Patagonia basically invented the concept of “corporate social responsibility.” Founder Yvon Chouinard built a brand that blended quality lifestyle products with a commitment to improving the quality of that lifestyle, investing in ways to make things better and at a lower cost to the environment. From its Footprint Chronicles, which tracks the life-cycle impact of its products, to its partnership with Bluesign Technologies in promoting higher environmental standards for dyes and finishes in the textile industry, Patagonia leads the pack in almost every area.

We also highly recommend its blog, The Cleanest Line, where you’ll be able to find the company’s first interactive “environmental initiatives booklet,” which highlights that impressive example of “considered” business.

Patagonia’s Environmental Initiatives Booklet 2010

For all this talk of offshore drilling in recent years, it may take a disaster like the one we’re witnessing play out in the Gulf Coast to step up the pace of clean tech investments. As bad as Exxon Valdez was- and officials are already calling this worse- the damage was confined to an area far from the everyday American consciousness. It looked bad- photos of sea birds and beaches covered in oil- and eventually covered 1,300 square miles of ocean, but it didn’t really disrupt ‘business as usual’ here in the U.S., in the way this recent one will in a profound way. Commercial and sport fishing in a large part of the Gulf has been halted, and some reports suggest the oil slick could venture up the East Coast and upset the balance of crude oil prices globally.

What seems like an impossible task, the cleanup (more accurately, the containment) usually involves a number of desperate measures. One technique involves applying dispersants, which can help wave energy break the slick into small oil droplets that dilute and subsequently bio-degrade naturally. Burning the oil slick is another technique, but, as with dispersants, this relies on favorable weather. Mechanical cleanup, the use of booms and skimmers, seems to be the most conventional technique, and BP has hired a massive army of volunteers to help in these efforts.

As our friends at Inhabitat reported last week, there are other less conventional techniques that are showing promise.

A tiny Norwegian company has developed a super absorbent organic peat moss that is capable of cleaning up oil floating on water. The peat is scattered on the spill and absorbs the oil, and, because it doesn’t absorb water, it can then simply be scooped out — taking the toxic oil with it…

The moss hasn’t undergone large-scale marine trials. But maybe we ought to give it — or some other organic material — a whirl before we light the coast of Louisiana on fire.

[Source: Inhabitat]

In another webisode of One Degree TV, we pay a visit to Burlington, VT-based Lunaroma to talk with owner Leila Bringas about some of the benefits of botanically-based essential oils and how mainstream synthetic alternatives are not only confusing our senses but also posing health risks.

The guiding philosophy at Love Tomorrow Today is that positive change in our lives begins with small decisions. It’s daunting and unrealistic to make sweeping and swift changes to our daily lives, to our economy, to our manufacturing, to our health. But, as Leila suggests, pausing to consider small decisions can help guide us in a healthier direction. Or as we like to say, one degree changes…everything.

For more info on the amazing products on offer at Lunaroma, visit them in Vermont and Hawaii or at their web site. Stay tuned for part two, where Leila helps us create a Love Tomorrow Today ’signature scent.’

Lunaroma: Part One from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

Last year, I enjoyed a lively exchange of emails with Jennifer Boulden, founder of the great blog, Ideal Bite. Like LTT, Ideal Bite was founded on the belief that “if we all knew what we could do in the day to day to impact the planet and our communities in a positive way, we’d do it.” The idea of “guilting people into going green” or shocking them in action by grim reports of a climate catastrophe doesn’t seem particularly effective. But in a piece for the Huffington Post, Boulden laid out a more ambitious brand of green thinking, one that seemed to question the philosophy of daily green baby steps.

In “You Gotta Break A Few Eggs To Make An Omlette,” she reflects on that “fine (nagging) line” that one treads when one chooses green products; “greener options are definitely better, but at the same time, they are only just less bad,” she writes. “The fact is we need a big, dramatic departure from the core structure of our economy. Why? Because it only works when we buy more and more things.” “We need to rethink some core tenants under which we are surprisingly comfortable operating,” she argues.

She goes on,

“I realized that we may just have the right ingredients for cooking up a new type of economy. Very intelligent, passionate people are shaping a new framework. Yes, there will be some short term costs and some temporary pain and discomfort. But remember, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

At LTT, we think about this a lot. Are “greener products” only “less bad,” rather than actually “good?” Should we be moving with a greater sense of urgency towards a “sustainable future?” To a point, and yes. But while we don’t believe in half measures, we do believe in the power of realistic alternatives.

Every major brand is addressing this in some way or another- there are a lot of innovative companies out there that get it and others that are starting to get it. But whether it’s the size of the slow-moving ship, the nature of their industry or the state of the economy, “going bold” sometimes gets watered down to simply “taking action.”

But, still, we look to those big fish to reshape the priorities of their own industry. PepsiCo , a company we admire (we’ve covered a number of their initiatives), is an interesting contradiction. On the one hand, it produces a staggering amount of plastic bottle waste, and, because of its global distribution, produces waste (in the form of emissions and landfill fodder) everywhere you can imagine. On the other hand, PepsiCo is among the most progressive Fortune 50 companies in terms of corporate social responsibility, recycling (check out Aquafina’s partnership with Keep America Beautiful), industry-changing innovation (Frito Lay’s compostable bag) and so on, and that global reach can bring a message of sustainability to unlikely places. Other examples, companies like Timberland, Green Mountain Coffee and Whole Foods, have shown the broad appeal of integrating responsibility into a company’s core identity.

Whole Foods is adopting some innovative practices, from exploring renewable energies at stores, banning the use of plastic bags, or pushing the entire industry towards responsible aquaculture guidelines. Their Mid-Atlantic region recently established a commitment to diverting 90% of its waste from landfills by 2009. We had a chance to speak with Mark Smallwood, Whole Foods’ Green Mission specialist, who says the company is well on its way. To achieve this remarkable goal, Whole Foods is working to minimize packaging, enhance its composting programs and further develop its recycling. After a recent garbage audit, Smallwood says, “we found roughly 60% of our waste going to compost, 25% was being reused or recycled (including pallets, totes, milk jugs and so on) and 15% was going to landfill, mostly packaging.”

Boulden’s right, it does seem as if the pieces are positioned to fall into place for a new (sustainable) economy. But it takes a confluence of understanding, energy and innovation. The words that shape all of our efforts- one degree changes everything- speaks to the power of baby steps to lead to adult-sized leaps. It takes not just consumers demanding greener products but companies anticipating (like Honda and Toyota did a decade ago with hybrid/EV technology) how their industry needs to evolve. Baby steps or big leaps, the scene is set for us to “cook up a new type of economy.”

For more on Boulden, check out her piece on the Huffington Post.

[Ideal Bite has since become part of Disney's Family.com, and it continues to offer great tips for moving towards a more sustainable life.]

It’s no surprise for those who track responsible brands to see Green Mountain Coffee making news again. They pop up in these pages on a regular basis, whether its about the company’s ambitious solar facility, their grants to fund projects that tackle climate change, their partnership with Ashoka’s ChangeMakers and more.  TransFair USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States, announced this week that it has received a $50,000 grant from Green Mountain Coffee, and a three-year commitment of $925,000 from the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation. The Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation was established and is led separately from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. by GMCR Founder and Chairman Bob Stiller.

The grants will go towards supporting TransFair USA’s effort to grow the Fair Trade movement and establish hundreds of Fair Trade Towns across the United States by 2013. Currently, 13 U.S. municipalities have been recognized as Fair Trade Towns, including Amherst and Northampton (MA), Brattleboro and Burlington (VT), San Francisco and Chico (CA), Milwaukee (WI), Media (PA), Montclair and Highland Park (NJ), Bluffton (OH), Ballston Spa (NY), and Taos (NM).

The Fair Trade movement was launched in England in 2000 and quickly spread across the UK and Europe, rising to 650 declared Fair Trade Towns today.

“For many years, GMCR has supported the Fair Trade movement because we believe that our highest quality coffees come from coffee-growing communities with a healthy quality of life,” said Stiller. “By choosing Fair Trade coffee – and now 72 other Fair Trade products – consumers can help support sustainable development and community empowerment for farming and artisan communities around the globe. We believe Fair Trade Towns USA can be an effective model for educating consumers on how easy it is to make a positive difference in the world through the products we purchase/”

[Source: GMCR, VermontBiz]

For all Boston’s great qualities- rich with historical treasures from Faneuil hall to Fenway- it has to be the worst city to drive in. Even my Garmin GPS moans as we drive east on the Mass turnpike. As the above video- courtesy of our friends at Inhabitat- explains, Boston also lays claim to the title of ‘worst city for bike-riding.’ Not just in the country, in the world! It boasts a sad 180 yards of bicycle lanes. The clip is an interview with Nicole Freedman, Boston’s Bike Czar, about her efforts to make Boston a more bike-friendly town. For the full interview and more information, visit www.inhabitat.com.

American Apparel has become a leader in its industry, offering made-in-America product and an impressive array of trend-setting organic cotton clothes. But as Cara Smusiak writes for Naturally Savvy, “aside from their locally-made goods, their green side is a little lack-luster. But last month, American Apparel made an unusual move into the green space by launching American Apparel Nail Lacquer, a line of 18 high-quality nail colors that are greener than the average polish.

We’ve been loving the newly launched 20,000 Songs blog, started by musician/teacher/writer Jeff Symonds last week. Over the last year, Symonds has been whittling his massive music collection down to the essentials, trying to build the perfect iPod. He went through every album he owned (at 750 Gigs worth of mp3s, quite a collection), every “Top” list he could read and revisited albums he hadn’t heard or had summarily rejected. The result? The definitive music collection, 20,000 songs he thinks everyone should hear.

He explains, “I’m pretty confident that I’ve given just about every major or minor band a considered listen” and “very carefully loaded and edited down a 160GB iPod with every single song I’ve ever liked. This project is the result. I’m going to let fate (or at least iPod shuffle) guide me as I lead you through my list of the very best music released in the last 100 years. Consider this blog a series of letters from one music lover to another– you gotta hear this stuff.”

With only a week’s worth of entries so far, we can already tell this will be a journey worth taking. Symonds blends an encyclopedic (Rain Main-esque) knowledge of music, hilarious personal anecdotes and the context that only a musician can provide, all to great effect.

What has this got to do with anything? Nothing, but we love it!

[Your Planet, Brighter from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.]

Our friends at Brighter Planet, a leading carbon offset firm, have launched a new “Sustainability In The Workplace” survey to gather reliable data about what companies are doing to encourage and support greener habits.

As Brighter Planet’s Outreach & Parternship Manager, Robbie Adler, explains, “we are trying to get a better feel for how successful employers and employees are interacting around the issue of sustainability. It is increasingly common for corporations to talk about sustainability initiatives, but how many of them are engaging their employees on the subject, listening for feedback, etc?” Adler continues, “it is our belief that in order for sustainability to be part of a company’s DNA, it must be a principle supported by all levels of employees. Employees are the front-line of any company. If they are not involved in a company’s sustainability initiatives, chances are those initiatives are not having much impact on directing the company’s growth.”

We encourage you to fill out the survey, where, incidentally, you’ll be automatically entered to win $200 cash.

For more info on Brighter Planet, check out their site, and watch a clip of our visit there (”Carbon Offsets 101“).

Another in Brighter Planet’s series of videos. It speaks to one of the central questions of the eco-movement, how to sell it. Is it enough to sell a product or an activity on the merits of it being ‘green?’ No. We all need to think more creatively about how to coax this cultural shift.

One of the great marketing campaigns of all-time is Nike’s ‘Just Do It.’ It accounts for the fact that exercise can be a drag (should I pull myself out of bed for a morning run?) and that competition can be daunting (will I fail? can I keep up?), but it offers, instead, a mindset that is as simple as it is empowering…just do it!

Skeptics who say the environmental movement doesn’t depend on creative minds and marketing wizardry don’t get it. The folks at Brighter Planet do, and we’re grateful.

A Reason to Bike from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.

Another great video from our friends at Brighter Planet. I got a sneak preview of this video at a BBQ last month, and it’s good to see the carbon offset biz getting a creative makeover. The video is to promote the company’s great new YOUR FOOTPRINT feature on their web site, which helps you understand what your carbon impact is. As BP’s Carolyn Barnwell acknowledges in her post, it can be a little daunting to learn the gory details: “When I meet people who have never gotten an estimate before, they often say, ‘Oh, no! I don’t think I want to know.’ I say, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not judging you. But you can’t start trimming your footprint until you understand your impact and where it comes from.’ Go on and give it a go!

Check out Brighter Planet’s YOUR FOOTPRINT calculator.

And for more on Brighter Planet, here’s our Carbon Offsets 101.

“Shrink and Save” $2500 from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.

Here’s a clever video from our friends at Brighter Planet, connecting the dots between your footprint (with all the excesses we rarely stop to consider) and your hard earned money! BP asks, “What if every time you switched from hot water to cold you could hear bills being stuffed into your wallet? Talk about a good reminder to do your part for the planet.”

To make their case, the good folks at BP have done the math for you to show how significant the impact of simple green tweaks can be for your budget. “With a minimum of effort, the typical American can SHRINK their carbon footprint by a third and simultaneously SAVE $2500 over the course of a year.”

For more on Brighter Planet, check out our video on them: Carbon Offsets 101

For those who haven’t seen Elephant Journal’s great interview series, “Walk The Talk” Show, it’s time to put it on your must view list. Waylon Lewis, the laid back host of the show (and brains behind the journal itself), has spoken with an impressive roster of guests on a remarkably broad range of topics.

Episodes of note include conversations with Graham Hill (founder of TreeHugger.com), Rick Peyser (of Green Mountain Coffee) and Bill McKibben (professor at Middlebury- my alma mater- author & environmentalist). Most recently, Lewis had an interesting chat with Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma) about the link between a healthy diet and the environment.

In that conversation, Pollan explains

“our eating decisions- what happens on our plate- represent our most profound engagement with the other species we share this planet with. We change the land more through our eating than anything else we do. We change the climate more than anything else we do. We change the composition of species on the planet more than anything else we do.”

Click here to go to Ele’s site and watch the rest. And while you’re at it, follow Waylon and co. on twitter.

Our friends at Brighter Planet have created a fun (and green) tribute to the Michael Jackson. A throw back to VH1’s ‘pop-up video’ series, the above version of MJ’s early 90s hit “Black or White” music video provides the viewer some eco tidbits related to the visuals. For example, when the King of Pop is doing his thing on the Statue of Liberty, BP tells us that, while this NY landmark used to generate a lot of CO2, “since 2006, windpower has provided its electricity, avoiding an estimated 6000 tons of C02 per year.” When George Wendt’s character gets blown out of the roof by his guitar playing son (Macaulay Culkin) and flies through the night sky, BP explains “flying at night produces more than double the emissions of daytime flights.”

Nice work, guys! As the “Man in the Mirror” used to say “if you wanna make the world a better place take a look at yourself and make a change!” Shamon, indeed!

We had the chance to spend some time at a remarkable new development in Hinesburg, Vermont, where contractor Chuck Reiss (Reiss Building & Renovation) and architect Rolf Kielman (Truex Cullins & Partners) are leading the way in building tomorrow’s homes today. Set on 24 acres of prime agricultural land on the outskirts of town (not far from Burlington), the South Farm homes have been designed and built to be “net zero,” meaning they will produce all the energy they need on site.

The land was bought in partnership by Vermont Building Resources (which Reiss formed along with a limited pool of like-minded investors) and the Russell Family Farm, and the goal was to ensure a modest but responsible development of this 24 acre parcel. Fourteen acres were set aside for continued farming, while a cluster of six passive/active solar homes was built on a portion of the land’s southern facing slope.

As Kielman points out, the principle of orienting a home on a piece of land to maximize efficiency is not a new concept. “You can go back to some of the basic principles involved in Greek town planning,” Kielman says, “you go to Delphi for example…all these Greek communities sit in these south facing bowls…and this was a perfect south facing bowl,…we could shelve all of these houses into the hillside, put most of the glass to the southside,…it’s a little like a tree, the way it sort of searches for the sunlight to sustain itself.”

Beyond positioning, Reiss and Kielman had to consider a range of factors to help reduce the homes’ overall energy load, including tightening the envelopes (limiting the homes to 1500-2000 square feet), using locally sourced materials where possible and introducing triple pane windows. Other environmental features include geo-thermal heating, radiant concrete floors, super insulated walls and roofs, active PV solar panels and significant south facing glass, which provides solar gain and great views down the valley.

The homes have been certified by the Vermont Builds Green program, which recognized the development’s conservation of agricultural soils and wetlands, location within 3 miles of a school and food store, building design (built into the hillside and with a roof oriented for maximum solar exposure) and its energy rating.

The homes will actually produce more energy than they use, making them each a little utility company.
“Green Mountain Power charges 13 cents per kilowatt hour,” Reiss explains. “It buys back electricity at 6 cents above that rate,…and when rates go up, the house earns more.”

“One of our goals was to say, ‘look, you can do this. This is not something that’s happening in the future.” I personally feel if we can demonstrate that with a subdivision of six homes, I don’t see why we’re building any other way.”

For more, check out the project’s brochure.

View the video on youtube or vimeo.

I’m still mulling over Jennifer Boulden’s piece in the Huffington Post, considering that balance between advocating “green tweaks” or “green leaps.” As I mentioned in the last piece, Boulden is the co-founder of Ideal Bite. For those of you who haven’t read Ideal Bite- what’s wrong with you?- it’s a site that provides daily tips for living green, promoting the positive and empowering value of “incremental environmentalism.” In her piece for the HuffPo, though, Boulden reveals a more ambitious philosophy emerging, a call for bolder action and bigger leaps forward. Will baby steps get us to where we need to be?

At LTT, we think about this a lot. Are “greener products” only “less bad,” rather than actually “good?” Should we be moving with a greater sense of urgency towards a “sustainable future?” To a point, and yes. But while we don’t believe in half measures, we do believe in the efficacy of realistic alternatives. But maybe Boulden is right, maybe we now have the necessary ingredients for creating a new framework. Maybe we’re reaching that tipping point, where individuals, governments and corporations are absorbing the message.

Every major brand is addressing this in some way or another- there are a lot of innovative companies out there that get it and others that are starting to get it. But whether it’s the size of the slow-moving ship, the nature of their industry or the state of the economy, “going bold” sometimes gets watered down to simply “taking action.”

But, still, we look to those big fish to reshape the priorities of their own industry. PepsiCo , a company we admire (we’ve covered a number of their initiatives), is an interesting contradiction. On the one hand, it produces a staggering amount of plastic bottle waste, and, because of its global distribution, produces waste (in the form of emissions and landfill fodder) everywhere you can imagine. On the other hand, PepsiCo is among the most progressive Fortune 50 companies in terms of corporate social responsibility, recycling (check out Aquafina’s partnership with Keep America Beautiful), industry-changing innovation (Frito Lay’s compostable bag) and so on, and that global reach can bring a message of sustainability to unlikely places. Other examples, companies like Timberland, Green Mountain Coffee and Whole Foods, have shown the broad appeal of integrating responsibility into a company’s core identity.

Whole Foods is adopting some innovative practices, from exploring renewable energies at stores, banning the use of plastic bags, or pushing the entire industry towards responsible aquaculture guidelines. Their Mid-Atlantic region recently established a commitment to diverting 90% of its waste from landfills by 2009. We had a chance to speak with Mark Smallwood, Whole Foods’ Green Mission specialist, who says the company is well on its way. To achieve this remarkable goal, Whole Foods is working to minimize packaging, enhance its composting programs and further develop its recycling. After a recent garbage audit, Smallwood says, “we found roughly 60% of our waste going to compost, 25% was being reused or recycled (including pallets, totes, milk jugs and so on) and 15% was going to landfill, mostly packaging.”

Boulden’s right, it does seem as if the pieces are positioned to fall into place for a new (sustainable) economy. But it takes a confluence of understanding, energy and innovation. It takes not just consumers demanding greener products but companies anticipating (like Honda and Toyota did a decade ago with hybrid/EV technology) how their industry needs to evolve. Baby steps or big leaps, the scene is set for us to “cook up a new type of economy.”

For more on Boulden, check out her piece on the Huffington Post.

I’ve enjoyed a recent exchange of emails with Jennifer Boulden, co-founder of Ideal Bite. Like LTT, Ideal Bite was founded on the belief that “if we all knew what we could do in the day to day to impact the planet and our communities in a positive way, we’d do it.” The idea of “guilting people into going green” or shocking them in action by grim reports of a climate catastrophe doesn’t seem particularly effective.

In that sense, Al Gore was preaching to the choir in “An Inconvenient Truth.” However necessary and affecting that film was, I wonder how many people walked out of the theater scared but largely unchanged. And how many people who should have seen it didn’t because of the loaded political associations?  As the Ideal Bite folks explain, “we don’t want someone to tell us what’s wrong…unless we understand how we can help.” That serves as the basis for Ideal Bite’s brand of “incremental environmentalism,” and the site offers “ideas for real people who lead busy lives and want to make small changes that up to big results.”

In a recent article published on the Huffington Post, Boulden proposed a more ambitious brand of green thinking. In “You Gotta Break A Few Eggs To Make An Omlette,” she writes about her experience at the Fortune Green Business Conference in Laguna Nigual, CA, reflecting on that “fine (nagging) line” that one treads when one chooses green products; “greener options are definitely better, but at the same time, they are only just less bad,” she writes. “The fact is we need a big, dramatic departure from the core structure of our economy. Why? Because it only works when we buy more and more things.”

Just when I was considering packing my bags for New Zealand to live a life of blissful ignorance, Van Jones spoke. Obama appointed this social change leader into a Green Collar Job position to make sure that the $20B - $40B allotment to stimulate green economic activity actually did just that, and that it the cash infusion benefited all of people in this country. His battle cry was, “Be Bold,” and I dig it.

I am no economist (even though I slogged my way through an Econ major at William & Mary), and I am no business pundit (although I hid from the economic downturn of 2001 by receiving a ‘green MBA’ from George Washington U). I am, however, someone who thinks that we need to rethink some core tenants under which we are surprisingly comfortable operating.

She continues,

Ask yourself, “why not be bold?” — and let me know what you come up with. Luckily I got my inspiration to fight the good-n-green fight for the next year from the conference. Not because anyone was spouting off warm-fuzzy platitudes that glossed over the abysmal state of the environment, but because I realized that we may just have the right ingredients for cooking up a new type of economy. Very intelligent, passionate people are shaping a new framework. Yes, there will be some short term costs and some temporary pain and discomfort. But remember, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.

Tomorrow, I’ll delve deeper into that question that we all seem to be wrestling with- are baby steps enough?

For more, check out Ideal Bite. For Boulden’s full article on HuffPo click here.

Carbon Offsets With Brighter Planet from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

Back with more One Degree TV, our series of webisodes that focuses on green innovation and simple change. We’re highlighting the efforts of companies and individuals moving the needle one degree closer to “better.”

In this one, we ask Matt Kling and Robbie Adler, from Brighter Planet, to give us the basics on their industry, a sort of “Carbon Offsets 101.” The Middlebury, VT-based offset company works with experts in the environmental movement and partners like Bank of America to create practical solutions to climate change for individuals and businesses.

For those of us looking to make simple tweaks in our daily lives, the idea of a carbon offset makes sense, but it’s not quite as tangible as other green efforts. We wanted some help in demystifying the concept, and, as Matt and Robbie point out, in the new green economy, as a value is assigned to carbon, offsets will play a more important role. Watch the video, and send it around!

The Skinny Pancake Project from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

We’re kicking off One Degree TV, our series of webisodes that will focus on green innovation and simple change. We’re excited to highlight the efforts of companies and individuals moving the needle one degree closer to “better.”

“The Skinny Pancake Project” follows our collaboration with a Burlington, VT-based restaurant, The Skinny Pancake. When owner Benjy Adler asked us to develop a “sustainable take-out container,” the challenge was to find something that was cost-effective and practical but also consistent with the restaurant’s deep commitment to the environment. The first question was could we find a material that was leak-proof AND compostable? Once we had that figured out, the second question was could we make one container work for two shapes of crepes (rectangular and triangular)? The answer, thanks to our own Eric Li, was “sustainable origami.”

Ever seen Michael Wadleigh’s famous film of Woodstock? It’s a dizzying, mesmerizing look at a game-changing cultural event, the massive, mud-soaked, drug-induced gathering of 32 bands and nearly 500,000 people in upstate NY in 1969. The festival was a defining moment for the 1960s counterculture- its swan song- but flash-forward 40 years, and what was considered counterculture (’hippie activism’) is now, thankfully, firmly in the mainstream.

The Rothbury Festival, the new best music festival of the summer, is a reminder of that, with its identity as much about ‘green thinking‘ as its remarkable lineup (which includes Bob Dylan, The Dead, Willie Nelson, The Black Crowes, Martin Sexton, to name just a handful).

Tickets just went on sale for the festival. We’ll be doing a series of posts on Rothbury, it’s green ‘Think Tank,’ and the sponsors that are helping to make this a green ‘event’ and the one festival of the summer not to miss. 

You read us- thanks, by the way- but who do we read? Quick answer- everyone! Perhaps a few grains of sand slip through our fingers, but we track hundreds of industry sites, press releases, trend watchers, blogs and newspapers, with a goal of aggregating a broad and interesting range of examples of how companies and individuals are activating simple and sustainable change. We follow the ways in which big brands are incorporating eco-thinking in their core business (from companies you’d expect, like Whole Foods, Patagonia and REI, to ones you might not, like Wal-Mart, Pepsi, even Pepperidge Farm) and how newer players (like Better Place and GEM) are pushing that innovation.

As a company, Love Tomorrow Today looks to develop products and ideas that make it easier to activate simple change in our daily lives. As a blog, we try to stay out in front of the tsunami, tracking the swells of exciting innovation and the changing landscape of sustainability. We value your feedback and your efforts to spread the word!

Here’s a widget of this blog that you can grab (for your iGoogle page, your blog…).

An Eco-Entrepreneur’s New Model Of Sustainability:

What would you do if your boat came in? We’ve all spent idle moments contemplating it, what we’d do if we won the lottery or, say, started and then sold a successful derivatives and financial risk management software company. OK, maybe not so much the last part, but that’s what happened to Roger Lang when, in 1996, he led his company, Infinity, to a successful (and profitable) merger with SunGuard Data Systems. Three years later, at age 40, Roger ‘retired’ and set his sights on a bold experiment in conservation that’s been described as “part anthropology, part economics, part Gunsmoke and part Greenpeace.” With no previous ranching experience, Roger purchased Sun Ranch, a 20,000 acre ranch in Montana’s Madison Valley, 40 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, and set about challenging the traditional relationship between ranching and conservation and to demonstrate that not only could cattle ranching and environmentalism coexist, but, ultimately, they can save each other.

more…

Does Dad really need another soap-on-the-rope this Christmas? Ok, maybe I’m the only one who gave his father that same, lame present every Christmas, but, I mean, it’s soap that’s on a rope! This holiday season, why not consider a gift with a higher purpose. No, not shampoo. I’m talking about the gift of carbon-free living for a day. Through a great holiday initiative at Brighter Planet, you can provide your loved ones with the gift of carbon neutrality with a click of the mouse. The ONE DAY campaign is designed to reduce and offset U.S. CO2 usage at a time when emissions skyrocket. By visiting their web site, anyone can request one day of carbon-free living and will be able to pay the gift forward by emailing personalized links to their friends. Recipients of the ONE DAY gift can then, in turn, pass it along to others by forwarding new links- virally increasing the impact of the gift.

As we’ve profiled in previous posts, Brighter Planet recognizes that avoiding carbon-emitting activities in today’s world is, at times, impossible, so they offer these offsets to compensate for those inevitable emissions. The offsets are used to fund renewable energy projects in communities throughout the U.S. And they’re cheap, which means, Dad, you’ll probably be able to getting that soap-on-the-rope too!

more…

Add-ons are becoming the reality of air travel. With some airlines, it’s $15 for the first checked bag, $25 for the second, $50 for a window seat, $10 to get one that reclines and $1 to use the bathroom. Ok, maybe not the last two, but can those be far off? How about an add-on that won’t give you air rage, $12 to offset your share of carbon from the flight? VT-based Brighter Planet is helping people take those sorts of steps for a healthier environment, by providing practical, carbon emission reducing solutions for consumers and businesses. As we detailed on this blog last week, the recently published Living Planet Report suggests the Earth’s natural resources are being used up to 30%  faster than they can be replaced in a reckless environmental spending spree. Thankfully, Brighter Planet is leading the way in innovating ways to mainstream carbon offsetting and in demonstrating that small, day-to-day actions can make a huge difference for the environment. To date, Brighter Planet members have offset almost 50 million pounds of CO2, the equivalent of taking 1.5 million cars off the road for a day.

more…