Brooke sent me this link. It’s a video about where “stuff” comes from and where “stuff” ends up.
storyofstuff.com

What is green? What is sustainable? What makes me sustainable? These are questions I have been asking myself and a few of my friends in the past year or so. I’ve done some reading, I’ve talked to some people, and I’ve started to make changes in my own life. As I watch the green movement taking shape around me, I often wonder how I can actually help make a change. Like my good friend Emlyn says, the change isn’t going to come in buying new green items, it’s going to come in limiting our consumption.

David, who I featured the other day and works for Green Options, drives an older car and when questioned about why he drives it instead of a hybrid he gives a similar answer. It’s because the car isn’t dead yet, it has thousands of parts that are going to end up in a landfill, so why not use it until it can’t be used any more?

How are you green?

I’m motivated best by my peers. When a good friend that I trust tells me that my car has better gas mileage if I drive it at 60mph instead of 75mph, I change my driving habits.
I try to set examples for the people around me. I know my peers are going to make decisions on their own, but if I can show them a comfortable green lifestyle about which I’m passionate, and prove that I myself can maintain it, I may be able to get a small group of people to change their habits. If they do the same, they pass it along to their friends. We all know this works.

What I/we do.

• I try to hang-dry clothes instead of using a drier as often as possible. I’d say 1 in every 3 loads we hang.
• Buy local organic food that is delivered to Claire’s office building, where other people people have food delivered as well.
• Turn off the water while soaping my hands and brushing my teeth, and consider my water usage in general.
• I’m lucky enough to get to take a bus to work—living in a city really helps lower my emissions.
• I wear out my clothes. It’s hard to do in a materialistic society, but I feel strong about repairing and re-wearing my clothes.
• I don’t drink out of plastic bottles, and avoid using paper plates and plastic utensils.
• I try to buy beer out of tap because it tastes better… Oh yeah, and no bottle plus less shipping generally. Local beer whenever possible.
• I don’t eat meat except fish, and the fish I eat is on a Seafood Watch List made by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Sustainable fish.
• I don’t use plastic bags from stores.

What makes me worse then most people on earth.

• I fly more than the average human. This is probably the worse thing I could do for the environment besides opening a coal plant just to watch the pretty black smoke.
• I have my computer almost constantly plugged in and on.
• I over-consume. Maybe not more than the average American, but more than I need I’m sure.
• Electronics for 2 people: 4 cell phones, 3 computers, 1 projector, 7 hard drives, 3 iPods, 2 speakers, N64, Gameboys, 2 video cameras, 2 digital cameras, 3 still cameras, 1 VCR, 40ish tapes, 1 DVD player, 100 DVD’s (not in cases).

If you have a moment check out the Scarsdale Challenge and video. I was blown away by some of our consumption as a country.

What do you do?

I’d love to hear from you by Seesmic video—you can copy and paste the code in the comments. Or just leave a comment.

Whit: So David you know that it’s Green Month on my blog, and I said I would be featuring friends in the Green industry. Can you tell everyone why I chose you to start with you? What I’m asking is, what do you do for a living?

David Anderson: (are we pretending this is a phone transcript or something?)

Whit: I’m totally putting all of this in the blog, and yes.

David: Ah, direct copy and paste. Well, then, let me be as pompous as possible… Well, Whit, first let me say how much I appreciate the opportunity. I’ve been following your blog for a long time, because, well, blogs are my job.

Whit: Really? And what blog are you with, and what is your role at said blog?

David: I run the first blog network with exclusively environmentally-themed content. We’re called Green Options Media.
Technically, I’m the Publisher of the network, which is really a lot more fun than it sounds. Our editorial team does all the really hard stuff, and I just get to sit around and determine the strategic direction of the network’s editorial staff, content and marketing.

It’s my job to look at all of the other blog networks and other new media, and identify how those strategies can be applied to green media.

Blog networks are kind of a brave new world, and best practices, writer compensation, and all the other details are still very fluid. I’m particularly proud of the writer model we’ve come up with. In other verticals where blogs have become big business, it’s because the majority of readers are already very interested in a wide range of related topics, and it’s pretty easy to find knowledgeable writers.

Green Media faces a tougher challenge; to date, most successful green bloggers are just people who happen to be interested but have no particular expertise in a green field–instead, their expertise is in running a blog. At the same time, there are tons of environmental professionals who are looking for a way to share their expertise with the world. Many of them are starting blogs as that outlet, but almost none of them have the time or expertise to administer, market, and otherwise find exposure for their personal blogs.

Whit: Well I’ll be asking you to come on the blog a couple times this month. Just so everyone knows, what is it that you brought you to this position? Specifically, what is your background in the green world?

David: Like many web entrepreneurs, it started small and evolved unexpectedly. I graduated from college (UCSD) with a growing passion for sustainability, and started a blog on the interplay of environmental and energy issues.

Through that blog, I met other high profile green bloggers, and the idea for Green Options as a single, multi-author blog was born. We launched that in Feb 2007. That blog grew quickly, but we recognized that we were only successfully reaching an audience that was already very ‘green.’

We realized that splitting our blog into smaller, affiliated blogs on more niche topics was a much easier way to pull people into the circle of sustainability, since when most people start to “go green” they start with one or a couple topics that interest them–no one’s going to make a ‘green’ portal that claims to be all things to all people their homepage, but normal people are open to small introductory changes before getting more involved.

So, we have a food blog, a parenting blog, a cleantech blog, and so on down the line, each written to be accessible to a particular audience who might not want to dig into every green issue in the world… quite yet.

Which brings me back to our writer model: we set up what we call a ‘direct professional’ model — giving those green professionals a platform to bring their expertise to the world.

Whit:Well you know I love GO, I’ll have you back on the blog soon. I just wanted everyone to get to know you and your site before I proceed with Green Month. Thanks for the first chat.

David: Any time, Whit.

I think I’ve recovered enough from Paganello 2008 to finally start writing again. This is the longest I’ve gone without computer communications in a long time. Even on our trip around the world we had pretty regular access to the internet. So much happened, but in general these are stories that I’ll tell in person and don’t really need space for on my blog. Instead I will just remind everyone that they should travel whenever they can but to be conscious of the impact that it has on our planet. I say this for a number of reasons. First off, my carbon footprint is in a pretty bad way right now. I fly so much, and plant so little trees…

Right before I left for Italy I had breakfast with Giselle (co-worker) and a former professor of mine Melinda Stone. We talked a bit about air travel and the effects it’s having on our planet. Melinda has decided to only take 1 flight a year to bring down her carbon footprint, which is something I’m pretty certain I can not commit to at this juncture in my life, but is important to be thinking about.

So what I have decided to do is make as many Green Blog posts as I can this April. My goal is to introduce you all to some cool people who are doing some cool things in the green industry, and to learn something new in the process. If you have any suggestions, questions or ideas for this upcoming month, let me know. Also, if you have anyone that you know that you’d like me to meet and feature please introduce me.

Tomorrow I leave for Italy. This is definitely a trip for pleasure, not work or anything else. Claire and I will be playing Ultimate Frisbee on the beaches of Italy for 4 days straight - this is often one of the best weeks of the year.

Just now Claire and I watched a video posted by an online friend of mine Christian Payne. His blog is here if you want to go check it out. All of Christian’s videos that I have seen have been quite compelling, from the funny stuff to the serious stuff, you’ll always watch his work all the way through.

After watching his video I feel that posting about our trip is quite insignificant as far as world events go. So if you’d like to learn more about what we’re doing you can check out last years blog post for Paganello here. I’ll be taking video while we’re gone, hopefully it’ll help you better understand what it is we’re doing at the tournament.