggest you either switch from plastic water bottles to be more safe than sorry, or you trust Nalgene and stay abreast of scientific data as it is further revealed. Personally, I’m going to switch to nonplastic, so don’t come crying to me when you give birth to a two headed dog. (Just kidding, Nalgene.)

More importantly, plastic is a non-biodegradable material, and it is largely inefficient to recycle, so the less of it you purchase, the better.

Finally, here’s what Debra Lynn Dadd (hailed by the New York Times as the ‘Queen of Green’ and a leading consumer advocate) has to say about all this: debraslist.com

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It’s been estimated that America alone spent close to $15 billion on bottled water in 2006…do you ever wonder what the effects of this will be in a few years? Will the water trapped in non biodegradable bottles in landfills across the land have an effect on our global water supply? Will we have to start shooting rockets filled with garbage into space to even have a place to live amongst all of our plastic trash? Will we, ten years from now, realize that all this exposure to plastic and the chemicals it’s leaching into our water is causing mysterious and gruesome illnesses? Sounds like the makings of some gritty science fiction…

WATER YOU REALLY DRINKIN’ THERE?

Although it cannot be denied that a sickening amount of energy goes into the production of plastic water bottles, and a horrifying amount of waste is generated in the disposal of the bottles…what of the purported toxins that are leaked into the water and digested?

*Most water bottles (like those you’d buy at a convenience store) are made of PET plastic, also known as PETE, or #1. Recycling #1 is far more practical than the recycling of the other plastics

*The water bottle industry denies there is any danger in drinking bottled water, and anything that leaks into the water is not at harmful levels…wait…doesn’t that sound a lot like the tobacco industry talking about cigarettes?

* Dr. William Shotyk of the University of Heidelberg released a study last December about PET (#1) plastic, saying that the bottles leach a chemical known as antimony, with more of it leaching the longer the liquid sits in the bottle. At high doses, antimony can cause dizziness, depression, nausea, or death. Even though Dr. Shotyk says the amount doubles every six months in the bottles, he stops short of declaring the levels dangerous. Still sounds pretty freaky!

*Dasani contains salt and two other chemicals, Aquafina recently admitted it was merely bottling municipal water sources, and in taste tests, tap water in NYC won out over all varieties of bottled water.

*As the owner of several Nalgene bottles, I went through a roller coaster of emotions reading about the hazards. First you weren’t supposed to wash them with soap, then you couldn’t expose them to heat, then anything made with #4 or #5 was ok, but stay away from the more colorful #7’s…WHO COULD KEEP IT ALL STRAIGHT?!

*Many Nalgene bottles are made from polycarbonate (#7) , which leaches bisphenol A into the water. Bisphenol A causes all types of scary things, like chromosomal aberrations, miscarraiges, and birth defects. Yuck!

*Nalgene bottles can be made of what’s called Lexan or HDPE, and from what I can understand, (although Nalgene’s official statement is that none of their water bottles pose any risks to humans) avoid Lexan (#7) and if you must, chose #2, 4, or 5 . Better yet, skip the plastic! It’s all so confusing and spooky, why not try a life free from plastic water bottles??

DO YOU REALLY NEED ANOTHER REASON TO SWITCH FROM PLASTIC?!

I don’t.

Two other options we’ve forgotten about in our plastic water bottle laden world are metal water bottles, which can be even lighter than a Nalgene type bottle, and glass bottles, which obviously less durable, but would be a viable option for say, a day at work or a bus ride.

I haven’t tried a metal water bottle myself yet, but there are multiple options on the web. And glass water bottle…why not reuse that glass bottle you just drank that juice out of?

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This is the first blog in a series about car sharing companies, featuring I-Go!

My friend Jen and her husband Ryan have lived all over the US, from Chicago to Ann Arbor Michigan to D.C. to the east coast, all without a car. In addition to bikes and feet and public transit, they told me they use car sharing services. Wondering just how that differed from a car rental service, I thought I’d do some investigation.

Car Sharing Around the World

For a list of cities and companies where you can find Car Sharing, I’m going to guide you to the website www.carsharing.net, because this blog series will focus on car sharing in Chicago.

And on with Car Sharing…

The three major car sharing companies available in Chicago are Zipcars, I-Go, and Flexcar.

Car sharing differs from car rental services because you reserve and pay for cars by the hour, and they differ from carpool services because you have the car all to yourself for the length of your reservation.

Car sharing encourages less car usage and thus less traffic and pollution in cities. Can’t argue with that! Increased driving also funnels funding of public funds more towards highway and road construction and repair at the detriment of alternatives such as funding for public transportation.

I-Go, You Go, Let’s All Go to I-Go!

I-Go hails itself as Chicago’s only non-profit car sharing service. It was created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, which strives to “invent and implement new strategies which make urban communities more livable and environmentally sustainable,” and they offer 100% low emission vehicles.

Once you join I-Go, it takes about 5-7 business days until you can start reserving cars, and there’s an annual membership fee of $75.

One of the rules of I-Go is that you must return the car to the location you picked it up from, but there are I-Go locations all over the city.

There are a list of added benefits to becoming an I-Go customer, such as the waiving of Flexcar fees in other cities and discounts at places like Ikea, G Boutique and the Apartment People.

I-Go Pricing

There is a one time membership fee of $75, and then each subsequent year costs $25. There are no monthly fees.

The Standard Plan costs $6 an hour, plus 50 cents per mile, or the Standard Plus plan, which costs $8.25 an hour, with 25 free miles.

The hours between midnight and 6 a.m. are always free for you night owls.

Contact Info

Website: www.igocars.org
Phone: 773-278-4446
Their Wicker Park Home Location: 2125 W North Ave

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So…I’ve promised myself that I am not taking up any more hobbies, because between making art, learning how to play drums, teaching myself French, watching movies, and reading, I have no time for anything new. Nothing new, you hear me?!

But… I think if I had a flat roof, I would defy my promise to self, and make a rooftop garden. Because I have the awareness of a cave person, I had never heard of rooftop gardens until recently! But they sound so cool!

Square mile after square mile of our cities are covered with cement and asphalt, generating heat and emitting smog out into the atmosphere. Yuck! Did you know that because of this, cities can be around 5 degrees hotter than the land around them? That was one thing that was so wonderful about my roadtrip through the midwest a few months ago…just the rolling hills of beautiful farmland.

The Advantages

Here are the exciting advantage of rooftop gardens:

*It reduces the CO2 emissions of your home, absorbing all the bad stuff you’re putting out there, and improving the air quality.

*It insulates your home (cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter…can’t beat that!).

*It creates a natural habitat for birds and butterflies.

*You can grow fun things like herbs and tomotoes and zucchinis!

*Since there probably aren’t as many trees blocking your roof as there are blocking your yard, it’s the ideal environment for plants to get full sunlight.

*I’ve never used self watering planters, but the website gardeners.com has a list of self watering products to make your rooftop garden even easier. (Note: I’ve never bought anything from them.)

*Rooftop gardens reduce stormwater runoff.

*It can double the life of your roof.

*I’ve heard that the city of Chicago also offers tax breaks for rooftop gardens…I’ll write more on that later!

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The EPA’s Green Power Partnership was created to encourage businesses to switch from conventional fossil fuel based energy systems to renewable systems. You can visit their website to find lists of companies who are utilizing renewable energy systems.

Say, what are renewable energy systems?

Know exactly what renewable energy sources are?

These days, our choices are solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydro generated green power.

Just a Bunch of Renewable Hot Air?

Looking at the list of companies that are using renewable energy sources, first I was suprised. So many companies whose products I would hesitate to buy (Pepsi, Johnson and Johnson, Starbucks), were listed as parters. Had I underestimated these companies?

Sure, every little bit helps, but some “award winning” companies listed on the EPA Green Power Partership website use as little as 3% renewable energy. Impressive enough to really be award winning? I’m not so sure. But, at least they’re doing something? Sure. We as consumers can let companies know that we appreciate what they are doing by supporting the products of companies that use renewable energy, and by encouraging companies to use more of it!

Goin’ All the Way: 100% Renewable

So, as some companies only use a small portion of renewable energy…what companies use 100% renewable energy? Well, the EPA has published a list appropriately called 100% Green Power Purchasers.

Some of those listed as 100% Green Power Purchasers are:

* Whole Foods
*Pepsi Co
* The EPA (Thank goodness, right?)
*NYU
*Coldwater Creek
*The City of Bellington, WA
*The City of Santa Monica, CA
*Burt’s Bees
*Tazo Tea

There weren’t a whole lot of places listed for Chicago or llinois specifically, but those listed are (none of which I’ve ever heard of):

*FPC - Construction
*Farr Associates - Construction
*Goodness Greenness - Food and Beverage
*Saint Xavier University
*PepsiAmericas

The website also lists the top 25 purchasers of renewable energy, which doesn’t by any means suggest they use even 50% green energy…

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