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Greenopia Founder at Mind, Body and Beyond Expo!

From Greenopia

This Sunday at 4pm, Gay Browne, the founder of Greenopia, will speak at the Mind, Body and Beyond Expo in Los Angeles. The Expo aims to "promote awareness for healthy and conscious living by creating a nexus between the community and industry professionals."

Check out the great speaker's schedule below and in between uplifting speeches, try some natural products, raw foods, yoga classes for kids & adults, workshops, and organic cooking demos too.

Expo Details:

September 13 & 14, 2008

Hours: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Los Angeles Convention Center, South Hall G

See you there!

Saltwater Energy?

It will be interesting to follow up on this sometime in the near future...

Blue Planet Run 30-Mile Challenge

We invite you to join Team EcoFlip H2O by completing 30 miles in 30 days beginning this October 1st to provide safe drinking water to 1200 students in Tanzania. We just signed and will post our Octo13berevent dates ASAP. I plan on running but you are invited to walk, run or cycle along this wonderful journey...

 

The Blue Planet Run Foundation invites all runners, walkers and cyclists to take its 30-Mile Challenge this October. By pledging a dollar for each of your 30 miles, you can give one person a lifetime of safe drinking water.

 

This is a special campaign to support three schools in the eastern African country of Tanzania. You can help provide safe drinking water to 1,200 students who would rather be in school than walk long distances to collect water. By providing wells at the schools, students' lives are transformed from drudgery to opportunity, from sickness to success.

 

Form a team, find a team, or go solo. It's easy! You have the entire month of October to cover 30 miles. Complete it all at once or a mile at a time, whenever or however you choose.  Registration starts September 8, 2008 at Blueplanetrun.orrg/30-mile.

 

The goal of the Blue Planet Run Foundation is to have 1,000 athletes participate, which will provide funding for the entire 3-school project. Please help get the word out. Send along this email to as many people as possible and download, forward and/or print our PDF flyer to post in high visibility areas.

 

Join the dedicated athletes of Team Blue.

$30 drastically changes another human's life. So, go for it! Make your miles meaningful!

If you have any questions email Forrest at forrest@ecoflip.org.

30 Going Green Tips: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Image via WebEcoist

We were excited to see EcoFlip plugged in the comprehensive article entitled Going Green: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle on WebEcoist. Of all the top green tip lists I've seen, this one stands alone...

Great work WebEcoist!

Gearing Up the Green for the DNC and RNC Conventions

Via The Daily Green

Political convention fever is upon us, just as Beijing Olympics fever will soon be waning. If you thought excitement over greening the conventions was high in 2004, your head will be spinning here in 2008.

In time for the DNC, Denver hotels are switching to sustainable wooden keycards, one more step toward local mayor John Hickenlooper's challenge of hosting "the greenest convention in the history of the planet." Green gurus had already been working on sourcing biodegradable balloons and organic fanny packs, in addition to local, organic (and non-fried!) food, compost bins and energy-efficient lighting and transportation.

Denver's $160 million Pepsi Center had already announced its pioneering plants to go carbon neutral by buying offsets, giving preferred parking to hybrid vehicles, supporting single-stream recycling and installing 52 solar panels.

Speaking of the Pepsi Center, the company's rival Coca-Cola has been named the Official Recycling Provider of both the DNC and RNC conventions. What does this mean?

• Coke products will be delivered to the conventions on hybrid electric trucks and will be kept in efficient coolers.
• Coca-Cola Recycling will provide bins and infrastructure to recover and locally recycle 100% of the materials consumed at the conventions.
• Coca-Cola Enterprises created a light-weight bottle closure design that will save approximately 100 million pounds of plastic this year in the U.S.

Hopefully the green efforts will make an impression on influential delegates, and serve to make lasting change around the country.

Yes, Coke is probably looking for some good publicity, after being hammered over allegations of unfair water use, human rights abuses and lobbying against bottle bills, laws that many call the best way to promote recycling. Not to mention widespread complaints that sugary sodas can make people fat.

Still, the goal of recycling everything from the conventions is a lofty one, and one can hope that a successful implementation will help convince other managers that it really isn't that difficult.

 

Coke hybrid delivery truck. / Courtesy of Coca-Cola Enterprises

In related news, Humana and the bicycling advocacy organization Bikes Belong are launching a massive bike-sharing program called Freewheelin, in which 1,000 bikes will be made freely available in Denver and Minneapolis. Convention attendees, residents and media will have the opportunity to take advantage of free, health-promoting transportation.

Hopefully, this good idea will rub off on people too.

Like this story? You make like these:

What Do Recycling Symbols on Plastics Mean? 
The Most Fuel Efficient Cars and Green Driving Tips 
Going Green Tips and News 
Everything You Wanted to Know About Organic Wine 
10 of the Greenest Colleges in America

Ecofabulous On The Air

Via Zem Joaquin of ecofabulous

"I usually visit the wonderful KFOG radio station on Wednesdays but this week we are doing Tuesday, so tune in tomorrow just after 8am to hear some of our ecofabulous back-to-school suggestions. Email or call in your burning questions about anything in the ecosphere. My favorite part of the show is getting the opportunity to exchange ideas, so I hope you have hands-free on your morning commute! Other listening options are: streaming it on the web and TIVOing the segment (you’ll have to check your cable channels)."

Post on the greener online classifieds!

Signs of the SUV Apocalypse Now

From The Daily Green

The evidence keeps piling up that the SUV era is over. Here are the latest indicators:

1. Americans Keep Driving Less
   Even as gas prices have begun to moderate at an average of $3.80 per gallon in the first weeks of August, the Transportation Department released new data showing that American drivers cut back driving 5% in June, the eighth straight month of decline. The year-over-year decline was a whopping 12.2 billion fewer miles traveled. Since November, Americans have driven 53 billion fewer miles than during the same period a year earlier.

2. America Is Buying Less Oil
   Largely as a result of decreased miles driven, demand for oil in the U.S. shrunk by 800,000 barrels a day in the first half of 2008, according to a Department of Energy report out Tuesday. That's the biggest decline in a generation; demand had been rising since 1982.

3. Chrysler Stops Making Cherokees
   With its sales down 23%, Chrysler will stop making an early icon of the SUV era, the Grand Cherokee, at a Detroit plant. Instead, it will retool the plant to produce smaller, fuel-efficient cars. It's only the latest announcement of its kind. Another from this week:

4. Ford Swaps the Fiesta for the F-Series
   Ford will stop making its once-popular F-Series of pickup trucks at a Mexican plant, and instead build a European-style hatchback, the Fiesta, along with fuel-efficient two-door sedans. Similar changes are under way at two other Ford factories, as the company responds to an $8.7 billion second-quarter loss. It expects double-digit growth as it shifts its production from 20% small cars ... to 90%.

5. People Can't Wait to Buy Electric
   More than 33,000 people have signed on to an unofficial waiting list to buy the Chevy Volt, General Motors' highly touted foray into the world of electric cars.

6. Used Cars Sales Are Lucrative
   Drive by any used car dealership, and the advertising is all about fuel-efficiency. Owners of even unassuming but fuel-efficient models, like the Chevy Prizm, are hounded with direct mail offers from used car lots, offering good trade-in deals. Consumer Reports offers this helpful list of the fuel-efficient used cars.

7. Numbers Don't Lie
   In the first six months of 2008, sales of new small cars were up 11%, while sales of SUVs were down 14% and pickup trucks were down 23%.

   Check out these interesting fuel-efficient concept cars that may one day hope to resurrect a better SUV.

Did you like this Article?

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How to Pay $1 A Gallon for Gas (or Less)

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10 Most Fuel-Efficient 2008 Vehicles

8 Most Fuel-Efficient 2008 Cars and Wagons

Most Fuel-Efficient Cars, the Best Driving Tips

Paris Hilton Looks Better than John McCain in a Swimuit

From The Daily Green

Paris Hilton may not be running for president, but she proved she has plenty of media savvy and advertising dollars at her disposal when she released her own political ad.

She skewered John "wrinkly white-haired guy" McCain, who days before had attacked Barack "that other guy promising change" Obama for his rock-star celebrity by comparing him to the millionaire starlet heiress.

Her ad dominated cable news and next-day newspaper political coverage.

And Paris seems to have some worthy policy coaches. Her suggestion that more offshore oil drilling could provide near-term energy supply while the country gears up its alternative and renewable energy infrastructure may be vague ... but it probably reflects political reality. We'll most likely see increased oil exploration domestically, and a continued reliance on fossil fuels, for years until the economy is changed to run on new renewable fuels.

Read more and see the video on The Daily Green...

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Let's Change Today

From GreenEnergyTV

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High LEED at Dockside Green

From Ecogeek

Everything from the WTC to stadiums are scrambling for LEED certification these days, clambering to ride the green trend in building and show how eco-friendly they are. But one luxury housing community has taken the trophy, gaining the highest LEED score in the world after building the community to Platinum LEED standards. Racking up 63 out of 70 possible points, the community beat out Wisconsin's Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, which once held the top score of 61. (Bank of America, are you sweating?)

Dockside Green in Victoria, Canada is turning some envious heads in the green building industry with its two condo buildings, townhomes and commercial space. Highlights include on-site sewage treatment and water re-use, store water-capture systems via green roofs, cisterns, bio-swales and bio-filtration that channel the water into a stream flowing through the community. So pastoral.

The community’s energy systems makes them greenhouse gas-neutral and also could allow it to be a net energy provider through its biomass gasification plant. The plant converts local wood waste into clean burning gas for heat and hot water. When tenants need to get around, they can use the Smart Car co-op. And of course the community houses Energy Star appliances and efficiency features like heat recovery ventilation units, Low E double glazed windows, and exterior blinds on the sunny sides of the buildings.

The score alone proves that this building is more than a publicity stunt, but just in case some are skeptical, the development set themselves up for achieving their goal by setting a $1 million penalty for failure. If they didn’t hit their goal, they would have paid $1 million to the city to be used for triple-bottom-line projects. I’m sure the city will gain quite a bit more than $1 million through the completion of this project.

And all this is just phase 1. The rest of the $1.2 billion project will eventually have 1,000 housing units…and will be a seriously cool place to live.

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