Green Moving Tips!

Posted on April 2, 2013 by pjpelham

For those of you who know, my husband and I will be moving to Long Beach, CA this week! While moving to a new area can be exciting and full of opportunities for exploration, packing and unpacking can be overwhelming and exhausting.

Today’s Inspiration: Sustainable moving tips to help you relocate across the state or anywhere your heart desires.

Donate or Sell – We had a garage sale two Saturdays in a row. With all the wonderful things we have in our home and the fact that we are down sizing, it made sense for us to sell items we decided not to take with us. Whatever remains unsold will be donated to a local charity.

Rent a Green Box – About a year ago, I conducted a presentation at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa for their 2012 Environmental Sustainability Conference. While I was there, I met Spencer Brown, Founder and Chief Tree Hugger of Rent a Green Box – America’s first Zero-Waste pack and move solution comprised of post consumer and industrial materials, and recycled trash. Rent a Green Box offers their Recopak (durable, recycled plastic bins) along with many other products including geami packing paper, recocubes, and expandos to safely secure your items.

Cardboard Boxes – While they might not be the most eco-friendly choice, reusing boxes from grocery and wholesale stores definitely lessens your strain on mother nature. In our case, we decided to scope out the closest Costco and asked their manager for boxes they no longer needed, we got them for free! After our move, I will be bestowing my boxes onto another family member for her family’s upcoming move.

Packaging material – My husband was shredding old confidential documents in our shredder and it dawned on me – “Why not use the shredded paper as packing material?” It works as a great cushion for fragile items.

Hope these tips help you on your next move! Wish us luck during this exciting transition in our lives.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Posted on March 19, 2013 by pjpelham

I recently visited a close colleague of mine at the grand relocation opening of her company. While I was there, I spoke with some of her colleagues and we began discussing hilarious environmental video campaigns that were created to further educate residents and businesses.

Today’s Inspiration: Laughter! Sit back and be prepared to laugh at these brief comical, but truthful videos.

The City of Denver Water has their “Use Only What You Need” campaign videos:

Planet Green Commercial:

By going electronic, you are reducing your paper consumption. But paper is still needed in some instances:

Bacardi – Much More than Rum

Posted on February 28, 2013 by pjpelham

My husband and I recently came back from an amazing, bucket-listed trip to Miami Beach, Florida and the Eastern Caribbean. We had an opportunity to jet ski off Miami Beach, hangout with crocodiles in the Everglades on our airboat, overlook beautiful St. Thomas from Paradise Point, and even enjoy a strenuous but worthwhile clear water kayaking trip in Turks and Caicos. But one of my most memorable moments on our trip was our visit to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Today’s Inspiration: When we go to bars, friendly gatherings, or even concerts we tend to have a favorite drink – Vodka Cranberry, Cuba Libre, Scotch on the rocks, Gin and Tonic, you name it. But do we ever consider where these stimulating concoctions originate? While in Puerto Rico, we were decided to visit the Bacardi Rum Distillery in the city of Cataño. I was amazed, but not surprised to learn that Bacardi Limited is the largest privately held spirits producer in the world – some global brands they produce, market, and distribute are Bacardi rum, Bombay Sapphire gin, Grey Goose vodka, Martini & Rossi vermouth, and Dewar’s blended scotch whisky.

Driving into the palatial, open spaced Bacardi grounds was an eye-opener. Being interested in the sustainability field, my eyes immediately noticed the wind turbines far off in the distance. On our tour of the facility, we learned that the distillery uses these wind turbines to reduce their annual energy use by 7%.

Shortly, after our tour was completed I was interested in learning more about the Bacardi Limited Brand and its purpose for “Spirit for Life”.

After doing some research, I learned that Bacardi Limited has pledged five pillars of Corporate Social Responsibility measures to channel their positive efforts:

Marketplace – Focusing on responsible driving campaigns
Environment, Health, and Safety – They have significantly reduced their energy use by 30% and accidents by over 60% since 2006.
Responsible Sourcing – They are continuously seeking sustainable sourcing for raw materials and packaging, while also maintaining/enhancing the economic status of growers and suppliers.
People – Focusing on training and aligning their employees with the company’s values and strategies
Philanthropy and Community Involvement – Operating in several nations around the world, they have pledged to bring positive contribution to local communities.

To learn more about Bacardi Limited and “Spirit for Life”, please click here.

Pairing Sustainability with a Great Glass of Wine

Posted on January 28, 2013 by pjpelham

As a wine connoisseur, I have always enjoyed the sweet taste and fragrance of a Muscat, the crisp, fruity flavor of a Chardonnay, and even the aroma of currant and cedar with each sip of Merlot. Thankfully, I live a short drive away from a local gem – the Temecula Valley Wine Country.

Today’s Inspiration: Pairing sustainability with a great glass of wine at Ponte Winery in Temecula, CA. From their green restaurant to green weddings to encouraging customers to be green at home, Ponte Winery has even developed an ambitious list of advancing their sustainability efforts.

Green Restaurant

Ponte Winery has partnered with the Inland Valley Community Supported Agriculture – to which they have pledged to purchase a portion of local farm’s harvests, covering a farm’s yearly operating budget in exchange for regular supplies of seasonal fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the season. Ponte Winery’s Smokehouse Restaurant has partnered with Sage Mountain Farms, where they receive a majority of their organic greens.

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Additionally, the restaurant serves as a CSA pick up location every Tuesday from 2-5 pm.

According to the Ponte Winery website, their kitchen uses a pulper – allowing kitchen waste to be added to their vineyard compost. They even save all coffee grounds to use as compost in their flower beds!

Green Weddings

Ponte Winery is committed to supporting environmentally conscious couples by incorporating sustainable elements into their “big day”.

Their Vineyard Pavilion was built using high quality insulation, carpet tiles, low VOC paint, and reuse old windows and concrete slab. They promise “90% of a typical green wedding menu has ingredients that are sourced locally”. Additionally, their green wedding package includes food, beverage, tables, linens, chairs and silverware – eliminating unnecessary fuel emissions to transport items from other locations. They even suggest using their lush picturesque setting so as to minimize on centerpieces and other decorations. With the expenses of a grandiose wedding, it’s great to save green by being green.

Other Sustainability Efforts

Launched in 2007, Ponte Winery’s Recycling Program allows customers to bring in empty Ponte wine bottles for recycling. In exchange for your due diligence, the Winery offers a $1 per bottle voucher which is valid on wine purchases.

With every fine bottle of wine, comes the cork. It is 100% recyclable, natural and biodegradable – they can be recycled into flooring tiles, building insulation, and even sports equipment. Ponte Winery has taken it another step by accepting corks for their ReCork Program. This program allows the Winery to send their used cork to be recycled by companies to be repurposed into innovative products. The Winery hosts a disposal station in front of their Tasting Room where customers can drop off their used corks.

For more information on Ponte Winery and their sustainability efforts, please click here.

Dance, Dance, Green Revolution

Posted on January 26, 2013 by pjpelham

During my college years, my friends and I would travel far and wide to the dance at the latest nightclub and hear top 40 hit songs reverberate through our bodies. To this day, I still enjoy dancing – at weddings, in the shower, and most definitely at nightclubs. Dance is a form of individualistic human expression, needs no words, and offers a sense of freedom as we let our worries melt away on the dance floor.

Today’s Inspiration: Energy Floors has developed the Sustainable Dance Floor – the world’s first energy generating floor. Pairing up the art of freestyle dance with an energy generating dance floor is what makes me want to move!

Launched in 2008, the Sustainable Dance Floor (SDF) uses the movement of people as its source of energy. The SDF is slightly pliable and when stepped on exerts kinetic energy. As a result, energy is generated into electricity powering the dance floor’s LED lights – bringing a whole new interactive experience to dancers by creating an energetic and melodious atmosphere.

Energy Floors has used this amazing technology for stadiums, airports, railway stations, shopping malls, buildings and city squares. Generated electricity from the floors can be used to power local systems such as streetlights, information and signing systems.

The technology has great potential to become a renewable energy system while also raising awareness about sustainability in a fun and inspiring way.

This brings a whole new meaning to dancing the night away!

Floating Solar-Powered Schools

Posted on January 14, 2013 by pjpelham

I love to travel. Curiously I enjoy new foods, engage in sightseeing, and soak in the scenic and cultural beauty imbedded by each country. As many know, there are specific times to visit other places around the world. For example, a majority of South America falls below the equator which makes the seasons the exact opposite that those in the United States, which is why you would want to visit places such as Brazil, Paraguay, Chile during the winter months.

While I was born in Chicago, my roots go back to beautiful and wondrous India. I have visited the country numerous times, but I have never ventured outside of the holiday season. Similar to South America, India neighbors the equator and therefore is most pleasant during the winter. While it may be pleasant to visit during this time of the year, it is not so during the summer. The main reason is due to the monsoon, a seasonal weather phenomenon of intense rainfall between June and September, that highly impacts the daily lives of Indians and Bangladeshis. Flash flooding can lead to the shut down of hundreds schools impacting the education of millions of students.

shidhulaiboats3

Today’s Inspiration: A non-profit organization called Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha addresses the monsoon issue by building solar-powered wooden boats that act as floating schools during these annual floods in Bangladesh.

Each boat can hold up to 30 people and is made from locally-sourced natural materials and includes small libraries. Many boats are docked at numerous villages and double as workshop spaces for parents and adults, providing over 88,000 families with computer education, internet facilities, along with a vast catalogue of library books. Many after-school workshops are held for these adults and cover subject matters including agriculture, finance, health, and hygiene.

“With roads impassable during the monsoon, students cannot go to school. If the children cannot come to the school for lack of transportation, then the school should come to them,” said Mohammed Rezwan, Founder of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha.

In 2007, the organization was awarded by the United Nations in both the Environment and Development Programme.

To learn more about this organization and how you can involved, please click here.

2014 FIFA World Cup – For the Love of Sport and Environment

Posted on January 10, 2013 by pjpelham

I have always been fascinated with the concept of sports. I grew up in a household where basketball was king. To this day, my father still owns his VHS tapes of all the Chicago Bulls games. Of course, now living in LA he has become a fan of the Lakers, but his devotion to Michael Jordan has never skipped a beat.

As die-hard fans, we superstitiously sleep in our favorite sports jersey night after night just to see our team win the playoffs. We religiously gather as a community to show our support to our little leagues, college, state-wide and even international sports teams. It’s what keep our hearts racing down to the very last nail-bitting moments.

Today’s Inspiration: The 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is quickly approaching and their sponsor Coca-Cola has recently announced their sustainability campaign for the event. Coca-Cola will accept and recycle plastic (PET) bottles by reusing them to make new chair linings of the 6,773 seats in the new Maracanã Stadium, the venue for the final FIFA World Cup match.

Participating cities – Rio de Janeiro and Brasília – have joined forces to provide 100 accessible collection points for residents to drop off their bottles for recycling. Since each seat requires 100 600ml plastic (PET) bottles to be recycled, having numerous collection points in the community will be key to ensuring adequate supply for the renovation.

While the purpose of this campaign is to make the 2014 FIFA World Cup more sustainable, it is also an educational experience for local residents by encouraging a recycling culture into their homes. FIFA recently conducted a public opinion tracker in Brazil and the topic of sustainability resonated in the results. According to the tracker, “92% of Brazilians believe the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil should be environmentally friendly. Additionally 50% believe that the stadiums should have facilities for recycling and proper disposal of waste.”

By doing so, Brazilian sport’s enthusiasts and residents will not only learn about the importance of this recycling initiative, its affects on the stadium and the community around them, they will feel a greater connection to their love of sport.

To learn more about the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil’s Sustainability Strategy Concept, click here.

H&M’s Global Recycling Initiative

Posted on January 8, 2013 by pjpelham

I am and will always be “head over heels” (pun intended) for fashion. I don’t know if it is the fabrics, colors, patterns, or the creativity that goes into putting the right “ingredients” of accessories into the “recipe” for ingenuity. Fashion changes frequently and drastically as seasons come and go, but one thing will always remain the same – our investment, not matter how grandeur or miniscule. I never like to reference my closet as the safe keeper of my bank account, but I do tend to splurge here and there. And while our fashion investments, just like most materialistic items, decrease in value I have always found an intrinsic investment by donating my clothing to charitable organizations and great causes.

Today’s Inspiration: Starting this February, H&M, popular fashion chain empire, has decided to take their socially conscious efforts to another level by accepting used clothing from their customers in exchange for store vouchers.

H&M will be working with their partner company, iCollect, to reprocess these used textiles and create new products with them – including, but not limited to cleaning rags, carpet, and insulation. While the value of the vouchers were not disclosed, your overly-loved clothes (even non-H&M clothes) will be accepted at all H&M stores in the US and worldwide.

“Our sustainability efforts are rooted in a dedication to social and environmental responsibility. We want to do good for the environment, which is why we are now offering our customers a convenient solution: to be able to leave their worn out or defective garments with H&M,” stated H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson.

H&M has developed seven commitments to sustainability by encompassing the following attributes:

In the end, whether your clothing is recycled within this program, donated to local charities, resold online, or any other avenue – the ultimate goal is to reprocess these goods and keep them out of our landfills.

To learn more about H&M’s Conscious Actions, please visit Sustainability Report 2011.

Eco-Resolutions 2013

Posted on January 2, 2013 by pjpelham

As another year comes to an end, we start thinking about all the great changes we hope to make for the New Year. In many cases, we start off the year with a bang – making sure we eat healthy, stop spending frivolously, go for our morning jogs. However, by mid-January we are finding excuses to make these great changes nonexistent. Which is why I have put together a list of 2013 New Year’s sustainability “no excuse” resolutions. These resolutions will cut your carbon footprint, close those purse strings, and show your commitment to the quality of life around you.

Year Round Inspiration: While some of the resolutions listed below may be considered “typical” to you, there may be one or two that might surprise you.

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – It goes beyond recycling your bottles, cans, and paper – it becomes a part of your daily life. A simple resolution for your home can be to place a small recycling bin right next your indoor trash can, you will be amazed by how many items can actually be recycled. As a former employee of Goodwill of Orange County, a non-profit with a mission to help people with disabilities and other barriers , I saw the items that generous people donated to the organization. Goodwill has a great eco-conscious business model with an exceptional purpose – accept unwanted goods from the general public, resell these goods, use the proceeds to support their mission. For those online shoppers, check out ShopGoodwill – an online auction featuring antiques, high-end merchandise, and more. For the fashionistas out there, you would be surprised on what treasures you can discover in store or online.

2. Drive Less, Travel Differently – It is quite understandable for those living in Southern California about the difficulties of traveling without the use of a vehicle. However, this should not be an excuse to look for other commuting options. I live in Riverside County and used to commute into Orange County – for those that are familiar, the 91 freeway can be disastrous. Just a few weeks of commuting back and forth made me scream obscenities and cause frustration with the cars around me – I hated the person I had become. Finally, after doing some research I realized that there was a Metrolink train stop a few miles from my home and would bring me to my office in about 35 minutes! After that I never looked back – my monthly train pass cost less than my monthly driving costs, the time spent on the train included naps, reading, chatting with train buddies, snacking, and relaxing. But the best part was doing my part by reducing my carbon footprint.

Low-Flow showerhead

3. Stop Wasting Water – When we step into a hot, steamy shower, we use this water to melt away our stress and worries – but we do not realize how much water we waste while we let our minds roam free. Set a 5-minute timer to shorten your water use and you will be amazed by how much water you waste. Like to listen to music when you shower? Set your favorite 5 minute song everyday, so that you know when your time in the shower is done.

4. Go Meatless – I have been a vegetarian my whole life for religious and personal reasons, but being a vegetarian aligns with my environmental morals. According to the EPA, “About 634 gallons of water are used to produce just one hamburger.” Additionally, the Huffington Post stated “If each American cuts meat and cheese from their diet one day a week, it would be equivalent to taking 7.6 million cars off the road.” If becoming a vegetarian is not resolution for you, consider observing Meatless Mondays or any other day that works for you.

Meatless Mondays

5. Garden and Compost – I am a big supporter for local farmer’s markets, but I am a bigger supporter of harvesting the “fruits” (pun intended) of one’s labor from home. With some elbow grease, your backyard can be transformed into its very own produce aisle. Once you grow your vegetable and fruit garden you can compost organic food waste by placing them into your garden, enriching the soil as a result.

Goodbye Construction, Hello Solar Roadways

Posted on November 21, 2012 by pjpelham

I do not think I know anyone that likes construction, except maybe for construction companies. The annoying traffic signs, never ending stream of red lights of stopped vehicles, and the uneven roads – I will do anything to avoid this combination of unnecessary stress. While it is important to continuously repave our roadways (average repave must occur every 7 years due to wear and tear), it takes a lot of funding, time, and stress to finally get that smooth ride to your destination.

Today’s Inspiration: Scott Brusaw, an electrical engineer, has designed a project called “Solar Roadways” which involves blanketing all streets and highways with solar panels. The Federal Highway Administration awarded Solar Roadways a $750,000 grant to build a research parking lot paved with solar panels.

Panels would cover and restore damaged roads with durable glass casing, allowing vehicles to travel directly over the solar cells without damaging them. Additionally, Brusaw has invented an ingenious concept to equipped the cells with LEDS to display speed limits and provide congestion information.

Additionally, the panels would generate 7.6 kilowatt hours of electricity per day to melt snow and ice (forget those snow removal trucks!), inform warnings to motorists, activate sensitive panels that illuminate a crosswalk, and even create a smart grid to power nearby homes, businesses, and electric cars.

Brusaw and his team have their hands full with research and development, but I must applaud his dedication in impacting safer driving while creating a cleaner planet for future generations.

Sustain Everyday

Your Daily Eco Inspiration