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The gift I am the most excited to give is my doll cradle from when I am a little girl. It needs a little bit of TLC and a non $200 non toxic doll to go with it but I am seriously excited to hand this down to my niece.

Here are some tips that I have learned over the last several days:
* Buy practical and useful gifts rather than flash in the pan "top toys".
* Stick with eco friendly brand names that you can trust.
* Etsy is the holy grail for home made eco friendly gifts.
* If you have a child and they are younger put practical items in their stocking...they are too young to hate you for putting bamboo toothbrushes or biodegradable shampoo in there.
* Buy as close to you as possible to reduce emissions from transportation. Sure you could buy something from a big name store online but then your purchase is cris-crossing across the country or even internationally which negates any positive impact you had by purchasing an eco friendly toy.
* If you can buy second hand. There are loads of groups on Facebook but also check out Kijiji and Craigslist.
* Make presents! I am making a fort kit for my nephew and can't wait to see how it turns out.

How are you doing with your shopping list?

Water Tube™ Saves Water and Plants

This is a pretty cool product that has been around since 2000 but I thought it needs to be brought out to the forefront. With the droughts going on around the world, this would certainly help plants, some crops and trees that are dying under the conditions they are currently under.

The Water Tube™ is made from very strong polyethylene and will stand up to a lot of wear and even re-use on another plant.

It is 100% recyclable, it is easy to install, it saves water, it saves your time, and it will save your plant. When a plant is protected and nurtured by a Water Tube™ it grows faster, it thrives and you gain the most benefit from your efforts to grow plants and trees.

The company strives to:

• Contribute to water conservation in all communities.

• Build well known and trusted global brands.

• Enhance the natural environment.

• Grow the business through distribution arrangements in all regions of the world.

Water Tube Pty Ltd is part of the NSW Government’s Australian Technology Showcase; is a member of the Australian Trade Centre in Melbourne; a member of the Australian Arab Chamber of Commerce and Industry; and is encouraged by the support provided by the Australian Government – Austrade.

Have you seen anything like this before? Even still, this product has certainly met all environmentally friendly needs/specs. I like it!

Water Tube™ ….. as the green future unfolds.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Zenni Optical for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine. ZENNI uses the latest modern materials, manufacturing and marketing systems for eyeglasses. They bring their product direct from their factories to you. There is NO middlemen, no retail overhead, and practically no advertising budget. At [...]

Thanksgiving Pictures Comments – Photobucket

May you have a wonderful day of food, laughter and love!

One of my favorite quotes about the writer-reader relationship is from Walter Lowenfels. I keep it at the top of my poetry blog as a reminder. Lowenfels wrote,

"One reader is a miracle; two, a mass movement."

I try to keep those words in mind every day as a writer.

On this the seventh anniversary of The Green Skeptic, I want to thank you, dear readers. I am grateful for your support, your comments, and your readership. I hope you are finding some sustenance here.

Seven years ago I wrote in the first post for this blog,

"As 'The Green Skeptic' I propose to create a web voice that is at once environmentally concerned, while remaining skeptical about our methods of communication and action. My blog will explore current environmental issues in a pragmatic fashion, debunking environmental myths, while supporting market-based solutions that compliment actions taken both locally and globally."

While this blog is about "challenging assumptions about how we live on the earth and protect our environment," it is also about the practice of writing.

Two bloggers I read regularly wrote eloquently about writing this week, Fred Wilson and Joshua Brown.

Fred wrote on A VC that through blogging

"I have learned to love writing. It's creative. It's a puzzle. How do I tell the story? How do I get my point across? How do I do it crisply and clearly? How do I end it on a strong note?"

Joshua, who writes the excellent blog, The Reformed Broker, suggested,

"It is in the writing that I discover what I actually think.  It is in the writing and the communicating of ideas and concepts that they truly become mine.  This is a cognitive learning thing that is very widely understood in the education world.  When I'm blogging there are two things that are happening - you, the reader, are being exposed to something I think might be important and I, the writer, am crystallizing my own beliefs and understanding of the topic at hand."

Writing is important to me. As I've written elsewhere on this blog,

"I have always been a writer -- it's all I've really ever wanted to be. Sure, I do a lot of other things, always have, much of which I've stopped doing over the years. But I'll never stop writing. It's who I am. I'm a writer."

As we mark this seventh year of The Green Skeptic together, I want to thank you again for reading. I hope to keep up my end of the bargain moving forward with good, informed writing about the issues, a healthy skepticism about both hyperbole and hysteria and, most of all, a respect for you, my readers.

Happy Thanksgiving.

It gets easier and better right???

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IMPACT 2011 Venture Summit Mid-Atlantic, the annual conference put on by PACT (the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies), will take place a week from today and tomorrow (November 29 & 30) at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Crystal Tea Room.

On Wednesday, the 30th, I'll be telling a "Tale of Two Cleantech Companies," offering perspective on a success story and a failure (hint: one of them is Solyndra) and Monday Night Football's Ron Jaworski, known to his fans as "Jaws," will be the keynote over lunch. Timothy C. Draper, Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, will close the 29th as keynote speaker.

A rich cleantech track has been developed for this year's conference, including panels offering investors's perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of investing in clean energy technology and fund managers's perspectives on energy efficiency finance.

Panelists include representatives from Meidlinger Partners, SJF Ventures, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Blue Hill Partners, New Venture Partners, DB Climate Change Advisors, Transcend Equity Development Corp and the City of Philadelphia.

14 cleantech companies will present, including

AHI Technologies
Alencon Systems, Inc.
e2e Materials, Inc.
FieldView Solutions, Inc.
Holganix, LLC
LED Saving Solutions
Liberty Hydro, Inc.
Local Food Systems, Inc.
MATCOR, Inc.
Organica Sustainable Water, LLC
Proterro
Quench
Rho Renewables, Inc.
WhiteOptics LLC

See the full agenda here, including non-cleantech related agenda items.

Hope to see you there!

Before you put that Turkey on the table, here are a few things to consider.  Over 240 Million turkeys were raised in the US last year alone. The size of this market has led to significant changes in what makes a “turkey.”  With the majority of fowl bred and raised in factory farms, the  focus [...]

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Okay, now you are taking this too far

"The problem society faces is that the best way to become rich is to trade value, not create value."  


--Roger Martin, Dean of The Rotman School and author of Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL, in interview with Steven Goldbach of Monitor Group


What is it about this statement that pisses me off? I mean no disrespect to Dean Martin (sorry, I couldn't resist), he's just the messenger, and I know he bemoans the truth of his statement as much as I do. But the fact that he's correct makes it even more troublesome.


We have completely forgotten what value is as a society. Winning is great in sports and in business, but it isn't great if it is at the expense of values and creating values.


Take Penn State as an example. 


Officials at Penn State may have covered up the hateful and abhorrent crimes allegedly purported by one of its coaches over a decade because acknowledging and doing something about it might harm the mega-million dollar cash cow of its football program. 


That's trading value not creating value.


Trading value creates harm because its driver is greed and its time horizon is temporary.


Creating value creates something lasting and beneficial, not just for stakeholders and stockholders, but for customers and all of society.


Apple creates value. 


Mortgage-backed securities traded value.


We need more people creating value, lasting value, if we want our economy and our lives to thrive.

Foods That May Cause You Problems

There are some experts out there who refuse to eat the following foods.

Canned Tomatoes - Why not eat these? There is a resin lining in the tin can that contain a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to reproduction problems, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The acid content of tomatoes causes the estrogen to leach into the food. So, purchase tomatoes in glass bottles as they do not have the resin lining.

Corn Fed Beef - cattle are supposed to eat grass. Farmers are needing to fatten them up quickly to get them to market faster. They are using grains and corn (maybe some of that new genetic corn) which means that we are not getting the nutrition we used to get. Like beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, conjugated linoleic acid (what is that?), calcium, magnesium and potassium along with lower omega-6s and lower in saturated fats that have been linked to heart disease.

Buy grass fed beef that can be found at places like Whole Foods, specialty grocers or farmers’ market.

Microwave Popcorn = There are chemicals that line the bag. The chemicals can cause liver, testicular and pancreatic cancer. The microwave process makes the chemicals vaporize and migrate into your popcorn.

They stay in your body for years and just accumulate. The big guys, such as DuPont have agreed to phase out the chemical PFQA by 2015. So, get you an air popper or do it the ol fashion way and use a skillet or pot. Use natural flavorings like real butter, dillweed, vegetable flakes or soup mixes.

Conventional grown potatoes not organic – as potatoes are planted, farmers are spraying them with fungicides and then sprayed with herbicides as they are harvested. Then they are treated again after that. Have you had any potatoes sprout lately in your pantry? Probably not. Go to local farmers market or Whole Foods to get your potatoes.

Farmed Salmon – Some of the salmon we eat have been harvested in pens. They are fed soy, poultry litter and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. I guess fish will eat anything. These farmed salmon contain carcinogens, pcbs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT. Farmed salmon mostly comes from Northern Europe. However, if you get wild caught Alaska salmon. If it says Atlantic, then it is farmed.

Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones = If you do not know but milk producers are treating dairy cattle with rBGH or rBST to boost production. However, it has been found that the human digestive tract does NOT breakdown these hormones. There is not enough proof that this is increasing cancer in humans but it is banned in most industrialized countries. So check the labels on the milk cartons and look to ensure that these hormones are not in the milk. Otherwise, you may want to switch to soy, almond or other varieties.

Conventional Apples – These are the most doused with pesticides. Apples do not resist pests very well so they are sprayed frequently. There are a number of studies that link a higher body of burden of pesticides with Parkinson’s disease. There are other studies that apple farmers are more exposed than used to be.
The best thing that can be done to apples right now is to wash them and then peel them. Otherwise, try and buy organic. Maybe.

If you are a boomer, all the food that we grew up on has changed drastically. The reason, of course, is the population explosion. I am sure that it is really hard for the farmers to keep up the pace with the costs, weather and other issues that confront them on a daily basis. But it is time for us to be diligent in what food we eat.

So hang in there, Skippy!

Food …. as the green future unfolds.

There are lots of benefits to buying used toys including:
* Extending the life of toys to prevent them from ending up in the landfill.
* Hello cash monies savings!
* Less natural resources being used up in producing new toys.
* No waste from packaging.


I'm excited for the holidays this year! Over the next month I will be sharing with you the new traditions we are starting that will help to make our holidays as green as possible.

Have you ever bought second hand toys for the holidays? What about other gifts?

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This is ultimately a heck of a plant. Especially when you have to wear special sunglasses to not hurt your eyes with the glare.

There is some thing so wonderful and soothing, about beautiful piano music, and calming nature scenes.  Relax and enjoy music and video by J. Michele Bodine.

A disgusting discovery yesterday (top of our fridge hidden under a cabinet)....that is an impressive build up over 4.5 years Stay tuned over the next few weeks for an exciting series of posts on having a Healthy Home.

Image via Wikipedia

A rather poor diagram of inductive charging.

Qualcomm, long a leader in the wireless and mobile space, is expanding into in the electric vehicle (EV) charging market with its acquisition last week of HaloIPT.

The acquisition, reportedly $70 million, has some in the EV charging space scratching their heads. Not because of Qualcomm's interest, but because they went after such a small player in the space.

HaloITP developed its wireless electric car charging technology out of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Wireless inductive charging, a process explained here allows an electric vehicle to drive over or near a mat that provides a charge without plugging in.

I've written about the need for and benefits of wireless EV charging technologies previously on this blog and, in the interest of full disclosure, I've done some advisory work with one company, Momentum Dynamics of Malvern, Pennsylvania.

According to sources close to Momentum, the company has already bested Halo, which had been doing 7,200 watts, achieving 30,000 watts. That's the level of power needed for commercial vehicles, which is Momentum's target market, and almost 10 times more powerful than WiTricity and Evatran can transmit 3,300 watts (more or less the capability of a low-powered Level 2 plug-in charger).

Momentum has been regularly getting 10,000 watts with greater than 90 percent efficiency. They are so efficient, my source tells me, "you can keep your fingers on them and barely detect that they are warm."

Toyota and GM are investor-partners in WiTricity and Powermat, respectively, and Nissan, meanwhile, is reportedly working on its own wireless charging technology. And Google tested Evatran's technology earlier this year.

With a big wireless player like Qualcomm moving into the space, is it only a matter of time before wireless EV charging becomes EZ and as ubiquitous as wireless toll collecting?

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The environmental impacts of these activities include:


Now if you are building a new home there are some things you can do to prevent this from happening.
*  Look for a builder with a history of green initiatives
*  Visit the builders current work sites to see their practices in action
*  Ask exactly what they do with all the waste being generated during the build

If you already live in a home where you have a similar problem to what we have there is hope!
*  Try to save your lawn for 1 season. Seed in the fall and winter and see if you can bring it back.
*  Look for grass alternatives like building gardens or sitting areas or laying down clover.
*  Install a sprinkler system. This will ensure you use less water than a traditional sprinkler

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