Remember when Green Thinking Blog went to Bonnaroo in June?

Well, the stats just came in on how much of an environmental impact attendees made through their recycling efforts & Bonnaroo made overall with their full-on committment. Clean Vibes was on the campus to do the dirty work & tally it up!  The results were so great that Bonnaroo even won an award: The A Greener Festival Award, which rates festivals eco-friendliness all over the world!

Check out what was diverted from the landfills at this year’s Bonnaroo (stats provided by Bonnaroo follow up email to GreenThinkingGTB@gmail.com :

101 tons of commingled recycling
23 tons of cardboard
21 tons of scrap metal
45 tons compostable material
5 tons of cooking oil

All together 60% of all waste by volume was diverted from landfills!

This is so impressive, I wonder how Bonnaroo & Clean Vibes will top it next year?!

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Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Flintstones!

Happy Anniversary Fred, Wilma, Barney & Betty – and of course the kids, pets, and all the prehistoric neighbors we know & love.

I used to love watching the Flintstones on Saturday mornings when I stayed over at my Grandma & Bumpa’s house – Fred always got so mad, Barney was always trying some new scheme, and Betty & Wilma were making a fashion statement from practically nothing.

What I also loved about this show was the creative way the families made modern day conveniences without impacting their environment.  Consider the running-man car, as powerful as a big mans thighs could carry him, they love animals & pets of all kinds, and they believe in healthy living – remember Flinstone vitamins?

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I hadn’t ever thought of this before, but does the Earth want us to conserve? compost? recycle?  Have I been butting my nose where it isn’t wanted?

According to Robert Laughlin, and featured in an article in Newsweek, (Newsweek, 9.12.10 by George Will) the Earth just may not care if we meddle.  Laughlin shares the idea that the geological timeframe of the Earth will happen regardless of what we do in the meantime. He argues that ‘Climate change over geologic time is, Laughlin says, something the earth has done “on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.” People can cause climate change, but major glacial episodes have occurred “at regular intervals of 100,000 years,” always “a slow, steady cooling followed by abrupt warming back to conditions similar to today’s.”’ 

I must say, I see his point – and since he is a Nobel Prize winner in Physics, he has some ground to stand on.  Even so, I still think it is in the interest of human nature that we embrace conservation and show a respect for where we live. 

What are your thoughts?  Leave us a comment, a tweet, or an email.

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This coming week my friend is having a garage sale, it got me thinking of all the great treasures people have in their homes…I am sure she will turn up a few cell phones – maybe a bag phone, an old car phone, the Zach Morris version walkie-talkie phone - ah, the possibilities. 

Remember when the RAZR by Motorola was all the rage? Then the Blackberry? Now the iPhone, I mean iPhone 4? You can practically recall the events in your life by what kind of phone you had at the time!

Now that the world upgrades technology on a regular basis, what happens to the quickly rejected versions?  Recycle mobiles is the newest trend in the wireless industry. 

One way to do this is to visit Envirofone and get paid to do something good for your earth.  Now, that shouldn’t be your only incentive – but $$$ in your pocket isn’t too shabby either.   Plus, the life of your phone is two fold this way; often, sources that take your old phones refurbish them to provide to lower income areas or reuse their parts and avoid landfills as much as possible. 

Whatever you do with your old bag phones – do not, I repeat, do not put them in the waste bin.  These electronics do not break down in our landfills and just become a waste of space.  Not to mention, cell phones will leak harmful chemicals that will bleed from the batteries and plastic directly into our natural soil resource. 

Therefore, I repeat, recycle those mobile phones!

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I am in the market for a new car.  Don’t worry, my existing car is going to a good cause -  my sister. 

I have a couple of options to consider for my car buying adventure:

1.  Buy something gently used - this option will  use one of the many excessive vehicles that are currently out there – recycling so to say…

2. Buy a hybrid.  While this option doesn’t take some of the excess inventory off the lots, going forward my gas emissions would be lessened while I am on the road.

You can see my dilemma, quite the catch-22.  What would you do? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

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This week my household seemed to increase its technology factor 3-fold.

With this upgrade came a new phone, a new computer, and an MP3 player.  So, I thought I would share a little bit about this adventure.

We have upgraded our energy-sucking desktops for the energy conscious laptop version.  Besides saving energy, our laptops are space-savers!  No more pesky cords, big boxes at our feet, simple, streamlined knowledge at our fingertips.

With all this new equipment, we had to find a place for all of our well-loved pieces.  So, I headed to the recycling center of Best Buy.  They took all of our cables, cords, music boxes, and phones. 

A word of advice though, be sure to read all the instructions on their website before trekking your hundreds of pounds of electronics to the store.  Today, just as I brought my computers to the store, I had to bring them home, or pay $10 each to have the hard drive removed- as those aren’t recyclable. 

While we all have to keep up with the times, please take care that your old items aren’t filling up the landfills.

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What could be better than having this summer month be dedicated to parking & recreating?  Seriously, though, it is the perfect season to get out enjoy your local parks and some recreational activities. 

National Recreation and Park Association has recognized that and is encouraging local parks and community centers to promote themselves through various programs.  This year’s theme is “Celebrate, Advocate, Recreate!”  

This association has implemented several initiatives, we have just passed National Therapeutic Recreation Week.  Therapeutic recreation helps people with illnesses and disabilities through treatment, education, and recreation services to enhance their health, to be independent and their quality of life.  It isn’t too late to celebrate for yourself!  The NRPA has given 20 ways to celebrate; here are my faves:

•  Organize an inclusive bike ride, including both hand-cycle and traditional cycles.
• Develop a raised garden in your facility.  Have community members choose items to grow. 
• Partner with community health professionals to hold a leisure education class.  
• Organize an intergenerational program for seniors and children, such as a story time, reading programs to encourage reading or other programs that might enhance academic performance.

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I got a pretty gnarly kink in my neck today.  The only position I can sit comfortably in puts me in front of the t.v. so I chose something educational to watch.  The Travel Channel  was showing some extreme living desitnations, and amongst them was Greater World  outside of Taos, New Mexico.

Greater World is a community where the homes are built entirely out of recyclable materials and uses sustainable utilities.  Retaining walls are made out of old tires, siding is made out of used beer bottles, it is really unbelievable. Each of these homes is called an Earthship, besides the fabulous name, it is a fabulous concept.   All energy comes from the sun, wind, and earth for electricity, heating & cooling purposes.  Water is filtered from the rain. 

Besides being a completely sustainable home, that leaves no imprint on the Earth – it is super cute. Beer bottles provide a stained glass effect, clay building creates beautifuly architechural arches, and floor to ceiling windows provides a very open environoment with a lot of light. 

Another great feature is that these Earthships  can be built in any climate, anywhere!  In fact, a group of people brought this method to Haiti to assist in the earthquake disaster relief.  What is so cool, is that they aren’t building a temporary shelter for the meantime, Earthships is building a permanent home for these people and a simple, sustainable, building technique that they can continue to use as they rebuild their community.

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In the July issue of National Geographic it was reported that the Kessler Syndrome may just come to fruition.  First described in the 1970s by Donald Kessler, the Kessler Syndrome takes place when space orbits become too polluted by various satellites, tethers, ecetera that these items cause a crash of astronmical proportions – no pun intended. 

A collision has already occured, the two pieces of hardware that collided created over 2,000 pieces of debris to orbit the earth.  Some preventative measures were taken by the United Nations, for example, no country is allowed to use old satellites as space target practice – huh, sounds logical.

However, even with prevenative measures scientists predict that a major collision will happen every 5 years or so.  Researchers are discussing various ways to clean up this trash – everything from an electrical wire to drag the trash from space to the Earth’s atmosphere to burn it up all the way to a space garbage collector in the shape of a collector satellite that would dump the trash into what is called a ‘death spiral.’ 

It is obvious to me that we, humankind, have now crossed the line from polluting the earth that we live on including the water (remember the Pacific Gyre?), mountains, and air surrounding it – to polluting the entire solar system.  How are we going to find a way to clean up space when we can’t even find a way to clean up  our act here?  Let’s hope the space program and the United Nations can instill some sustainable practices while still learning more about the big old wide world out there…

Want to learn more about the litter in outerspace?  Check out National Geographic’s Space Trash Quiz.

(Nasa Orbital Debris, National Geographic Magazine, 2010, pp. 30-34)

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IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME.

Can you hear the boom of James Earl Jones’ voice?  Can you see the crowds flocking to the fields? 

SCENE CHANGE

Hear the squawk of the seagulls, the gentle waves of the gulf lapping onto beaches free of little oil balls, the laughter of happy families enjoying their summer holiday on the coast…

This scene very well may happen since there is confirmation that BP will utiilize oil centrifuge machines to clean up our contaminated waters by seperating the oil from the water.  These machines, as seen below, are the environmental baby and $24 million investment of none other than Kevin Costner.  According to CBS News,  BP has contracted with Mr. Costner & Ocean Therapy Solutions to use 32 centrifuge machines to tackle the disaster that is in the water of the Gulf of Mexico – and they couldn’t start soon enough in my opinion.  

Costner has been an advocate and investor of this project for over twelve years, and as you will see in the video below, he is ticked that researchers have known about this idea for years and simply chose not to give it a try, which is why it has been funded privately to this point.  You would think giving these machines a whirl from the very beginning to try your chances would be a no brainer.  A test of them early on would have at least provided the process of elimination;  if these machines turn out to be the answer to our prayers, a lot of damage could have been avoided.   

Thank goodness a possible solution has finally surfaced instead of more oil balls.   

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