You in?

Are you participating in Earth Hour? Are you telling everyone you know about it? You should! To learn more visit March Challenge. Let us know if you plan on turning your lights out on March 28 by leaving a comment below. Together we can make a difference!

Love green or green love

Was your Valentine's Day green? Tell us about it! We want to hear how you worked smart living practices into your life, especially when it comes to something that is not typically associated with "green". If you went green on Valentine's Day – we're impressed! Tell us how by leaving a comment to this post.

A paperless life

Did you take on January's Green Muncie challenge? We want to hear about it! Tell us how you reduced paper in your life by leaving a comment to this post. Check out previous challenges at Challenges.

Earth Hour

When it comes to activism, I am usually a skeptic. Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that if it wasn't for Earth First! and Green Peace, the Nestle boycott and a series of other organized, passionate groups we wouldn't be where we are today. I became a member of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) when I was about 5 or 6, I sold T-shirts and stuffed animals to raise conservation funds. It was a total life changer and probably part of my decision to study the environment (which I have known since I was about that old). I appreciate past activism, and sometimes even the activism needed today (I still support WWF, for example). But I tend to shy away from it, because oftentimes it is so divisive. When we started the Smart Living Project, I personally believed very strongly that one of our cornerstones should be non-activism (the other two being positive environmentalism and providing the resources for easy change). But there are definitely some issues and campaigns that are easy to get behind. Take Earth Hour as an example. When someone claims that the fundamentals of climate change are still controversial and up for debate ("is it happening"), I can't help but chuckle a little. There is always room for healthy discussion in my book, but to say that this is not some kind of oil-corporation lobbying trick is pretty ridiculous. Earth Hour is a global event to turn out lights for one hour and make a statement of concern about climate change and commitment to finding solutions. It's pretty simple, and aligns well with the cornerstones of the Smart Living Project through one simple mantra: together we can make a difference. When millions turn out their lights on March 28, I think you'll wish that you did, too.

SLP's web site

Don't forget to check out SLP's web site at SLP's web site for smart living advice, our Green Muncie Challenges, and smart living guides. Submit your own best smart living tips through our contact form.

Making room for sustainability in your life

Sustainable living is a complex science. The conscious consumer is faced every day with green dilemmas that at first glance may seem impossibly hard. The most important part to leading a more sustainable life, in my opinion, is to make decisions that work for you. If asked to make major life alterations in a short period of time even the most the most committed environmentalist will eventually throw in the towel. That’s why adopting small changes incrementally over time and making sustainability work for you is usually the best way to go. However, when faced with difficult decisions about our consumption habits, such as choosing between organic food grown far away or local food produced using pesticides or other chemicals, we can approach it several different ways. We can simply choose the product that boasts features that are most important to us, such as organic food for our own personal health versus supporting a local food system in our community. The issue you feel stronger about is the right choice. Luckily many local producers who are part of our local food system believe in sustainable agriculture and produce food without pesticides. The other option is to turn to environmental scientists. There are internationally accepted methods for determining the sustainability of a product or food item, such as Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) or the concept of food miles. These tools allow us to look at a more comprehensive picture of the environmental burden of the product from a “cradle to grave” perspective. In the case of food miles, food is tracked literally from its origin to your table based either on weight or calories provided. These and other methods often provide the basis for product labeling, called eco-labels. The use of eco-labels is typically an attempt by various nations’ governments to avoid what is often called “green washing”; a company’s claim that their product is greener than the next without any science to substantiate those claims. “Green” has become the newest trend and everywhere you turn companies, products and services are all touted to be “green”, “environmentally friendly”, or “natural”. But without standards for these claims, the words are meaningless. It’s really just about marketing. You need to look for credible labels, or do a substantial amount of research yourself. A good place to start learning about eco-labels is at eco-labels.org. This domain is now owned by Consumer Reports, but it’s a well-managed project that is now hosted at greenerchoices.org. While we all certainly need a minimum amount of food and goods to survive, of increasing significance are our consumption habits. The idea of curbing our consumption, not just doing without, but by also substituting quality over quantity, is equally or more important than making the choice between for example, local and organic. It’s of course not a new idea, denying what some would claim is an intrinsic drive for consumption can be traced to the voluntary simplicity movement, Quakers, the origins of several major religions including Christianity and Buddhism, and the Spartans to name a few. The bottom line though, is avoiding the crappy quality goods that don’t last and that you probably don’t need, sold by Wal-Mart and its likes. Consider whether you should be buying before you consider what to buy.

Blogging on smart living?

Ah, the joy of blogging. Honestly, I haven’t really tried it before and I am not really a blog follower either, so I have no idea what the expectations are. But ever since we started the Smart Living Project, people have been asking us “do you have a blog”? Now the answer is definitely yes, but what kind of content were our members and followers really expecting? For me, at least, this blog will serve as a series of anecdotes on the journey to sustainability, trying to weave in some tips, ideas and advise for what it’s worth along the way. This time of year, all I can think about is gardening. In fact, it will completely consume me if I let it. I find tremendous happiness from growing things, whether it be food or flowers, even grass. It’s true; a couple of weeks ago I started growing grass indoors. Maybe just to have something to grow and something green around the house, but the purpose, I told everyone, was to grow “oats for cats” for my friends’ cats. Turned out they didn’t like it so much, but it was a fun project that satisfied my gardening craze for a while. About the same time, I bought my first sprouter. Funny you think, someone who has been gardening as much as I have never made sprouts? The fact is I didn’t think I liked them. But if you make them yourself, they taste a whole lot better. So in a round-about way, that’s what I wanted to come to. Growing things yourself. It’s very sustainable. Why? First of all, it’s tremendously local. Even if you buy seeds and supplies over the Internet, there is still a lot less transportation involved. And that’s one of the core things that I like to look for when I judge if something is sustainable. How far did this item have to be shipped? The bigger and heavier it is, the more gas was used, too. The second thing I look for, and this is my personal choice really, is the input of chemicals, especially when it comes to food. This is for health reasons of course, why eat unnatural materials when you don’t have to? But it’s also fundamentally unsustainable to produce, transport and release toxic chemicals into the environment. Even if they are deemed safe for human consumption, or their manufacturer proudly proclaims that they biodegrade within five days, they are by definition poisons. That’s what they were designed to do. So why do it if you don’t need to? It’s been proven over and over again that organic agriculture is equally or more productive per acre than conventional agriculture. Most recently, a study at the University of Minnesota came to this conclusion, but there are others. This brings me back to the third item I look for. Anything that is unnecessary. I have never really heard this argument in a sustainability conversation, but think about it. For example, when I buy paper towels I refuse to buy the printed ones. Not only do I think they are pretty dumb, but why waste the ink, the energy that goes into the machine and the extra packaging that states “cute motifs” when you don’t need it? That’s an extra burden on the environment that makes no sense to me. Maybe this is something that stuck with me when I studied lifecycle assessment in college, but for some reason I like to look at products and compare them based on which is simpler. Fewer ingredients, fewer hard-to-pronounce ingredients, and less industrial input in general are things to me that make a product sustainable. I loosely base my decisions on what I know about lifecycle assessment, industrial ecology, and eco-labeling principles. So far it works well for me. Later!