Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the house...

...people were panicking with the realisation that they still had gifts to buy but did not want to buy any old unethical crap made of chemical-leaking plastic that had flown millions of miles adding lots of CO2 to our precious atmosphere before being thrown away after less than 12 seconds of someone's attention and spending the rest of it's decomposing days wasting space in landfill.

Aaaaand relax...

For those of you who need last minute green gift salvation help is at hand.

Here are my top last minute ideas for some instant great green gifts that you can give without needing to wrap a present.

GREEN SUBSCRIPTIONS
It is nice and easy to give the gift of a magazine subscription. I love doing this. Part gift and part ideological warfare. Nice. Here are some I would be happy to give and receive:

National Geographic
Ode
The Ecologist
Spirit & Destiny
Plenty
Organic Life
Resurgence
E-magazine
New Consumer
Sublime
The Green Guide
Permaculture
Utne Reader
Green Parent
Ethical Consumer

GOOD GREEN GIFTS
2006 will be City Hippy's Year of the Green Gift as far as I am concerned. I will promise here and now to buy Oxfam Unwrapped gifts for ALL 2006 gifts, regardless of what and who they are for. This will cause serious waves I am sure. Just has to be done though.

Oxfam Unwrapped allows you to buy goats, train farmers and give kids school meals. Not much use in the middle of London or New York I grant you but this sort of assistance to the global poor ensure that they can stand just a little bit taller on their own two feet and that means that one more corner of our planet is just a little bit brighter and ever so slightly more self-sufficient.

Namaste & Ho Ho Ho

CH

p.s. this is an edited post from CityHippy.net

Greenthinker Nathan: Signing Off For '05

This urban Greenthinker is heading off duty for a week or so but wish you all a happy holidays in advance. Whatever feast you enjoy this season, I hope it's a happy and peaceful one (except for the 'feats of strength' portion of the celebration).

Thanks for reading, I'll be back in '06, better than ever!

Photo credit: Exit171com and Sony Pictures.

Loans That Change Lives

A few months ago I heard about an organization called Kiva. Kiva allows individuals or companies to loan, not give, money to small businesses in the developing world. Here is more about how it works:

By choosing a business on our website and then lending money online to that enterprise, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive monthly email updates that let you know about the progress being made by the small business you've sponsored. These updates include reports on loan repayment progress, photos of new capital equipment, narratives on business growth and standard of living improvements, and more. As loans are repaid, you will get your original loan money back.

You can loan as little as $25, even using PayPal. The big question some might have is why a loan and not a donation? I will let the Kiva site explain.

Over the last three decades, microfinance has proven to be an effective tool in raising the standard of living in impoverished communities. Up to now, there has not existed a way for individuals in developed countries to participate directly in this exciting movement. Kiva believes individuals in developed countries will find loaning to be a more rewarding and sustainable form of involvement in international development than traditional giving. In other words, when you receive your original loan amount back, you are more likely to loan again than if you simply made a donation.

I was very excited when I heard about this. So Greenthinkers and Sancor Industries Ltd. (who makes Envirolet® Composting Toilets and helps pay for this site and employs me!) decided to loan a small amount of money ($100.00) to see what this was all about.

We really liked the idea of helping a small business. We know how difficult it can be in the beginning for a business and hope our small loan can give them the little bit they need to be successful in business and life.

A cool thing about Kiva is you choose who to loan to. So, you can browse the different business proposals and pick which small business to loan money too. And, as they progress you get updates in the form of a business log or diary.

We chose a company called Blessings in Uganda run by Margaret Etyang. Here is more info on Blessings:

Partner: Village Enterprise Fund
Partner Rep(s): Moses Onyango , Joseph Adongu
Location: Tororo, Uganda
Entrepreneur: Margaret Etyang
Activity: Retail Shop
Loan Amount: $500
Loan Use: Buy stock for her shop.
Start Date: December 1, 2005
Loan Repayment Term Range: 6-12 months
Amount Repaid: $0

Margaret is married with nine children.

She has been doing this very business for five years. She has experience in her business. She got a grant money worth 100 dollars from Village Enterprise Fund in the year 2001.

Margaret runs a small store outside of Tororo that deals in domestic and kitchen supplies. She has the only such store in the area and people walk up to an hour just to buy supplies from her store. She deals in both wholesale and retail.

A loan will help Margaret significantly upgrade her store. She is currently supporting her family with the store, but they are struggling to pay school fees and buy medicine.

Given a loan 500 dollars, she plans to expand her business by buying the essential commodities in large quantity -- sugar, salt, bread, cooking oil, washing soap, toilet soap, rice, baking powder, baking flour, matches etc.

Some of the other active businesses on the Kiva site can be found here.

So, we loaned $100 and others loaned the remaining $400 she needed. On Decemeber 16 we received an update:

Business Update
She has a shop that she started as a small business four years ago with the grant that was given to him with Village Enterprise Fund (VEF), the shop deals with the sale of domestic and kitchen supplies and it’s the only shop in the village of his area, their for she enjoys a lot of abnormal profits. With the help of the loan of $500, it helped her to buy more stock in her shops and now days since she received the loan, she now sales most of the supplies in wholesale and retail to the people within her local community and her stock has highly been lifted by the loan and she now enjoys lots of profits being the sole trader around the whole village and she gets a lot of profits and she is now able of supporting her fairly in paying her children school fees and meeting all family needs. The loan has helped her open up an expanded business with a lot of essential commodities that has large market within the community making her capable of handling the loan and paying it back faithfully in the tune of paying it back. Thanks, Joseph Reporter.

I am excited to get more updates! We are going to look into other business to loan money to in 2006.

You should check out the Kiva web site and consider loaning a small amount. This also makes a great gift!

Greenthinker Gifts: Solar-Powered Garden Lights

It may not be the right time of year to install them in some parts of the worl (you know, frozen ground and all) but the new generation of pre-assembled solar rechargeable garden lights are a pretty great gift for those who enjoy their garden.

They are pre-assembled and constructed of durable, rust proof die-cast metal to last for years. Featuring LED technology for extra-long run times, multiple LEDs for maximum brightness and special internal reflector to enhance and distribute light evenly, all you have to do is spike them into the ground and you're good to go.

No wiring required– assembles and installs in seconds. The solar panel converts sunlight into electricity and charges the rechargeable battery during the day. At night, light turns on automatically.

Brinkmann was the brand that dominated the shelves of my local hardware superstore the last time I checked.

OmniNerd Takes On The Hybrids!

In a recent article, OmniNerd number-crunched over a few all-nighters in order to see if hybrid vehicles in their current state and at their current price are a steal or not.

Their summary, as we have discussed in the past, gas-electric hybrids are the most fuel-efficient passenger cars on the road and ecologically there isn't a more viable option. But until something big changes, the industry-high efficiency can't economically offset the steep sticker price.

Check out all the crazy charts and graphs here. It's pretty compelling and thorough stuff - taking into account mileage, car loan payments, performance, maintenance, value retention and a whole lot more. Thanks OmniNerd.

Greenthinker Gifts: Un-Petroleum

Here's a stocking stuffer for you - Un-Petroleum.

Petroleum-free products like lip balm by Avalon Natural Products work and use plant oils, natural waxes, essential vitamins and therapeutic herbs.

You'll never find common petroleum-based ingredients like petrolatum, petroleum jelly, paraffin or mineral oil - derived from the same crude oil that is used to make gasoline - in any of their Un-Petroleum plant-powered lip balms or body care products.

The lip balms also feature healing vitamin E and SPF sun protection. Without parabens, harsh preservatives or petrolatum, they also come in different flavours.

Greenthinker Gifts: Living Gifts

Looking for some last-minute easy-on-the-planet present suggestions? Then let's ride along with the NRDC and check out their favourite environmentally-friendly gifts. They include...

A great reminder that there is life beyond the desktop might be a National Parks Pass.

A subscription to The Green Guide is certainly one of the more useful gifts out there. By doing research on products and practices, they take the hard work out of doing right - like Greenthinkers!

Seeds of Change has a great collection of organic garden supplies, including seeds and fruit trees. Awesome stocking stuffers (the seeds, that is).

Check out the list for suggestions galore. Thanks NRDC!

Seiko's New Disaster Clock

When disaster strikes, you want to be prepared, don't you? Because if you aren't prepared, you may live to regret it. Ok, ok, enough of the fear mongering. This is just a lame introduction to a post about Seiko's new Disaster Clock. The $45 flashlight-radio and personal alarm will last for 30 hours on battery power while using the flashlight continuously. Sure, we can't ignore the fact that it isn't crank powered, like other products we've posted about in the past. But it's pretty cool, nonetheless.

Thanks Gizmodo for the tip.
Photo credit: Seiko Japan.

Taiwan Skyscraper Causing Earthquakes?

According to Associated Press reports published in Wired, the weight of the world's tallest skyscraper - specially built to withstand Taiwan's frequent earthquakes - could be causing a rise in the number of tremors beneath.

Lin Cheng-horng, an earthquake specialist at the National Taiwan Normal University, says the Taipei 101 building (named for the number of floors) might rest on an earthquake fault line.

In the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, Lin wrote that the pressure of the building's 700,000 tons on the ground may be leading to increased seismic activity.

However, Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau countered, saying that the one year since the building's completion was too short a period in which we can evaluate its effect on tremors.

Taipei 101 (right), which looks like a giant steel-and-glass bamboo shoot, is equipped with a 733-ton ball suspended near the top that moves to counter the force of earthquakes or strong winds.

AP via Wired.
Photo credit: NPR

Greenthinker Gifts: Black Greenthinkers Tee

Still looking for the perfect gift?

Why not give the badass greenthinker in your life something special like the new black Greenthinkers logo t-shirt.

I know it's what I want for Christmas!

Greenthinker Gifts: Sarah Harmer's New CD

Not only is she a fantastic singer-songwriter, Sarah Harmer also recently embarked on a tour to help bring attention to the plight of the Niagara Escarpment, the most prominent topographical feature of the southern part of Ontario. that hosts old forests, headwaters and important local diversity.

In 1999 UNESCO designated the region a World Biosphere Reserve which should have afforded the area even more protection but Toronto's sprawl is still encroaching. Harmer organized the 'I Love The Escarpment' tour to protest an application for an 82-hectare limestone quarry on the north bluffs of the sensitve Escarpment lands at the singer-songwriter's hometown of Burlington, Ontario (yes, this is a very local story...but a good one).

And she has a new cd out too - I'm A Mountain. Great reviews.

Photo credit: SarahHarmer.com

Greenthinker Gifts: Ecoist Bags

Any green thinking person who browses the web (here, here, here) or any fashionista who reads the fashion mags knows their products. But just in case you've been away, be sure to check out Ecoist.

Ecoist makes cool-looking handmade one-of-a-kind handbags out of recycled candy wrappers, food packages, and pop labels.

Ecoist was founded in 2004 and besides recycling what would be garbage into functional art, they have a great Buy a Bag, Plant a Tree program where they plant a tree for every bag sold.

Each is one-of-a-kind, so if you see one you want you better grab it quick! Makes a great holiday gift!

Greenthinker Gifts: Patagonia

Before a couple of week ago, I didn't know Patagonia from J. Crew or J.Peterman. But a friend of mine schooled me on what they are all about and I was mighty impressed.

Besides being dedicated to the sports their clothing apply to (the so-called silent sports) and innovative design for said clothing, they also show a strong commitment to grassroots environmental activism and the human (not corporate) scale. From green buildings to grants to enviro-internships, Patagonia is practicing what they preach. And good for them.

Need some comfortable outdoor clothing? Then check out their website. 1% of sales go to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment (18 million dollars and counting).

Greenthinker Gifts: Freeplay Self-Sufficient Products

Freeplay Self-Sufficient radios and flashlights give you freedom and independence from traditional power sources, leaving you equipped for any situation. Their technology combines wind-up, solar and rechargeable power into unique, portable, consumer electronic products replacing conventional battery-powered systems that are wasteful and costly. As their tag line says, "With Freeplay you’re powered wherever you go."

And to top it off, in 1998, Freeplay Energy Group created The Freeplay Foundation to facilitate and implement projects. Working primarily in Africa, the Freeplay Foundation promotes access to radio broadcasting in rural and remote areas through alternative energy solutions. Working with governments, international organizations and NGOs, they seek to advance economic progress, promote community development and help eradicate disease, famine and conflict. It does this by supporting or initiating projects that harness appropriate and alternative energy solutions that deliver information and education through radio broadcasting. The idea: to deliver self-powered technology to people who need it the most but can afford it the least.

Photo credit: Freeplay Foundation

The Greening of Google

Google is using their incredible Google Maps interface to create a new way to plan public transit trips with Google Transit.

It's still in beta right now (and only works for Portland, Oregon now) but will soon allow users to plan the best route, usoing public transportation, from point A to B.

The great thing is that if anyone can make public transit easier to use, it should be Google. No plans have been announced to have Google Space locations at transit terminals, but seems like a good idea to me!

More info, including if you work for a public system and want yours included, can be found in the FAQ section.

Greenthinker Debate: Real vs. Artificial Christmas Trees

Ah yes, the annual debate between supporters of fake Christmas trees (cutting down juvenile trees, displaying them for two weeks, then throwing them in the garbage is destructive, wasteful, and highly unfriendly to the environment) and real ones (the Christmas-tree business keeps land that would otherwise be developed in trees, plus the fake ones are often made of plastic or vinyl).

Grist magazine took a look and came up with the following conclusion:

If you must have a tree, the good old-fashioned wooden kind is the right option. That does not necessarily make them a great option, though, and you should do your tree-selecting with care. Christmas trees are an agricultural product and carry the attendant issues of all mass agriculture. There are trees grown with pesticides and herbicides vs. organic specimens, there are family operations vs. large-scale producers, etc. The bottom line: Go for the actual tree and try to support a small-scale sustainable grower if you can.

Now, some eco-tip-happy folks will suggest additional options. There's the "Buy a live tree and plant it" option, which I think is excessively poor advice if you a) live in a city or b) are susceptible to charging ahead with plantings inappropriate to your landscape. More reasonably, there's the "Don't buy a tree at all!" option, which I trust you have all already considered.

A real tree was definitely on the agenda for my first holiday season in my new home. Purchased it a few nights ago. But the only tree seller within walking distance was my local grocery store; and I have no idea where their trees come from. Will have to do more investigating next year...

Grist Magazine via Lifehacker.
Photo credit: BBC Gardening.

Greenthinker Gifts: Ancient Forest Friendly Books

Every year, ancient and endangered forests around the world are logged to produce paper. Trees up to 1200 years old end up in products such as newspapers, catalogues, magazines, and books. This isn't news.

But what is news is that eco-friendly alternatives do exist and over the past four years publishers have made significant progress towards conserving forests globally. They have worked to pioneer an international movement, have been instrumental in stimulating the market for new eco-friendly papers and garnered impressive ecological savings. That's all good news for endangered forests such as Canada's temperate rainforests and the Boreal.

So check out their collective website to see a list of participating publishers. They promise to add more detail (book and magazine titles, for example) in the near future; but one that we have all heard of is the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Canada, Germany and the UK.

Photo Credit: Ancient Forest Friendly

Steamwhistle Brewery - Brewing The Green Way

As local craft breweries sweep the continent, we'd like to highlight one for it's great green work.

Steam Whistle Brewing, an independent Toronto brewer, has successfully focused on making one beer, a premium Pilsner that everyone can enjoy. They have developed their recipe using only four natural ingredients and have packaged the beer in unique, green glass bottles.

Steam Whistle has a history of ’green thinking’: the Brewery opted out of conventional heating/cooling systems, using instead Enwave’s direct steam and deep water-cooling systems in manufacturing and for the brewery’s climate control; Smart Cars have been added to their service fleet; and the brewery’s heavy green glass bottle enjoys at least twice the number of re-uses as the industry standard brown bottle.

They also plan to continue to ’Green Shift’ by switching to biodegradable beer cups at their outdoor events.

Oh, and it's tasty too. Check your local beer store!

Greenthinker Gifts: Biodegradable Cups

A great gift for your next party host, these newfangled biodegradable cups made mainly from sugar cane and corn or natural paper fibres biodegrade within 50 days in commercial compost and only take a little longer in landfill. Standard petroleum based plastic cups...uh, they don't break down.

One particular producer of these cups that we located is Green Shift. A Toronto-based environmental company , Green Shift is producing a series of products being touted to shift society away from polystyrene and other problematic petroleum derived plastics that founder Jennifer Wright calls a "toxic nightmare that should have been banned long ago."

There are many reasons, including the fact that there is no record in history of the traditional cups ever breaking down in landfill and polystyrene being made with benzene, a known carcinogen...Not to mention the dependency these traditional products have on the petroleum industry and non-renewable resources.

To top it off, those now supplying the new cups report that some are beating the prices of their toxic cousins.

Photo credit: GreenPower

Carnival of the Green Keeps on Chooglin'

Stop number five for the Carnival of the Green is on The Greener Side.

This week, the Carnival pays a lot of attantion to the holiday shopping season with posts from Green LA Girl, City Hippy, Dee's Dotes, Great Green Goods, Urban Eco and Greenthinkers (hey that's us!) all discussing this timely topic.

Enjoy!

Soy-Based Clothing?

Organic cotton is seemingly and thankfully becoming more commonplace. With that in mind, we continue to look for the next frontier. And as oil prices remain high, the US Department of Energy is planning to convert 25% of its chemical manufacturing to an agriculture base. What does that mean? Soy, corn and possibly even weeds will all be turned into hard plastics or silky fabrics in the coming years (just as long as no one mentions hemp). Cheers.

We will post more in the future as we find out more about this emerging trend...

Photo credit: American Soybean Association, International Marketing

Solar-Powered Overhead Projector Will Help Teach Reading

This is a great example of using green-technology to do good.

A solar-powered overhead projector will help teach reading in poor, rural African and Asian communities without electricity, the non-profit group that invented it said.

The “kinkajou” projects text and images on a wall. It has been tested successfully in 45 villages in Mali and organizers hope to introduce the projector in India and Bangladesh, according to Design that Matters (DtM), a non-profit group associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The projector is built to withstand some rough handling and costs only about $50. A roll of microfilm, which can hold about 10,000 pages, costs another $10.

Via Daily Times.

Update:
Thanks to Misty and her comments we have now added the correct photo to this post.

Greenthinker Gifts: Adbusters' The Big Ideas of 2006

A worthwhile read over the holidays is Adbusters' The Big Ideas of 2006 special year-end issue. Amongst numerous essays discussions on media + culture, business, science + technology, politics, and art + life are some pieces of note on the environment:

Paul Ormerod's discussion of Robert Neild's hard-to-find book on the English, theFrench and their oyster industries is also especially enlightening.

Nield has loved oysters all his life. Shortly after he retired, on a long vacation in France, a question occurred to him. Oysters are plentiful in France, with 2 billion a year being produced, yet scarce and expensive in England, which produces just 10 million. Why? Nield knew that this was not always the case – in the mid-nineteenth century oysters had been in such abundance in Britain that they were an important part of the diet of the Victorian poor. Why had that changed?

His research took him deep into the intersection between economics and the environment. He determined that oysters all but disappeared in England because the disastrous laissez faire policies of nineteenth-century British governments allowed them to be harvested almost to extinction. Conversely, in France the extraction and conservation of this valuable natural resource was carefully regulated and controlled.

Nield’s entertaining book – if you really want to know how to open an oyster this is for you – illustrates the usefulness of thoughtful, real world economics when applied to environmental problems.

Photo credit: Adbusters

New Home Week: Light Bulbs & Urban Legends

Hmmm, urban legends may be a strong term but there used to be a general belief that because fluorescent lights used more power in their warm-up phase, then it was better to leave them on all the time.

This was actually never true!

According to the National Energy Foundation,

an old style strip light (or non-electronic CFL) only uses as much energy in the warm-up phase as it does whilst operating for a minute or so, and modern electronic ballast CFLs use even less energy at the start. Although CFLs do not use much electricity it is still best to keep them switched off when not wanted - why throw money away on anything that not needed?

Photo credit: King County

Tags: new home week light bulbs fluorescent fluorescent light bulbs greenthinkers

Habitat Jam, December 1-3

Habitat Jam is innovating the methods used for attempting to solve the world's problems, especially those caused by globalization by using the world's biggest toolbox - the internet.

In preparation for the third World Urban Forum, people can meet and discuss problems like environmental sustainability and access to water in an online forum.

Visit the site from December 1 to 3 to take part.