Switching Out The Lights In Liverpool

Lights out Liverpool is another of those schemes to encourage companies and schools to switch off their lights in Liverpool. But instead of being just a single event like when they switched off some lights for a night in London but the start (I’m told) of a series of events to make the city cleaner.

Although they did switch off the lights at some of the major building for an hour (to get some nice photos I reckon) if you register you’ll get a pack explaining more of their plans and future events. You’ll also get a lovely energy saving lightbulb too.

Win Recycled Christmas Decorations In Our Festive Competition

Reusing is the best form of recycling and the hoilday season is well known for the amount of waste produced, so why not give something back? We’ve got some recycled Christmas decorations to give away thanks to Nigel’s Eco Store.

The decorations are made from circuit boards from computers (one’s made from unwanted CDs are coming soon too) and will catch the light off your tree all lovely like.

All you need to do is answer the following question:

How much does a set of three recycled circuit board Christmas decorations cost at Nigel’s Eco Store? Click here for some help.

This will also sign you up for our free, short weekly newsletter (you can unsubscribe easily at any time, but must be subscribed when the competition winners are drawn to be in with a chance). If you are already a newsletter reader, then you still need to enter the form below.

1. Email(valid email required)
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Closing date is Wednesday 5th December so you’ll get your decorations in time.
Open to people within the UK only - sorry! We’ll have some competitions open to other countries soon.

Two New Environment Sites

Sharing the love is errr always one of my rules to live by so thought I’d mention two new environment sites that might be of interest to you.

 

First up is Green Guys Global. The brother site of Green Girls Global, it’s a blog made up of a group of editors from around the blogosphere - including myself and Joel. Building on the success of the girls, the guys hope to entertain and inform and build relationships as we go along. It’s probably better to let the site speak for itself, there’s some good stuff on there even though it’s only been going a week.

And the second site is smartplanet.com. Edited by our friend Adam Vaughan who used to be known as The Green Guy and was at New Consumer, the site is full of news and interviews already even though it was only recenty launched as well. Worth a look and a comment or two I reckon.

 

 

Feel Better Buying New Books With Eco-Libris (Plus A Special Discount For Readers)

Buying new books is always a joy for me, I love them. In recent years I’ve been better and been buying more and more from charity shops, off eBay and Green Metropolis. However they’re still printed on new paper - very few are printed on recycled material.

Raz Godelnik has recognised this and wants to do something about it. His new company Eco-Libris lets you balance out buying a new book by paying online and getting a tree planted for each book - and a sticker to prove it.

Life Goggles wanted to find out more so contacted Raz and arranged an interview, and he turned out to be very knowledgeable, passionate and eloquent. He even gave us a special offer for Life Goggles readers - balance out 10 or more books and receive a 15% discount until the end of 2007. Click here for more details. Anyway, on with the interview.

Life Goggles: Tell us a little about yourself and where the idea came from?
Raz: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Eco-Libris. I spent a few years in financial management and business development positions and also served as an advisor to the Israeli Minister of the Interior. Afterwards, I co-founded Hemper Jeans (www.hemperjeans.com), an eco-fashion jeans company focusing on producing fashionable jeans made of hemp, and now I’m with Eco-Libris. I also write on green business for the second-largest newspaper in Israel (Maariv).

I live in Newark, DE with my wife Peleg and in my scarce leisure time, I like playing soccer, watch old episodes of Seinfeld and read books.

The idea to establish Eco-Libris started when I was thinking about paper and the environmental impacts of its production. I realized that it might take a while to get to the point where eco-friendly alternatives (from the use of recycled paper to e-books) will replace virgin paper. Then, I talked with some friends about the idea of giving people the opportunity to balance out their paper consumption by planting trees and received good feedback about it.

The decision to focus on books was made after learning that only about 5% of the paper used for printing books is made of recycled paper and because most books don’t have yet an online eco-friendly alternative (e-book), like newspapers and magazines. So, if you want a book, you usually can’t really avoid purchasing a paper-made version of it, unless you go to the library or get it from websites like BookCrossing or BookMooch, which are all excellent choices. You also can’t tell people to stop reading books, so it seemed to me only natural to give book lovers a new alternative to green up their reading - planting trees for the books they read.

Are there other sites doing what you do? How do you differ?
As far as I know we’re the only ones who provide this unique offer. Of course, there are many organizations and websites that offer to plant trees, but we’re more than just about planting trees - we see ourselves as an agent of change that aims to raise awareness, make reading more sustainable and become a voice of all the eco-conscious readers out there, pushing the industry further to be greener and print books in an eco-friendly manner.
[Read more]

Do You Know Of Any Tree Planting Campaigns?

The BBC have reported on two tree-planting campaigns that are under way in UK cities, in an effort to reverse the “chainsaw massacre” of the past. It appears that everyone loves trees, so why are so many being lost?

It’s strange to see deforestation being talked about in Britain, usually the Amazon and other major forests are (quite rightly) discussed, however it’s interesting to see how “little” projects such as these can make a big difference.

Trees for Cities chief executive Graham Simmonds says that as well as their beauty, trees improve air quality by trapping pollution, they slow down rainfall, reduce noise pollution, provide shade and encourage healthy lifestyles. And studies in the US suggest they increase emotional well-being.

How To Build A Green House

I dream of the day I can buy some land and build my own green home. Or at least pay other people to build it for me. A quick search round the web will give you lots of green building projects. One that stands out is Green in Medusa - a husband and wife team of Baldomero and Stephenie Fernandez, along with architect Lynn Gaffney, designing and building an affordable house in upstate New York.

Baldomero took some time out to talk to Life Goggles.

Life Goggles: Can you give us a bit of background and tell us a little bit about who you and Stephenie are?
Baldomero: We met on a photo shoot in Los Angeles in 2000 and have been married six years and are expecting our first baby literally any day now! We share many of the same passions - travelling the world, good food, art, music, city life mixed with country life. We are exposed to many different cultures and choices and that got us started thinking green. We would come back from Africa or Cuba and see the amount of excess and waste all around us in our own lives and here in the US. We started making small choices here and there to live greener, cleaner - reduce, reuse, recycle… and this is just a continuation. Our next project is converting our diesel wagon to bio diesel. We think about the impact of driving upstate - in the meantime we’ve bought a terrapass to help offset our CO2 footprint.

LG: Why did you decide to build an eco house?
B: While building is not inherently “green” We wanted to be responsible and choose healthier alternatives that don’t harm the environment as much as other choices. We found there are increasingly more products and desire out there, and hopefully it will become the mainstream way of doing things instead of the alternative way.

LG: How did you hook up with architect Lynn Gaffney?
B: We had been interviewing and researching architects and builders for a few months - finding someone we both loved was harder than we thought - and we knew that whomever we went with would be a relationship we would have to endure for quite a while. We wanted someone who would help us build our dream house, not their dream house. We had a few we really liked and just when we were about to decide on one we received an issue of Dwell and saw an article on a house built by Lynn for herself. We were inspired by her house and got in touch with her right away. She was lovely from the beginning, offered to meet us up at her house so we could see it in person. We knew Lynn was the one when after spending half an hour with us she basically sketched a house that we had been dreaming of for the past few years… something that no other architect we we interviewed did.

LG: What was the first thing you did to get started?
B: Write a check/cheque to Lynn. Once you start spending money your realise it’s for real.

LG: Why did you buy the land that you have?
B: We live in NYC and started going upstate NY with friends who rented houses up there as a great escape from urban life. We both love the outdoors, camping, hiking and really want to have more of that in our lives. We saw this piece of land and fell in love with the view, the 2400 acres of state forest a couple of hundred yards away, the town of Rensselaerville three miles away also helped make our mind up. We knew we wanted to build our own place, something green and on a strict budget. We’ve had the property for three years… we’ve really spent our time thinking about it, spending seasons up there and now we are finally in the process.
[Read more]

Latest Green News

The head of the World Trade Organisation Pascal Lamy has claimed that the proliferation of agreements on “green” and other product standards between large western retailers and consumer groups is likely to spark a new row with developing countries that fear new barriers to their exports. Lamy also said that new and tougher standards could offset the benefits of removing tariff barriers for developing countries.

Director of the Soil Association Patrick Holden revealed a 22% rise in the UK organic food and drink market over the past year. He notes that sales through organic box schemes, farm shops and at the farm gate have increased by 53% - double the volume sold through supermarkets.

Wal-Mart revealed plans to cut costs by measuring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout its chain supply. The retailer said that it will ask its more than 60,000 suppliers to measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions. The company will then use the data to cut costs, by comparing similar companies to identify which are less efficient. Wal-Mart has formed a partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project as part of a plan to get its suppliers to manage their greenhouse gas emissions better.

Philips has announced plans to invest €1bn in developing environmental technologies in an attempt to boost its revenues from green products. Chief executive Gerard Kleisterlee has told staff that he wants the company to derive 30% of its revenues from green technologies by 2012.

Sainsbury’s has announced that it will launch a new campaign to boost its environmental and social credentials. The Different Values campaign, which will use press advertising and a new series of television adverts featuring Jamie Oliver, comes in response to rival supermarkets’ recent attempts to promote their ethical awareness.

The Times reported that a series of surveys on consumers’ social and environmental attitudes have revealed that eighty per cent of customers say that they are not given enough environmental information to make informed choices about electrical products. While it is estimated that household appliances become on average 2% more energy efficient every year, the fall has been more than offset by the increasing number of electrical items in homes. The Energy Saving Trust says that the average number of electrical goods in British households has risen from 17 in the 1970s to 42 now.

The once niche market for environmentally-friendly car insurance is on the rise, as rising environmental awareness amongst consumers has led to a surge in demand for ‘green’ products. Insurers offering such products include The Cooperative Group, Norwich Union, Royal & SunAlliance and Ibuyeco, with other eco-friendly products, such as hybrid cars and carbon offset air travel schemes, also rising to prominence. However, carbon offsetting has come under fire from critics, sparking a debate over whether the practice is actually environmentally beneficial.

The Daily Telegraph reported that designer Katharine Hamnett has announced that she will terminate a deal to supply organic and fair trade clothing to Tesco stating that she is “incredibly disappointed” that the retailer had broken promises to roll out her Choose Love range and promote it in store. “I was initially really excited about the tie-up because I thought we could increase demand for ethical products. But I’ve come to the conclusion that [Tesco] simply wants to appear ethical, rather than make a full commitment to the range” she said.

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