This past Tuesday, I attended the Green Drinks DC cocktail hour.  It’s an event that happens on the second Tuesday of every month.   It’s usually at a different restaurant/bar around the city.  It was great to catch up with “the regulars”, but even more interesting to run into close friends from other social circles that were in attendance, too.  DC is a small town, but it’s not that small!   To me it’s a local indicator that “going Green” isn’t a fading fad, but a growing movement of interest.

Typically, they have a speaker give a short talk about their company, nonprofit or project (of course, Green-related).   This time around it was Casey Trees, an interesting nonprofit that along with other programs, I know them best for going around the city and planting trees.

I spoke to their Director Jared Powell just before he presented, and he shared that they do approximately 1,000 trees a year in DC alone.  They need volunteers and of course property owners interested in having a tree planted on their property.

I ran into my friend Monika Thiele, of The DC Green Connection.  It’s been several months since I last spoke with her, but it sounds like things are going great.

The DC Green Connection’s mission is to grow the green economy locally and promote sustainable living widely through fun and informative events, green business promotions, networking, and social media marketing.

The DC Green Connection already have a Meetup group of 177 members!  They have sponsors lining up and it’s great opportunity to get involved with something Green in the city.  It’s no secret that Mickey has managed to convert my bad habits and I have also become passionate about Green-related technologies.   Anything that helps move the needle in protecting this ball of dirt we live on, Infamia is in support of.

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USB will charge all european phones

I whined. A few months ago, when I first heard that Europe was trying to force cellphone makers to standardize on one charger.  Maybe bitched more than whined, but that’s just splitting hairs.  I thought it was a bad idea.   I, too, have the box-o-chargers, some of which dating back to the mesozoic era of charges.  Rather, I bitched because I saw it as a superb opportunity for the bureaucrats to screw it up:  USB was quickly becoming the de-facto standard, and we didn’t need some committee in Stockholm or Brussels designing some heptagonal “standard”.  So here it is:  Mea Culpa.

Europe, with their continental sensibilities, has reached an agreement with big names (including Apple, for those of us tired of the proprietary iPod connector), to standardize chargers to, you guessed it, USB.  Assuming other countries jumps on the bandwagon, or at least don’t change their connector just for Europe, this can have a bit of an effect at the landfill:  every year, 130 million of us get new phones. That’s 65,000 tons of junk. скачать фильм без регистрации трахни меня

Hopefully now we won’t have to throw away the chargers.

Green tips for every day life!

Green Profits

Being environmentally conscious (and generally, socially conscious) has become fashionable.  And as with all fashion, it has become expensive.  Somewhere between Carbon Credits and Green Roofs, we lost track of the basics.  When I was a wee lad in Elementary school, you didn’t have to go broke and smell of patchouli to save the world. On the contrary, it meant being frugal and being conscious of your actions.  On this first article in our “Green Business” category, I want to explore a few green tips that are not only socially conscious, they also increase your “Green visibility” and will not break the bank.  For now, I start with bringing it back to the basics: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. And you may even save  a few pennies in the process.

1. Ditch Styrofoam

I walk in a meeting, at some ungodly hour like 10 am.  Happily, the person at the desk is nice enough to offer a very welcome cup of coffee.  They come out with a styrofoam cup and packets of sugar and cream. Oh, and one of those plastic stirrer things.  And I’m thinking: Styrofoam? Really?!  Whether there’s any basis to my bias is yet to be determined, and there’s still some debate about the paper vs. styrofoam cup thing, but it is accepted in many circles that styrofoam is just plain bad, with health effects as well as environmental.  I don’t know why but styrofoam still persists. 

2. Ditch the paper and plastic, too

Now consider the alternative: I get a reusable mug with a spoon and a sugar and cream server if I wanted sugar/cream.  Now I think happy thoughts.  I think they care about the environment. I think they think of their work place as something more than a factory.  I think they care about their employees and probably have a rec. room. Chance are the coffee tastes better too.   I get kind of confused when I go to lunch, and they ask whether the food is “for here” or carry-out…only to serve it in the same disposable plastics when I’m eating in.

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