Some experts point to increased bottled water ad campaigns targeting minorities as the cause of this phenomenon. Coca Cola and Nestle, owners of Dasani and Poland Spring respectively, are structuring their advertising campaigns to specifically focus on African American and Latino mothers who commonly control household spending. It’s working.

Forbes Magazine reports that a significant portion of people of color are convinced that bottled water is healthier, cleaner and safer than the virtually free stuff that comes from the tap. But Forbes notes the evidence pointing toward the contrary: “A National Resources Defense Council investigation discovered that 17% of bottled waters contained unsafe levels of bacterial loads, and 22% were contaminated with chemicals, including arsenic.”

Chilli, former member of the music group TLC, and son push Dasani

Bottled water campaigns use the healthy angle to tout water as the smart choice for mothers who want the best for their families. In a way, that’s true. Research suggests that substituting water for sugary drinks “could result in up to 235 fewer extra calories per day being taken in by children and adolescents.” But mothers can encourage an increase in water consumption without doling out gobs of money for bottled water.

Despite the arguments against consuming bottled water, namely the personal financial and environmental costs, I think some people of color still avoiding tap water as a result of these carefully placed ad campaigns. A corporation using fear mongering to rake in customers—in this case by intimating that not buying their brand means putting your children at risk of drinking dirty water—is nothing new, but I think it’s unfortunate that this marketing ploy is contributing to the financial burden on low-income communities. Read more here.

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1. The story of bottled water

I’m talking in particular about Llanllyr Source, a bottled water company based out of the U.K that claims its water is organic because it comes from beneath an organic farm. But NPR makes an interesting counterpoint: “Remember the properties of water? H2O means each molecule of water contains two atoms of hydrogen (H) joined to one atom of oxygen (O). In order for something to be organic — as in alive — it needs carbon. So water, by definition is inorganic.”

I suppose the rules must be different in the U.K, because in America the U.S. Department of Agriculture specifically excludes water when defining which products can be classified as organic.

But Llanllyr markets itself as Mr. Green, touting its environmental awareness and emphasizing the fact that it is a UN Global Compact signature. However, Principle 8 of the Compact states that businesses should “undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility.” How can bottled water possibly be considered environmentally responsible when so much carbon is expelled in the extraction, packaging, and exporting process? And for what? To make people believe that just because they paid $4 for a sleek silver aluminum can the contents will be more pure? I sincerely hope that false assurances and ridiculous green washing will not be enough to convince people that it’s worth it to further pollute the planet just for a drink of water.

One more hilarious tidbit from the Llanllyr website:  “[Our water] is distinctively soft and an ideal meal accompaniment.”

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1. Organic produce is not cheap, so if you are going to buy conventionally grown fruits and veggies I suggest choosing items with a peel to cut down on the amount of pesticides you are ingesting. So save money by buying non-organic oranges, lemons and bananas but splurge on peaches (the fruit with the highest pesticide load according to The Environmental Working Group) and berries.
2. Invest in a good bike: The amount of money you’ll save on gas will soon offset the cost of a bicycle. And you don’t even have to buy a new bike- get one used from your local bike trader.
3. Shop at a thrift store: The clothing industry is taxing on the environment and on our water resources. By buying pre-worn clothing, you are not only avoiding department store prices but you are recycling and re-using in a way that benefits the planet.
4. Turn off the lights: Save energy, save money on your electric bills– simple as that.
5. Make your own cleaning supplies- While Seventh Generation is widely considered to be one of the most environmentally responsible household products brand, they aren’t cheap. Here’s how to make your own supplies.
6. DON’T BUY BOTTLED WATER! I know I’ve written about the detrimental effects of bottled water a hundred times, but I really can’t emphasize it enough. Dropping 2 bucks every time you want some water adds up. So buy a re-usable water bottle or water filter—good for your wallet, good for the earth.

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Here’s what Cameron Walker of National Geographic News has to say about the holidays: “Yes, the holidays draw out the best in most of us each year. But they also bring what seems like an environmentalist’s worst nightmare: tons of extra garbage, millions of chopped-down trees, and megawatts of flashing lights. With a little tweaking, however, everything from holiday gift-giving to light-stringing can celebrate the environment, too.” As we celebrate the holidays this year, we can celebrate the environment too. Here’s how:

Every year between Thanksgiving and New Years, Americans throw away an addition 1 million tons of garbage. This, according to environmentalist and author Robert Lilienfeld, is a result of all the surplus wrapping paper we’re using at the time. To eliminate some of that waste, try reusing gift bags and ribbons, wrapping presents in newspaper (it doesn’t look that trashy, I promise), or buying recycled gift wrap.

During the nation’s biggest shopping season, remember to bring reusable bags with you. Also, cloth shopping bags make great gifts! They’re not only trendy, they’re eco-friendly too.

Switching to LED Christmas lights will save money and energy. Reduce your carbon imprint this month by investing in low-power lights that are long-lasting (50,000-100,000 hour life span), safe, and recyclable. Holiday Creations is one place to buy them.

Recycle your Christmas tree! Here’s the blog post I wrote last year about how to do so: Treecycling

Plan your gift shopping in advance so as to avoid making lots of different trips. This saves you fuel, money, and the hassle of fighting through holiday traffic.

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1. Straw!

As it gets colder and fall settles in, I’m already thinking about how to keep warm and keep my heating bills low at the same time. I found a great site that explains how to easily winterize your home (so easily in fact that even I can do it) in order to save money and energy. So warm up, be green, and check out this site: 19 Easy Home Winterization Projects

Also, eco-idea of the day: Why not use shower caps instead of cellophane to cover left-over containers in the fridge? This saves money (each package of saran wrap costs about 3 dollars whereas re-usable shower caps are only 99 cents for 3) and saves plastic. Watch this video to find out why saving plastic is good for our water resources:

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Millions of tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year. The plastic bottles, Saran wrap and TV dinner containers we use all have to go somewhere, and more often than not it’s into the sea. So I asked myself what I can do as one person to use less plastic and be more conscientious about preventing this problem from getting bigger. This is what I came up with: don’t use straws. Simple, yet effective.

Think about it, do you really need one? Really really? Straws aren’t too hard to cut out and it’s worth it, environmentally speaking, to try. There’s also the option to buy glass straws. The ones that GlassDharma sell have a lifetime guarantee against breakage. I buy re-usable water bottles and shopping bags-so why not straws? It’s a little thing- but it counts!

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How it works: While there are many ways to harvest rainwater, it is usually done in one of two ways: the water is collected either from roofs or saved in underground cisterns. Roof catchment systems move the water into a storage container (sometimes underground), like a rain barrel, through pipes or gutters. To see it for yourself, click this link for pictures of the various types of rainwater harvesting systems available. The collected water can then be used for watering lawns, washing cars, flushing the toilet or whatever else you can think of.

A model of an underground rainwater storage system

In India, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have taken an active role in generating the capital needed to build catchment systems. Groups like Jal Swaraj create rain centers that provide information, resources, and training for locals. In turn, these locals present their wealth of traditional wisdom about how best to interact with nature. The NGOs give money or building materials thereby enabling residents to put their knowledge to work and appeasing the water crisis in their area.

Rainwater harvesting is gaining momentum in the U.S as well. Because there are so many rainwater harvesting companies in America nowadays, it is becoming easier and cheaper to buy and/or install rainwater collection devices in your own home. Here are just a few companies to choose from:

RainHarvest

Rain Harvesting

American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association

Water Tanks

It’s really exciting that investing in technology that helps the environment by reusing natural resources is catching on. In Malaysia, the Environment Ministry is encouraging developers to make rainwater collection systems a selling point for house buyers and to stress the point that while these systems might be expensive today, they will save a lot of money tomorrow. Hospitals are in on it, homeowners are in on it, even hospitals and baseball teams (which I will write about later on because that’s an interesting story in and of itself). The revival of rainwater harvesting is essential in times of environmental uncertainty and I can only hope that more people will save and reuse resources in this way.

Related posts:

1. Press Release: Rainwater Warehouse Launches Rainwater Harvesting E-Commerce Website
2. Water in the news
3. Barefoot engineering

Thanksgiving is about food. Lots and lots of food. But while we loosen our belts, we are hopefully thinking about what we are thankful for. During this thoughtful and reflective time of year, I think we should also be thinking about where such bounty comes from. What steps preceded the turkey arriving on your plate? I’m not talking about your mother-in-law back seat cooking on Thursday afternoon. I mean before that. How did the turkey spend its life before it became headless and frozen?
Here is what Jonathon Safran Foer has to say about what it means to eat turkey on Thanksgiving (excerpt from his book Eating Animals):

At the center of our Thanksgiving tables is an animal that never breathed fresh air or saw the sky until it was packed away for slaughter. At the end of our forks is an animal that was incapable of reproducing sexually. In our bellies is an animal with antibiotics in its belly. The very genetics of our birds are radically different. If the pilgrims could have seen into the future, what would they have thought of the turkey on our table? Without exaggeration, it’s unlikely that they would recognize it as a turkey.

Almost 300 million turkeys are raised for slaughter each year in America. Most spend their days in windowless sheds with thousands of other birds. It is so crowded in there that turkeys cannot spread their wings even once in their lifetimes. They have to have their beaks and toes cut off to keep from killing each other in such close quarters. Many die of stress-related illnesses like heart failure at a young age or they lose the ability to walk because their legs do not support their body weight. Turkeys have been genetically modified and pumped with chemicals so that they fatten up faster and live shorter lives. Those chemicals and antibiotics are transferred to your body upon consumption.

If you can, try to find independent butcher shops near you by using this site: www.LocalHarvest.org. Talking to a farmer one-on-one at a local market about how your turkey was raised ensures that you are avoiding green washing, i.e. claims of humane conditions without proof. Avoid buying the Broad Breasted White brand of turkey because that is the type that is genetically modified. An alternative is the Heritage Turkey which is raised naturally.

Here are some recipes for side dishes, desserts, soups, and salads that are made with earth-friendly ingredients:

Carrot cake
Apple Bavarian Torte
Sweet Potato Biscuits
Butternut Squash Soup
French Onion Soup
Endive, Apple and Walnut Salad
Savory Cornbread Stuffing
Caramelized Apple-Pecan Cake

For more vegetarian holiday recipes, click here or here

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Don’t be a jerk. It’s one thing to have good eco-friendly intentions, but when you start bawling out your friends for leaving the water running too long while they’re washing dishes you can turn from greeny to meany. When I watch my brother chug three, four, five plastic bottles of water per day I get the same urge to strangle him that I had as a seven year old when he hogged the TV. And when I wake up in the morning to find that my roommates have left the lights on all night I want to leave nasty little reminder notes about how they’re killing polar bears. But, I’m not a jerk. Or at least I try not to be. What I want to know is how we can be more constructive in our efforts to get the people we love to start loving the environment. So, a few tips:

Don't be an eco-elitist!

1. I’ve found that any version of ‘Thou shalt not’ is a no-no. We all have mothers who provide enough guilt trips to last us until the last ice caps melt, so, needless to say, lay off the scolding and preaching. Eco-guilt is not an effective way to get people on board with your cause.

2. When a person wags their finger, they might as well be saying “I am perfect and you are not.” Confessing a few sins you’ve committed helps to take you off your high horse. If you admit that you don’t always wash out the peanut butter jar to recycle it and instead just trash it, or that you forget to unplug your phone charger when you aren’t using it then you can level the playing field enough to create an open and healthy line of communication between you and the bottled-water-drinker.

3. Don’t make it seem like you are personally attacking the person. Present their problematic behavior in the context of wider issues (i.e. water scarcity, over-consumption, unnecessary waste…) and mention how the fight against these environmental problems is a group effort. We are all trying to make small changes in our daily lives to manage climate change, and this process is something your friend can be a part of. But when you call him/her out on littering, you make it seem like that person is single-handedly ruining the earth. It’s not like they’re setting out to hunt for the last albino baby seal, they just haven’t realized their environmental impact yet.

4. Using “I” statements is another way to avoid guilt trips and personal attacks. So instead of saying “You’re wasting water!” say, “I try not to use so much water because I realized that it might be affecting our water supply.” Ideally, you will come off sounding less critical and your friend will be more likely to emulate your green behavior.

5. Another way to address these tricky topics is to go about it from the money-saving angle. If a person realizes that installing energy-efficient light bulbs in their homes would save them $30 in energy costs over the life of the bulb, maybe their ears would perk up. Or if you mentioned that a Prius’ fuel cost per year is $829 (compared to a Hummers’ which is $3,223 perhaps they’d go green-if only for the sake of their wallets.

I hope these tips help. Keep on fightin’ the good fight.

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Urban alleyways conjure images of dark, slimy, creepy things. They’re places where only the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles should hang out. But Chicago, the city with the most alleys in the world (1,900 miles of them to be exact), is transforming theirs into cleaner places as a part of the new Green Alley Program. The plan is to repave them with permeable materials to benefit the environment. Here’s how:

1. Pavement absorbs water that then goes into the earth reducing flooding and saving tax payer money which would otherwise be spent treating storm water
2. The pavement is a light color so it reflects heat and is cooler, reducing the “urban heat island effect”
3. They’re made of recycled materials
4. Lights in the alleys will be energy efficient

Green alleys aren’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think of ways to reduce the effects of climate change, but I think urban renewal projects like this one can really make a difference in the long run.

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