The Nash Goes Green!!!

Being a bit of a thesp meself I loved this article I read in the Evening Standard last night.
Had to post it here for you!

National's energy savings can finance a play every year

The National Theatre is saving enough energy to pay for a production every year after a bold environmental drive.

It has met its target of cutting energy consumption by 20 per cent since 2006 and set itself a 25 per cent figure to hit by December.

The savings have translated into an annual financial dividend of £100,000 - which is equivalent to a new show in the Cottesloe, the smallest of the National's three stages. The success has prompted the theatre to consider a bigger long-term plan. Architecture company Haworth Tompkins has delivered a masterplan which includes environmental measures worth £10million that it says will transform the theatre over the next two to three decades.

They include the National using excess heat on site to generate hot water in a system known as combined heat and power, or CHP. The system would cost £1million but would pay for itself within four years. The savings so far have been made thanks to technology such as movement detectors to trigger lighting in the lavatories, so it switches off when no one is there, and a new extractor fan in the car park. The National also stopped a tradition of switching on certain stage lights three hours before curtain-up because they would not work without time to warm up. It found that modern ones were far more reliable.

Partly thanks to a £500,000 deal with Philips, the theatre has also replaced halogen and tungsten lights with LEDs, which are expensive but last a long time and use relatively little power.

The National last month won a silver medal from Mayor Boris Johnson at the Green500 awards.

New Old Jewelry

How about this gorgeous cuff I just treated myself to from Verde Rocks available at Planet Threads.

I love it!!

The "Olympia Cuff" I'm wearing is from... "New "old stock" is the term used for vintage components that were made for the jewelry industry years ago and were not used. These were stored away for decades and never circulated for manufacturing! Such a great idea to use what has already been manufactured -- VerdeRocks rocks the light footprint."





Planet Threads doesn't just do jewelry they have lots of eco designers of women's and men's fashions and accessories, handbags, interiors and kids stuff.




Finally designers are coming up with fashion that is fashionable!! I mean I love retro as much as the next person, but too much of the hippy thing can make the flowers in my hair wilt!!

Goodbye, GM by Michael Moore

Greenies,
I don't often get political here on How Green Is Your Life but....During the eight unbearable years of the Bush Administration, film maker Michael Moore (Bowling For Columbine, Roger and Me, Fahrenheit 911) was one of the few liberals brave enough to be the tall poppy in a field of bitter left rhetoric that lost the Democrats two elections.
Michael Mooore, along with architect William McDonough, is one of my eco heroes.
Here he is talking about the demise of the American Motor car and what the (potentially bright) future holds for an industry that needs to move with the times...as we all do.... I love some of what he has said here and wanted to post it for those of you not on his email list.

Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore

June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

The Book Of Green

My friend Katie at One Green Earth is publishing a fab FREE directory that lists pretty much all the green resources you need from soup to nuts!!

If you have a green or eco business and would like a listing, the deadline is fast approaching, but here's the link

• Book of Green is a paperback eco directory that’s given to the consumer for free
  
• UK wide distribution of 30,000 copies plus online flip magazine (with seo & clickable links)
  
• The best of both online & printed media promoting the green marketplace to a wider audience

Watch out for it.
The Book Of Green will be distributed by leading green magazines The Ecologist and Permaculture Magazine, plus available at WH Smith, The Eden Project, CAT, high street eco stores, online eco stores, and at eco shows throughout the summer.

Eco Warrioress says HURRAH!!

Darryl Hannah and Eco Warrioress = BROWN SISTERS!!

Further to my GREENWASH rant a few blogs ago, a reader sent me this article from OFF GRID.net about Darryl Hannah who clearly feels my pain...read on...

“I can’t stand the word “green,” says actress and biofuel campaigner Daryl Hannah. And she’s not the only one. All over the environmental movement we’re sick of Greenwash, and we’re not going to take it any more.

“It’s become a pedantic, smug, judgmental word that is unrelated to the rest of one’s life,” she tells The Guardian newspaper. The word ‘green’ “is being so overused as a marketing tool that it has no credibility,” says Hannah.

She is right, of course. Advertising people love the word Green – they have rendered it almost meaningless – reduced it to a mix of lifestyle choices, expensive organic whimsies, unaffordable building codes and ridiculous gadgets such as an over-designed composter for your marble kitchen counter-top.

Their shade of Green is the color of Astroturf – synthetic, ugly and potentially damaging.

Porter Novelli, the global public relations firm, says, “even the tardiest marketers are scrambling to make green attributes and launch new products and services positioned as more responsible alternatives.”

It's time that environmentalists re-appropriated the language of ecology – seized it back from the new army of marketers and consultants who are reassuring us that we can all go “green” while we continue to consume as much as before – grow the economy as much as before, just so long as we do it in a new “green” way.

This time we need something the marketers will never want to appropriate – and that’s why Brown may be the new Green. It’s the color of the Earth, of dirt – it reminds us that things smell as they compost, it reassures us that we do not necessarily need to put on a clean white shirt to go to work. But Madison Avenue does not like stains. Try saying “Brown Huggies.” It will never take off.

The Green Party could change its name to the Brown Party and Greenpeace become Brownpeace.

Hannah is proud of growing her own food (not all of it surely?). But as she says:” We’re in the midst of a massive population explosion, a credit crisis, there’s climate chaos, poverty, unprecedented loss of species, loss of open wild space, resource depletion and growing dead zones and yet we still act slowly, if at all. What’s wrong with us?”

And what would she save, apart from her family and friends, come the floods?

“My critters, seeds, eggs, medicinal spores and worms.”

Brown eggs, I hope, Daryl.

Self Container-ed Housing

I just love these dwellings made from recycled shipping containers. Had to share.
From bijou lake houses to shelter for the Third World. Take a look....

I WAAAAHHHNT ONE!!!

Eco - Schmeeco!!!

I know I know where the Eco Heck have I been??

Well between you and me I have been a little disillusioned with the eco world I profess to love so well. It started at Christmas when the fabulous and oh-so-eco-stylish Lupe and I met on a dark and rainy Saturday afternoon in Spitalfields to forage for more fab eco stuff that I can share with you.

However

The Eco Design Fair in The Old Truman Brewery was indicative of the increasing amount of gatherings with vendors plying their products as ECO or GREEN. My overwhelming impression was of a bunch of ethnicy-slash-crafty stalls all trying to be green because they are selling 'fairtrade' things. I'd like to make the distinction here and now... Of course buying something from a country where the people making the jewelry and knitted hats are getting a living wage. Brilliant. Won't find fault with that but please don't lure me in with the green thing and then be fair trade for the most part. And the source materials? What are they made of? Do they use huge amounts of energy to produce and then they have to be shipped here. That can add up to a lot of carbon footprint...anyway...

What with that and all the TV ads from supermarkets claiming they keep their prices down because they have low energy light bulbs and recycle their packaging......uummmm...little tenuous in my book...SO.... I have been sidestepping writing my blog for want of something to say that doesn't infer that I'm over the whole thing!!

I'm just asking for a little less GREEN WASHING please!!!??

SO I TOOK A STEP BACK!!
OK. Soap Box rant over...

At the Christmas (eco) fair I did find some fab lampshades made from recycled plastic milk bottles by a very talented lady after my own heart - LIZZIE LEE who says.....

"I first became interested in recycling plastics on a trip to India in 1998, where I saw the effect of plastic water bottles collecting in piles on the streets and plastic bags littering the desert in Rajastan. In India they had beautiful buckets , jugs, plates etc made from recycled stripy plastic and they looked so much more attractive than the plain green or beige ones you could buy in this country. When I returned to university I was determined to find a simple way of recycling plastic waste – primarily plastic bottle tops which were not recycled and went to landfill, and hence my little cottage industry ‘plastikrap’ was born, using an oven and an old bookbinding press."

Please check out her work in Highgate at North and South Ideas Gallery.
The opening is this Thursday March 12th


Lizzie is an inspiration as is Jamie Ward the student designer who makes his pieces from discarded furniture he finds in Manchester where he is still at college!! Wow!!

Check it out!!!

America's First GREEN President!

How can I blog after the historical election result of November the 4th and not mention OBAMA THE MAN!! I flew back to LA to vote. No absentee ballot for me!!

Waking up in election day I felt a slight apprehension that we still might not prevail. It seemed such a long time since Barack Obama's speech declaring his intention to run for the presidency, the 'Yes We Can' speech that brought me to tears, beating Hilary to the nomination.... and finally, The Day was here. I remember 2004 when we thought we had it in the bag. No-one could be so sure after the other side had 'won' twice against the Democrats estimated odds...

I trotted along to my polling station. (Had to take a pic for proof or something...Check out those lovely late 80's colours... pink and green - nice!!) I stood in a long line of Obama supporters. If there were any McCain-ites in the queue they kept very quiet!! This was Hollywood after all.... Oh I can't tell you how my hand shook as I put my little black dot in the right place for Obama!!

Later that day, I joined Kay The Cook and her hubby Fred at Troy's house to watch the returns. Kay had made us a big pot of Obama's Chilli from his own recipe and we were just finishing up our bowls of delicious but not too spicy (very political!) chilli and settling down to what I thought would be another long election night when... at 1 minute past eight - right after the West Coast polling stations had closed - with no fanfare, no roll of drums, no WARNING!! - a news anchor comes onto the TV screen and calmly announces:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now in a position to announce that the president elect of The United States of America is Barack Obama."

Well for a moment we were stunned. Wait. What did he say? Did he just say The Thing. The Thing we have been waiting so long for, that we couldn't quite believe might ACTUALLY HAPPEN? We had voted in not only a black man to the Whitehouse, but a man who's first job is to work on the ecomony - like anyone would - and who's second pledge after he takes the Oath of Office on January 20th is to do what he can to slow Climate Change and the USA's dependency on foreign oil...this is amazing and slightly unbelievable news for environmentalists all over the world!!

Because like it or not, where America leads, the rest of the world eventually follows.

When I woke the next morning I had the feeling I imagine an Oscar winner might have waking up after all the excitement and elation of the previous evening. I can't imagine you wouldn't glance over at the bedside table to make sure your little gold statue was still there. Had it been a dream all along?

NO!!! IT'S TRUUUUUUUUUUUUUE!!

Time will tell of course as to how much this guy with so much expectation on his shoulders can actually achieve. We are talking about politics after all. However I, for one, am certainly looking forward to the green blogging I can contribute as 2009 unfolds.

In the meantime I have been writing for the fabulous and brand new SELF magazine, a new publication for Sustainable Lifestyle & Self Build, from the creators of the leading UK magazine for Sustainability, Business & the Built Environment, SUSTAIN.

Go to the website and sign up for a free sample issue.

GORGEOUS GREEN CHRISTMAS THINGS

This evening, I'm going to the launch of my friend's Sarah Baulsh and Lisa Harland's Christmas 'pop up' shop OUR ECO SHOP in Notting Hill. For the first time, eco friendly designers and makers are showcasing their innovative and ethical products together in a single shop, providing Christmas shoppers with truly eco-friendly gifts for family, friends and colleagues. Launching on the 19th November and opening this weekend, Our Eco Shop on Westbourne Grove in London, will be open to the public for the next six weeks until Christmas Eve.

Bags of Change is offering a 5% discount on most items in Our Eco Shop to anyone who shops there with a Bags of Change bag! The full range of bags is available in Our Eco Shop, on their website and at over 70 more shops around the UK. Plus, for every fairly traded Amazon bag sold this Christmas, Bags of Change will donate £1 to Survival, the tribal people’s charity. So there you go.

LOS ANGELES

Not wanting to leave out my Los Angeles chums, my English friend and eco fashion designer, Samantha Robinson, is the owner of RAW EARTH WILD SKY and is having a Holiday Sale this weekend of her Designer Organic Clothing & Hand-Made Jewelry.

Saturday 11/22 - 11.00am to 5.00pm
Sunday 11/23 - 12.00pm to 4.00pm

@ 937 South Mullen Avenue, Los Angeles - 90019
(between Olympic & Wilshire - 1 block east of Rimpau. email Srobinson5@aol.com for full details)

Her entire line is also available online at BTC Elements.

That gorgeous charm bracelet is made from melted down bullet casings poured into Antique Art Deco & Nouveau molds.
Something war-like turned into a thing of beauty!

Eco Warrioress wants one....Y'know, if you are stuck for a pressie idea....?