GreenHeart Global

What is a Hangelier? I’ll explain in just a second. But first let’s talk about being creative.

A huge part of building a sustainable world is creativity. It is what allows us to make comfortable transitions from using our standard, unsustainable products to the more eco-friendly versions.

For example, when people begin to use Ditto Hangers, there will have a lot plastic hangers that no longer have a purpose. And the last thing we’d want them to do is throw them away so they can sit in a landfill for a 1,000 years.

That being said, we are always looking for new and interesting ways that people can use there old hangers for something other than clothing. So we we’re excited to find out about this company called Organelle Design because they invented the Hangelier!!

A Hangelier is, essentially, a chandelier made out of hangers. I can’t really explain it much better than that. Along with this, Organelle also makes lamp covers out of re purposed hangers.

These are  2 very CREATIVE ways of reusing those gently-used hangers that might otherwise be shipped straight to the landfill from clothing stores that no longer want them.

Most people would probably assume its Vermont for obvious reasons.

But what most people fail to realize is that New York has a secret weapon: extreme population density

• The average city resident consumes only about a quarter as much gasoline as the average Vermonter — and the average Manhattan resident consumes even less, just 90 gallons a year, a rate that the rest of the country hasn’t matched since the mid-1920s.
• New Yorkers consume far less electricity — about 4,700 kilowatt hours per household per year, compared with roughly 7,100 kilowatt hours in Vermont and more than 11,000 kilowatt hours in the United States as a whole.
• New York accounts for almost a third of all the public-transit passenger miles traveled in the United States.
• 54% percent of New York City households — and 77 percent of Manhattan households — own no car at all. In Vermont and the rest of the country, the percentage of no-automobile households is close to zero.) Eighty-two percent of employed Manhattanites travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That’s 10 times the rate for Americans in general, eight times the rate for workers in LA.
• Population density also lowers energy and water use in all categories, constrains family size, limits the consumption of all kinds of goods, reduces ownership of wasteful appliances, decreases the generation of solid waste, and forces most residents to live in some of the world’s most inherently energy-efficient residential structures: apartment buildings. As a result, New Yorkers have the smallest carbon footprints in the United States: 7.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases per person per year, or less than 30 percent of the national average.

To make a long story short, dense urban centers offer one of the few reasonable remedies to fight climate change. That being said:

New York – 1, Vermont – 0

Here are 5 programs in the Bay Area that offer information, classes, and degrees in the field of sustainability. There are, of course, plenty more but these are some of the most dynamic, informative and well rounded programs in the field. Definitely check them out:

UC Berkeley Extension “Go Green”

These classes are ideal for basic knowledge on sustainability and how it connects with environmentalism. It also offers five separate certificate programs in various sub-fields of sustainable design, including corporate responsibility, energy, and transportation.

Dominican’s Green MBA

This is the first Sustainability focused MBA ever created. With a strong foundation of critical and systems thinking, the program teaches students the “how” and “what” of sustainability.  They offers a full/part time Green MBA program as well as a Sustainable Practices Certificate, which is composed of core courses, electives, and a capstone project or internship.

Presidio Graduate School

Presidio is one of the more notable Sustainable MBA programs in the country, with world renown faculty and alumni. They offer two graduate-level programs in sustainable management: a master of business administration, and a master of public administration. They also have a dual degree and an executive version of their MBA. They continue to be successful with a innovative curriculum and tight knit community which will make a them a premier MBA program for years to come.

PG&E Pacific Energy Center

This is a great resource for anyone interested in sustainability. Not only does it offer a wide breadth of classes, but they are all FREE!! So it is definitely good to take advantage of this great site. Most of the courses are online as well so it is ideal for anyone really.

Center for Ecoliteracy

CEL helps educators communicate the concepts of sustainability to their students. The center produces invaluable teaching resources (such as DVDs, books, and lesson plans), but they also offer on-site seminars with fabulous speakers and facilitators. Anyone would greatly benefit from this instiution and its resources.

Nike has recently left ts position on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors

The reason is because they disagree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change and their recent action challenging the Environmental Protection Agency. They have gone on record to say:

“It is important that US companies be represented by a strong and effective Chamber that reflects the interests of all its members on multiple issues. We believe that on the issue of climate change the Chamber has not represented the diversity of perspective held by the board of directors.

Therefore, we have decided to resign our board of directors position. We will continue our membership to advocate for climate change legislation inside the committee structure and believe that we can better influence policy by being part of the conversation. Moving forward we will continue to evaluate our membership.”

The main incentive for this move was that Nike shareholders have been applying pressure for the company to leave the chamber. The Chamber recently made an incomprehensible challenge against new initiative by the Environmental Protection Agency to track emissions of heat-trapping gasses like carbon dioxide. They have since apologized for their appeal, but the damage has been done, as NIKE is the 4th company to drop from the board in the past few weeks.

NIKE’s new tag line: Just Do It…Sometimes.

In effort to create more exposure for the climate crisis, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) has put up a very unique display on the steps of a Berlin square that. There are a thousand human shaped ice sculptures on the steps of the Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt Square.

These sculptures have melted away in the hot summer sun in a statement and thus signified the frailty of nature and the power of human impact.

This very powerful artistic display should remind the world that the consequences of climate change affect all of us.

We our proud to announce that Ditto Hangers has been mentioned on, “The Internet Newspaper,” also know as the Huffington Post. The article is about the Eco Emmy’s Celebrity Green Gifting and Wellness Chateau in La this past week. The event’s proceeds benefited several charities including GreenWish, SPCA, I Am That Girl, Free the Slaves and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Here is our excerpt:

“Practical item: Ditto Hangers, which are 100% recyclable. A must-have in today’s world where 8 billion unrecyclable plastic hangers are land filled every year. At least Joan Crawford was right about something: “No more wire hangers ever!”

And here is the full article:  Ditto Hangers in The Huffington Post

The common understanding amongst the modern world is that no matter how much garbage we throw at it, the planet can absorb it, and no matter how many resources we use up, there will always be more. Unfortunately, this is a false understanding that will come to light in the very near future. This is why we’re now facing climate change and shocking environmental devastation, resource shortages, famine, etc.

David P. Barash’s, from The Chronicle of Higher Education had a very interesting article discussing how our relationship to the environment is akin to a Ponzi Scheme.

He makes the case that modern civilization’s exploitation of the natural environment is not unlike the way Madoff exploited his investors, predicated on the illusion that it will always be possible to make future payments owing to yet more exploitation down the road: more suckers, more growth, more GNP, based on the fraudulent idea of hope.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of a Ponzi Scheme to give you some context:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually offers returns that other investments cannot guarantee in order to entice new investors, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.

The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments. Usually, the scheme is interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses because a Ponzi scheme is suspected or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.

Continue reading Environmental Ponzi Scheme

1. Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman. This is a great book about the convergence of 3 major forces: population growth, global warming, and an increasingly connected world. Friedman does a brilliant job in explaining about how these forces are going to shape our future and what we can do change that future.

2. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. Why settle for a throwaway culture? This book inspires elegant design solutions, stating that every single product must either go back to the earth or back into industry to be made into something else. A revolutionary way of upgrading the industrial revolution.

3. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. What exactly would happen to the earth if human life disappeared? The author explores a few different scenarios in great detail.

4. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. The author spends a year eating only from her garden, or that which is locally grown or raised. A foodie’s delight, this book proves how richly one can live off the land.

5. Eating For Beauty by David Wolfe. Leading raw foodist David Wolfe takes that old adage “you are what you eat” to a new level. He describes how what you eat literally creates who you are, and which foods will create the most beautiful you – in body and in spirit.

6. Green Building & Remodeling For Dummies by Eric Corey Freed. This book is a comprehensive guide to green building materials and techniques, energy and water systems, and the pros and cons of everything.

7. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by James Lovelock. First published in 1979, this book sets forth the Gaia Hypothesis, stating that our planet is more than a sum of its resources, but rather a fully integrated living being, with systems of life more complex than previously imagined.

8. Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities by Jan Martin Bang. Documenting some of the successful Ecovillages around the world, the author shows us how groups of people have come to together to live out the permaculture model in both rural and urban environments.

9. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus. We’ve thus far created a modern world based on artificial ideals, but nature, which runs on sunlight and creates no waste, holds the solution to many modern problems. This isn’t a “back to nature” book, but rather a book proposing thoroughly modern technologies that copy nature’s best traits.

10. Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin. Living with less “stuff”
can mean living with more purpose, balance and connection. Here’s the inspiration you need to scale back on material goods and make more room for the priceless things that money can’t buy. Now if all these books were printed on tree-free paper (like Cradle to Cradle) with soy-based ink, we’d be another step towards true sustainability.

In William McDonough’s latest book, Cradle To Cradle, he discusses a lot of amazing ideas and concepts. And one of the larger ones that stood out was that being eco-efficient is simply not good enough. Our interaction with nature should not be about being efficient, it should be about being effective. That is why he promotes the concept of being “eco-effective”

In the book, McDonough discusses the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, who have harvested wood for sale from their forested land for many generations. In 1870, the Menominee inventoried 1.3 billion standing board feet of timber on their 235,000 acres. Since then, they have harvested nearly twice that amount—2.25 billion board feet. Considering the “clear-cutting” methods of the corporate lumber merchants you hear about, which completely strips land of its trees, you’d expect that the Menominee would have barely a single tree left, not to mention any forest wildlife. In fact, they have 1.7 billion board feet left, more than they had in 1870, and a thriving forest ecosystem.

That’s because the Menominee tend to cut only the weaker trees, leaving behind the strong mother trees and enough of the upper canopy for the arboreal animals to continue to inhabit. They have figured out what the forest can productively offer them instead of considering only what they want to take from it.

This is largely how every other species on earth lives—in harmony with the environment. Lions neither starve themselves nor gorge to the point of wiping out the gazelle population. Instead, they promote the health of the gazelle herd by culling its weaker members and preventing herd overgrowth which in turn prevents overgrazing of the savannah. Animal waste does not poison the ground but fertilizes the soil so that it can produce more vegetation for the animals to eat. Bees feed on the pollen of flowers but far from damaging them they provide the crucial service of pollinating them.

This is what he means by “eco-effective.” The philosophy is based not only on restricting consumption but on changing what is consumed so that it actually helps or at least does not hinder the world. If bees had the idea that they wanted to save the planet, they would not go on crash diets and start eating less pollen. They would continue to live their lives abundantly, because their lives are already eco-effective.

I applaud anyone trying to live a greener, more sustainable lifestyle. However, the emphasis should not be on tightening our belts so that our consumption does not poison the earth, but on trying to change our consumption patterns so that our abundance helps or at least does not harm the planet in the first place. We must figure out what our world can productively offer us rather than considering only what we want.