GreenMindFulness

Go green for Earth Day!

greenmindfulness — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:15:14 +0000

The Earth Day Network is aiming for a billion pledges of green actions in the name of Earth Day. What will your pledge be? Always recycle your plastic bag? Exchange all light bulbs in your house with energy saving bulbs?

Publish your pledge of green on the Earth Day website, shout out your green ideas to the World!

Photo courtesy: japanese forms on Flickr images

The Story of Stuff

greenmindfulness — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:46:49 +0000

: Ever wonder what happens to all the stuff you buy?

Maybe you already know the story of the stuff that you buy: where you bought it, where it was produced, how it was produced, how the raw materials were obtained, etc.

You may also know part of the story of what happens to the stuff that you bought: what you do with it, what it does to you, when you trash it, where you trash it and how you trash it.

But did you ever see the greater picture? How it all fits into how our society works, and would you be so pleased with your stuff if you knew?

Annie Leonard has done an amazing job of raising awareness of the issues surrounding our consumer culture by publicising this 20min video featuring herself as the narrator of the “Story of Stuff”. Go watch, learn and share.

Project 10 to the 100th

greenmindfulness — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:58:36 +0000

The Google way of changing the World:
Project 10 to the 100th is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. By public vote, they will select which of 150.000 submitted project proposals will receive funding of $10 million.The proposals have been divided into the 16 “big ideas”:

Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

And the Google criteria for selection will be:

Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

Go vote now, for what you think will be the best project to change the World.

Go Green, Live Rich

greenmindfulness — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:53:15 +0000

David Bach, who is known as a financial advisor and author of the very popular books “Automatic Millionaire” and “Start Late Finish Rich”, has gone green. His new book: “Go Green, Live Rich” gives advice on how you, by making green choices in your everyday life, actually accumulate huge savings on your budget. Putting it this way, there is no good reason not to start making developing your sustainable life style today.

Ideally, IMHO it should also be the path of politics in this area to make all sustainable choices the economically optimal choises. In that way the society as a whole would by the powers of the free market go towards a more sustainable choices for our environment.

Read a full review of “Go Green, Live Rich” on Treehugger.com

Get some of the green tips immediately from David Bach himself on Yahoo.com/finance

Eat CO2 and produce methane

greenmindfulness — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:00:48 +0000

The objective for the genetically modified bacteria which are currently a major project of the Craig Venter lab is for the bacteria to “eat CO2 and produce methane“. If they manage to develop these bacteria to consume CO2 on a larger scale, they could help not only to reduce the overproduction of CO2 but also to serve as biofuel factories.

Read the full story on Yahoo news: Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 into fuel

Illustration: Natural gas production by country, wikipedia

Energy balance

greenmindfulness — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:10:48 +0000

Most people find it easy to understand the problem of over-consumption of fossil fuels. The fossil fuels like oil and coal are being exploited faster than they are generated by nature, and we will end up in a situation where we can no longer depend on fossil fuels to supply the world energy expenditure. That is why a lot of time and money is spent on researching alternative sustainable energy sources, which will not be affected or depleted when we expend them.

Another energy issue that somehow many people find difficult to understand is the energy balance on a personal level. However, the problem is the opposite. On average the energy intake of the population in most western countries by far exceeds the energy expenditure, and as a result we see more and more people of serious overweight. Treating obesity is an extremely difficult task, but prevention is, in theory, very easy: “maintain the energy balance”. If you uptake more energy, you have to expend more energy, in order not to gain weight.

The Dutch Nutrition Centre acknowledges increasing obesity as a national problem, and they have employed a Master Plan to help the Dutch maintain their energy balance. I am looking forward to see the same kind of initiative taken in the rest of the European countries with increasing obesity in their population.

Why buy refills?

greenmindfulness — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:13:24 +0000

Because the wrapping and packaging of a refill can be a whole lot less than the packaging of the original (and if it isn’t, it does not make much sense). The reduced packaging reduces the space required for transport, i.e. more can be transported in less space, and fewer trucks and transports will be necessary to bring the product to your shop. In the end, the more you save on packaging the more you save on polluting transport.

But what if you do not always use the same soap/shampoo/cleaning liquid? No problem. The soap will not mind what bottle or tube it is in. You can basically refill any brand with any brand. And why don’t you get yourself one of those fancy soap dispensers while you are at it – they will encourage your refill habit.

Green Mindfulness

greenmindfulness — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:07:48 +0000

The green intention of this blog, and yes it is green, is to stimulate the conscious choices of everyday people in everyday life towards an environmentally sustainable life style. The consciousness of your own behaviour is what the buddists like to call mindfulness. And for us, the target of our mindfullness will be thinking green.

in short, this is a blog encouraging Green Mindfulness