Archive for the ‘The Environment’ Category
June 16th
The sky can be its own calendar, but we often don’t read it as well as the ancients. More than any print calendar, seeing Orion in the sky heralds for me the coming of winter.
Growing up, my family used to spend summers in Vermont. There were no lights along our dirt road, so we got a clear view of all the stars and planets. My sister and I would lie on the lawn and look up at the night sky. We would take out our father’s binoculars for a closer look at the Milky Way, the craters on the moon, and pick out different constellations.
Dad taught us how to find Polaris - the North Star. He said mariners used to find their way using the star as a guide.
If I find a telescope at a yard sale this summer, I plan to set it up in my backyard out on Long Island. I’m far away enough from New York City and all the lights to really see the stars.
May 12th
The Farm in Southold, NY uses the Stella Natura calendar. The Farm’s crops are bountiful, delicious and healthy. Last summer, when overabundant rains compromised many other farmers’ and gardeners’ tomatoes (including mine!), The Farm had a great crop.
The Stella Natura is a biodynamic agricultural calendar that had its beginnings with Austrian philosopher-educator Rudolf Steiner in 1924. Sherry Wildfeuer popularized an English language edition, and has edited the calendar for the last 32 years.
Biodynamics is a holistic system of agriculture whose practices are designed to harness the forces of the sun, moon, planets and stars and focus them on the earth and its plants. Its both an ancient and modern practice of preparation and cultivation.
The calendar is meant to be used with common sense and an eye to the weather. The charts can assist you in choosing optimum times to sow seeds, transplant, cultivate your crops and harvest them for storage.
April 24th
Does “Made in America” figure into anyone’s buying decision?
Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Cannondale mountain bikes, Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster guitars, Zippo lighters, American Apparel T-shirts, Manhattan Portage bags, and Quo Vadis planners are made in America. But do people buy them because they admire and trust the brand and its products, or does the fact they were made here also figure into their purchase?
With so many mass-market goods made offshore, primarily in Asia, American-made products are usually more expensive. We understand that is a minus for shoppers that put price first. But it is a plus for people that have come to connote craftsmanship with small-scale domestic products.
There are reasons American-made products are more expensive: the living wage and benefits paid to employees, and the costs of adhering to environmental, health and safety laws.
In the past decade we have tried to reach out with messages of “sweatshop-free,” “supports the U.S. economy,” and even, “environmentally clean manufacture.” None of these made any discernable difference with many retailers, especially the national chains where so many people do their shopping.
There is a lot of media attention now about companies jumping on the green bandwagon. There is also a corresponding amount of negative publicity on China: reports of poisoned products; their massive air and water pollution problems, the unrest in Tibet.
Will this publicity prompt consumers and stores to check the label for “American-made”?
April 22nd
Author Michael Pollan wrote an article in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about why, given the immensity of the problem we face in global warming and the improbability that any one individual act (or even lifestyle) is going to make an impact, we should bother doing things like switching to CFL light bulbs or biking, not driving, to work:
If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture… And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others—from other people, other corporations, even other countries.
Idealistic and even naïve as that may be, it seems like justification enough to change one’s ways. But it also got me thinking about how trendy “going green” has become, and how conflicted I remain about it. On the one hand, it’s great to see companies like Whole Foods and even Wal-Mart announce initiatives to eliminate plastic bags or reduce the amount of mercury in CFLs. Their motives aren’t pure, but the outcome is still good, and the impact is far greater than any individual could hope to accomplish. On the other hand, if the trend ever dies, then we’re back to where we started. And it’s ridiculous, almost dangerous, to give people the idea that they can save the earth by buying stuff.
Also, environmentalism has long felt like an essentially personal choice, where we decide to sacrifice our own convenience for a cause that we believe in, because our ethics and our sense of individual responsibility demand it. It’s hard to reconcile that view with a cynical, herd-following mentality. Many companies struggle, too—and I know this is a corporate blog—but a lot of us care passionately about preserving the environment, and would be quite distressed if people thought it was just another marketing ploy.
What do you think?
April 14th
When I was growing up, my mother always kept a “yuck bucket” under the sink to store our biodegradable waste: stale bread, leftovers, eggshells and coffee grounds… periodically, someone would be tasked with taking it outside and dumping its contents on top of her compost pile.
Here in New York City, though, composting is rarely practical. Indoor bins are expensive, and besides, who has room for them? Few of us have any outdoor space, either, and when we do, our yards are quite small.
Fortunately for my own tiny yard, they now make reasonably small, compact outdoor composting bins; the one I just bought online is made from recycled plastic, and it doesn’t look atrocious tucked away on one side of the patio. Apparently our yard has also been blessed with a number of tiny red earthworms—earthworms are great for compost—so I dropped a couple in the bin last weekend to give them something new to chew on. (If they don’t like what they find, they can crawl back out through the bottom.) I’m so glad to be able to put our garbage to good use, and I can’t wait to put the finished compost on my flower bed: there’s no better fertilizer, I’ve heard.
Do you compost?
March 28th
Earth Hour started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?
The answer: Ask the people of Sydney, Australia to turn off their lights for one hour.
On March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 businesses in Sydney turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
Earth Hour founder, Andy Ridley, said 371 cities and towns from Australia to Canada–35 countries in all–had signed up for the 60-minute shutdown at 8 pm on March 29, 2008.
Ridley, who began Earth Hour last year while working with WWF Australia, said the initiative was about individuals and global communities joining together to own a shared problem - climate change.
Cities officially signed on include Chicago, San Francisco, Dublin, Manila, Bangkok, Copenhagen and Toronto, all of which will switch off lights on major landmarks and encourage businesses and homeowners to follow suit.
“Switching off the lights for an hour is not going to make a dent in global emissions,” said WWF organizer, Charles Stevens. “But what it does do is it is a great catalyst for much bigger changes. It engages people in the processes of becoming more energy efficient.”
August 8th
Just wanted to follow up on last week’s post about Clairefontaine paper and talk a bit about the company’s commitment to the environment… As I mentioned back in April, the Clairefontaine factory is at the forefront of environmental technology, recapturing the energy that’s given off during the manufacturing process to generate fully 80% of its own electricity. Wastewater is sent through special treatment stations in order to purify it and eliminate toxins; it’s then returned to the nearby River Meurthe. And as Christine Nusse, president of Clairefontaine’s parent company, Exaclair, told me a couple of weeks ago, even the sludge from that wastewater is made into a fertilizer.
Last week, I mentioned that both the wood and the pre-made pulp that are used in Clairefontaine paper come from from ecologically certified forests—forests whose managers preserve ecological diversity and plant as many trees as they cut down. One of the more interesting things I just learned is that you don’t even necessarily have to cut down trees to make paper; instead, the fibers often come from byproducts of the foresting industry (recovered from scraps of wood that aren’t suitable for making furniture).
The Clairefontaine paper mill has been around since 1858, though a nearby monastery was apparently known for making vellum well before that.
April 18th
Earth Day is April 22, and here in New York, the fifth annual “Earth Week” festival is already underway in Grand Central Station. Never before has it been clearer that we’ve got to do a better job of protecting our planet’s health.
At Quo Vadis, our respect for natural resources began long before public opinion made it law. Our planners are made exclusively with Clairefontaine paper, manufactured since 1858 in a mill that’s located in the Vosges region of France. The papermaking process requires enormous amounts of both water and energy, and Clairefontaine is always looking for new ways to minimize its environmental impact: Two gas turbines and a waste-heat boiler allow the company to generate fully 80% of its own electricity. Wastewater is sent through a high performance biological treatment station before it is returned to the river. In fact, the water is so clean when it leaves the facility local people can fish, swim and boat downstream within sight of the mill!
Clairefontaine paper itself is fully recyclable, and its fibers have a very high reuse quality.
Click here to read more about our paper and the environment. (The link to the video is currently broken—sorry. We’re working on it.)
