Organic Researcher

The Carnival of the Green

It is my great pleasure to host the Carnival this week, taking the baton on from Triple Pundit (and in turn I’ll hand it on to Great Green Goods ). This week there is a really varied range of contributions from environmentally sustainable tampons through to the predictions of Karl Rove, via video competitions, green buildings and a great deal more – so this week almost defines electic.

Starting gently, with a decent cup …

We like coffee in our house and enjoy plenty of it. Most weekday mornings at approximately 4:50 AM, you’ll find me emptying the moist grounds from the day before into the trash container. Over the course of a year, I’m convinced that I’ve disposed of at least one or perhaps even two curbside trash bins full of coffee grounds. That’s a lot of grounds being trucked off to the landfill. Here’s my penny-wise tip of the week. Did you know that coffee is good for plants?

Nina Smith presents Coffee Grounds in the Garden posted at Queercents.

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chances are that wasn’t locally grown but here is a guide to why you should be buying if not not growing locally..

Top 10 Eco-Reasons to Buy Local Food

Here are the top 10 reasons to buy locally grown food. Buying local helps not only the environment, but also our health and the welfare of laborers.

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I’m just going to be a bloke about this, it’s important but I can’t add anything …

In an effort to promote its new line of eco-friendly feminine products, Seventh Generation dispatched two “mission fairies” to spread the word about safe, natural tampons and pads.

The month-long “Tampontification Tour” included a stop at a Santa Monica health foods store – where we chatted with Jennifer and Stacie about their experiences taking tampons to the masses and Seventh Generation’s efforts to donate products to women in need.

more at LA Green Living

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As some one who struggles to repair the house he is in, this looks great.

LEED-H Prototype Heather’s Home: Modern, Green + Affordable

DFW builder Don Ferrier’s daughter wanted an affordable, green home, so they retained the best, local green architect, Gary Olp of GGOArchitects, to get the job done. The result is Heather’s Home, which has its own website at www.heathershome.info. What’s interesting about this home is that it’s economically pragmatic, but it looks goods–it’s proof that a modern, green home can be relatively affordable.
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more on the building theme, from the green edge of real estate/estate agency.

We’ll all be Earthcraft soon

By Jim Duncan

And that qualifies as a “good thing.”

At an open house this weekend, a builder and I were discussing homeowners’ evolving wants and demands in their homes. Friday, I met with some potential buyers who spoke to exactly what I foresee as being what is “next,” both from a want and a need perspective.

Buyers want quality. They want energy efficiency. They want smart design. They want good materials. They want their homes to be more than a house that has been vomited up on a clear-cut landscape and put up as quickly as possible by whomever could be found and contracted with to be built by whomever they builder could find who would show up.

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For all the YouTube Greens amongst us.

TreeHugger/7th Generation Video Contest Launches Tuesday!

At long last, TreeHugger’s collaborative project with Seventh Generation is launching! It’s a video contest called “Convenient Truths”.

We’re asking readers to submit short videos featuring proactive, practical and positive solutions to the environmental problems we face. We’ve got a fabulous celebrity panel to pick the winners in a few months and a bunch of great prizes.

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A more ancient art, using modern technology.

A bedtime parable
Mark A. Rayner

Once there was a boy, just about the same age as you, who lived with people unlike us.

–Yes, they were different. Not much, but different enough.

He was a very smart young man, just like you, who saw that not all things were right with the way that his people lived. He tried to tell them, but they would not listen. One day it got colder and everyone made fires to make their houses warm.

continued at Mark A. Rayner presents A bedtime parable posted at the skwib.

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We are starting to switch back and forth across the Atlantic now, an interesting post from the up and coming green city that is Sheffield. It is not just the backdrop for the ‘Full Monty’ you know, or if you don’t read this…

Climate change: a local perspective

Last week I had a call from a local journalist who was researching an article on the signs and symptoms of climate change. In particular he wanted to know how global warming is effecting animals and plants in the Sheffield area. He also asked me for my personal impressions about how the climate is changing locally.

Roger Butterfield presents Climate change: a local perspective posted at Words and Pictures.

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I’m resisting a quip about sustainable warfare. Good to see the folks in uniform are thinking about these things.

Greener News Room

Who would pay millions of dollars for a vehicle with no steering wheel, seats, or a gas pedal? The U.S. Military. A new Hybid vehicle developed under environmental protocols instituted by the military could save lives as well as help the environment.

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Is far too early me, but not for Eco Street and quite possibly you..

Eco Street’s “Green Christmas” guide

Counting down…

Start as you mean to go on. Biome Lifestyle will set you up for a green Christmas with the Christmas Survival Kit & Advent Calendar. The advent calendar is stocked with organic sweets, eco-friendly Christmas survival tips and some small surprise gifts, and the calendar itself is made of sustainable materials and designed to be used year after year. Priced at £25.00. (Refills for the calendar will be available every year from Biome Lifestyle.)

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A spiritual turn,

What makes creation care different from environmentalism? What distinguishes Christian ecology from other religious attention to wildlife (or non-religious attention for that matter)?

Thought on this at The Evangelical Ecologist Blog

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The travails of squatting

Riversider presents Canterbury Hall Squatters – Highlighting Community Facilities Under Threat posted at Save The Ribble!.

Canterbury Hall Squatters – Highlighting Community Facilities Under Threat

The news today is that the Canterbury Hall Squatters, a group called ‘Viva Six Fingers’ after a heroic fighter in the Spanish Civil War have been ordered to quit the Community Center they are occupying on Garstang Road within 24 hours…

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Fascinating piece from ‘The New Statesman’

How clean and green are we really?

Published by Sian Berry November 13th, 2006

Oddly, given that I am focusing on local issues for my Council by-election campaign in North London, globalisation has been on my mind a lot in the last week or two.

click for more from one of the main speakers for the UK’s Green Party.

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Making a lot of small differences = a substantial one?

Go M.A.D! Go Make a Difference – Emma Jones and Jo Bourne

Over 500 daily ways to save the planet

This book really does have a lot of useful ideas about how you can save the earth. It’s also presented beautifully, so you can read it straight through, browse through ideas or just flip to a random page for some inspiration. Nice!

What is also nice is that the book is riddled (in a palatable way) with ads for useful green products and organisations. The products look great but they’re mainly for the UK audience.

Angela Randall presents Go M.A.D! Go Make a Difference – Emma Jones and Jo Bourne posted at AngelaRandall.com.

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After a life time of reading his books I’ve only just found William Gibson’s blog, and this made me laugh!

FAITH IN HIS FIGURES

posted 7:02 PM

”Rove thought the polls were obsolete because they relied on home telephones in an age of do-not-call lists and cell phones. Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House—enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists—to study just how wrong the polls were.”–MSNBC

Genius.

William Gibson

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Thanks to everyone who sent in contributions – it has made for a fascinating week, City Hippy recruited me to this after we had a bit of an on-line tiff and look where it led.

best wishes

Matt – aka Organicresearcher