wow. I am SO glad I bought a camelbak

So - I've been grousing lately about how I want a stainless steel water bottle - my latest reminder was from the Think Outside The Bottle people, who were offering some logo-ed bottles for purchase.

But now...

oh, now.

SIGG, the big name-brand face to the stainless steel water bottle craze, which took off after the fuss over BPA in water bottles like Nalgenes (and prompted me to buy a Camelbak), has apparently been coating the inside of their bottles with... ::drumroll:: BPA!

I saw the story on Salon.com today, and I'm disappointed but not surprised.

One of the biggest challenges for Green Me is that I feel kind of powerless about stuff like this. I just finished reading The Ominvore's Dilemma (a post on that to come!), and it made me feel trapped in the same way this SIGG thing has done. Little ole me is just another block in the wall (like this lady).

I've got bigger personal fish to fry these days, so another Corporate Accountability Scandal doesn't faze me much. Sometimes, all you can do is all you can do.

So you should make a point to do the following: add SIGG to the list of products you don't buy.

Cleaning up a broken CFL bulb...

Many thanks to my uncle for sending this link my way...

I knew that you had to recycle your CFL bulbs in a special way, but this is getting ridiculous! What a way to scare people away from using CFLs! I mean, come on folks, you should be more worried about eating tuna than breaking one bulb...

egg on my face...

Well, first of all, if you knew all the details, you would forgive me for being such a slacker about posting. Trust me, you would not want to read any blogging I might have done over the past three weeks!

BUT...

I'm feeling a bit perkier now, and I have something to share with you all - which is also the cause of a bit of embarrassment on my part (because I haven't updated like I should).

I've been named a Runner Up for Greenest Greek by my sorority's magazine, Anchora!!!
Check me out... along with all the other Green DGs!!! Part of what makes me green is this blog, and since I haven't been updating like I normally would... well, you can see how it's kind of embarrassing.

Anyway, I promise that I haven't left green-dom behind, just put it on pause for a while.
My latest project is figuring out where to recycle in Murfreesboro.

Also, I just finished reading Skinny Bitch (they have a website, too), and I'm not quite transformed into a vegan yet, but I have definitely stopped eating all artificial sweeteners (the phrase that made me buy the book even though I'm on a Skinny Wallet diet right now? "When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don't fucking drink it."). That's my first step. Next step is cutting out dairy (chapter 5).

Anyway, it's "fall hell" right now at my job, so this is all I can manage... but yay for being a Green Greek and yay for trying to be a skinny bitch!

thanks, Mr. Hunt

So, back when i was buying the Prius, I thought long and hard about the impact that its actual production (well, the production of any new car) would have on the environment. I had heard about the toxicity of the batteries and the problems with producing them, and I knew that buying anything new is not really a green activity.

However, it's always nice to get some concrete numbers to go with what you already sort of know. Many thanks to Jeff for the link.

I did pretty much know this when i decided to purchase the little bugger, but I hoped then, and I do still hope, that my purchase wasn't stupid. I hope that by hopping on the hybrid bandwagon, I helped just a little to push forward hybrid and electric technology.

::sigh:: I don't know. I've already put 25K on the Prius over the past year, so, according to the article, I'll have overcome that new/old car carbon gap. Of course, if I just stopped driving altogether, that would be even greener...

Outdoors all this weekend!

So, in case you are living under a rock (like me... there are many different kinds of rocks, including sinus infections and for-sale condos), this Saturday is the Earth Day celebration at Centennial Park from 11-7. Make sure you check out the Greener Nashville Tent, where, along with Gardens of Babylon, they'll be giving away 1,000 free baby oak trees!



Many thanks to jeffmradio for tipping me off to the Billboard Green 10! I've really been digging KT Tunstall lately, and it's no surprise that Willie is up there!

Meanwhile, Rites of Spring is now swingin' over at Vandy, so head over there to catch some yummy tunes like Lady Antebellum, Feist & Old Crow Medicine Show. Between Rites and VU baseball vs. Auburn, I'm going to be at Vandy all weekend!

Tayst goes green!

If you haven't seen the tidbit in the Scene, Tayst restaurant, a little place across from the Gardens at Hillsboro Village on 21st Ave, has gone green!

So much going on in the 'ville!

In case you missed it, last Sunday was Earth Hour, where you were supposed to turn out your lights for an hour, but apparently the folks down in Australia didn't take March Madness into consideration when choosing a Sunday. Sadly, we did not participate due to the pressing need to watch the Elite Eight games.

Down in Williamson County, the kids at Hillsboro elementary/middle are participating in the Free the Children Water Project. The thought of all the bottles of coke and PowerAde that are not being trashed warms the cockles of me 'eart it does... but they're still drinking water out of bottles:

According to the scorecard, students can save up to $1.50 per glass by drinking water rather than milk, soda or juice and up to $1 per bottle on sports drinks. Every time they drink a glass or bottle of water, they put that savings into a cup. At the end of the two weeks, the money will be collected. (emphasis mine)

I don't know anything about the Free the Children thing, but the project sounds like a good idea to me, at least to raise awareness... but I wish they were thinking about the bottled water part of it as well (see Think Outside the Bottle for why)

In other news, there's finally an answer to the question of what will be done with the old Wild Oats building... a Trader Joe's is moving in! I think I've talked before about how I miss the old Wild Oats - I liked how small and homey it felt compared to the new Whole Foods. Not to say I don't like the WF, but I miss the way things were. I'm excited to see what a Trader Joe's is like, finally, and maybe I'll be going there instead of WF soon.

Also, in case you haven't checked out the Greener Nashville site or you don't get their eblasts, there is a big Green Business expo going on over at Lipscomb today.

That's it for this week, folks! Stay dry and warm, and let me know if you want to buy a condo!

Warren Wilson's new environmental curriculum

You all know that I'm a Vandy grad (yes, yes, boo-hiss, where's my trust fund...), but before I fell into the VandyBubble, I was considering going to a small private school in North Carolina - Warren Wilson.

My parents went there and loved it. Sometimes, like when I'm in bumper-to-bumper traffic headed home from work, or when the sky is matte purple and not deep blue with stars because of all the sodium lights in the city, or when I think about what a lazy-butt I am, I wish I'd gone there too.

Warren Wilson is, period, end of story, AWESOME. Their little tagline says it all: "We're not for everyone... but then, maybe you're not everyone." Not only do you go to class, but you spend 15 hours a week on a work crew, and you do 100 hours of service over your 4 years there. It's in the middle of the Appalachian mountains in NC and it is so beautiful it will make you cry.

Obviously, it's a pretty hippy, granola, green place to be anyway, but they're worth mention here and now because, in October, they were awarded a $193,265 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations develop an environmental curriculum, Advancing Environmental Literacy.

Using the concept of "full cost accounting," the Advancing Environmental Literacy project will provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary study of the broad implications of critical environmental concerns. The goal is to better understand issues within a framework of sustainability - a "full cost accounting" that considers the environmental, economic and social/cultural impacts of realities and remedies.
- from the press release

I am so excited to hear more about this, because this topic has not yet been fully explored. We know now that scope is important, but we don't yet have an established framework through which businesses and governments can operate. It's not very effective to go to your local government and say, "Hey, this proposed housing development has broad-reaching implications on our quality of life! We should study this further!" but not have a way to actually, effectively study it and weigh the actual cost.

It's a bit out of our purview here in Nashvegas at the moment, but NC is close enough that this curriculum could spread here with a little push. After all, it was largely that Oil and Water class that got me thinking seriously about all of this stuff.