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QuickTime vPIP We recently had the privledge to make a video about Rainforest Action Network, the non-profit envrionmental change maker. We first met Julie Wolk, RAN Grassroots Organizer, at the Bioneers Conference. Julie explained that RAN works to hold corporations accountable for their environmental practices through an inside-outside approach to activism. Having protesters outside a store or shareholders meeting helps to put the pressure on, having a contact meeting directly with CEOs on the inside helps get the demands met, both creating space for each action to make real change. We were super impressed and moved by the passion and dedication that everyone we interviewed in the organization has. They ve made incredible changes and continue to train and empower the next generation of environmental activists to get engaged and tell corporations that business as usual is just not OK . We ve been working on this for a few months, going through their extensive video archive, gathering interviews and trying to bring 20 years of RAN s work into the spotlight. All media in the video (music, photos and original interview footage) is Creative Commons licensed. Thanks to everyone at RAN for letting us come in and document your work!

QuickTime vPIP I ve been meaning to make this video for weeks. Check out our place and our gardens. We re gardening using the Grow Biointensive methods we learned in Willits, CA from John Jeavons and Carol Cox. All hand tilled baby. Everything is growing wonderfully. Inspired by our tour, Wendy Tremayne, of the infamous Wendy and Mikey, made a tour video too. Click on the picture below to go to their Vimeo page. If you make one, link to it in the comments, I d love to see what other people are doing.

Jamais Cascio is all about solutions. He considers himself an ethical futurist- one who designs and executes resilient and sustainable solutions that will not adversely effect present and future generations. On his blog, OpenTheFuture.com, Jamais writes about three cornerstone issues that will make or break this planet: Global Warming, Global Poverty and Nanotechnology. As he explains in this video All of these are intrinsically connected. If you are to succeed in any one of them, you have to deal with the others everything is connected. Fortunately, the solutions are connected as well As these concepts become more commonplace, what happens is they disappear into the woodwork. They really become expectations. By Co-Founding the site WorldChanging.com (also check out the beautiful World Changing Book), Jamais is helping to make these solutions part of the planetary problem solving vocabulary. Big Thanks to Lisa Rein for connecting us and letting us take over her apartment for the interview!

Right now, Jay and I are touring Europe- basically we re couch hopping at videobloggers houses! We took a short detour and stayed in a hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland. One of the cool things about this hostel was its energy conserving light systems (besides these LEDs, they had motion sensor hallway lights that were only on when you walked through!). This LED halogen replacement was super cool. LEDs have very low wattage, so they use a ton less electricity than even fluorescents- compare .5-2w to the average 13-20w fluorescents or 40-100w incandescents. They also are said to have an almost infinite life span. I think we re going to be seeing a lot more of these in the future. Philips, one of the major light bulb manufacturers, just recently bought some LED technologies for future(istic) integration. The only issues are that LEDs are super focused, meaning they don t spread light like other bulbs; they keep light kind of funneled and focused like a spot light. The other issue is that they tend be a more cold, blue color, rather than the pleasant warm glow of incandescents and the newer fluorescents. Hopefully LEDs will start to evolve into warmer hues and eventually replace the energy sucking lights we have now. I was really excited to see this light in use as a little reading light!

Ever since we started living in a place were every square inch is growing something useful (to people and other creatures), our eyes are opened to the possibility of transforming lawns and other unused green space to grow food. Why water a lawn full of grass when you could water and grow salad greens, root veggies, herbs, squash, tomatoes, peppers, the list goes on and on. In this video we used some scrap wood to build a raised garden bed over a 7 x7 patch of driveway gravel. Not only do we pluck the greens for dinner, it looks a lot nicer than the dumping ground of found materials that it once was. If every neighborhood had even a few lawns turned into gardens, we could start hyper-localizing our food supplies and getting to know our neighbors- because, after all, you re going to want to trade gardening tips! Correction: Thanks to Nicole who commented below that this garden bed is 49 sq feet (or 4.5 sq m), not 14 sq feet (which would be 7+7 not 7 7, duh). Thanks Nicole!

You might remember from our Stone Soup video that our little eco-village has started to cull our chicken flock to make room for new birds. For the last 2 months we ve been learning what it takes to be mother hens and raise two dozen newly hatched chics. Jay and I grew up in urban areas where there were no chickens but in the grocery store, so this was a learning experience for us both. These babies need tons of food, water and warmth because they grow exponentially in their first months of life. The benefits of having chickens in your backyard are many- they eat veggie food scraps and weeds, they poop instant fertilizer, they lay eggs and, if you re into it, they ll eventually make a great organic, free range, home raised meal.

I m so sick of getting my utility bill and seeing that a huge majority of my money goes to pay for energy from Natural Gas and Nuclear (and in many places in the US, Coal). I want my money to go towards renewables and I m not the only one. Many communities, including San Francisco and Oakland are petitioning and passing legislation for more choice in their energy purchasing. The movement is called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) or Community Choice Energy. This type of legislation would not take down big corporations like PG ll hear Rory Cox of PacificEnvironment.org say: PG most likely from the former Soviet Union and The Middle East. It would require a whole brand, new fossil fuel energy infrastructure. We d rather see those billions spent on clean energy. When will it end? When will companies stop thinking that it is ok to continue to invest in finite resources? When communities stop relying on them to make energy choices for the people. For more info on Community Choice Aggregation, check out Local Clean Energy and Local Government Commission s CCA page.

Neelam Sharma is the Programs Director for CSU, Community Services Unlimited, an organization empowering South Central Los Angeles residents to eat and grow healthy food. The Food Not Lawns attitude towards neighborhoods, I must admit, is infectious. After hanging out with urban and suburban farmers in the last year, we see people watering grass and we gasp. What a waste! CSU encourages and empowers folks to start thinking this way by teaching backyard gardening and reclaiming un-used urban space for food production. Check out their other projects in our previous video Community Services Unlimited: Rocking LA with Food and Beauty .

We first met the Community Services Unlimited folks at the Just Us For Food Justice Bioneers day. They told us we should come check out their work in community gardening in South Central LA. How could we not? These folks are on the front lines of urban gardening in an LA neighborhood most famous for violence. The work they have done transforming empty lots and street abutting school yards into luscious, cornucopias of food and beauty is awe inspiring. They hold weekly workshops at each garden site to get folks involved and to taste goodies from the garden as well as local farmers wares. In an area of town where the only food resources tend to be liquor stores and fast food joints, CSU is a welcome addition empowering residents to grow their own and take action for food justice.

As you might remember, we made a new worm bin after our original bin failed. This new one is doing great! The drainage holes in the bottom have helped keep it moist but not too wet, the shallow shape allows the worms to get to everything faster and the blending of food scraps allows the worms to eat right away. Today we harvest all the rich vermicompost (soil) and sprinkle it into one of our garden beds. Potted plants also LOVE this stuff. I ve brought back to life more than one of our failing ferns with a scoop of nutrient rich vermicompost. Why buy chemically fertilizer when you can use worm poop?

Recently, Jay s dad started building on some property he owns in Rural Virginia. The first structure built was the garage/workshop. Jay and I were eager for the chance to try out some green building materials as an alternative to the usual stuff. Before traveling over to the east coast for Turkey Day, we did some research along side his pops about what the cheapest, most green insulation material could be used (which could also be purchased at a major box store near by). We found that Recycled Paper Cellulose was the least expensive material you could buy, at 25 cents per sq. foot and it is available through most building material suppliers. The alternatives were The Pink Stuff , fiberglass rolls at about 50 cents per sq. foot. I was wary of using fiberglass because of its notorious itch inducing particles that will irritate not just your skin, but your lungs as well! If the particles ever become loose and get into your ventilation system, this can mean big trouble for your internal organs and cancer fighting immune system. Another recycled and mostly benign insulator are the trendy new denim rolls. These are made from recycled scraps from jean manufacturers. This was my top choice until I did a price check. This stuff goes for $1.00 per sq. foot. Yikes! The price factor is still top priority when you have to build, those square feet can add up fast. And when you re trying to convince a retiring baby boomer to go green even though it costs 4 times as much, they re gonna laugh and buy the usual Pink Stuff . So we were happy to find an alternative that was cost effective and recycled. The only downside was the actual packaging of the material. It came in plastic bags, which most of you know, drive me crazy and can not be easily recycled or degraded. A would love to see this company really pull through and start packaging the product in, you guessed it, recycled paper!

We met Allstar Organics co-founder, Janet Brown, during the Just Us For Food Justice Bioneers day up in Marin. I really liked what she had to say about the impending crisis that is climate change and the small scale human solutions through the food we eat. I liked it so much, I thought I should share her interview as it s own separate post. Thanks Janet!

When I was little, my best friend s family never dried their clothes in their dryer but on a clothes line or indoor rack next to the radiators. In my house, we did use a dryer. I never understood their reasoning until now. Why use all that electricity or gas when you can just hang your clothes out in the sun (or partial sun in my case)? This is how it s been done for thousands of years before the industrial revolution, so why change? According to the US Dept of Energy an electric dryer can use between 1800-5000 watts of power. That s a lot of electricity! Even if you supplement your dryer usage by hanging stuff out half the time, you d be saving a bunch of money and resources. So that s what we ve decided to do. It s even catching on among our fellow eco-villagers - every time I walk by the line, it s got someone else s clothes on it! Thanks to Rhett and Amy at Greentime for the inspiration! P.S. Check out Project Laundry List for more info on communities coming together to end laundry line bans. Isn t that nutty? Drying clothes on a line is illegal in a lot of places!

A Word of Warning: This is a graphic video. If you do not eat meat and think killing animals to do so is bad, you should not watch this video. We live at The San Mateo Eco-Village, where we know our neighbors, garden together and learn how to live more sustainably. Part of living sustainably is eating local foods. Harvesting food from the garden and raising hens for eggs is about as local as you can get. When our neighbors Amy and Malaki arrived at the Eco-Village, they noticed a lack of eggs coming from the hens. Both have an agricultural background from years of working on a farm in Kenya. What do they do in Kenya when a bird gets too old to lay? They eat it. The whole damn thing! So we, as a community, decided to do just that. Most of us had never experienced living with chickens, let alone killing them for dinner. Growing up in the United States allows us to be vastly ignorant of where our food comes from- meat and vegetables alike. We thought this would be a good education for us city kids. The interesting part to me was the difference in methods between Brian, co-founder of The Eco-Village and Bay Area Native, and Malaki who grew up on a farm in Kenya. Also I thought it would be way more physically dramatic- you ve heard the saying running around like a chicken with its head cut-off . Well, it s true. Even after the chicken has died, the body still moves around and spasms. Though it was not the most pleasant experience to watch an animal die at human hands, I do know that these birds had a peaceful life full of good food and loving owners. That s saying a heck of a lot more than all the meat that is factory farmed and trucked to our grocery stores.

I know, I know- flying places is not very green at all, I hear ya- but getting to and from the airport can be. Recently, on a trip to Los Angeles, I decided to bypass the forever clogged LA highway system and go the Green LA Girl route and take the Metro. Yes, LA has a subway and it rocks. For $2.50 roundtrip, I got downtown from LAX (and back again a few days later) in one hour. I made it to my events and then I made it home to San Fran without ever having to climb into a car and sit in traffic. It was great! I highly recommend public transport to and from airports. Especially New York City where a cab can cost you over $100 roundtrip (take a book if you re going to JFK, it s a long ride!).

The Green City Gallery is an eco-demonstration site/art gallery/community meeting and event space in downtown Berkeley, CA. A collaboration between Bay Localize, an Oakland based non-profit focused on post petroleum community empowerment, and Dig Cooperative, an eco-design crew helping to re-invent urban environments to be more sustainable. The Green City Gallery was established to showcase to the public, as well as local politicians and business folk, that green does not have to be hippy-fringe but practical, clean and smart. Some of our favorite demonstrations are the roof top garden (keeps buildings naturally insulated, provides green space and food to occupants), the constructed wetland/greywater filtration (filters all your household water naturally through gravel and plants right back out to your garden) and last but not least, the composting toilet and urinal (fertilize your plants every time you go!). Thanks to Ingrid from Bay Localize for touring us around! If you re in Berkeley, head over to the space, it s at 1950 Shattuck Avenue, Downtown Berkeley.

The Solar Decathlon is a competition between 20 international (but mostly US) universities to build a solar, green and sustainable house that could be practically duplicated for the marketplace. Sponsored by the US Department of Energy, the contest requires teams to ship their entire house to the National Mall in Washington, DC for a week long, public exhibit and to be judged on ten sustainable areas. We got the chance to check out the Santa Clara University team house before they shipped it to DC. It was definitely inspiring to see students so passionate and excited about building sustainably. Here s to hoping the Department of Energy will take queues from all these talented students building for the future.

We were saddened by the death of our first worm bin because of some imbalance of moisture, acidity or bad paper products. We re super determined to continue the worm composting process with a homemade bin. We took the tray from our old bin (a big kitty litter pan) and gathered some scrap wood from our communal backyard at the San Mateo Eco-Village and got the process going again. The basic set up for a healthy, homemade bin is plenty of ventilation, damp paper bedding, food scraps, green plant stuffs, red wiggler worms and some shredded dry paper topping. We ll keep monitoring our bin to see how it s going and hopefully, cross your fingers, our worms survive and make us rich worm castings for our plants. If you make your own bin, let us know how it s going and what your secrets are! Music: Santigo (Stuttering Breaks Mix) by DJ Rkod

Burning Man is filled with hackers, artists and makers of all walks. We thought we would search out the energy geeks and see how they were utilizing resources out in the middle of no where. The obvious, most abundant source of energy in Black Rock City is the Sun. Solar arrays ranged from the milk crate supported to the 10,000 watt, could (and did) power a small village variety. It was great to see electric art cars charging off the sun! Waste Veggie Oil diesel conversions were also a favorite among burners for powering art cars and generators too. Thanks to Maestro, David and Nick for sharing their desert energy oases with us!

Ever since we interviewed John Sullivan, Campaigns Manager for The Free Software Foundation in Boston, our heads have been spinning with the possibilities that Free as in Freedom Software holds. If you re looking at this on the web, you ll see that our site is a pimped out Wordpress blog- a free and open blogging platform. There are lots of crazy thumbnails and video playing plug-ins that we ve helped to build through our collaborative Show-In-A-Box project. All of this is possible because of Free and Open Software. Free is the idea (and the reality) that people should have the right to use their software in any way they see fit. Modifications, hacks, customizations and copies-lots of copies- should be allowed. If you re using any operating system besides GNU-Linux (this would be Mac and Windows and a huge percentage of the population) and proprietary software made by these companies and many others, you literally don t have the right to change, copy or distribute any of it. That CD you made your friend of that cheesy FTP program? Nope, that s totally illegal. Unless of course it s Free Software (like my favorite FTP app, Cyberduck), then it s wholly encouraged for you to share and even open up the code and modify it and share it some more. We love free software because as people with big imaginations and some techy, smart developer friends, we can build things the way we want them rather than wait for a big corporation to build them for us. We have the Freedom to share our code and encourage others to modify and share alike. Much like Creative Commons, The Free Software Foundation embraces copyleft which gives both creator and user the freedom to work together. Check out our new Ogg Theora video feed and subscribe in your favorite free video aggregator or check out Miro!

There are so many words to describe Burning Man that it overwhelms me. If you ve ever attended the annual desert gathering 100 miles north of Reno, Nevada in Black Rock City of artists, hackers, hippies and yuppies alike, you know what I mean. Burning Man is an experiment in temporary community in the middle of nowhere with no resources except for the stuff you bring. Food, water, shelter, transport and whatever hacked together art or science project you can imagine- these are your life for seven days in the desert with 50,000 new friends. This year was themed The Green Man though it seems that the Burner crowd is generally pretty darn savvy when it comes to recycling the world s trash into amazing, awe inspiring art and functional pieces of technology, shelter and transport. Here are some snippets of our fun time at Burning Man. Stay tuned for some interviews with Burners making their own renewable energy and sharing it with fellow camps.

For my last birthday, I received a big, old box of fancy handmade soaps and lotions as a present from my mom. She lives in New Bedford, Massachusetts and is big into the local arts and crafts scene, as she was a crafter herself my whole childhood. This luscious cornucopia of products on my doorstep was cultivated and created by Diane Dupont of One Love Body Care, an independent grower and craftsperson making her living out of a workshop in her apartment. I was able to track her down for an interview while I was in town for a visit. Diane is a lively business woman with a knack for telling a good farmer s market/craft show story. Making a living by growing and perfecting your own product is no small feat, but given the choice to return to a 9-5 office job, Diane tells me she d never go back in a million years.

Anyone who knows Ryanne, knows she s extremely thrifty when it comes to utilities. Growing up in cold wintered New England taught her to keep that thermostat to a minimum or else when spring rolls around, you ll be in heating bill debt. Living in California allows us to keep our heating bill low to nonexistent. So why are we paying almost $20 a month ($240 a year) for gas? We don t even have a gas stove! Find out how we were able to cut this amount in half through a little furnace investigation. If you have a newer gas heating system, you might not have this problem. Newer systems have electronic gadgets to help drastically reduce gas usage. Thank Goodness! Our system is from the late 50 s early 60 s, back when energy was cheap(er)!

We ve been composting in our homemade worm bin for 5 months now. Through trials and tribulations, we ve learned a lot about the right environment for worms! In fact we experimented so much, that we managed to decimate our entire worm population. *Sigh*. Master composter and Freshtopia diva, Barb Finnin, came by to see how our worm bin was doing after all this time. Thank goodness she was so encouraging! She helped us haul our semi-composted compost (and dead worm population) to our new backyard composting bins where it can still be useful. We also get a look at a Wriggly Wranch-a multi-layered worm bin that our neighbors purchased at a discount from our county waste management. Seems that if you can get the discount, the layered method is the way to go. We will try again using homemade methods, but this time we ll have a little bit more knowledge to keep our worms alive. Thanks Barb!

Jason Harvey, director of The Oakland Food Connection, has an exciting vision for bringing real examples of practical gardening, food security and nutrition to urban schools. By partnering with the Bay Localize Rooftop Resources Project and community leaders like Lisa Blair, principal of EC Reems Academy, an elementary charter school in East Oakland, Jason has been able to create projects like this rooftop vegetable garden. Utilizing a valuable, unused space on the roof of EC Reems Academy, Jason s crew of local high school gardeners get down to business and build a half dozen garden boxes soon to be filled with plant and vegetable seeds. These vegetables will serve as more than just a healthy meal, they ll help educate kids and their parents about the possibilities that exist beyond processed, packaged foods and the often limited variety of produce sold in stores.

The book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart has been a good touchstone for the new green movement. Ideas like zero waste and designing products that have an almost infinite life cycle were crystalized with its publication. Many times during RyanIsHungry interviews, this book is mentioned. We thought we d help expose it more by showing how the book really sparks conversation and gets the green wheels turning in our heads. Grab the book for cheap on Amazon or go to your local library and borrow it for free!

A few months ago we did a story about California s primary utility company, PG s, Let s Green This City campaign. The green posters were all over the city of San Francisco. Our initial reaction was, Cool! A corporate utility company is actually talking green! These posters suggested many things that individuals could do to green their lives like ride a bike instead of drive, switch your lightbulbs to fluorescents etc. But what about PG t any of the posters advertising how much renewable energy they were buying? After a while we started to notice counter messages advertising PG s environmental record. Posters and stickers with the slogan Let s Greenwash This City and statistics citing PG s purchase of renewables at less than 4% started showing up all over the city as well. This counter message was initiated not by a competing billion dollar utility corporation, but by a group of citizens called Green Guerillas Against Greenwash. Their purpose was to counter PG s million dollar ad campaign with the simple truth that no matter how many bikes Californian s ride, companies like PG s office (where it was not vetoed!). This plan would give the residents of San Francisco a choice of where they can buy their power instead of having to settle for dirty PG green this city .

We ve been thinking a lot about how much trash comes in and out of our apartment. We recycle and compost a lot of stuff, but some things, like plastic wrappings, just have no where to go but the garbage. Thinking on a more micro level, we are trying to analyze and reduce those miscellaneous items of trash from even reaching our doorstep. How do you do that when everything you buy, especially your weekly groceries, come in some kind of packaging? Number 1: Stop buying so many packaged foods and supplement them with things you make instead. Number 2: Anything you do buy should be in a recyclable or compostable container. Number 3: Make PANCAKES from scratch! Yes, make pancakes!

Nikki Martinez and Oren Jaffe started EcoTuesday as a chill networking event for Green business folk to interact with each other. Structure is the key to success at EcoTuesday. The event opens with speakers from various green backgrounds- a good topic to spark conversations later. Next, everyone has a chance to introduce themselves and what they re passionate about- second great topic to chat about. Finally, it s walk around and mingle time- introduce yourself to the CEO of that small solar business, get an interview with some potential employees or start a business revolution with other fellow green upstarts. EcoTuesday strives to be a place for green and sustainable partnerships to form helping to strengthen the larger green movement with the proper economic strength and business savvy.