As with many of the decisions that have been made regarding “greening” at betterworldbuys.com, the decision on a new energy source for our home offices has been a challenging one.

Up to now, we have been paying to support wind energy with an extra fee on our monthly utility bill. Always seeking to do more, however, we began to investigate various options including a windmill, heat pump, and solar installation. After many consultations, research and soul (or in this case solar) searching, we chose to go forward with a new solar installation to power our residence and office space.

The bidding process ensued with several reputable firms participating. Halo Energy was selected to complete the work and owner John O’Boyle graciously agreed to allow us to blog about the process to share our experiences (positive and negative) with others interested in learning about solar power.

Our first official step was to have a solar tracker assessment completed to determine where on the property the installation would be most efficient (without requiring the removal of our beloved trees). From the assessment, it was determined that locating panels on our garage at the rear of the property would maximize the efficiency of the system with the least impact to our trees, home, and home office. The next step involves the completion and filing of all appropriate applications with our borough and state.

We’re interested in any comments from readers that have had experience with solar installations or with alternative energy questions.. As always, your feedback is invited and welcomed. We’ll keep you posted with updates on this process as we progress!

In celebration of the Independence Day of this great nation, the words of our forefathers are recalled to inspire a look beyond our independence and at our interdependences:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….”

Their words have stood the test of time. Is it advisable now, however, to consider not just the Independence they declared, but also our Interdependence as implied in their references to our equality, our relationship to the ”Laws of Nature” and our “unalienable Rights”?

In the original Declaration, our forefathers brought charges against King George III, which demonstrated his violation of the rights of the colonists (subjects/citizens – depending on what articles you’ve been reading this week). Free of the monarchy, we now live in a society where big business and government create grounds for updated charges.

If we were to amend the Declaration to detail unalienable rights such as life, liberty and pursuit of happiness infringed upon today by various political and corporate powers, what would the updated charges entail?

Environmental discrimination, disruption of fragile ecosystems, widespread deforestation, depletion of resources, pollution, social injustices, and many more might be among the list of accusations.

What “charges” do you think should be added to a 2010 Declaration of Interdependence that could bring focus to our connectedness, while remaining cognizant of the beneficial role political systems and businesses play in our complex society?

Compost isn’t dirt but it sure can help your garden grow…or so I’ve been told! I wouldn’t know firsthand because I’ve had a tumbling composter for the past two years and haven’t been able to make a successful batch of compost yet. Undeterred, I enrolled in a local course to become (drum roll please…) “Master Composter Certified”.

Though no cape, invisible jet or tiara come with this new title, I’m please to say I have learned a great deal about the biology of compost and what it takes to make a lovely soil conditioner for my garden. From my training, I’ve created my top 10 list of things I think everyone should know about composting.

10. It’s an inexpensive and easy way to eliminate yard waste and food scraps while creating the equivalent of garden gold!

9. Choose wisely when selecting the container you will use. Three bin composters are great if you want to keep more than one batch “cooking all the time. Tumbling composters can speed things up but will limit the size of your batch.

8. Do NOT add meats, fish, oily foods, dairy, pet manure or diseased or insect infested plants or weeds that have gone to seed in your pile.

7. Do add yard trimmings, garden debris, veggie and fruit scraps, coffee grounds and filters, horse, cow, chicken and rabbit manure.

6. You need 4 key elements:

Organic materials: In a ratio of 2 parts brown to 1 part green.
Moisture: Should be at a level that feels like a damp sponge.
Temperature: The pile should be warm to the touch (except in winter).
Air: Turning your pile will add air and help eliminate odors.

5. Browns include leaves, dead plants, straw, shredded paper, twigs, and sawdust.

4. Greens include grass, green weeds, manure, coffee grounds and kitchen scraps.

3. If it stinks, ADD Browns!

2. It is ready when you can put a sample in a plastic bag for 2-4 hours and it doesn’t stink terribly when you open the bag. If it does, it isn’t done.

1. It is useful and reduces your waste stream! Apply as mulch or work into the top 6-8 inches of soil when planting.

I’ve now begun my adventure in home composting and am in full swing with my kitchen composter and tumbling bin. I’m looking forward to using it in my garden with some of my new garden accessories from our global garden product category!

Do you have any questions about home composting? If so, check out this presentation from Penn State and the DEP or post your comments below. Advice from experienced home composters is also welcomed!

I am blessed and fortunate to be able to count some amazing mothers among my list of family and friends. My mother, who is also my best friend, has inspired me in more ways than I could retell in a blog (or novel for that matter). My Gramma, who passed on many years ago, was a true matriarch. She taught me the value of persistence and confidence. My Nana, ever playful, makes me smile to think of her influence on my belief that a good sense of humor helps bring happiness in even the most difficult situations. My well read, and researched dear Aunts Sallie and Tina inspire me with their inner strength, candor and fortitude. My stepmother conquered cancer and is able to manage my father on a daily basis! Then of course, there are my fellow mommy friends from school, playgroup, church, work, and travel with whom I can share stories smiles and the many daily trials, tribulations and triumphs of motherhood.

To all these women and the mothers around the world I say Thank You! Your inspiration, humor, patience and efforts pave the way for a better tomorrow for our progeny and our planet.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Over 200,000 gallons of crude oil are gushing from the damaged rig in the Gulf of Mexico. If the black gold reaches the Gulf Stream, the coral reefs in the Florida Keys, not to mention the miles and miles of shoreline and fisheries in between, could be irreparably devastated and a multitude of greenbacks (no longer secured with gold) will be spent to mitigate the disaster.

Big Oil is big industry and with industrial size comes Power. (My mother was right in that respect when she told me size matters!) …pardon my crude comments (and poor puns). With this power comes responsibility. The responsibility, however, isn’t to be shouldered by the suppliers alone. As an oil guzzling society, we bear much of this responsibility because of our demand for oil and its many derivatives. Just try to go a day without using or consuming something that requires or is derived from oil.

Though going oil free overnight is unfathomable, to be responsible, we need to begin to rethink our oil consumption decisions and our dirty love affair with this dark source of immeasurable wealth.

Increasing demand for products sourced from sustainable and responsible industries is a key component of decreasing our reliance on oil. If the profit made from the sale of oil is decreased by decreasing demand, and demand for other sustainable fuels increases, then technologies will be developed in these areas because, though we may have a fondness for oil, it is only such that it assists us in achieving greater monetary gains. If there are more gains to be made by working in sustainable fields, then that is where leading business and industry will shift to maintain profitability.

What are your thoughts on the current eco-disaster? Are sustainable fuels the answer?

My daughter came home from school this week with her Earth Day assignment from the preceding week. She’s in Kindergarten, and the assignment, after reading the book Dear Children of the Earth with her class, was as follows:

“For homework write at least three sentences telling me something that you could do at home to make Mother Earth happy.”

My daughter wrote:
“We can reacikle cans and nuspepers and magazeans. We should reaus water and alektrisady. The most important thing of all you shud do for Mother Erth is to Love her. She cann feal if you do something good or bad. Pepol think she dusent no wate we are doing but she dus”

I should listen more to my children. Beyond her words of wisdom on how to save the planet, she could probably give me photography lessons. The above butterfly shot is hers!

When I was younger, friends of mine collected a series of cards called the Garbage Pail Kids. (It was the 80’s, what can I say?) Anyway, I’m thinking that now is the time for a new series of (compostable) cards featuring the Garbage Planet Kids with information on the back on how our careless consumption and disposal is destroying our natural resources. Perhaps they could include suggestions to promote responsible consumption and environmental and social consciousness?

As I read through the news on Yahoo! of yet another massive patch of floating plastic debris in the ocean, and got ready to pick my children up from school, I was wondering what kind of planet we are burdening them with?

Researchers discovered the Pacific Garbage Patch a few years back and now it seems that (so we East coasters don’t feel left out) there is an Atlantic Garbage Patch to rival the one in the Pacific full of plastic pollutants that stretch for, not tens or hundreds, but THOUSANDS of square miles.

To help educate our children on this mess, and how they can help protect their future, there are some good, albeit dated, resources for “Planet Protectors” from the EPA. Another site recommends an experiment: “Get a bag made of net and put all sorts of garbage into it, such as vegetable scraps, fish bones, a tissue, a candy wrapper, cracker box, an empty can and wrapping paper. Make a list of what you put inside. You might even take some photos as a record. Next, dig a hole in your backyard and bury the bag full of garbage in the hole. You might want to cover the hole with a few heavy stones so that it won’t get dug by a dog or cat. After about a week or two, dig up the bag to see what has happened to the garbage.” The results may seem obvious to us, but might do wonders to make our children more aware of the issues that trash presents us with for the future.

On this, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, what do you think is the best way to help minimize our plastic footprint by land and by sea?

NYC

Last weekend on the streets of New York City near Grand Central Station I counted four large trash cans within a short city block chock primarily full of plastic bottles. Not only were the designated receptacles overflowing with plastic trash, but there were bottles littered on nearly every walkway that had been trampled underfoot. I began challenging myself to see how long I could go without seeing an improperly discarded plastic bottle and was given a reprieve only when I stopped for lunch.

You can read some of my previous blogs to learn more about my beef with plastic bottles and the bottled water industry. It appears, however, that I’m not alone in these concerns. Check out the Story of Stuff Project’s, The Story of Bottled Water for the full scoop.

Share the important message to reject water bottles by sporting one of our eco-message graphic tees for Him or Her. From now through Earth Day, 2010 these tee’s by Re-Thread are buy 3 get 1 FREE using coupon code “4for3tees”. Help us to spread the message and save money as you save the world!

Reject Water Bottles Tee

Visiting friends on a long weekend in Chester District between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios in Jamaica in early February brought me a heightened awareness of how inefficient my household routines are.

In Jamaica, my friend lives with eight other family members in a small home situated on a sunny hilltop surrounded by fruit and nut trees and flanked by other small homes populated with extended family. The children, too young to go to school (which begins at age 3), are watched by whichever family member is off of work, or unemployed at the time. Jobs are hard to come by, and often require long hours and six to seven day work weeks. Typical income for working adults in her home is about 55 US dollars per week. Food prices, however, are comparable to prices here at home.

To combat these prices, much of the food is grown on their property. They have a beautiful almond tree, breadfruit trees, abundant coconuts, bananas, and other sustainably farmed fruits and vegetables. Some of her brothers bring fresh fish home a few times a week which they eat immediately or salt for future use. There is very little food wasted. But what is determined as “scrap” is put on a small pile outside of their kitchen door for their two dogs to enjoy. The dogs, who have no names, and aren’t ever let into the home, benefit from the food and shelter (outside of the house) provided by the family. In return, they help dispose of scraps and alert the family of visitors approaching.

Freshwater is efficiently captured in large rooftop containers, and occasionally replenished with buckets and trips to the nearby stream to supply household needs via gravity.

They use the natural Caribbean breeze to cool their home opening all doors and windows during the day and close things up at night to guard against insects and other pests. Very little is wasted and they seem to want for very little.

When I think about my heating costs, cooling costs, food waste, my beloved dog (who has her own bed in my bedroom), and my struggles to grow a few good tomatoes each year, I feel like I have much to learn.

So long as I continue to try, however, my Jamaican friends assure me there will be “No problem!”

I traveled to the other side of the globe two years ago and met a man.

My travels took me through the rainforests of Peru, on to Cusco and from the Sacred Valley to Aqua Calientes and the majesties of Machu Picchu. The man I met had a similar itinerary, and our paths crossed oddly at several destinations.

I recall being struck by the abject poverty that many of the people in the towns we visited lived in. This man seemed oblivious to the plight of the people there, and talked incessantly (in the churches) of how the Wall Street Journal was his Bible and the stock exchange his God. He insulted teachers, who work in a profession I strongly admire, multiple times during the first ten minutes after we were introduced and was generally dismissive of women. My typically high tolerance level was severely tested.

Just when I’d begun to think Peru might not be large enough for me and this man, I learned that he lived and worked in the same town I call home. As Bogart said, “Of all the gin joints in all the world…” Not only did he have the same small town as his home address, but he boasted (often and loudly) of his very successful business there.

As I work to review all the wonderful thoughts and ideas presented at the most recent Board of Directors meeting of betterworldbuys.com, I’m challenged to reconsider my personal definition of success. When I do this, I’m reminded of that man whose definition I want to stay so far from. Unknowingly, he has helped me to become increasingly aware of the fact that I must share my home, and that we all must share our planet, with people of vastly differing backgrounds, cultures, races, religions, and belief systems. In addition, we share it with a multitude of other living beings, with whom we need to coexist in order for the ultimate survival of our species.

Doing our part to educate consumers on the impact of their responsible purchasing decisions, and providing conscious alternatives to typical products so we may promote this peaceful coexistence in a sustainable fashion is my definition of success for betterworldbuys.com.

How do you define success?