Have You Checked Your Footprint Lately?

It seems like there are a million "calculate your footprint" quizzes online, and more every day.  The latest is from the Global Footprint Network, which is a fairly upstanding source of global footprint information.  Nevertheless, its footprint calculator manages to get things wrong, just like all the rest.

The problem is that all of these calculators fundamentally assume that you're a "regular person" who isn't doing anything to reduce your footprint at the moment.  Whenever one of these calculators makes the rounds, there are always people protesting that it isn't accurate.  And this always comes down to, "I'm doing things to reduce my footprint, but the calculator doesn't take that into account."

Even though I realize that this is a pretty childish thing to say, I'm going to say it too.  I guess I want a gold star for my efforts and sacrifices just as much as everyone else.  

For example, I cut meat out of my diet a year ago.  And I still eat eggs and cheese, but I get the cheese from a local (20 miles away) dairy, and the eggs from the pet chickens in my yard.  Surely that should significantly reduce my footprint!  There's the greatly reduced transportation, for one thing.  Instead of having my eggs shipped across one or several states, I just have to walk out there (sometimes, yes, in the rain) and get them.

This is one of those oddball things that no online quiz is going to account for.  

Another thing that always gets my goat is that I heat my house exclusively with a wood stove.  According to the agency Al Gore used to source his numbers for "An Inconvenient Truth," wood heat is carbon neutral.  My understanding is that home heating is one of the biggest sources of Americans' carbon footprint, and to have that reduced to zero is a pretty big mark in my favor (if you ask me).  

But this isn't going to be on an online quiz, either.

In a broader sense, the reason these lapses are frustrating is that we want the quizzes to show us the way.  Suggest alternatives.  And for pity's sake, be somewhat accurate.  If a quiz isn't asking specifically what you use to heat your home, then how accurate can it be?  This particular quiz seems to assume that you heat with either electricity or gas.  And please note that there is no "I don't use gas" option, just an "I don't know" option.

Then again, this quiz also assumes that you either live in Calgary, the United States, or Switzerland.  

Every time I run across one of these quizzes, I threaten to create an "I'm Better Than You" quiz.  One which asks what you use to heat your home - electricity, gas, wood, or nothing?  Are you a meat-eater, a vegetarian, a vegan, or a vegetarian who secretly goes to the McDonalds drive-in once a week?  Do you drive once a day, once a week, once a month, or once a year when you're piloting a parade float on Earth Day?

Now that's a quiz I can get behind!

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user ezioman

Super Commuting

Tree Hugger has an interesting (and remarkably blame-free) article about super commuting up today.  Extreme commuting is up 95% since 1990, and is defined as commuting for more than an hour and a half round trip (i.e. 45 minutes each way).  

I thought that last bit alone was interesting.  My understanding is that the average American's commute is 30 minutes each way.  It hardly seems fair to define "extreme commuting" as a commute that's only 15 minutes longer!  Granted that's a 50% increase over the average, but it still seems a bit stingy.

The other interesting tidbit is the increase in extreme commuting since 1990, which dovetails nicely with the high tech revolution.  Funny isn't it, how the explosion of the internet, and the resulting boon in long distance communication technology (from online conference tools like WebX to Skype conference chats, IM, text messaging, cell phones, VPNs, and remote desktop logins) has apparently not affected our commute times.  And when I say "funny" I'm sure you understand I mean "soul crushingly poignant."

I myself was an extreme commuter for almost a year.  I commuted from La Conner to Seattle, a distance of about 90 miles.  That's an hour and a half each way - on a good day.  Which it never was.  TomTom GPS recently announced that the Seattle area has the country's worst traffic, and I believe it.  My typical commute was 2.5 hours in the morning, and 2 hours home at night.  That's assuming no unusual events, like a traffic accident or a massive unexpected snowstorm.  (My record is a 5 hour drive home, a drive so long that I took an hour long layover.  Snowstorm.)

Obviously, the carbon footprint of someone driving that far each way is shocking.  Everyone knows this.  And if anything, the cost of gas alone has a huge impact on our driving habits.  No one says "Ooh I would love to drive two hours each way!"  The problem is that typically the jobs are not located where the housing is affordable.   

Treehugger frames it as a choice between a bigger house in the country, versus a smaller house in the city.  Apparently they haven't seen Seattle's housing prices.  For many people (everyone out there on the road with me when I was commuting, for example) the choice is between a house in the exurbs, or a lousy apartment in the city.  If you have kids, kids who need a separate room, and a decent school system?  It really isn't a choice at all.

Extreme commuting used to be a matter of prestige jobs, or prestige homes.  These days I'm afraid it's more a matter of survival.  People are lucky to have jobs at all, and if those jobs happen to be far away, you just tighten your belt and get to it.

The revolution here needs to happen at the jobs themselves.  I'm going to pull a number out of my hat and say that 78% of white collar jobs could be performed from home.  But managers need to feel that sense of control, of supervision, that they get from having employees there in the office.  It's stupid, foolish, short-sighted, and ultimately more expensive for the companies themselves.  

Don't blame the commuters.  Blame the managers with control issues and a fear of technology.  I can guarantee you anyone stuck on I5 through Everett at 6:45AM would weep with relief at being allowed to work from home.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Christine592

Bag Taxes Work Shockingly Well

For something that has caused so much ecological destruction, locked up so many natural resources into a non-reusable form, and plagued us all with their tendency to be filled by the clerk with either one small apple or six two-liter bottles of soda, it's turning out to be pretty easy to kick the bag habit.  Washington D.C. enacted a five cent per bag tax on plastic grocery bags in January, and plastic bag usage has declined by a whopping 50% at minimum.

It's funny how easy it is to change human behavior with economics.  The older I get, the more I wish I had gotten an Economics degree in college, because it's obviously the key to how the world works.  (English Lit, awesome as it was, clearly has a diminished influence.)  

From all people's bitching and moaning about how hard it is to remember to bring tote bags, and "I use those for trash bags," you would have thought the plastic bags would be worth a lot to people.  Certainly if you go by the volume of complaints, I would have expected that people would be willing to pay up to at least 20 cents per bag.  Although bag taxes are great, and the money raised usually goes to address a local ecological issue, I didn't expect it to start moving the dial at the nickel range.

But no!  Turns out?  Pretty much any amount of money, no matter how small, is enough to turn people off plastic bags.  For a measly nickel per bag, magically people are able to remember to bring in their darned tote bags.

In Washington D.C. plastic bag usage dropped from an estimated 22 million bags PER MONTH to only 3.3 million for the month of January.  And that number is sure to fall farther, as more and more people get on the tote bag bandwagon.  Eventually, having your groceries loaded into plastic bags will be as cringe-inducing as asking for a Styrofoam cup, or leaded gas.  And hurray for that!

What I really find fascinating is that this wee little nickel is such a small token of money.  And yet, that is what is real for people: those nickels that add up on their grocery receipts.  Whereas in reality, we have all been paying a lot of money for plastic bags all along.  

Plastic grocery bags were never free.  Their cost was built into your overall grocery bill in a very real way, because the store has to buy them, and they pass that cost along to you the same way they pass along the cost of the lights and refrigerators and employee salaries.  

We also paid for plastic bags to be wrangled at the dump.  Employee hours are increased by the need to frequently dig stray bags out of the machinery, and that fee gets passed along.  Plastic bags clog storm drains and sewers, and we pay city employees to suit up and rip out the clog.  Plastic bags dot our landscape, and we pay other city employees to clean them up. 

And of course, sea life like turtles pay for our plastic bag habit with their lives.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user eflon

Watch "Bag It" Documentary Free Online

"Bag It" is a fascinating short, 10-minute documentary about America's plastic grocery bag habit.  The filmmaker has posted it to the internet, so that everyone can watch it for free!  

Every year Americans use 100 BILLION plastic grocery bags once, then discard them.  Once!  All that waste and pollution from something that gets used for between ten minutes to half an hour, from the store to your kitchen.

Before it even gets to the grocery store, creating the plastic grocery bag is a nightmare of industrial waste.  The side effects from producing the bags is, as one interviewee says, more damaging than the bags themselves.  Aside from the petroleum to make the plastic, and the energy required to run the bag-making plants, the EPA says that plastic production uses "five of the six top listed chemicals that generate toxic waste."  Plastic grocery bags use propylene, phenol, ethylene, polystyrene, and benzene.

Everyone is familiar with the sight of plastic grocery bags littering the landscape, clogging storm drains, fetching up against wind-blown fences, and gradually strangling the growth of trees.  What most people don't realize is that those stray bags aren't the work of careless litterbugs.  

Plastic grocery bags have the perfect aerodynamic profile to be caught in the wind and blown away.  You would be hard put to design something better able to escape into the wild.  One expert in "Bag It" describes a study of a dump which found, bizarrely, that it contained no plastic garbage bags.  Where did they go?  It turns out they all blew away in the wind.

You have probably heard about the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch."  A lot of the garbage in the Pacific Gyre is escaped plastic grocery bags.  Ordinary people, you and I, throw away plastic garbage bags in the trash - but they end up being eaten by sea turtles anyway.

Only 5% of plastic grocery bags are recycled.  According to one interviewee, it costs about $4,000 per ton to recycle plastic grocery bags.  This is not a cost-effective project!  

Another interviewee raises an interesting point that has occurred to me in the past.   My county (like most counties and municipalities) does not recycle plastic grocery bags.  However, I can take them to the grocery store and stuff them into a recycling bin.  So how does Safeway recycle those plastic bags?  Do they all get shipped to some mysterious recycling facility, where Safeway pays $4,000 per ton to recycle them?  Or do they all get stuffed into the dumpster and thrown away on the sly?  

Kicking the plastic grocery bag habit and converting to reusable grocery tote bags is one small step on the road to curing us of our addiction to single-use plastic.  Grocery tote bags cost only a few dollars each, but can be reused hundreds of times.  I once calculated that every month I use my tote bags, I spare 400 plastic grocery bags.  Those numbers add up fast!

"Bag It" is set in Boston, which is considering banning plastic grocery bags entirely.  Other cities are looking at taxing the use of reusable bags.  Most grocery stores are already using the carrot, by offering a .10 per-bag discount off your grocery bill for each reusable bag.  There is literally no reason not to be using reusable totes, so it's high time we get in the habit!

Ecologically-Responsible Rockhounding

With the gradual shift towards nicer weather, a lot of families are looking to get outside and re-connect with the outdoors.  Rockhounding is a great way to get exercise and fresh air, spark an interest in the natural world, and provide some science learning as well.  As long as you do it right!

Searching for gems and minerals has been a fascination for people since we were people.  The earliest humans and hominids sought outcroppings of chert and other silicate stones in order to create spear points and arrow heads.  Other minerals like soapstone and jade were used to carve decorative items, like the famous Venus of Willendorf.

It rarely takes much to convince kids to at least give rockhounding a try.  "Digging for treasure" is pretty much the only phrase you really need to use!  It also helps if you choose your earliest outings for their gemstone appeal.  Kids are much more likely to persist in hiking and digging if you're going after amethyst, fossils, or geodes, rather than more "boring" minerals like travertine.

Every part of the world has its own native minerals and gems.  The best way to find out what to hunt and where is to contact a local rockhound club.  Many clubs offer field trips for beginners, for a nominal fee.  These clubs are also great because they provide coaching, in the form of experienced rock hounds, who can help ensure the success of your outing.

Unfortunately, a lot of rockhounds have caused damage to private and public property.  Here in Washington state, rockhounds are personas non gratas at several former collection sites, which have since been posted "PRIVATE" which is strictly enforced.  

One classic form of rockhound destruction happens to stream beds.  A lot of minerals (such as jade, pyrite, and gold) can be found in streams that have washed them out of the mountains.  In order to collect these, unscrupulous or simply unknowledgeable rockhounds will start taking a shovel to the stream bed.

Riparian habitat is exceptionally delicate, and a shovel at the wrong time can wreak devastation on a trout or salmon spawning location.  By increasing the silt and turbidity, the act of shoveling at a stream bed can cause destruction for miles downstream.  And by shifting the contents of the stream bed, these problems can cause disturbance for decades afterward.

Less ecologically devastating but more annoying to property owners and passers-by is collectors who dig holes and don't fill them in again, or permanent changes caused by chipping away at rock faces.  Last weekend I visited a site at Blanchard Mountain here in Skagit County where rockhounds have caused a surprising amount of damage over just the last 20 or 30 years.

And of course, anyone who goes out in the woods is liable to leave trash behind!

The lesson is clear: when rockhounding, as with any other activity, tread lightly.  Fill in any holes you dig.  Be as gentle and non-invasive as possible.  Bring an extra trash bag, and pick up any garbage you find.  This is a great way to not only teach kids how to care for the outdoors, but why they should.

Creative Commons-licensed image of fire agates courtesy of Flickr user live w mcs

The Best Shampoo Isn't - Go No 'Poo!

Shampoos certainly don't improve your health (despite what the shampoo commercials would have you believe) or the planet's health, and may well be detrimental to it.  

Toxins: Shampoos and other cosmetics contain a lot of chemicals which can be harmful in long term usage.  The list includes parabens, which emerging studies are linking to increased rates of breast cancer and elevated estrogen levels.  Not to mention sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES), an industrial degreaser which is actively toxic.

Crude Oil: Shampoo also contains propylene glycol, which is a petroleum product.  I think some day humanity will look back and be amazed that we not only powered our vehicles with petroleum, we also used it in just about every non-food product (and some food products).  If you're trying to reduce your gas consumption, you could start with your shampoo!

Waste: Think of all the plastic that gets used in all those shampoo bottles, which all go straight to the dump!  Sure, some municipalities are able to recycle shampoo bottles, but these are few and far between.  And the type of plastic used in shampoo bottles is not in high demand on the recycling market.

Ground Water: Shampoo gets washed down the drain and into the water table.  The amount of parabens, SLS, SLES, and propylene glycol may not be enough to poison an adult human being outright.  But it's a different story for smaller life forms including beneficial bacteria, fish, insects, and amphibians.

If you have curly hair, shampoo is actually detrimental to the hair shaft.  It has the opposite effect from intended, causing your hair to look frizzier and less glossy.  If you have lightweight hair, shampoo and conditioner weigh down your hair and make it look worse.

Is there any reason TO use shampoo?  I keep a bottle around and use it when my hair gets truly dirty, maybe once a month, usually due to some unfortunate gardening incident.  Once I finish this last bottle (in 2-3 years, at this rate) I'll just use my regular bar soap in these cases instead.

What to use instead of shampoo?  Baking soda of course - is there anything it can't do?

I use an old plastic sports bottle (having converted to metal or glass drinking containers) to mix the concentrate.  Drop 3-4 tablespoons of baking soda into the sports bottle and top it off with water, then shake vigorously to mix.

When I'm in the shower, I squirt about ¼ cup of the baking soda concentrate mixture into an old plastic margarine tub.  Then I add hot water from the shower to top off the container.  (This way you never have to pour cold baking soda water down your back!)

Massage the mixture into your scalp and let it sit for a few minutes, then rinse it out.  

About once a week I swap in a white vinegar treatment.  Same deal - vinegar and water mixed about 10:1 in a sports bottle, pour a bit into the margarine tub and mix with hot water from the shower.  Rub into your scalp, let it sit, then rinse it out.

Try it for a week and adjust as necessary.  If your hair gets too oily, use the vinegar rinse less often (every 10 or 12 days).  If your hair gets too dry, use the vinegar rinse more often (every 2nd or 3rd day).  You'll be amazed at the results!

Creative Commons-licensed image of No 'Poo hair courtesy of Flickr user paxye

Heating With Firewood: Zero Carbon Footprint, But…!

I live in the Pacific Northwest, and heat exclusively with a wood stove.  (It is a cozy kind of warmth, although round about February one starts daydreaming of simply turning a dial on a thermostat.)  Several years ago after watching "An Inconvenient Truth" I ran across an interesting fact while calculating my carbon footprint: firewood as a home heating source is considered carbon neutral.

This ruling comes from the numbers of the environmental agency from which Al Gore sourced his carbon footprint statistics.  In other words, they are as reliable and reputable as one could want.  After all, Al Gore said so!

I found this particularly interesting since the home heating bill is a massive part of most Americans' carbon footprints.  It runs neck and neck with your automobile gas consumption footprint, depending on what kind of driving you do.  Since I work from home I have no commute, and since I heat exclusively with firewood - well!  I was feeling quite smug, I can assure you!

The problem is, this is one of those things that only works as long as not many people are doing it.  Already in the past few years we have seen a significant rise in the cost of a cord of firewood, from $125 in the summer of 2007 to $185 in the summer of 2009.  Demand rose in line with the increasing cost of propane.  Faced with a four-figure propane bill for the year, many people decided to start using their wood stove more often.

Firewood is zero carbon footprint because for every cord you burn (thus releasing some carbon into the air), another cord is grown by trees (thus sequestering carbon out of the air).  Furthermore it is a very "lossy" loop, because a lot of the carbon is left behind as fireplace ash.  Ashes are hauled outside and spread on burn piles and compost piles, thus locking that carbon in a stable format and returning it to the soil.

But how many acres would have to be planted and grown up for firewood if everyone decided to heat with wood?  Um, a lot.  I don't know if there are that many trees in the world, honestly!  And since it takes at least 5-10 years for a woodlot tree to grow to a harvestable age, this isn't a system that can respond quickly to increased demand.  (Thus the price increase, which helps throttle demand.)

The other down side to firewood is the particulate pollution.  This isn't a significant concern in my county, which has never seen air quality fall below "Good."  It is a much bigger concern in larger cities, and in areas like Southern California and Atlanta where air quality is a major concern.

However, I feel obliged to point out that the pollution released by firewood is a NIMBY problem.  There is plenty of pollution and particulates released by the production of electricity, propane, and other heating fuels!  It just happens halfway across the world, so it doesn't really "count," for most people.

The lesson being that if you have the ability to heat with firewood - and I'm talking about a proper wood stove, not just a fireplace - you definitely should.  With a few caveats!

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user cryjack

Upcycling Office Paper Into Notepads

Recycling is great, but let's raid the office recycle bin for paper you can turn into notepads!  You can spend a lot of time and money making creative notepads, but let's start simple.  All you will need is paper, scissors or a paper cutter, a bottle of Elmer's glue, cardboard or scrap wood, and either clamps or a weight.

First, you need paper!  Look for paper that has printing on only one side, and isn't crumpled, stained, or torn.  Even if your qualifications are super picky, you will still end up with a pretty good handful of paper!  

If you don't work out of a traditional office (I don't), stop by anywhere that offers copy services.  I guarantee there will be a fat recycle bin nearby, ready for the picking.  (I always ask permission before I dive in.)

Next, cut it into notepad size.  I like to cut an 8.5 x 11 sheet into quarters.  

If you really get into making notepads as a hobby, there is a bewildering array of paper cutters for sale to the scrapbook market.  For now, just cut the paper using scissors, or the paper cutter at your office (should your office be so equipped).  

Square up the edge to be glued, and sandwich your notepad-to-be between two sheets of cardboard or scrap wood.  This way your paper won't get dented by the clamps or weight while the glue dries.

Once everything is squared up, pin your sandwich together.  You can either use clamps if you have some, or weight it down with whatever you have handy.  A cement brick, a stack of books, a two liter bottle of soda, a gallon of water, a big rock - whatever works for you!  

Now that your notepad has been properly secured, slather the top edge in Elmer's glue.  Be sure to apply enough at the top and bottom edges (I often have the first and last sheet fall off when I'm lazy about this step).    Let it dry for a little while, then add a second coat.

The pros use something called "padding compound," which you can purchase in bulk if you want to make this A Thing.  But trust me, Elmer's glue works just fine!  

Let the glue dry properly, at least 24 hours.  Then impress your friends!  These make great gifts for eco-minded friends and family, and they're great ways to start a conversation about thrift and green living.

"Why should I make my own notepads?  I buy notepads made of recycled paper!"

Don't get me wrong, it's always best to buy paper products with as much recycled content as possible!  But it's always better to upcycle than to recycle.

The recycling process always includes some loss and waste, and often involves the use of toxic chemicals.  In the case of recycling paper, the chopped-up post-consumer paper fibers are often bleached with toxic chlorine so that the finished product is white paper (not gray).  And many notepads are packaged for sale in the ultimate useless, wasteful, non-recyclable, petroleum product: plastic wrap.

And don't forget to take into account the carbon footprint for all three legs of the paper's journey!  It has to be transported from your office to the recycling facility, processed at the recycling facility (which takes a considerable amount of electricity), then shipped back to the stores as a finished product.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user LadyDucayne

Tell Congress: We Want Clean Energy

We’ve been eagerly awaiting an energy or climate bill for years. After nearly a decade of our president and his administration pretty much ignoring climate change, we’ve been ready for some action from this new administration since—well, since before Barack Obama was even elected.

So far the environment has taken a backseat to health care on Capitol Hill—though, in the long run, it’s a similar issue, isn’t it? The survival of mankind, after all, is inexorably linked to climate change; and though we definitely need medical care to survive, we also pretty much need the planet as it stands to sustain us as well. Like one of my college science professors used to tell us—the Earth will survive us. The only question is, will we survive ourselves?

Right now, some members of Congress are working hard on an energy bill. Unfortunately, at least some of these members have special interest groups in mind—with plenty of lobbyists for various industries at their heels, greedily demanding a continuance of the current policies (or worse), which will do nothing for future generations on this planet. What we need right now does not include bowing down to corporate interests; as the growing movement across the country is vocally declaring, businesses are not humans and should not have rights as such. What we do need is a renewable and sustainable clean energy policy now.

To send a message to Congress right now, click here. Be sure to include your specific opinions, especially on subjects like climate change, wind power, and solar power. Some ideas that Solar Nation provides in their introduction to the form include “nudging” utilities and big energy users toward using renewable fuels and cleaner energy use; however, most of us know that such legislation will not go far. In fact, we know that such businesses are more likely to scoff at legislation that makes “coming clean” voluntary.

So let’s call for direct government action in holding these energy users accountable. We want vehicles running on clean energy, particularly electricity; we’ve done it before and we can do it now! We want big businesses held accountable for their environmental practices and for strict mandates on what kinds of energy they can run on, as well as waste disposal practices and stronger safety measures in place. We also want ways for the general public to easily cut down on their own emissions, solar paneling and wind power more readily available and affordable, and green jobs created from these measures.

Okay, well, at least that’s what I want! What do you want? Tell Congress today.

Leno's EcoJet no joke

When it comes to late night TV, I was and still am firmly in the Conan O’Brien camp. I’ll take one tweet from him over a Leno monologue any night. But I have to give Jay Leno some props on giving some publicity to the green world- he’s pushing the turbine car, specifically something called the EcoJet that utilizes technologies that Chrysler was using in their 1963 Turbine Car.

Leno started building the EcoJet about four years ago, manufacturing a partnership between GM mechanics and those at his own massive stable of vehicles- called the Big Dog Garage.

“It was built as a project, and like most backyard projects, it kind of got out of hand,” Leno told the New York Times in their article about his EcoJet.

Leno is a TV comedy guy. He cracks jokes and interviews celebrities. Pretty straightforward. Maybe a charity dinner here and there, but nobody expects him to be changing the world- he makes fun of it. But tinkering with cars to make them more earth-friendly, well, that’s sacred entrepreneur ground out in California, and to see him dabbling in that mix of hippie and classic America is a little head-tiltling.

And then I realize, man, this is what it’s all about. Everyone should be tinkering away in their garage trying to figure out how to make the next generation of car, you know? That’s how we got computers.

The EcoJet isn’t going to revolutionize the car industry- it gets terrible gas mileage (dismal in town and 19mpg on the highway) and the greenest thing about it is that it runs on biodiesel. It uses Jet A fuel to start up and shut down. The point is, Jay Leno is talking about using biofuel and creating a green car, and bringing back the kind of innovation and world-leading manufacturing dominance to Detroit that was the call-sign of America in, say, the 50’s.

And moreso than anything else, that is the crucial and important element of what Leno and everyone else is up to. In the 70’s there were Earth Day hippies that pretty much echoed protest culture. Leno would have cracked jokes about them. From there, we’ve mainstreamed the idea of going green to a point, and certainly the idea of talking about it. Leno isn’t making fun of the idea of biodiesel with a wisecrack about putting his lunch in the gas tank or something- he’s actually using it.

It’s a small step in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a big deal when you compare it to, say, 1980 or 1990. Unthinkable, just a dream, and the realm of the hippie. Just 5 or 6 years ago when my friend told me he was going to convert his car to biodiesel I was like, “do you have to go pick up oil at McDonald’s or something?”

And I was supposed to be the guy in the know, you know? But growing awareness and pop culture embracing of the green movement mean that it will just be natural for our kids to grow up with this as a goal.

I like that.

Photo Credit: Mr Munnings on Tour (via Flickr under CCL)

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