Seriously Green
These families don’t just talk about recycling – they live it, every day, even if it means unplugging from the grid.
These families don’t just talk about recycling – they live it, every day, even if it means unplugging from the grid.
Milk and soda producers are finding out that reuseable bottles make good economic sense. And satisfied customers agree.
Tom Chappell, the Tom of Tom’s of Maine, set out 22 years ago to make environmentally friendly products and he’s still at it.
Authors Nikki and David Goldbeck, who live in Woodstock, New York, run Ceres Press, a home-based cottage industry that turns out environmental books on subjects like "clean and green" housekeeping. Their new book, Choose to Reuses, is a 450-page guide to living well while reducing one’s load on the Earth. It’s a step-by-step, very specific source material on reusing everything from computer printer ribbons to upholstered sofas.
If you call your event "Eco-Challenge," the last thing you want is bands of environmentalists waving angry, in-your-face placard for the TV cameras at the starting line. But that’s just what happened in April, with the U.S. debut of "adventure racing," inspired by the grueling, French-sponsered Raid Gauloises.
When it comes to illegal dumping from cruise ships, sometimes the best watchdogs are appaled vacationers who catch the action with their video cameras. In 1993, passengers aboard the Regent Sea witnessed and photographed crew members throwing plastic garbage bags in to the ocean 30 miles off the coast of Florida. Also in 1993, a group of fishermen discovered and partially retrieved more than 25 plastic garbage bags floating several dozen miles of St. Petersburg, Florida. The debris was determined to have come from the Regent Rainbow, another ship operated by Regency Cruises, Inc. Regency received a whopping $250,000 fine this spring for violations of MARPOL, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships.
Hollywood’s scripts are becoming increasingly friendly to environmental causes. After all, Murphy Brown recycles, and Universal wagered $175 million on the Kevin Costner film Waterworld, in which centuries of global warming have caused the polar ice caps to melt, leaving Earth’s surface covered in water.
In 1989, the government of Western Samoa directed the village of Falealupo to build a new school. Located on the island of Savaii, 2,800 miles south of Hawaii, the village coulnd’t find money, so Chief Fuiono Senio and the elders reluctantly sold logging rights to 30,000 acres of tropical hardwoods for $2.50 per acre.
"If you see a school of whales where there is a feeding mother, first kill the calves because then the mother wont leave. Next, kill the kill the mother, then the male won’t leave. And finally, kill the male." The comments of former whaling fleet captain Vladimir Dobralskiy echo the kill-at-all-costs credo that operated for years in the Soviet Union’s whaling industry.
Five years ago, Tom Sellars wasn’t getting any repect in the music business: His calls rarely got beyond industry secretaries. These days, musicians like R.E.M., Paul McCartney, k.d. lang and Kenny Loggins are listening, because Sellars and former college buddy Michael Martin have combined a vision, a cause and commitment into the Minneapolis based Concerts for the Environment (CFE).