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.

In a presentation at TED in January (but published earlier this month), Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, discusses his company’s (potentially) world-changing invention, a new eco-friendly drywall material. He introduces EcoRock, a clean, recyclable and energy-efficient drywall created by his team at Serious Materials and explains why it can make such a difference.

As he explains, 52% of the world’s CO2 emissions is tied to building construction. In fact, the CO2 emissions from just one house are the equivalent to driving your car around the planet six times. With that in mind, Serious Materials began R&D to develop a new type of drywall that could dramatically reduce those emissions. After testing 5,000 different mixes, Surace’s team hit upon a winning formula. Popular Science magazine named EcoRock ‘Green Product of the Year,’ for its re-invention of drywall.

As the company explains,

Traditional gypsum drywall has remained virtually unchanged since its invention over 100 years ago.  Our increasingly fragile world requires rapid innovation to meet the changing conditions of our environment.  EcoRock is an evolutionary leap in drywall— an advanced solution that offers superior performance today, without sacrificing the prosperity of tomorrow.  We call this ecolution.

It’s Cradle to Cradle Gold certfied, uses 80% less energy to produce gypsum drywall, is made of 80% recycled materials and is designed to be entirely re-utilized at the end of its life. Bring on more ecolution!

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!

During the recent Tube strike in London, one commuter decided to capture the thrill and convenience of riding to work on his bicycle. The youtube clips, from kmcyc, which have the feel of a real-life video game, provide a fascinating vantage point of how to beat the chaos caused by the underground strike. As kmcyc writes, “anyone want to see lots and lots of cars going nowhere? Well hop on your bike and cycle around the Tube Strike!”

Has the credit crunch got you cutting up and throwing out your oversized collection of credit cards? Does your tight budget have you staying in at night and playing guitar at home? A company called PickPunch may have the gadget for you! The Indiana-based company has developed a hand held punching device that allows you to make your own guitar picks out of old credit cards.

Daniel Libeskind may be putting the ‘fab’ in prefab. One of the world’s most famous (and often controversial) architects, Libeskind has designed a 5,500 sq ft, two-story villa that can be shipped and assembled anywhere. The villa’s price tag will range from just under $3 million to as much as $4.2 million, and many in the industry see this as a game-changing moment for public perception of “out of the box” homes.

Libeskind, who is perhaps best known for designing the Jewish Museum Berlin, the reconstruction of New York’s World Trade Center site and the Denver Art Museum, has only designed a few residential projects. The villa will boast four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a 900 sq ft “grand room,” and a number of green elements, including both solar and geothermal systems, along with a rainwater catchment system that comes optional.

Libeskind explains on his site, “This is a cutting edge house. A house that has the highest sustainability components in the world. From its insulation, from its geothermal power, from solar energy. It is the really highest level in the world. But, sustainability goes beyond just the technical aspects. A house which is memorable, a house which is beautifully built, with fine materials, a house which will remain for a 100 years. That’s what makes this house sustainable.” But critics are quick to point out that with a house of that size (5,500 sq ft), it’s difficult to take Libeskind’s “sustainability” claims seriously.

But the chic quotient is new to the sustainable prefab industry, so to is this degree of exclusivity. It may be “prefab,” but buyers are assured of “regional exclusivity,” knowing they’ll have the only ones in their area. For more, check out Kevin Brass’s piece in last week’s NY Times.

[sources: NY Times, Inhabitat]

When one thinks of the Wall Street Journal, “environmental advocacy” doesn’t leap to mind, but, it seems, the paper has come around on the issue of climate change. In its ‘Environment’ section earlier this week, the WSJ offered this headline: “It’s Time To Cool The Planet.”

As one critic of the Journal noted in January, the paper often uses quotation marks around certain terms to, in effect, suggest that term is misleading. “A 2007 editorial on climate change complained that “political and media activists attempt to stigmatize anyone who doesn’t pay homage to their ’scientific consensus.’” As a matter of grammar, if not as a matter of fact, this is perfectly clear: The Journal believes no scientific consensus on climate change exists.”

Still, there it was in print on Monday, June 15th. In the article, Jamais Cascio proclaims, “if we’re going to avoid climate disaster, we’re going to have start getting a lot more direct. We’re going to have to think about cooling the planet.” Cascio explains that “many of us who have been watching this subject closely gone from being skeptics to advocates. Very reluctant advocates, to be sure, but advocates nonetheless.”

Policy makers have failed to meet the challenge. As a result, if we want to avoid an unprecedented global catastrophe, we may have no other choice but to reduce the impact of global warning, alongside focusing on the factors that are causing it in the first place. That is, while we continue to work aggressively to reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, we also need to consider lowering the temperature of the Earth itself.

He then advocates so-called ‘geoengineering‘ as a “more deliberate manipulation of the environment;”,

On a global scale, industrial activity for the past 150 years or so has changed the Earth’s atmosphere, threatening to raise average world temperatures to catastrophic levels, even if we were able to stop releasing carbon into the atmosphere immediately…

Geoengineering mainly takes two forms: temperature management, which moderates heat by blocking or reflecting a small portion of the sunlight hitting the Earth; and carbon management, which gradually removes large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere (as opposed to simply reducing the amount of additional carbon we’re releasing into the atmosphere). Temperature management is the more likely course of action, as it has the advantage of potentially quick results, while carbon-management techniques that would have a global impact might take decades or centuries to show results…

We can’t let ourselves slip back into business-as-usual complacency, because we’d simply be setting ourselves up for a far greater disaster down the road. Our overall goal must remain the reduction and then elimination of greenhouse-gas emissions as swiftly as humanly possible. This will require feats of political will and courage around the world. What geoengineering offers us is the time to make it happen.

As we suggested earlier this week, it’s possible that we’ve reached some sort of tipping point, that maybe we’ve moved towards a place where even Rupert Murdoch-owned companies acknowledge the need to love tomorrow TODAY!

[full WSJ article]

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.

A teacher of mine in high school was famous for interupting himself (and others) mid-sentence to demand we all take an “aesthetic break,” a moment to take in the view, a second to think about the flutter of life going on around us. This spot, from the quirky and talented MK12 design team, is for Swiss International Air. It’s a bit of a dream-like tangent from our normal fare, but, as trend/idea aggregators, we like to see how brands develop their own distinct view of the world (and their place in it). And, anyway, it’s time for an aesthetic break!

from the Memphis Flyer

I was just defending Burger King to my wife. We were watching Conan’s first show (on DVR- do they count folks like us in Nielsen ratings, by the way?) and a Burger King ad came on. “Oh god!” she grumbled. She was remembering the Whopper she’d ordered the previous day on our drive up from Boston. “Burger King makes the worst burgers on the planet!” she continued. Call me crazy, but I’ve always enjoyed the Whopper, maybe not over a Big Mac, but the worst burger on the planet? Well, BK has some ’splaining to do!

A reporter for the Memphis Flyer, Chris Davis, recently spotted a Burger King in Tennessee with a billboard that read “Global Warming Is Baloney.” He called up the restaurant to see if it was some practical joke. It had to be, right? Read on…

Davis calls BK:

Davis: Hi, I’m calling from the Flyer about your sign. Does Burger King really think global warming is baloney?
Davis: [Hangup]
Davis:(calling back): Your sign out front says global warming is baloney.
BK: I don’t see that sir.
Davis: Well it does.
BK: I don’t see that sir… I change the signs and that sign’s been up for a week.
Davis: Well, I have pictures that I took this afternoon [cross conversation ensuring I'm calling the correct BK. I am]
Davis: So there’s no question that your sign said it and so did one in Midtown. I want to know if it was on purpose or if it was a prank someone pulled on you.
BK: Let me get the manager. [several minutes of dead air then the same or very similar voice picks up.]
BK: Who were you holding for?
Davis: A manager, about the sign. I have pictures of the sign and people have called me upset. I just want to know if it’s a mistake or not so I can report it. [rehash of previous conversation]
BK: Let me go outside and look at the sign and I’ll call you right back. [exchange of contact info]

from the Memphis Flyer

[phone rings, I answer]
BK: The sign was put up yesterday.
Davis: And it’s not a mistake?
BK: No.
Davis: It reflects the opinion of BK international?
BK: Yes. Would you like to talk to the home office? I can give you a number.
Davis: I’ve got the number, I’ve already contacted them. Thanks.

While McDonald’s seems to be searching for ways to incorporate some green thinking (from supply chain to restaurants), Burger King looks to be way off the mark. As Davis explains, “when it comes to climate change, BK doesn’t have the best reputation. Climatecounts.org, a not-for-profit organization that rates companies based on attitudes toward global warming, describes Burger King as “A choice to avoid for the climate-conscious shopper.’” He hasn’t heard back from corporate, and, for now, I’m starting to agree with my wife.

[source: Memphis Flyer, via Leo Hickman]

With an impressive 8,844 solar panels, Taiwan’s recently finished solar-powered stadium just might revolutionize the sporting world. The 50,000 seat stadium, designed by Toyo Ito, will generate all of its electricity from solar.

A test run performed earlier this year demonstrated that it takes just six minutes to power up the stadium’s 3,300 lights and two jumbo vision screens. Additional ‘green’ features include permeable paving, reusable and locally made materials.

The stadium will generate an estimated 1.14 gigawatt hours of electricity every year, which will be enough to power up to 80% of the surrounding neighborhood on the days when the stadium is unused. The stadium will officially open later this year for the 2009 World Games.

For more, check out Deputy Dog’s article.

Click here to watch the World Wildlife Fund’s effective (and affecting) new video. According to the WWF, 1,000,000 plants and animals could disappear within the next fifty years. Almost 1,000,000 square kilometers of ice field has melted in the last thirty years. 250,000 hectares (roughly 618,000 acres) of tropical forest disappears each week.

Aside from the vid’s message, we enjoyed director Matthieu Jacobs‘ aesthetic and sound production.

Last year, we ran a piece on the swirling mass of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean, often called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In his recent story for the Telegraph, Richard Grant provides a more in depth look at this “accidental monument to modern society.” As he explains, the mass of debris was first discovered in 1997 “by a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist and early-retired furniture restorer named Charles Moore, who was heading home with his crew from a sailing race in Hawaii.” Moore was taking a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, “an immense slowly spiralling vortex of warm equatorial air that pulls in winds and turns them gently until they expire.” Sea currents converge in the gyre, collecting much of the flotsam from the Pacific Rim. Though, as Grant writes, “fifty years ago nearly all that flotsam was biodegradable. These days it is 90 per cent plastic.”

“It took us a week to get across and there was always some plastic thing bobbing by,” Moore tells Grant. “It wasn’t a revelation so much as a gradual sinking feeling that something was terribly wrong here. Two years later I went back with a fine-mesh net, and that was the real mind-boggling discovery.” Moore continues, “we found six times more plastic than plankton, and this was just colossal. No one had any idea this was happening, or what it might mean for marine ecosystems, or even where all this stuff was coming from.”

There is an estimated three million tons and growing. As Grant suggests poignantly, “when Leo Baekeland, a Belgian chemist, started tinkering around in his garage in Yonkers, New York, working on the first synthetic polymer, who could have foreseen that a hundred years later plastic would outweigh plankton six-to-one in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”

A new experimental community on the outskirts of Freiburg, Germany is getting some attention for thinking outside the box, I mean car. As Elizabeth Rosenthal writes in her piece in the NY Times, the town of Vauban is completely “car-free”- “except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.” Car ownership is allowed, but residents can only park their cars in two large garages at the edge of the development, “where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.”

Rosenthal continues,

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”

more…

Meet Green Thing from Green Thing on Vimeo.

After seeing GreenThing founder Andy Hobsbawm speak at a TED conference last year, we’ve been enjoying their clever videos. The London-based not-for-profit public service group seeks to inspire people to lead a greener life by focusing on seven things each of us can do - and enjoy doing- today.

1. You get from A to B without any C when you Walk The Walk
2. It’s delicious but it causes more CO2 than cars so go Easy On The Meat
3. Resist the urge to buy the latest and Stick With What You Got
4. Turn down the central heating and turn up the Human Heat
5. The art of wasting nothing and using up everything: All-Consuming
6. Instead of jetting your way around the world, Stay Grounded
7. Don’t leave it on or even put it on, Plug Out

Here’s another good one about what can happen if you choose to “walk the walk.”

I’m not sure we’ve found the right way to describe people who think climate change is a myth. Brave? “Slap on a little sunscreen and take our chances!” Psychic? “So the oceans will warm up a few degrees, we’ll be fine!” Scientifically superior? “Okay, I’ve listened to overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion, and I’m not convinced!” After reading a recent article by Andrew Revkin (NY Times: Industry Ignored Its Scientists On Climate), it’s hard not to think of a slightly more colorful description.

In his piece, Revkin explains that “for more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.” These efforts came despite warnings from its own group of scientists that stated in a 1995 internal report, “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.”

Yet througout the 1990s, the coalition spent millions of dollars challenging the merits of policies that sought to address climate change. According to the British environmental activist and writer, George Monbiot, the industry promoted doubt to “take advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had. They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed,” Mr. Monbiot said, “only to cause as much confusion as possible.”

At Love Tomorrow Today, we’re driven by a belief in simple change. It’s a straightforward approach predicated on an honest self-assessment of the way we live our lives. The so-called Global Climate Coalition achieved the opposite when they suppressed the facts about climate change. Here’s Revkin’s article.

We enjoyed looking over this year’s Earth Day “List of Superlatives” from Grist, their fourth annual “take on the good, the bad, and the weird of the past year.” (And check out previous lists for 2008, 2007, and 2006.) It covers everything from “Strangest business-tycoon-turned-wind-activist” (T. Boone Pickens) to “Best recent use of Coen Brothers Time” (anti-clean coal ad). There are plenty of Sarah Palin jabs, however, “Hottest MILF” goes to Mother Earth.

Here’s the list from the good folks at Grist. more…

Brighter Planet Forward from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.

As a follow up to our One Degree TV post about Brighter Planet, we thought we’d share a recent video those guys made. It’s a great summary of how we can each lower our carbon footprint. Three things to consider: 1) have a sense of what your carbon footprint is by taking an inventory of your daily habits. 2) reduce your carbon footprint. Once you’ve have a sense of those habits, tweak them (lower the thermostat when you leave the house, unplug applicances when they’re not in use…). 3) offset what you can’t reduce. It’s not always possible to avoid activities that result in carbon emissions. Check Brighter Planet’s site for more on that, and watch our ‘What’s a carbon offset‘ video.

[note: we'll be featuring posts from our friends at Brighter Planet on a regular basis, so check back for more bright ideas]

It’s like they say, mutton ventured, mutton gained. Oh the ewemanity! Was this post solely an opportunity to go off the sheep end with bad puns? Possibly, but this video, made by the BaaStuds and quickly making the rounds, is great. Can it be real? Not sure, but if it is, it’s a great example of living, breathing art. If it’s not, it’s still good for a chuckle.

Someone sent us a link to Carl Nolte’s piece in the SF Chronicle about David de Rothschild’s plans to sail from San Francisco to Australia in a 60-foot catamaran made of plastic bottles. De Rothschild, a British adventurer/environmentalist, hatched the plan to call attention to plastic bottles, which he sees as a symbol of waste in the world.

As Nolte explains, de Rothschild’s “plan is to turn the symbol of waste into an adventure, by building an all-plastic boat (only the masts are metal) and sailing it across the ocean to show what recycled material can do. “We are out to prove a point,” he said. “We asked ourselves, how do you capture an audience? We are using an adventure to tell stories.”

When finished, the boat’s twin hulls will be made of 12,000-13,000 plastic bottles, with the decks and cabin to be made of self-reinforcing PET.

Sounding like a cross between Don Rumsfeld and Deepak Chopra, de Rothschild said about the adventure, “the unknown is the biggest unknown. It could be a recipe for disaster, or hopefully the recipe for solutions.”

For more, check out Nolte’s article.

updated 3/9/09: Here’s another article about the boat from CNN.com

We enjoyed this post on Trendwatching.com about the quest for the eco-bounty. At a time when financial markets are imploding, we’re reminded of the “mind-boggling fortunes (and accompanying power shifts and reductions in pollution) that are in store for those who figure out how to get the world off its addiction to polluting power sources and wasteful consumption.” Following the line of thinking that neccesity will be the mother of eco-invention,  TrendWatching examines this quest for the eco-bounty. In its monthly ‘trend briefing,’ the site highlights 12 eco sub-trends that will become (or already are) ubiquitous.

Here are some examples- to which we’ve added a bit of jargon translation:

Eco-frugal- think of all the money you can save by being more efficient.

Eco-status- be noticed and be a conversation starter.

Eco-Iconic- products that, through their appearance, become an iconic representation of this shift forward.

Eco-stories- attaching a story to a product that normally would not be told (where and how and why something was made, who it’s benefiting…)

Eco-Metering-a growing crop of devices that assist in making you more eco-frugal.

Eco-Mapping- leveraging the developments in GPS-tech and web-based map sites to provide consumers with ways of locating green shops, green restaurants, green destinations.

Eco-Concierges- helping customers connect all the eco-dots.

Eco-Tips- sites that provide daily ‘how to’ advice on tweaking those daily habits.

Eco-Matching- connecting the green supply and the green demand (i.e. green architects with green sourcing).

Eco-Naked- sites exposing the green-washing of the disingenuous.

For more, check out the piece at Trendwatching.com.

Thanks to the Daily Show- a phrase I find myself saying a lot- I have a good book to read on my travels through California this week. Daniel Sperling, a Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciene and Policy at University of California, Davis and Director of the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies, joined Jon Stewart last week to discuss his new book, Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability. As the above video shows, Sperling spent a few good-natured moments trying to provide some serious answers to some typically irreverent questions. In the book, authors Sperling and Deborah Gordon describe a future, 15 years from now, when the world will have close to 2 billion cars. Given that greenhouse gases are already creating havoc with our climate with an estimated 1 billion cars, the set up for very troubling consequences is obvious.

Sperling and Gordon describe the challenges that we (as a country, the leading emissions culprit, and as a planet) face and the solutions that are most likely to work. The authors reveal our greatest obstacles- “the resistant auto-industry, dysfunctional oil markets, short-sighted government policies, and unmotivated consumers.” The authors look at solutions (mix of advanced bio-fuels, electric vehicles, fuel-cell hybrids), expose some fool’s gold (corn-based ethanol), and point to the role of government as a necessary component- they single out California’s leadership in promoting aggressive emissions standards.

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…).

Don’t mess with Texas! Well, don’t mess with Austin, anyway, which has laid out an ambitious goal of diverting 90% of the city’s mess (waste) by 2040. With typical Texan aplomb, city official’s are calling this their “Zero Waste…or Darn Near” campaign. The measure received unanimous approval by the Austin City Council, which said its strategic plan includes: expanded and improved recycling and composting, new rules and incentives to reduce waste, preserved land for sustainable development and green industry infrastructure, advocacy for manufacturer responsibility, and education and community involvement programs.

Surprised to see the Lone Star State capital so ahead of the curve? You shouldn’t be. Austin has been one of America’s greenest cities for years (recently selected #1 Greenest City by MSN), and it’s home to the headquarters of sustainability pioneers Whole Foods.