Whenever you look at environmental documents aimed at letting people know what they can do to help save the planet it always includes a list on “ways you can conserve water”. I see these lists everywhere; most of them say the same things and they are really good ways to save water. However, none of them tell me WHY I should save water. I am wired in such a way (my husband, brother, and basically everyone that knows me would call it stubbornness) that I can’t (and won’t) do something unless I think there is a good reason behind it.

Well, it turns out there are good reasons to conserve water. This is a complex subject because of its many facets, but it is all very important to know. I will try to organize it the best I can. I have heard some people refer to potable water as the next vanishing commodity. There is always the same amount of water on earth and it comes in one of the following states: liquid, ice, or gas. While it is true that the actual amount of water never changes; the amount of potable water is steadily declining. Potable water is defined as water which can safely be ingested by human beings. Here in the United States, for the most part, the municipal water which readily flows forth from our faucets is potable water. We use this water not only to drink, but also for washing our dishes, our hands, showering, watering our plants, filling water balloons, etc. This abundance of potable water in many ways has lead to a false sense of security for a couple of reasons. First, there is a general mentality that we can polute water as much as we want because we have come to believe in these, almost magical machines, that will “filter” all contaminants. It also contributes to the inaccurate belief that everyone in the world has access to some source of clean water.

Because there is so much information, I’m writing a series of posts to talk about these issues. I hope to look into the problem and also offer some ideas for how we can all positively affect the current worldwide water situation.

Many evenings this summer over at Mom’s were spent in the company of loved ones, sitting in the three seasons room or back yard around a fire, relaxing, watching lightening bugs, and drinking Fat Tire beer. As the leaves are falling, the days are now getting colder, and the desires to cozy in and bundle up are increasing; it still makes me feel warm, happy, and free to think about those nights.

It was the beginning of this past summer, as my husband and I were walking through the grocery store, that we saw boxes and boxes of New Belguim Brewing Company’s Fat Tire. It was a great surprise to find out that it was now being sold East of the Mississippi and it was easily decided that we would buy one of those boxes. As it turned out, we would continue to keep a steady supply in the house throughout the summer; sharing its goodness with family and friends.

Adding to the greatness of this delicious beer are the practices of New Belgium Brewing Company. I will follow their lead and break their practices into three categories: Ownership, Sustainablity, and Philanthropy.

Ownership:
The company has been employee owned since the hiring of its first employee, Brian Callahan. It is important to Jeff and Kim (the founders) that employees have a “vested interest in the company” and that they all get to reap from the benefits and failures alike. “These days, ownership is awarded at one year�s employment (along with a one-year, commemorative, neat-o cruiser bike!).” In addition to this, there is “a policy of fiscal transparency” which they practice in order to encourage “a community of trust and mutual responsibility”.

Sustainability:

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction � In 1998, New Belgium took an employee vote and decided to commit to being the nation�s first 100% wind-powered brewery. Employee owners voted to dip into their bonus pool to help finance the conversion.

Healthy Watersheds � Water is a key ingredient of beer.Through recapture and reuse, New Belgium has nearly halved the industry average of using eight barrels of water to produce one barrel of beer.

Green Building � New Belgium has been a long-time participant in green building techniques. From sun tubes and daylighting throughout the facility to reusing heat in the brewhouse, we continue to search out new ways to close loops and conserve resources.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle � New Belgium has found many creative ways to follow the three R’s.

Philanthropy:

Since its inception, New Belgium Brewing Company has donated more than 1.6 million dollars to organizations in the communities where we do business. This is our way of staying local and giving back to the communities who support us.

Party hard, but party sustainably.

One of the most beneficial things we can do to curtail the damage being done to the environment is to reduce our carbon footprint. Automobiles are one of the primary sources of the man-made greenhouse gases that are causing global warming because the majority of cars on the road burn fossil fuels in order to make them run. It makes sense then, that one of the best things we can do to bring health to our planet is to minimize the number of automobiles on the road everyday. There are a couple of practicle ways to accomplish this:

1. Walk.
2. Ride a bike.
3. Carpool (preferably with someone who has a hyrbid or very fuel effecient car).
4. Take public transporation.

One of the first things I noticed as I began to walk around this city was the buses. I could have noticed them because there was not much of a bus system in the West Suburbs of Chicago where I just moved from. However, that was not the reason. I noticed them because many were labled as hybrid diesel-electric or biodesiel buses. Metro’s plan is “to have 100% of their fleet ‘clean air’ equipped by 2010″ and they are well on their way.

By switching from the Breda buses to hybrid diesel-electric buses they were able to accomplish the following:

• Particulate Matter (PM) reduced by 90 percent over the cleanest diesel buses now in Metro’s fleet
• Carbon Monoxide (CO) reduced by 90 percent over the cleanest diesel buses now in Metro’s fleet
• Hydrocarbons (HC) reduced by 90 percent
• Carbon Dioxide (CO2) reduced by 40-60 percent
• Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) reduced by 50 percent

With their use of biodiesel they are hoping to help “open up the local biodiesel market to other consumers, such as school districts, small trucking firms and even individual car owners”.

Biodiesel is a fuel that is made from natural ingredients, such as the seed crops that are used to make vegetable oil. Metro has committed to pilot the use of a blend of five percent biodiesel and 95 percent Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) over the next two years, and is already using the fuel at its Ryerson and Bellevue bases. It hopes to power its entire fleet of more than 1,200 diesel buses with the biodiesel by the end of 2006.

Ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel is a specially refined fuel with significantly lower sulfur content than regular highway diesel. The sulfur content ranges from 15 to 30 parts per million. Regular diesel has a maximum of 500 parts per million of sulfur. Other than sulfur content, ultra- low sulfur diesel meets the same specifications as regular highway diesel.

I have taken the bus a couple of times when it has been too far to walk and it has been very convenient and easy. Usually, the buses are filled to the brim with people and in certain areas of downtown Seattle you can take advantage of the free-fair zone. I also love that while on the bus you get to see a diverse mix of people using the same service and sitting/standing next to each other.

Anthropologie uses sweat shops (as well as engaging in other ethically sketchy behavior).

Huge sigh.

Jasmin over at Worsted Witch, who also shares my love for what she describes as “Anthroplogie’s sense of Old World sophistication”, broke the news to me a couple of days ago in a post. It is incredibly disturbing that Antropologie uses sweatshops. The use of sweatshops, at all, is incredibly disturbing.

Those of you who know me, or who have come to know me through my writing for one/change, may know the following about me:

1. I have a huge appreciation for art, beauty, creativity, textiles, form, and function (and things that are feminine without being girly);
2. I, for the most part, could care less about shopping.

Anthropolgie was basically the only exception to the latter because so much of what was in the store possessed the former’s qualities. To be honest, I can’t afford most of the goods Anthropologie sells, but that didn’t keep me from wandering aimlessly through the store, letting my creativity neurons fire at the speed of light and shamelessly being tempted to go into debt.

The grief I now feel about Anthropologie’s use of sweatshops is not because I will no longer shop at a store whose creativity I related to and appreciated. I understand enough to know that a store, that store, is ultimately not that important. The grief, saddness, and dissapointment I feel is the result of yet another store’s indifference to human rights. It is that the human beings, the men and women running that store could care less about the lives of other human beings, other men and women.

Check out Green Shift and Responsible Shopper to find out more information about the practices of the companies you are supporting.

It’s always better to know.

P.S. I am getting to know more independent designers whose craftsmanship and aesthetic are worthy of praise and support.

Last night I was going through the blogs I read and came across this video, A Girl Like Me, on Trying to Follow. In this documentary, Kiri Davis (the director) interviewed 6 young black women about how they view themselves and how others view them based on their skin color. Kiri Davis did an excellent job making this film. The thoughtful statments of the women participating in the interview and the reconducting of Dr. Clark’s doll test together express how far America still has to come in ridding society of such deeply rooted lies.

We as human beings are wired in such a way as to have instinctual moral responses. The problem comes about when those instinctual moral repsonses become numbed or non-existent. In this case, the moral wrong committed is not limited to those who actively engage in racism, but includes those who fail both to acknowledge the wrong done and elicit thoughts and/or feelings of pain and outrage in response to it.

Below I have included a fairly lengthy excerpt from Barak Obama’s, Dreams From My Father. He is a man that is both thoughtful and wise; both are evidenced in his writing. With clarity Obama expresses himself and his journey to understand himself as a black man.

But in one corner I found a collection of Life magazines…[w]hen I came upon a news photograph, I tried to guess the subject of the subject of the story before reading the caption.

Eventually I came across a photograph of an older man in dark glasses and a raincoat walking down an empty road. I couldn’t guess what this picture was about; there seemed nothing unusual about the subject. One the next page was another photograph, this one a close-up of the same man’s hands. They had a strange, unnatural pallor, as if blood had been drawn from the flesh. Turning back to the first picture, I now saw that the man’s crinkly hair, his heavy lips and broad, fleshy nose, all had this same uneven, ghostly hue.

He must be terribly sick, I thought. Except when I read the words that went with the picture, that wasn’t it at all. The man had received a chemical treatment, the article explained, to lighten his complexion. He had paid for it with his own money. He expressed some regret about trying to pass himself off as a white man, was sorry about how badly things had turned out. But the results were irreversible. There were thousands of people like him, black men and women back in America who’d undergone the same treatment in response to advertisements that promised happiness as a white person.

I felt my face and neck get hot. My stomach knotted; the type began to blur on the page.

I had a desperate urge to jump out of my seat, to show them what I had learned, to demand some explanation or assurance.

I know that article was violent for me, an ambush attack. My mother had warned me about bigots–they were ignorant, uneducated people one should avoid.

But that one photograph had told me something else: that there was a hidden enemy out there, one that could reach me without anyone’s knowledge, not even my own. When I got home that night from the embassy library, I went into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking as I had always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me. The alternative was no less firghtening–that the adults around me lived in the midst of madness.

Barack Obama as a child in Indonesia as recorded in Dreams From My Father.