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Why are you men so hard to shop for??? Mom, sister-in-law, sister– check, check, check.  They are so easy!  But buying for my father, huzzy, and brother-in-law keeps me awake at night!  Then add to that that I’m trying to buy eco-friendly gifts and it gets even harder.  So I’ve searched and pondered and here are some ideas I’ve come up with for the sweet eco-dudes in our lives– I hope they help!

Idea #1:  Give an experience instead of stuff.  By far the most eco-friendly type of gift you can give someone is the gift of an experience.  It’s much more green to take someone to a play or buy them a massage or make them brunch than it is to buy them some item.  Don’t we all have enough stuff anyway?  So I encourage all of us to think of experiences we can give to our eco-dudes.  How excited would he be if you actually bought him baseball tickets? Wow, that would get you major points.  Or how about you call his mom and find out what his favorite childhood meal was and whip that up? (Organic) comfort food is the way to any man’s heart.

Idea #2: Get that man some learnin’.  How about a cooking class? Or some yoga lessons?  Or some golf coaching?  My cute husband recently told me he wanted to learn how to play the ukulele…. so you guessed it, he’ll be strumming away in class come 2009.  Classes or coaching are great eco-gifts.

Idea #3:  Dudes love gadgets.  Every man I’ve ever known loved electronic gadgets.  So here are some eco-gadgets that might float their boat.  This nifty item is a hand-cranked LED light, radio, cell-phone charger combination. It’s amazing! (I actually own one.) It uses no electricity and is great for natural-disaster preparedness.  It is really satisfying to crank the little handle and see the light come on and the radio start to play!  Better still– it’s only $25.

Solar chargers in general make a great gift– you can get them for laptops, cell phones, iPods, and more.  Check out lots of solar chargers here.

Another super-cool gadget my husband got that has changed his life is the Kindle from Amazon.  It is a complete book and periodical replacement.  You just download books and or magazines and newspapers with this wireless reading device and you’re off and running.  The screen is the size of standard paperback and the whole device is very easy to use.  You can have 4-5 books and weeks of newspapers and take them all on vacation!  Or you can program it to download your paper automatically every morning.  Think of all the paper you’ll save! The Kindle is pretty nifty.

Idea #4: Get that man some eco-style.  There are so many cool companies making clothing now out of bamboo and organic cotton and even recycled plastic bottles….every man deserves to look good and support the planet at the same time.   Patagonia is a wonderful, environmentally-minded company that make tons of great looking clothes for men…and I also love these t-shirts from Fuse Organics. 

Good luck with those dudes!

Greenpeace publishes a periodic report on electronics, and has just released its November 2008 Greener Electronics Guide. The report ranks the leading mobile and PC manufacturers on their policies and practices for eliminating harmful chemicals and for taking responsibility for their products that are discarded by consumers.

The news is not good.  According to the report, “Very few firms are showing true climate leadership. Despite many green claims, major companies like Dell, Microsoft, Lenovo, LG, Samsung and Apple are failing to support the necessary levels of global cuts in emissions and make the absolute cuts in their own emissions that are required to tackle climate change.”

Nintendo and Microsoft own the bottom of the rating scale, and Nokia scores the highest. Learn more about the individual ratings of the companies here.

Of the 18 market-leading companies included in the Guide, only Sharp, Fujitsu Siemens and Philips show full support for the necessary cuts of 30 percent of greenhouse gases for industrial nations by 2020.  According to the report, “All the other companies in the Guide make vague or essentially meaningless statements about global emissions reductions and have no plans to make absolute emissions cuts themselves. With the need for deep emission cuts becoming ever more urgent it’s vital big companies support a global deal and take effective measures now to reduce their overall emissions.”
 

Are you scratching your head wondering what to get little Sally, Ben or, if you’re in Los Angeles, baby Dakota?  Well fear not– eco-assistance is on the way. Consider these groovy green gifts for kids– we’ve got gifts for babies, toddlers, little ramblers and even too-cool-for-school teenagers.  Like, whatever.

Green Gifts for Babies

What little baby wouldn’t love to snuggle the night away in this cozy 100% organic cotton one-piece from Under the Nile?  It’s so smart with its polo stripe design.  The baby will kiss you and say, “Thank you– I love it!” Wait, no it won’t.  But it will think it.

For the slightly more avant garde baby, how about this smart “I’m with the band” t-shirt from Focoloco?  This organic, hand-dyed shirt will make even the fussiest aspiring rock-star-baby pleased as punch.   I absolutely love the designs this company does….to see more click here. 

Okay we’ve got to get some stuffed animals in the mix.  These adorable sock monkeys from Maggie’s Organics are made from “less than perfect” Maggie’s Organics cotton socks. These monkeys are made by a 100% worker-owned co-operative in North Carolina. To make these monkeys extra special they are all hand sewn and one of a kind.  Get a barrel full of ‘em!

Green Gift for Toddlers and Little People

Kids need toys, but let’s say no to plastic this year, shall we? (To learn more about the No Plastic Holiday Challenge, click here.)  Why not get them a wooden toy that is sustainably made and will last for generations?  ImagiPLAY is a great company that makes wonderful, safe wooden toys for kids of all ages.  How neat is this Artic Expedition Playset at left?  You can also educate the child about the danger to the Artic posed by global warming! 

Little people will also love the toys from Plan Toys.  Plan Toys are made from sustainably-sourced woods (like recycled rubber wood) and are colored with vegetable dyes. I love this prop plane and pilot set… but there are hundreds of other super toys from this company as well.

Another excellent educational gift for kids is Dr. Seuss’ classic book The Lorax.  What makes this a green gift, you ask?  Let us refresh your memory on the books central theme:  ”Way back in the days when the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean…. there was a Lorax who spoke for the trees.” Seeee?  It’s a wonderful, cautionary tale that never grows old.  It should be in every child’s bookshelf!

Green Gifts for Teens

Teens are very hard to shop for– they hate everything their parents give them, right?  Well you might win some serious Cool Points if you get them an eco-friendly skateboard or snowboard.  Arbor is a hard-core green company and they have been making eco-smart boards since 1999.  They use eco-materials to improve the performance and style of their boards.  All of these natural materials are sustainably sourced. They also reclaim woods and bamboo for many of their products. Check them out! 

Another groovy gift for an older kid is a solar-powered backpack. These packs have solar panels in them, and kids can use them to charge their iPod, cell phone or whatever other gadget them may be carrying around.  They will look pretty sly carrying one of these bad boys on campus.

And click here to see more green gift ideas for mom, dad, wife, husband, and more!

Cities around the US are starting to embrace solar power in some pretty interesting ways.  Last week Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled an ambitious long-range plan for producing enough solar power to meet one-tenth of the city’s energy needs by 2020.  Villaraigosa is launching this initiative to help wean the city’s Department of Water and Power off of fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.

In the plan, the largest share of solar power, 500 megawatts, would come from generating facilities built by private-sector companies in the Mojave Desert.  An additional 380 megawatts would be achieved through smaller programs, including one that would help low-income residents add solar panels to their homes and another that would allow DWP customers to purchase shares of city-owned solar plants.

Read the full Los Angeles Times feature on the Mayor’s solar plan.

Further North in California the hyper-progressive City of San Francisco launched a strong solar incentive program this summer. The realized that fewer than 1000 rooftops in the city had solar panels and they needed to drive positive action to embrace solar power.  The city’s Solar Energy Incentive Program provides rebates to home- and business owners who install solar panels on their buildings. Individuals can receive up to $6,000; businesses can be granted $10,000. They also launched a one-year pilot program to provide funding for solar installations at low-income housing and buildings owned by nonprofits. According to Grist.org, San Francisco currently generates less than 5 megawatts of power from 770 solar-powered rooftops, but hopes to boost that to 55 mw from 15,000 rooftops within the next decade.  Learn more about the San Francisco program here.

Right across the Bay, The City of Berkeley is offering innovative loans to citizens to fund home solar installations. The program gives city-backed loans to property owners who install rooftop solar-power systems. The loans, which are likely to total up to $22,000 apiece, would be paid off over 20 years as part of the owners’ property-tax bills.  Learn more about the Berkeley program here.

And just to prove that solar isn’t only a “West Coast Thing” the City of Chicago has created a very impressive program called the Chicago Solar Partnership. The Chicago Solar Partnership (CSP) is a public-private consortium managed by the Illinois Solar Energy Association (ISEA), to advance the development of the solar energy industry in the Chicago metropolitan area. The website is excellent and provides great information on different solar system options, costs, and rebates. The State of Illinois provides rebates for up to 30% of the solar installation with a maximum rebate of $10,000. Not too shabby!

My only criticism of the Chicago program is that they don’t provide links to actual solar installers— you can click here to find a solar installer in your area anywhere across the United States.

And an excellent resource for learning about state and local solar incentives in your area is GreenMadeSimple.com. Check it out!

Americans haul 82 million tons of trash to recycling centers each year. But does it pay off—for the environment or the economy? Popular Mechanics has some real answers.

Written by Alex Hutchinson, appearing in the December issue of Popular Mechanics

The modern era of recycling began in the meandering wake of the Mobro 4000. The infamous garbage barge spent much of 1987 traveling up and down the eastern seaboard looking for a place to dump its 3000-ton load of New York trash. It was refused at every port. By the time the spurned vessel returned to Long Island, still ferrying its fetid cargo, it had become the poster child for what was trumpeted as a national crisis: dwindling landfill space. Faced with the scale of their own refuse, Americans took action. Nascent recycling programs blossomed into major operations. Municipalities invested in trucks for curbside pickups and in facilities to handle mountains of castoff material. Kindergartners were taught the virtues of separating clear glass from green. Almost overnight, it seemed, recycling was embraced by the public as a kind of all-purpose absolution for our environmental sins.

Yet doubts remained. Some critics wondered if, far from being an environmental panacea, recycling is actually a giant placebo that makes us feel virtuous but wastes both money and resources. Take the much- maligned plastic water bottle. It’s almost always made from petroleum, a resource that certainly seems worth conserving, and if you chuck it in the trash, the container will live on in a landfill for centuries. But how much diesel fuel does the truck that collects these bottles burn? How much energy does the recycling plant consume; what fumes does it emit into the atmosphere? And what does it all cost, anyway?

Click here to read the rest of this article.
Click here to learn about 5 Recycling Myths Debunked