greenguru.org

TBS is a huge success proving many hands make light work

The Bountiful Sprout is in essence a web-based, local food co-op that allows its members to shop from home. Linking farmers and producers directly to customers, TBS keeps our farmers in business and keeps our food local. Now 60 families strong and growing every day, the Bountiful Sprout is quickly becoming our very own local grocery where we can find all we need and more without driving into San Marcos or Austin. And even better we are supporting our own, like Arnosky Farm, Morning Glory Farm, and Chisolm Beef, just to name a few.

We hear about our problems like the health care crisis, our lack of energy independence and climate change everyday, but let’s hear about some solutions. What most of us don’t realize is that the way we currently grow, process, ship and eat food in America is at the heart of all three of these problems. It now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. As Michael Pollan, author of the bestseller Omnivore’s Dilemma puts it, “when we eat from the industrial food system, we are eating oil and spewing green-house gases.” In contrast, food eaten closer to where it is grown is fresher and requires less processing, making it more nutritious.

People now are paying attention to where their food is coming from and how it is grown. The bigger and more industrial our food system, the more vulnerable it is to catastrophe. The best way to protect our food against contamination, like the recent spinach scare, is to decentralize it. Markets for alternative kinds of food like organics, local, pasture fed, and humanely raised meats, are thriving like never before because they are the solution to the broken system in place today. Here in Wimberley, the Bountiful Sprout is our solution. Buying our food locally is one small thing we can do to change our health and our path to energy independence.

“It’s exciting to think that this could be the beginning of something huge in Wimberley. Wheatsville Co-op and Whole Foods started in just the same way!” says TBS member Terri Burney-Bisett gazing into her bushel basket with a smile. Members pick up their orders every other Wednesday at the Bountiful Sprout located on RR12 just south of Jacob’s Well Road, right across from Clifford’s Wine Bar.

The Bountiful Sprout has made it their mission to not only keep shoppers from having to go into Austin or San Marcos for groceries, but to keep workers here as well, creating new economic opportunities for our residents. Those interested in becoming producers for the fastest growing group of responsible shoppers in the hill country, please go to the website, www.bountifulsprout.org and join the Forum. There you will find a wish list of products members want to find at the site and buy locally. Together, we can bring home our dollars, our passions, and our hopes for the future of Wimberley.

Call it mother’s intuition, but I was thinking it would be prudent to go and get some lead tests at the hardware store and make sure that Gabel’s toys and the antique coffee table he always seems to chew on, was free of lead paint. As everything of concern was checking out OK, I thought I would test the beaded board we used in our bathroom. It’s antique long leaf pine and beautiful, one of the most beautiful rooms in our home. There were three layers of paint showing and although they were not flaking too much, there was a dusty quality to the surface of it, so I tested it. Sure enough, the bottom layer of cream-colored paint was positive for lead! We FREAKED out. The next couple of days were spent sealing and re-sealing the bathroom walls… Here we are living in a “green” home, built with recycled materials, thinking that we are saving so many trees and at the same time getting some history and warmth in our home. We had no idea we were bringing lead into our house!

Unfortunately, old house paint is not the only place you find lead. I was just buying a new sippy cup (all of the old ones I had saved that Aidan sipped on had Bisphenol A in them and phthalates to boot), and the box of our Think Baby cup said, “Lead Free!”… What? Someone actually puts lead paint on baby sippy cups?” Not only that, but on children’s toys both plastic and wooden. Any plastic or wooden toy that is painted, especially those made in China, should be tested for lead. If you have a toddler who may be teething on these toys, lead may not be your only concern, most plastic toys contain phthalates and bisphenol A, which has been labeled even by Wal-Mart as a hazardous substance.

What have we chosen for ourselves? The bottom line, is it more important than our safety and our health?

Quote of the Month: “Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress.”  ~John Clapham, 1957


 

It’s true, the times they are a changin’ and the giant field of green jobs: jobs that produce something vital to our future like food, clean water, and energy, is blossoming with opportunity. In the green movement we are re-defining what’s important. Jobs that take care of our basic needs are what Americans are going to be seeking out in the future. Whether it’s the economy, climate change or peak oil, we are bracing ourselves for big changes; changes in our lifestyles, changes in our incomes, and changes in our worth. For a list of green-collar jobs like those in organic farming, alternative energy, alternative fuel, and water harvesting, go to www.urbanhabitat.org/node/528.

People ask me quite often how I think they should prepare for a future of food shortages and high fuel prices. Are we going to all lose an average of 30 lbs. like the people of Cuba after the Soviet Union cut them off? It depends, is it going to be a future where we have been visionary and acted ahead of events, or a future where we have let events overtake us? I don’t think you can compare our present lifestyle with that of a carbonless future. It seems impossible, but didn’t our President at one time, say, “we are going to the moon in this decade!”? Why can’t we say some 40 years later, “We are going to be energy independent in this decade with wind and solar power!”?

No one can predict how we will survive what comes, but what is vital to our survival is strong, visionary leadership, and the willingness to live within our means and our descending carbon quotas. Ours is a future where ingenuity and creativity will replace apathy, self-reliance will replace self-gratification and community gardens will replace golf courses.
I have to say that I’m actually looking forward to this dramatic shift in resources, I think it might just give us an invaluable sense of collective meaning and individual purpose, and that is something many of us have been craving for a very long time.

Quote of the Month: “We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.” -the slogan on t-shirts worn by people in the office of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights 

It’s time to refresh and renew our living space, open windows, dust and vacuum, but why do some of us get out the all-purpose cleaner for help? Most cleaners promise quick and easy cleaning, just spray and it will basically clean it for you. The green guru wonders, has it really been that easy, did the little scrubbing bubbles really do the scrubbing? Or was there a lot of elbow grease going on while you were breathing those toxic fumes?

We Americans have an obsession with cleanliness to the tune of an 18 billion dollar a year industry. There are more than 85,000 synthetic chemicals in use today and another 500 are added to the mix every year. The average family uses 40 pounds of these chemicals a year to clean their homes, and the majority of them have never been tested for safety. The most dangerous chemicals are found in carpet, oven, drain and toilet cleaners, and chlorine bleach is the chemical most frequently involved in household poisonings. These scary substances below are linked to asthma, allergies, cancer, endocrine immune and nervous system problems, reproductive and developmental disorders, and organ damage:

Alkyphenols: Found in some cosmetics as well as multi-surface cleaners, liquid laundry detergent, paints and floor coverings

Artificial musks: Found in cosmetics, shampoo, perfume, shaving foam, skin care products, liquid soap air fresheners, laundry detergent and dishwashing soap

Bisphenol A: Found in plastics, epoxies, and some skin care products

Brominated flame retardants: Found in mattresses, mattress pads, upholstered furniture, carpets and some electronics

Chlorinated paraffin: Found in upholstered furniture, floor coverings, paints, plastics and rubber products

Organotins: Found in shaving foam, floor coverings, carpets, pajamas and air mattresses

Phthalates: Found in PVC plastics, including children’s teething and other toys, in shampoo, perfume, shaving foams, cosmetics, skin products, shower curtains, air fresheners, multipurpose cleaners and food packaging materials

A five-year study by Harvard scientists revealed that pollution inside the typical American home was five times worse than the air outdoors. It is not a coincidence that since the use of these harsh chemicals, the incidence of environmentally related health problems has dramatically increased. Breast cancer rates are 30 times higher here than in less industrialized countries. The incidence of asthma in children has risen at least 160% since 1980.
We CAN save the planet from scrubbing bubbles.

This is what we do: First we remove toxic chemicals from our homes safely, go to www.earth911.org to learn how to best dispose of all kinds of materials. Then, we start replacing our cleaning products with safe and green alternatives or even start making our own.

Next, go to our own, Green Home Cleaning Resources page, for links and more information about greening your cleaning.

Or, if you’re not so inclined to do it yourself, call Shannon at Healthy Helping Hands, an organic cleaning service, at 512-586-5196 and they will clean your home for you, organically and safely.

Quote of the Month: “We now have solid scientific evidence that a variety of environmental agents can adversely affect the nervous system [of developing children]” 

— Scientific Consensus Statement on Environmental Agents Associated with Neurodevelopmental Disorder (published on February 20, 2008. Signed by 50 international health professionals and scientists.

On holidays our family likes to eat, read, watch movies and reflect on the year and what we might resolve for the next, if you are like us, add these flicks to your list. What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire,Crude Awakening, and End of Suburbia, they are movies that will make you reflect on this year and resolve on this new year to come. As humanity reaches peak EVERYTHING; oil, climate, water, waste, it’s not just time to reduce, reuse and recycle, it’s time to regroup and rethink where we are and where we are headed. We all need to question what is best for our remaining resources, how we will sail through the coming rough water and have enough food while we’re doing it.

As I watch our son Aidan draw yet another picture of the Titanic, his newest fascination, I can’t help but think it’s prophetic in some way. He is in awe of its size, its beauty and grandeur, but most of all is impressed that something so BIG actually sank. He constantly asks us, “What time of day was it…. is THIS how it sank, Mommy?” We are now quite learned on the subject. What an awesome ship, totally set up, the best of the best of everything, unsinkable, just like us, right?

To learn more about these movies and to find more books and websites on these subjects visit www.greenguru.org. Let’s build a boat, a lifeboat, right here in Wimberley. Let’s look to the town of Willits, California for our inspiration, and go to www.relocalize.net/groups/wimberley to get started. Marc signed us on over a year ago and we’ve watched new groups start up in towns all over the world. What can YOU bring into this next year that is for our community, is your resolution to eat fewer brownies or is it to eat locally? Is it to exercise more or to build communities, co-op’s, and gardens?
Happy Holidays, from the green guru and may your new year be bright green!

Quote of the Month: “…I have seen that in any great undertaking it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.” –Lone Man, Teton Sioux

Have you noticed that no matter what you buy, it seems to be entombed in plastic, then boxed up in plastic or paper and then wrapped in plastic again? Whether it’s food-to-go, a new skillet or a toothbrush, it’s wrapped up in one of the most toxic and indestructible products we humans have ever created. We think the plastic we use and then put in our little green bin is going to be recycled, but only 3 to 5% of it actually does, and that process is not what you might think. Melting plastic at high temperatures creates deadly gases so in order to recycle the plastic “safely” it actually has to be coated with a layer of new plastic. Even though we have no idea how long plastic will take to biodegrade, every year we create 60 billion more tons of it. In this cheap, convenience over wisdom, disposable culture, we have created so much plastic we are now eating it. There is nowhere else for it to go.

In an area 800 miles north of Hawaii a plastic soup twice the size of Texas known as the Texas Gyre is there to remind us of this fact. Plastic never biodegrades, with exposure to sunlight and the elements it may become smaller and smaller but even on a molecular level it remains too tough for biodegradation, and it is eaten by unsuspecting animals in the sea that mistake it for food. The scary thing is that the North Pacific gyre is only one of five similar high-pressure zones in the oceans, together these plastic wastelands cover 40% of our oceans, and that amounts to one quarter of our planet’s surface! For the entire scoop on the soup and what it’s doing to our environment, the green guru strongly urges you to visit: www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/travel-leisure/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we.shtml or just google Texas Gyre.

If plastic is toxic when you heat it up, when you freeze it, when you make it and when you burn it, then why, shouldn’t we all be asking, are we still buying it?! Why are we still buying food packaged in it? Is the convenience of disposable forks and bottled water really worth the destruction of our oceans and our bodies?

Quote of the Month: “Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated, and it’s a very small amount, every bit of plastic ever made still exists.” Captain Charles Moore, dedicating his life to researching the North Pacific Gyre and its effects.   

Wimberley is going to have another mini-storage facility in town, but this one will keep your stuff cool, and I don’t mean in a trendy way. The green guru had a chance to meet the three Houston developers, Lisa and Greg Goulas and Rick Barrett to discuss their green choices. They have seen an opportunity, and have for investment purposes as well as just plain smart business sense, decided to make this new development as green as they possibly can, because they know that the average solar system will pay for itself in 5 to 7 years of no electric bills.

Their plan is to build two 1400 sq. ft. buildings outfitted in solar panels made by Unisolar that stick on the metal standing seam roof in long sheets between each standing seam. They will also collect all necessary water plus some off of these roofs into a tank hidden inside the corner of one building. The solar will be grid tied to PEC, but will undoubtedly cover the cost of powering their geothermal heating and cooling system and all necessary lighting requirements. Even though they will probably have enough rain water collection potential to bottle cloud juice and sell it at Glenn’s, they will only have a ten thousand gallon tank, which will take care of all of their landscaping needs and provide a water pond feature in front of the building that will become a habitat for birds and butterflies. In order to offset the building’s need to remove trees they plan to buy trees and plant them on site as well as give them to the city of Wimberley to plant elsewhere. Look at it this way, while you’re building your GREEN home and need to store your stuff, your couch can be living green long before you will!

The green guru would like to ask the City of Wimberley to strongly encourage this kind of offsetting and green decision making of all new development in the city limits. At the very least the new developments we approve should collect and be able to provide their own electrical and water needs. It’s the only way to grow in a sustainable way. Why not? Building green is cost-effective, better for our environment and just plain smart.

Quote of the Month: “While the environmental and human health benefits of green building have been widely recognized, our comprehensive report confirms that minimal increases in upfront costs of 0-2% to support green design will result in life cycle savings of 20% of total construction costs — more than ten times the initial investment. In other words, an initial investment of up to $100,000 to incorporate green building features into a $5 million project would result in a savings of $1 million in today’s dollars over the life of the building.” Aileen Adams, Secretary of State and Consumer Affairs