More on Marketing Manipulation

Photo Credit: Asif Akbar at stock.xchng

Consumers are easily manipulated. No matter how savvy we think we are, we fall for many of the tricks advertisers and marketers use to sell products to us. We don't believe those "Going Out of Business Sale" signs that are permanent fixtures in some store windows, but we will succumb to just the right color, the right descriptive word, or perhaps the right scent. Here are several articles that may make you rethink just how sophisticated your choices are when you make purchasing decisions.

"Does This Smell Clean to You? - Products Bring Aromatherapy To Household Chores; Don't Say 'Banana'"

"Forget lemon and pine. People are fumigating their homes with exotic essences of ginger and hibiscus while scrubbing floors and bathtubs. That's because packaged-goods makers, in their endless hunt for the new and improved, are ramping up the complexity of product fragrances. Adding an elaborate bouquet that consumers crave to a product line helps build loyalty, marketers say. . . .Mr. Clean has New Zealand Springs, promising 'ferns, forests and glacier-carved waterfalls.' No matter that consumers may not know what a glacier-carved waterfall actually smells like. 'They're fanciful. You want to evoke a feeling or emotion, like when you're out in a meadow,' says Deborah Betz, a senior fragrance development manager at International Flavors & Fragrances, an industry supplier. 'It doesn't have to smell like an actual meadow.'"

Read more here to learn how the colors you see on the fashion runways and foods that are currently popular also affect the scents in cleaning products. It's a safe bet that these same factors influence personal hygiene products and cosmetics, too -- even organic ones.

"7 Reasons Why Diamonds Are a Waste of Your Money"

"Ira Weissman is a diamond industry veteran with a decade of experience at one of the world's largest diamond polishers. He has traveled the world buying and selling diamonds and now dedicates his time to helping consumers make the most of their diamond buying decisions."

The focus of the article is on the diamond engagement ring: Long-standing tradition? No. Great investment. No. Good way to stall when avoiding a marriage commitment? Possibly. Read the list to see if you want to rethink how you feel about diamonds in general.

"Cheap Clothing Costs a Lot More Than You Think"

I've posted in the past about the complex dilemma of cheap products produced under horrific conditions in foreign countries and sometimes in the U.S. (here's one previous post).  Elizabeth Cline is the author of a new book entitled “Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion” (I have not read it yet) in which she explains that the high volume/cheap labor/cheap materials business model has resulted, as most of us already know, in human suffering and negative environmental impact. "Cline states that 'There are very few middle-market brands and retailers and everything has become very cheap or irrationally expensive on the other end.' Leaving little room for quality products that don’t cost a fortune, most of us fall victim to clothing items we know aren’t the best sourced, yet we buy them anyway."

The article promotes www.fashioningchange.com, a website offering free shopping links and information about "stylish, eco-friendly and ethical alternatives to top name brands." My personalized recommendations look good enough for me to investigate further and probably purchase a few items. Read more here.

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And one final note: The Thoughtful Consumer blog celebrated its 6th anniversary on August 3rd. Thanks to all of you who read and comment!

Potpourri: Big Homes, Advertising, Recycling

I have a backlog of interesting items on various topics that I'm condensing for this post.

Big homes: I was distressed to learn that, in spite of all the favorable press small homes have been receiving—especially the ultra-small "tiny houses,"—people are opting for larger new homes. From The Wall Street Journal:

"KB Home says the average square footage of houses currently under contract is 2,079, an increase of 13% from last year. And more KB buyers are picking models that exceed 3,500 square feet...The return to bigger houses—which has taken industry watchers by surprise—indicates that the housing downturn paused, but didn't kill, America's love affair with supersize abodes...A major driver behind the bigger-home trend is record-low interest rates, under 4% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, which allow some buyers to move up without necessarily making larger mortgage payments."

Advertising: Soon there will be no escape from advertising. Here's the warning from the LA Times:

"A company called Novo Ad has developed technology that can turn a public bathroom mirror into an electronic display for video advertisements...The mirrors are actually LED screens that have an internal hard disk and "very sophisticated proprietary software," according to a spokesman for the company."

The technology hasn't arrived yet in the U.S., but efforts are being made to find partners and advertisers to get it here as quickly as possible.


Recycling: On a cheerier note, in the Netherlands, recycling has been elevated to a new level of cultural awareness and change. The New York Times reports from Amsterdam about the "Repair Cafe" phenomenon:

"Thirty groups have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and toasters, as well as at least one electric organ, a washing machine and an orange juice press...'The Repair Cafe is an effective way to raise awareness that discarded objects are indeed still of value,' Mr. Joop Atsma [the state secretary for infrastructure and the environment] wrote in an e-mail...Marjanne van der Rhee, a Repair Cafe volunteer who hands out data collection forms and keeps the volunteers fortified with coffee, said: 'Different people come in. With some, you think, maybe they come because they’re poor. Others look well-off, but they are aware of environmental concerns. Some seem a little bit crazy.'"

I like the Repair Cafe idea, but I may be a little bit crazy.

Urban Gardens Also Grow Communities

While it's been a long time since I was a practitioner of the fine art of gardening, I retain an interest in it and confess to living an occasional rich fantasy life as an urban farmer. The benefits of urban gardening are not just personal to the gardeners; cultivating the land can revitalize neighborhoods, too. For an example, take a look at this 10-minute video about the current impact of urban gardening in Detroit, the much more ambitious plans for the future of agriculture in the city, and the challenges that kind of development faces:

"Seeds of Progress: How Urban Farming Is Changing Detroit's Future"

Of course, not all stories of urban gardening are cheerful. Robin Finn writes in The NY Times about theft from the 700 community gardens scattered throughout the city:

"...to hear urban farmers speak, no borough, and no garden devoted to edibles, whether sprawling or thimble-size, is immune to theft. 'Food is more attractive than flowers, especially in this economy,' said Marjorie J. Clarke, a caretaker at the flowers-only Riverside-Inwood Neighborhood Garden, known as RING. On the Upper West Side, cucumbers are tops for filching; in Harlem, the main draws are chilies and herbs; on the Lower East Side, green and red peppers; in Brooklyn and Queens, tomatoes and squash."

If you have a green thumb that's itching to get into the dirt or if you just want to find out more about urban gardening, the following links can be helpful:

"A Starter Guide to Urban Gardening" : From Inhabit, a blog with the motto, "Green Design Will Save the World."

"Urban Gardening: You Can Grow Food No Matter Where You Live" : EarthFirst posts about indoor gardening, container gardening, community gardening and guerilla gardening.

Urban Garden Magazine: "We want to inspire everyone, no matter what their domestic situation, to get growing. Even somebody living in an apartment on the 37th floor can produce surprising quantities of their own vegetables and herbs."

"The Edible Garden: Breaking Ground" : An LA public TV special in which six expert gardeners demonstrate how they use sustainable methods to grow beautiful organic produce. Available on DVD.

Previous posts from The Thoughtful Consumer:
Guerilla Gardeners
Off the Grid

If you do start an urban garden, or if you already have one or participate in a community garden, please share your experiences with it in the comments. Is gardening as satisfying as you hoped it would be? Does it help feed your family? Is the garden contributing to a sense of community?

And if it's just plain fun, please let us know that, too! Thanks.

UPDATE: I had just published this post and discovered within seconds this excellent story by Steve Lopez, also just published online in the LA Times:

"In the Weeds of Bureaucratic Insanity There Sprouts a Small Reprieve" : "Ron Finley planted a garden that fed both stomachs and souls in an area where healthful food is scarce. When the city demanded he remove it, neighbors protested and a councilman stepped in to mediate." ~ Please read this story of a man who planted his garden "between the curb and the sidewalk along his property in a 10-foot-wide, 150-foot-long strip of useless, scrubby grass" and discovered that it produced friendships as well as vegetables.

Small Houses, Urban Gardens, Consumer Spending ~ and a Blog Anniversary

In honor of today's fifth anniversary of The Thoughtful Consumer blog, I'm taking a hiatus from my hiatus to share several articles devoted to three of my favorite areas of interest: small houses, urban gardening, and consumer behavior.

Small Houses

As regular readers know, I enjoy exploring the options offered by small houses, but sometimes I'm amazed at just how small a house can be and still have someone willing to live in. The design model pictured above is an example. This house will be 28" at its narrowest and about 4' at its widest. It's scheduled to be completed in December in Warsaw, Poland, and, yes, it was commissioned. Read more and see more photos at the NPR post here.

Urban Gardening

On an acre of land in the densely-populated Mission Terrace neighborhood of San Francisco, "Little City Gardens recently became the first legal commercial farm within city borders. Thanks to [the women gardeners], San Francisco leaders revised zoning laws to allow the cultivation and sale of produce in all neighborhoods." Will Oakland and Berkeley follow suit? Read more in the LA Times article here.

Consumer Behavior

The recession may have put a damper on spending in the U.S. on items to decorate homes and make them more fashionable, but that's not the case in other countries that are developing a middle class with "disposable income" for the first time in their histories. Brazil, Russia and, especially, China are hot markets not only for the stylish stuff but for the glossy magazines that pitch it. Architectual Digest is about to start publishing in China, but more than just foreign branches of already established magazines are finding welcoming markets; brand new publications, such as Minha Casa and Bamboo in Brazil and Home in Russia, are also being launched. Can clutter be far behind? Read more here in the LA Times.


I'll be back with more posts soon!

Simple Living: Predicted Twenty Years Ago. Again.

I have just a few items in print that I can't seem to let go: the 20th anniversary issue of Rolling Stone, Abbie Hoffman's obituary, and a story (and cover) from the 1991 issue of Time magazine entitled, "The Simple Life." Setting aside discussion of the first two for some other day -- more likely, never -- let's examine the third. I'm simultaneously disheartened and heartened to read it again, almost twenty years after its publication. And, at the time it was printed, I recall feeling simultaneously disheartened and heartened to read it some twenty years after those of us who came of age in the late '60s and early '70s had professed the identical ideals: "a simpler life with deeper meaning."

Here are quotes from the article, which was written by Janice Castro, with reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington, Melissa Ludtke/Boston, and William McWhirter/Chicago, with other bureaus:

These are the humble makings of a revolution in progress: Macaroni and cheese. Timex watches. . . . Bicycles. . .

See the pattern? It's as genuine as Grandma's quilt. After a 10-year bender of gaudy dreams and godless consumerism, Americans are starting to trade down. They want to reduce their attachments to status symbols, fast-track careers and great expectations of Having It All.

In place of materialism . . . having time for family and friends, rest and recreation, good deeds and spirituality.

In a Time/CNN poll of 500 adults, 69% of the people surveyed said they would like to "slow down and live a more relaxed life" . . .

In scaling down their tastes, most Americans are making a virtue out of necessity. Contrary to perceptions, the past decade was an era of downward mobility for the majority of U.S. families, who kept up their spending by borrowing and relying on two incomes. Only the wealthiest 20% of Americans significantly increased their real income during the Reagan era, and the poor slipped further behind. . .

Not everyone believes America has changed its stripes, however. "If the present generation has learned anything, it is that talk is cheap. But are they really doing anything different?" asks Stanford economist Victor Fuchs. "The baby boomers are just growing up and playing out a predictable life-cycle change." . . . John Kenneth Galbraith, the eminent liberal economist, dismisses the trend as a bicoastal fad among fast-trackers. . .

The beginnings of the new mind-set probably go back as far as the stock-market crash of 1987, which had little immediate effect on the overall economy but gave many people an uneasy feeling about the Roaring Eighties." . . . Many people were awakened by individual experience: the plight of a homeless neighbor, the collapse of a bank, a friend's job loss. . .

The article continues with talk of "cocooning" (remember that buzzword?), the importance of spending more time with family, and:

. . . another reason for rejecting rampant materialism: its impact on the environment. . . Recycling has taken hold as a voguish and satisfying pursuit . . . Gilded '80s [TV] shows such as Dynasty and Falcon Crest are gone, swept away by . . . Roseanne, The Simpsons and Married...with Children . . .

In their search for more enduring gratification in life, many people are seeking spirituality, if not a born-again commitment to organized religion . . .

And the article concludes with:

Is the simple life just a passing fancy, a stylish flashback of the 1960s? Not so, say people who have studied both eras. Contends Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah: "It's no longer messianic, the way it was in the '60s, but relatively pragmatic. That may give the present mood a greater staying power." That's good, because the American generation now reaching middle age has a lot of promises to keep -- not to mention mortgages to carry, tuition to pay and lawns to mow. No wonder they want to keep it simple.

Sound familiar? Yes, indeed. But it's different this time around.

In the '60s, the counter-culture revolution was bolstered by children of some privilege. It's easier to rebel if you know you can always go home and do laundry. I know; I was there. I was in school, then worked for a non-profit.

And after the '70s, what happened? The "Roaring Eighties," as the Times article called it. The era of "real gold," "L'Oreal...because I'm worth it," and, most famously, "Greed is good." The stock market was the place to be and if you weren't in it, you were missing out on a "sure thing." At least until 1987.

Then, in the '90s, the urge to simplify and cocoon was championed by people who were exhausted by their demanding jobs that had allowed them to spend enormous amounts of money on luxuries. And it's easier to simplify if you've got money in the bank. I know; I was there. I was in show biz, then became an artist.

What happened in the '00s? Financial lunacy. This time it was real estate. If you didn't own property, you were missing out on a "sure thing." And this time, even the big boys, the banks and brokerages, were so caught up in the madness that when the market collapsed, it brought them down right along with the individual investors. I know; I was there, but on the sidelines. I was fortunate not to have overextended in real estate and not to have trusted the stock market with everything else. I'm enormously thankful for that because you never know when life will throw a curve ball in some other way.

So where are we all now, with yet another decade behind us? There's still some talk about the benefits of simple living and lots of talk about protecting the environment, but today, for so many, simplification isn't by choice; it's being imposed on a lot of people who have been caught by surprise. When simplicity is a result of a lack of other options, it's doesn't feel so virtuous. It just feels like you're poor.

Bad financial decisions are at the root of the problem for many people, but for some -- many who were in the vanguard in the '60s and '70s -- age discrimination is now part of enforced simple living, too. Limited jobs mean limited opportunities. Scaled back expectations are the new reality for almost everyone, but especially for those who are too young to retire and too old to be considered employable, even if they have impeccable credentials. We live in a society that too often devalues experience and has never particularly valued maturity. There's an example of a curve ball thrown by life and it's clear that not everyone was prepared for it.

The obviously disheartening aspect of reading that Time article is reflecting on the fact that today's mess is just another example of the rather painful economic cycle that our society seems to repeat so predictably. What's heartening about it? It reminds us that we do manage to get through the hard times eventually. Society survived the Great Depression; why not the Great Recession?

So, with the blessing/curse of optimism, let's consider what's the best bet for getting through today's challenging time. Other than the obvious financial reality check that's required for most people, there's an attitude change that would be helpful and at least part of it relates directly to being a thoughtful, uncluttered consumer.

First, believe that less really is more, just as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said over fifty years ago. I'm not advocating embracing the concept of "less" because it's frugal, or sensible, or necessary; instead I'm advocating embracing it because it offers us not only beauty, but also flexibility. Beauty gives us joy in the moment and flexibility is a highly valuable commodity during a period of change.

What if you made buying choices that would simplify your life by resulting in fewer possessions, but more appealing possessions? What if you chose to keep only those things you already own that are beautiful or useful, just as William Morris advised over a hundred years ago? (Beautiful doesn't necessarily mean expensive; it means pleasing to the eye, your eye.) What if you kept only the sentimental items that had true sentiment, not just history attached?

What if you emptied your home of all of your unnecessary stuff, not because you were panic stricken and felt obligated to have a garage sale, but because you wanted to make space to actually live in your home? Or because you wanted the flexibility to move if you needed to or chose to do so?

Then, what if you embraced the concept of change? What if you were bold rather than timid during these difficult times? What if you had faith in yourself and your ability to do whatever is necessary to stay afloat? What if you took this opportunity to remake your life the way you'd like it to be? I doubt that you'd be lugging around all of the stuff you currently own because you'd see much of it as a burden. I doubt that you'd be clinging to everything you've ever owned because you'd see that now is what matters and planning for the future makes more sense than seeking (false) security in the possessions of the past.

What if you embraced the goal of "a simpler life with deeper meaning?" I doubt that you'd be who you are at this moment, but I bet you'd become who you are in this life.

What if you did that?

© 2010 Cynthia Friedlob

Transportation and the Irrational Consumer

I learned two disappointing facts of life when I grew up: (1) people are not logical and (2) making good choices is often not as simple as it first appears to be, even when we know "the facts."

Our lack of logic doesn't mean that we make random choices; we use what logical abilities we have, but we're sub-consciously influenced and can be manipulated by all sorts of factors like emotions, expectations and social norms. And, probably because we're mostly "pack animals" of sorts and have similar hard-wiring in our brains, we seem to make the same kinds of errors in logic repeatedly and collectively. The currently popular book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by MIT professor Dan Ariely, delves into this issue (quote from Amazon.com):

Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.

Other contemporary authors come to similar conclusions about our inability to be as logical as we like to think we are: Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman; A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives, by Cordelia Fine; Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, who has a cottage industry in books about human behavior and how the mind works. But the general concept is nothing new; the flaws in human logic were well-observed by Charles Mackay in one of my favorite books, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there's some sort of documentation about us being illogical that dates to the cave drawings in Lascaux.

In spite of this, we all make myriad decisions daily using our apparently limited skills, and we do the best that we can. But surely the decision-making process must be complicated further when we discover there are multiple choices and when we're informed that compelling arguments for more than one choice can be made. It certainly seems complicated to me.

In previous posts (see below for links), I've discussed some of the challenges we face when we're trying to make environmentally-responsible decisions. Everything from the value of using ethanol fuel to that of re-using cloth grocery bags can be debated, sometimes with impressive research backing both sides of an argument. But my own completely non-scientific, observational research indicates that the most significant factor influencing our decision-making is the "cool factor." Facts and logic take a backseat to cool more often than we'd like to admit. Of course, we're influenced in our choices about what's cool, too, but let's save analyzing that phenomenon for posts about the power of advertising. For now, let's look instead at an example of a surprisingly debatable issue: something as "simple" and "straightforward" as the advantage of public vs. private transportation.

Most of use would say that efficient, high-speed rail that moves many people would be a better choice than everyone owning cars. But Suzanne Smalley of Newsweek.com reported that "many economists now say the costs of building a high-speed rail network far outstrip the possible benefits, especially when cars are becoming more energy-efficient." Of course, this conclusion doesn't take into account the problems Toyota is having right now with the fuel-efficient Camry, the most popular car in America, or the problems with the Prius, the most popular hybrid car in the country, but we can safely assume that those problems will be resolved eventually.

Will this pro-car point of view have a significant impact on the car-buying choices and public transportation plans we make in the future? Will trends away from ostentatious, gas-guzzling vehicles continue because of the economy? Perceived and, perhaps, actual advantages to public transportation resulted in President Obama allocating $8 billion for high-speed trains in the stimulus package, and Congress upping the figure by another $1.2 billion. Does that mean that the previously agreed upon logic of the value of public transportation has won the battle? Or will we ultimately be affected by the "cool factor" more than anything else?

I vote for the "cool factor." The economy may dictate certain changes but, if there's any wiggle-room at all in our budgets, we're most persuaded by what kind of statement our purchases make. It's currently cool and getting cooler to own fuel-efficient cars. Hybrid and alternative choices are still optional. But there's nothing cool about daily public transportation, unless perhaps it's a bullet train or, for short trips, a cute trolley or double-deck bus. Otherwise, public transportation is perceived only as functional, to a greater or lesser degree. Until public transportation becomes fashionable, any debate based on the "logic" of its environmental advantage or lack of advantage won't be as significant as it should be, considering the impact the ultimate choice will have.

Of course, the other big issue about public vs. private transportation is convenience. In Los Angeles, it's pretty much impossible to rely exclusively on public transportation even if you want to. (You can read more than you probably need to know about this in the NY Times Freakonomics series about transporation in LA; the comments are integral to understanding what's really going on in this city and are often more accurate than the articles.) Los Angeles can claim the number one worst commute in the country (the Hollywood Freeway headed into downtown LA always, I repeat, always slows down at Vermont Ave.) and residents complain endlessly about traffic, but giving up a car would mean giving up reasonable access to the vast majority of the urban area. In addition, because this is a car town, cars are (too) often used as a reflection of the owner's status and personality.

So, give up your car and in return get inconvenience and a loss of identity? That's definitely not cool.

Would you give up your car? Does your city or town have adequate public transportation?

© 2010 Cynthia Friedlob
Photo by Cieleke at stock.xchng


Related posts:
Going Wrong, Going Green
Going Wrong, Going Green, Part 2

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

The challenge facing a call to action to deal with climate change is that the issue is not an obvious problem on a daily basis. We might notice an unseasonal heat wave, or be inconvenienced by a drought that restricts our water usage; we might even have an intellectual awareness that the issue is a serious one, but most average consumers in our country don't really suffer as a result of it -- not yet.

The majority of people probably don't even see much of a connection between consumerism and climate change, but it exists. Every product that we consume requires not only the ingredients or components of the product itself, but also a manufacturing and distribution process for those components and the final product, all which have some sort of environmental impact. Often there's also an environmental effect during or immediately after the consumption of the product.

Probably the most obvious example that contributes to the climate change problem: a car. When we buy a car, we're not just buying transportation; we're buying the various metals, glass, fiberglass, rubber, etc. that were used to build the car, as well as the manufacturing process itself. Then we need fossil fuels to run the car. Fuel requires not only raw materials (which are extracted in an environmentally unfriendly way), but also plants to process them (also not environmentally friendly). When fuel is burned in the car (and in the giant tanker trucks used to deliver the fuel to our gas stations), the waste product contributes to pollution. The Environmental Defense Fund states, "U.S. autos emit more than 333 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, more than one-fifth of the nation's total carbon dioxide emissions. Any serious effort to fight global warming must include cutting auto emissions." (Click here for a detailed analysis on the EDF site about how cars contribute to global warming.)

Everything that we consume has some kind of environmental consequences, so limiting our consumption seems to be a simple way to lessen our negative impact (our carbon footprint) on the environment. And because we are such a wealthy society, our impact is substantial. Global Issues reported that "using the latest figures available, in 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%" (See Material World: A Global Family Portrait, one of my favorite books, for some startling images that show the differences between us and consumers in other cultures.)

We may not have a lot of time to make changes in our patterns of consumption in order to halt and perhaps reverse the climate change trend. A recent British study predicts that the polar ice caps will be gone in twenty years. "Remove the Arctic ice cap and we are left with a very different and much warmer world. . . Loss of sea ice cover will 'set in motion powerful climate feedbacks which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself' . . . This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emission from massive carbon pools and extreme global weather changes."

Well, that would get our attention, but let's not wait that long. We can get involved right now by supporting these or many other fine organizations that are making efforts to deal with climate change:

The Nature Conservancy

Greenpeace

Oxfam

There are also opportunities for political involvement here:

350.org (sponsors of the International Day of Climate Action, October 24th)

TckTckTck (a cooperative umbrella organization working for an international agreement to address this issue at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, December 7-18, 2009. You can read more about the UN's effort to make this deal happen.)

And you can check out the other 7900+ blogs from all over the world that are participating in Blog Action Day. [Update at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time: over 10,000 bloggers are participating and the event was kicked off by a topical post from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.]

I know, it seems a little overwhelming. I've written in the past about "shopper's compassion fatigue," that oppressive feeling of the weight of the world on our shoulders that we can get when trying to make the "right" decision about what to buy, or whether to buy at all. But as long as we're all traveling together on this small planet, it seems like a good idea to do what we can to keep that planet healthy enough to take care of us. And nobody ever said that being a thoughtful consumer was easy.

© 2009 Cynthia Friedlob

Going Wrong Going Green, Part 2

Synchronicity, according to Dictionary.com, is "a coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related." After my previous post, I haven't been searching for more examples of the complexity of the decision-making process when you want to be a thoughtful consumer, but the LA Times had two articles today that relate to the topic. Synchronicity? Why not?

First, fabric. Let's consider the fact that many consumers who think of themselves as concerned and aware disdain anything other than "natural" fabrics like cotton, yet "Hard Truths about Uzbek Cotton," an opinion piece written by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), details the plight of children forced to pick cotton in Uzbekistan, the world's third largest exporter of cotton -- cotton that ends up in our marketplace.

"Unlike most instances of forced child labor in agriculture, this mass mobilization is not driven by exploitative plantation owners or desperate families but by the government. . . Consumers and companies in the West prop up this monstrous system by unwittingly purchasing cotton harvested by forced child labor. Supply chain analysts have determined that most Uzbek cotton is sold to countries in South Asia and Eastern Europe. From there, the cotton is processed and turned into garments sold in retail stores in the United States, Canada and Western Europe."

Is child slave labor cotton any more acceptable than blood diamonds? No.

And don't think that buying "organic cotton" necessarily solves the problem. Erik Cussack's "Organic Cotton" blog has interesting posts about fake organic cotton that's being sold as the real thing and about genetically-modified organic cotton from India. Also, if organic cotton fabric is dyed with toxic chemicals, which does happen, that defeats its purpose. There's also a cost factor if you're purchasing most legitimate organic cotton goods; not everyone can afford a $35 T-shirt.

The next issue may sound amusing, but it really isn't: toilet paper. Reporter David A. Fahrenthold wrote, "Environmentalists Target Plush Toilet Paper," in which he explains that "plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. Environmentalists want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods."

Although toilet paper and facial tissues account for only 5% of the products made from "the forest goods industry," do we really want to cut down a single old growth tree so that we can have three-ply toilet paper? No.

And finally, before I put to rest, at least for awhile, the problems inherent in going green, I want to close with some information I just happened to come across recently having to do with ethanol, which has been touted as as a biofuel alternative to gasoline. In 2008, the U.S. and Brazil produced 89% of the supply of ethanol fuel; Brazil has been nicknamed "the Saudi Arabia of biofuels."

From Wikipedia: "Because it is easy to manufacture and process and can be made from very common crops such as sugar cane, potato, manioc and corn, in several countries ethanol fuel is increasingly being blended as gasohol or used as an oxygenate in gasoline. Bioethanol, unlike petroleum, is a renewable resource that can be produced from agricultural feedstocks."

This makes it an appealing commodity to environmentalists. But, it turns out that, in addition to potential ecological problems affecting water quality (see the NY Times) and the contamination of grain fed to livestock (see Minnesota Public Radio), once again the human cost must be considered.

According to an LA Times article by Patrick J. McDonnell from June, 2008, "[m]ore than 300,000 farmworkers are seasonal [sugar] cane cutters in Brazil, the government says. By most accounts, their work and living conditions range from basic to deplorable to outright servitude. . . In its annual report, Amnesty International last month highlighted the plight of Brazil's biofuel workers, more than 1,000 of whom were rescued in June 2007 after allegedly being held in slave-like conditions at a plantation owned by a major ethanol producer. . . Although slavery cases tend to grab headlines, advocates say laborers typically face more quotidian abuse -- low pay, excessive work hours, inadequate safety gear, an absence of sanitary and health services, and exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals."

So, this is what it takes to produce one type of alternative fuel? Is that okay with everyone? No.

Unfortunately, I could list many more situations that most consumers may not be aware of, including some that I've covered in previous posts (see, for example, Fair Trade Jewelry). Clearly it's not easy to understand the complex issues surrounding every single thing we buy, to make the right decision, to do the right thing. But accepting that fact may at least help us make some decisions that we know are right:

I know for certain that I can live without that third ply.

© 2009 Cynthia Friedlob

Photo credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Going Wrong Going Green

We all like to think we’re making wise consumer decisions that are good for us and good for the Earth. We like to think we’re making informed decisions, not irrational, arbitrary ones. Okay, at least we like to think we’re giving it our best shot. Turns out that often there are trade-offs and compromises that probably don’t even occur to us when we’re making those decisions.

Here are just a few things to consider:

Sometimes the real cost of "buying American" defeats, or seriously compromises, our efforts to go green. For example, Newsweek recently reported that "[a] New Yorker leaves a smaller carbon footprint drinking a French Bordeaux shipped across the Atlantic (2.93 pounds of carbon per bottle) than drinking a Napa merlot (7.05 pounds). That's because when it comes to calculating carbon costs, the method of transportation matters as much as the distance. Shipping freight by sea generates less than half the emissions associated with airplanes and tractor-trailers."

The same shipping problem exists for groceries. Consumers have come to expect fresh produce in our stores throughout the year, so importing is the only option. But the New York Times reported that "the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food. Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures."

But the transportation/fuel issue isn't straightforward: "The problem is measuring the emissions. The fact that food travels farther does not necessarily mean more energy is used. Some studies have shown that shipping fresh apples, onions and lamb from New Zealand might produce lower emissions than producing the goods in Europe, where — for example — storing apples for months would require refrigeration."

And how about those "green" re-usable bags we're all supposed to remember to carry into the store when we go shopping? Again, it's not so simple to figure out the benefits. From the Wall Street Journal: "'If you don't reuse them, you're actually worse off by taking one of them,' says Bob Lilienfeld, author of the Use Less Stuff Report, an online newsletter about waste prevention. . . . [and] Finding a truly green bag is challenging. Plastic totes may be more eco-friendly to manufacture than ones made from cotton or canvas, which can require large amounts of water and energy to produce and may contain harsh chemical dyes. Paper bags, meanwhile, require the destruction of millions of trees and are made in factories that contribute to air and water pollution. Many of the cheap, reusable bags that retailers favor are produced in Chinese factories and made from nonwoven polypropylene, a form of plastic that requires about 28 times as much energy to produce as the plastic used in standard disposable bags and eight times as much as a paper sack . . ."

Kind of makes you want to throw up your hands and surrender, doesn't it?

But let's not do that. Let's continue doing our best to make good decisions, but let's also remember that life is full of compromises. In fact, it's not always possible to make the "right" consumer choices because we can't always figure out what they are. Maybe realizing this is an opportunity to develop a more tolerant response to people who make choices that we don't understand. Maybe it's an opportunity to lighten up.

And maybe the whole dilemma doesn't matter all that much because if we don't start making better choices about how we relate to and care about other human beings, trust me, shopping will be the least of our problems.

© 2009 Cynthia Friedlob

Photo credit: StockVault.net

Buy Nothing Day - November 28th

November 28, 2008, is Buy Nothing Day, an annual observance promoted by Adbusters Media Foundation, publisher of Adbusters Magazine:

"Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces. . . We want a world in which the economy and ecology resonate in balance. We try to coax people from spectator to participant in this quest. We want folks to get mad about corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy, and any industry that pollutes our physical or mental commons."

Check out the history of Buy Nothing Day here.

So, how do you participate in Buy Nothing Day? Buy nothing on November 28th, "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally one of the biggest shopping days of the year.

Buying nothing for one day is a stuff consumption fast; it's not meant to prevent us from shopping ever again, but simply to make us aware of how much shopping we do, often without even thinking about it. And this is definitely the time to think about it.

We're in the midst of a financial meltdown and the entire structure of our society needs to be reconsidered. We can't continue to buy mindlessly (the personal financial losses of many people make that idea impossible anyway) and we can't continue to deplete Earth's natural resources mindlessly either.

We need to convert our consumption-oriented society into one that is much more nurturing and service-oriented. It will take some very wise leaders to figure out the specifics of how this will work, but it will also require a general shift in thinking so that people no longer value excessive possessions at all costs. We're seeing right now what those costs are and they're too high.

So let's hold off on shopping for just one day. Pay attention to how it feels. Watch the news and see if the crowds descend on the malls like crazed locusts or see if things are not quite as frantic as usual because of the failing economy.

Maybe spend the day thinking of ways that you can change your own buying habits and help nudge the world in a new direction that will benefit everyone on our small planet.

All you have to do to get started is buy nothing.

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Alternative Housing: From Small to Quirky

Of the two billion or so bloggers posting regularly on-line, I imagine that about 1.99 billion of us recently have devoted a post or two to the near total collapse of the U.S. economy and its collateral damage to the economies of other countries across the world. The root of the problem centers around housing, so I thought it might be interesting to speculate about what would happen if everything continued on this catastrophic path and we were all catapulted into a world that required a radically alternative way to look at housing.

Okay, it's not likely that all the existing homes and apartments will suddenly be abandoned and collapse into piles of rubble, even if the stock market continues to tank alarmingly and the jobless rate hits an all-time high. But many changes in the way we create our homes may be required over time just to deal with issues of sustainability.

Housing is usually a consumer's major expense, whether renting or buying. In the past I've blogged about small houses, pre-fab and modular houses, and other related topics, but I decided to put together a list of links to other websites and blogs that discuss alternative housing in detail. You may be surprised by the many resourceful and interesting choices that are available.

Zenzibar is an alternative culture site that would have had great appeal back in the "Summer of Love." But there is an interesting post from 2000 about alternative housing that suggests everything from camping on public land to living in a school bus. It also mentions nomad or "snowbirds," as they're often called:

"Quartzsite is a town in southwestern Arizona where hundreds of full-time nomads gather together each winter and set up a temporary city where they have potluck dinners, buy and sell items and generally enjoy each other’s company. There are many other places like this all over America although probably none as large. There are regular annual migrations of these modern nomads from the cool north in the summer to the warm southwestern deserts in the winter."

Alternative Housing offers news and information about everything from teepees to treehouses, log cabins to floating homes. If you find the thought of hanging out in Quartzsite appealing, you can investigate RVs and trailers, too.

Alternative Solar Housing explains the advantages of a modified Buckminster Fuller concept, the geodesic dome. Their Cube Octahedron Hemisphere allows solar energy applications.

American Steel Span Buildings touts the environmental and economic advantages of using steel to construct a home or other structure. They even sell kits.

BioHome uses Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome concept, too, and gets you off the grid completely. They call it "closed system housing." The framework of the dome is covered with insulating foam and topped with bubble windows.

Green Home Building is a great site that has information on straw bale houses, a popular type of construction in the southwest. Check out Earthship design, building fanciful lightweight concrete structures, and other fascinating options. Wonderful photos, too. Entertaining, inspiring and my favorite site on this topic!

Finally, just for fun take a look at Pink Tentacle. It offers a post about "Reversible Destiny Lofts," located in Tokyo and designed by NY-based architect-poets and philosophers, Arakawa & Gins.

"In their vision, a home that keeps its inhabitants young and healthy should provide perpetual challenges. A tentative relationship with your environment,they argue, is key to 'reversing the downhill course of human life.'"

Many unbelievable photos and a video are on the site. The NY Times has a recent article about the design here. It's unlikely that this type of design will catch on in a big way, but I have a feeling that art was the motivating force rather than practicality.

[March 24, 2009 update: Arakawa & Gins invested heavily with Bernie Madoff and lost millions. Here's a link to the story in today's Wall Street Journal.]

If you know of other useful sites or blogs devoted to alternative housing, please feel free to leave a comment. Considering our volatile economic situation, an affordable, sustainable, alternative home may start to make sense to a lot of people who had never considered the possibility in the past. And if those homes are as cute as this one, well, that's not so bad.


© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Green White Roofs

Ten years ago, upon moving into a townhouse, I was slightly disappointed to discover that the Homeowners Association had already made plans to replace the roofs on all the units in the complex. I thought it was unfortunate that no one had considered the possibility of installing solar panels. We do live in southern California and there is no dearth of sunshine; in fact 73% of our days are sunny every year. Imagine the energy savings over the last decade if the Board had been a bit more forward-thinking.

But it's not just solar panels that can make a difference. I've discussed green roofs on several occasions in the past, but for many people, the structural reinforcements necessary for a green roof can rule out that option. What if there was a simpler way not only to lower energy costs but also slow down global warming?

It turns out that simply having a highly reflective, white roof on the average home, rather than the conventional dark roof, can prevent 10 metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere. And, because a white roof never gets more than a few degrees warmer than the ambient temperature, the need for air-conditioning is substantially reduced -- as much as 40% in some commercial buildings.

The LA Times reported today:

"Since 2005, the Golden State has required that flat commercial structures have white roofs. Next year, new and retrofitted residential and commercial buildings, with both flat and sloped roofs, will have to install heat-reflecting roofing, as part of an energy-efficient building code."

If, in addition to white roofs, the 100 biggest cities in the world also began using reflective materials for pavement, "the global cooling effect would be massive, according to data released Tuesday at California's annual Climate Change Research Conference in Sacramento."

The Atlanta Business Chronicle pointed out that "several years ago, [Georgia] became the first state to amend its building code to recognize the benefits of reflective material. The 'White Roofing Amendment' became part of the Georgia State Minimum Code for Construction."

The Chronicle also notes, "White roofs also reduce the heat island effect in an urban area, a potentially critical boon for Atlanta, which famously suffers from a lot of bad-air days. Studies have shown that cities are often three to eight degrees warmer on hot days than outlying rural areas. The effect in Atlanta has been measured as high as 12 degrees. And heat is a major contributing factor to the formation of ozone." Anyone who's ever ventured into downtown LA on a hot, smoggy summer day knows how miserable that heat island effect can be.

Naturally, the EPA has taken a positive position on cool roofing materials:

"Cool roof systems with high reflectance and emittance stay up to 70°F (39°C) cooler than traditional materials during peak summer weather. Benefits of cool roofs include reduced building heat-gain and saving on summertime air conditioning expenditures. By minimizing energy use, cool roofs do more than save money – they reduce the demand for electric power and resulting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions."

If you've traveled to the Mediterranean countries or seen photographs of towns and cities in those areas, you've probably noticed the consistent use of white on the buildings, both residential and commercial. Well, it doesn't just look beautiful, obviously it's smart, too. Good for the consumer, good for the environment. A very thoughtful choice.

Cool.

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Prefab and Modular Housing: Solutions to the World's Housing Crisis?

Over five years ago, "Environmental Health Perspectives," the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, wrote about the global housing crisis and its effect on human health and welfare. Sadly, the situation has not improved. Of course this crisis must be addressed, especially in areas where there's terrible suffering and disease as a result of lack of shelter and clean water. But it's also worthwhile for those of us who are more fortunate to rethink just how much space we need to live and how that space might be constructed.

I've written in the past about ultra-small houses ("Small House, Big Benefits?"), which offer interesting alternatives for many people. Another option we can consider is prefabricated housing. Prefab homes are manufactured off-site in standardized pieces that are easily transported to the site for quick assembly. They're inexpensive and durable, and have now, at last, qualified as trendy. In fact, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC is opening an exhibit on July 20 entitled, "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling." The high-fashion angle is confirmed in an article in Gothamist.

If you want to be at the cutting edge of prefab homes, check out FabPrefab where the joys of modernist prefab construction are extolled.

An article on New Hampshire Public Radio's website explains that prefab housing has been around for over one hundred years and mentions an environmental benefit:

"Prefab housing also taps into the desire for more sustainable and ecologically-friendly architecture. "

There's also a video on the site that shows the assembly of the prefab "Cellophane House."

You can find a variety of green prefab housing choices at LowImpactLiving.

And what retailer would be a natural for getting into the prefab business? IKEA, of course. They're building prefab apartment houses in Sweden and soon in the UK. The IKEA-ized name for the product: BoKlok.

Another unusual approach to housing is discussed by Bob Vila, who writes on his website about using steel shipping containers for modular construction:

"Inter-modal construction means applying many methods – often unconventional ones – for housing and commercial construction. It frequently implies recycling materials for reuse as building components. More than 50 years ago, the U.S. converted steel shipping containers for use as portable command centers and medical facilities in Korea. Now, architects, designers, planners, and homeowners are finding renewed interest in these inter-modal steel building units (ISBUs) as they look for affordable, sustainable housing options for the 21st century."

If you can stand to read the tiniest font size ever created, in white on black, no less, the Houses of the Future website has interesting information about new steel modular building.

If you're an investor in housing, the International Property Investment website discusses the advantages of steel modular housing from the Australian perspective. L.A. readers, you may want to note the comment about its advantage in an earthquake: "it may collapse, but it won't kill you." Most comforting, if slightly mystifying.

And if you want to get the current perspective on our main concern, the global housing crisis, take a look at this inspiring video of Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity. The organization's motto is: "Building a more sustainable future using the power of design."

Of course, the power of architectural design is only part of the equation that will add up to a sustainable future; another part of it is each of us making thoughtful choices as consumers. If you're planning on buying or building a home or office space, this could be a great opportunity for you to contribute to that sustainable future by considering carefully what you need and how you can fulfill those needs. There might be an unusual solution that would be green, creative and, thanks to MOMA, very, very cool.

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

A Potpourri: The Green Roof Doghouse, the Disappointed Australian, and the Popularity of SUVs

Here's a bit of potpourri for your 4th of July weekend:

The LA Times featured an article today about building a doghouse with a green roof. Sounds a bit odd, but it does make sense. It offers you a lovely little gardening area and it will make your pet's home cooler -- "in every sense of the word," as the article mentions. You can get instructions from the article or link to a landscape architect and sculptor who will happily sell you their snazzy versions for $1,000 to $4,000.

In case you're wondering what happened to the Ian Usher, the Australian who auctioned his entire life on eBay, here's the scoop: he was disappointed that he had to settle for $384,000, a bid that doesn't even cover the value of his house. He's committed to honor the bid, however, and is ready to move on to the next phase of his life. He's decided to complete one hundred life goals in one hundred weeks and has set up a website where anyone who's interested can track his progress. The goals are primarily adventurous (skydiving, bungee jumping, running with the bulls in Spain) but one is to sell a book telling the story of his adventures. Does anyone do anything without a film crew following them around or a plan set up in advance to sell a book?

Finally, I had hoped that the cost of gasoline would result in significant changes in our auto-buying habits and, fortunately, that seemed to be the case. The popularity of hybrids is up, that of SUVs is down. Or so I thought. Then Jacqueline Mitchell at Forbes Magazine reported on the most difficult cars to find -- the ones that are "so popular that auto manufacturers are selling them faster than they can build them." In first place on the list, no surprise, is the $21,500 high-mileage, hybrid Toyota Prius. But in second place is "the not-so-expected gas-guzzling $74,700 Lexus LX Series full-size luxury SUV that gets a combined 14 mpg." The likely explanation? Brand loyalty. Luxury-loving Lexus owners are willing to pay a premium for comfort. I wonder if they'll be willing to pay the price of the effects those kinds of vehicles have on our environment.

The Fourth of July is our celebration of Independence Day. Maybe eventually we'll realize we should also celebrate Interdependence Day -- every day.

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Guerrilla Gardeners

There was a time far back in our country's history when gardening was an integral part of the lives of the majority of our citizens. Even city dwellers, at least those with access to a plot of land, grew their own vegetables and often had a pot or two of geraniums that received loving care.

During WWI and WWII, Liberty Gardens and Victory Gardens were both practical and patriotic. Wikipedia explains:

"Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot 'commandeered for the war effort' and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch. During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London, to publicize the movement. In New York City, the lawns around vacant Riverside were devoted to victory gardens, as were portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park."

Although avid vegetable gardeners remain among us, somewhere along the way the ease of purchasing food at the local supermarket changed the way the majority of the population thought about home vegetable gardens (even though homegrown food tastes a million times better than supermarket produce and you can actually harvest it when it's ripe). Eventually gardening in general gave way to landscaping, with appearance playing a more important role than function. For many people, it often became just another chore, eagerly handed off to hired help by those who could afford it.

Coming from a gardening family, I was delighted to read an LA Times article by Joe Robinson about the rise of guerrilla gardeners, brave souls who take on street medians, traffic islands and vacant lots, planting them with everything from greenery to flowers to food. Robinson reports:

"Part beautification, part eco-activism, part social outlet, the activity has been fueled by Internet gardening blogs and sites such as GuerrillaGardening.org, where before-and-after photos of the latest 'troop digs' inspire 45,000 visitors a month to make derelict soil bloom."

I was even more delighted to read that this is an international phenomenon: the Guerrilla Gardening website founder is Richard Reynolds, who lives in London and refers to his plantings as "weapons of mass beautification." His site has links to groups in Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the U.S.

With both the rising cost of food and increased awareness of the fragility of our environment, this is a perfect time to rethink our relationship to the land in urban areas. Using the land as a source of food or a source of beauty is a crucial part of humanizing our cityscapes.

In another post I wrote about green roofs which are environmentally sensitive as well as a wonderful way to beautify our cities. Here, in addition to the Guerrilla Gardening website, are some links to get us all thinking about creating green public land that is otherwise ignored or forgotten:

Homegrown Evolution - Los Angeles urban homesteaders planted a vegetable garden in the parkway across from their home.

Green Guerrillas - a New York group that mixes advocacy, education and the involvement of youth to cultivate community gardens on public land.

Public Space - a Canadian group based in Toronto that has as its slogan: "Graffiti with nature."

Disclaimer: Guerrilla gardening is illegal. You are commandeering land that you don't personally own for the purpose of planting veggies or flowers or other greenery. This action, depending on where you live, will either be appreciated or prosecuted. Although I confess that the political statement made by citizens turning derelict public land into a lovely garden appeals to my sixties sensibilities, if you have concerns about the legality of guerrilla gardening, check out The American Community Gardening Association for ideas about getting your civic leaders to cooperate with your efforts.

Although I'm no longer a gardener, I have fond memories of the small vegetable garden in the backyard of my childhood home. I was thrilled every time I pulled up a carrot I had planted myself. The neighbors shared raspberries from their bushes across the alley, a grape vine draped along another neighboring fence, and we had a small peach tree that, as I recall, gave us very few peaches over the years but still looked lovely. My parents continued to garden after moving to another town, filling their yard with flowers, vegetables (including a few rows of cornstalks!) and strawberry rings. My father chased away crows regularly. Even when they moved to an apartment, Mom kept planters of onions and chives on the balcony.

Today, my mother finds it quite annoying that her current apartment managers won't allow her to keep a small container garden on her front porch. But, unstoppable at almost age 86, she and a few of her neighbors are successfully guerilla gardening the building's courtyard with flowers. Come next summer, I wouldn't be surprised to find an onion or two hidden amongst the marigolds!

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Global Water Crisis

Late last Friday afternoon, the water main that serves our row of townhouses broke. An unlucky owner a few doors down had his garage flooded. The water was shut off until late Saturday afternoon. Twenty-two hours with no running water at all.

Because we live in Earthquake Central, I try to be reasonably prepared to function for a few days without municipal services, so there was plenty of water stashed away in those big five-gallon jugs we all complain about because they're plastic. Friday, I loved those plastic jugs. They allowed us to have water for basic hygienic needs and water to drink. The phones worked, cable tv was fine, internet functioned, heat and a/c were unaffected. We went out to dinner. The lack of running water was a temporary inconvenience, not a disaster.

Not so elsewhere.

We take for granted the access we have to clean running water, but, even in our country, there are areas in which our citizens suffer without that fundamental benefit of civilization. I've written previously about the Navajo Water Haulers; here's further information from an article in The Arizona Republic.

Water problems in Africa are legendary. You can read about one Seattle woman's experience in Ethiopia in her January blog post for The Common Language Project. She explains, "I’m here to research and write on water scarcity issues. In the past three days I’ve interviewed a woman whose son died of typhoid and a man who held four of his children as diarrhea from waterborne dysentery drained the life from their small bodies. I watched an old woman fall to her knees and kiss the ground in thanks of water."

CNN Money offers an article about the problems of farmers in India as they attempt to cope with a water shortage that prevents them from growing their crops. Inefficient government subsidies, the overuse of tube wells and a maxed-out electrical grid have resulted in a dramatic lowering of the water table. According to the article, Shreekant Gupta, professor of economics at Delhi University, say, "It's a classic example of bad economic policies having serious environmental consequences."

Colin Beavan at the No Impact Man blog speculates about when what's happening to gas happens to drinking water. His post offers a chilling scenario about supply and demand in which companies like Nestle, Coca-Cola and Pepsi buy up water rights the same way that only a few now infamous companies bought oil drilling rights.

Back here at home, the LA Times reports that we're facing the worst water shortage in decades.

Fortunately, there are organizations working to make clean water available to everyone. Living Water International is a fine example.

But the problem isn't just one of infrastructure (although that's certainly a key element); it's one of attitude: the attitude of entitlement that those of us with easy access to clean running water have. It's that same attitude of entitlement that makes us feel like we "need" so much more -- of everything -- than we have. It's definitely not an attitude that will allow us to thrive as stewards of our small planet. It's an attitude that may not even allow us to survive.

I turned on the tap this morning and clean water poured out. For a brief moment, I barely remembered not being able to enjoy the wonder of that privilege just days ago. Then I smiled with appreciation for all the things we take for granted that make our lives comfortable.

Focusing on the basics always makes it easier to keep all the other "stuff" in perspective.

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Whole Foods and Sustainable Architecture

I've not yet visited the gigantic, new, two-storey Whole Foods Market in Pasadena, but the place already has generated a lot of discussion in the LA area. In fact, the discussion has prompted a feature article by Christopher Hawthorne in Sunday's LA Times. Hawthorne, the Times' architecture critic, ponders the conflict between the massive structure in which organic/fair-traded/crunchy-healthy foods are sold and the concept of green architecture in which a smaller footprint on the land is a primary focus. Not surprisingly, the conclusion isn't favorable for the market:

". . . the first rule of sustainable architecture is to keep new buildings as small and efficient as possible. With its soaring 30-foot ceilings and endless aisles, 280 subterranean parking spots and . . . TVs flickering day and night, this place is neither. It's more like the grocery store version of a hybrid SUV made by Lexus or a 12,000-square-foot 'green' house with a swimming pool and six-car garage accompanying its solar panels and sustainably harvested decking."

Sounds like a far cry from the tiny old neighborhood Aunt Tilley's health food store of some thirty years ago in Hollywood, with its too-small aisles and little bins of bulk brown rice and lentils. The selection of items wasn't great, but the counter-culture vibe (sadly dated words!) was palpable.

So how much of a trade-off are we willing to accept today for the multiple brands of a dazzling variety of soy products, the rows upon rows of snack bars, the imported (yet "sustainable") designer bamboo tableware?

Clearly, there's a dichotomy between Whole Foods' ostensibly good intentions to provide easy access to a variety of healthy food (okay, and they want to expand their business), and the manifestation of those intentions which Hawthorne suggests has resulted in "Vegas with organic, gluten-free scones."

Have the organic products/health food industries been totally co-opted by big business?

It's true that the mammoth Whole Foods store seems to be an anachronism, but, oh, what we would have given if Aunt Tilley's had stocked a gluten-free scone!

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Juxtapositions: Green Roofs and Water Haulers

Someday in the future, the phrase "green building" will be obsolete. Eventually, the ecologically sound design and construction practices we now label as green will be incorporated into those processes in the same way that running water is automatically expected in today's American homes.

This doesn't mean that all American homes have running water, just that it's expected. But I digress. Read this story or watch this film about Navajo "water haulers" if you'd like to digress with me. After digressing, it's interesting to take a moment to think about how different your life is from these Native Americans who live with minimal possessions and no running water. Provides a little perspective, doesn't it?

But back to the original topic: let's consider one tiny aspect of green building currently available and being well applied in old and new construction: green roofs, i.e., using living plants that cool the building below while also providing beautiful natural environments.

Here are just a few interesting links featuring lovely green roofs:

Take a look at the spectacular green roof in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park at the California Academy of Sciences. The structure uses two million native plants.

Check out Chicago's Green Roofs project. Over two hundred green roofs are scattered across the city, more than any other city in the United States.

Here's a truly fabulous photo gallery of green roofs across the world.

If the green roofs idea excites you, you can find out much more at EcoGeek (good photos, including one of goats grazing on a roof!), the International Green Roof Association and GreenRoofs.

If you know of examples of green roofs in your area, please share them in a comment. Or, if you digressed and now would like to express your thoughts about the value of having running water in your life, please feel free to do that, too.

Then, if you really want to test your thoughtful consumer skills, ponder awhile the odd contradiction of using water to grow plants on the tops of buildings (a worthy idea, I believe) with the simultaneous failure to provide the most basic of needs (an accessible clean water supply) to many thousands of citizens.

No one said being a thoughtful consumer was going to be easy.

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Historic Preservation and Adaptive Reuse Architecture

My goal in 2008 is to continue exploring the many resources we all have available to help us become thoughtful consumers. I'll be sharing information and links that will help us to unclutter and simplify our personal lives, to recognize how often and how effectively we're manipulated by advertising, and to think about decisions that we need to make collectively in order to create a society that is focused on the quality of our lives rather than the quantity of our possessions.

So, let's launch the new year with just a few thoughts about one of those larger topics that affects all of us: architecture. We don't live in a vacuum, we live in cities, towns, and rural areas, all of which are full of structures that impact our comfort, our sense of aesthetics, and the Earth's environment. Our surroundings affect us not only in our own homes, but outside them, in the communities where we live and work.

At home, living an uncluttered, simplified life means we're not consuming more than we need and we're being thoughtful about our purchases, often recycling items for purposes other than what was originally intended. When we achieve this goal, or at least valiantly strive for it, it's personally satisfying -- perhaps even sanity saving.

Adaptive reuse of older buildings serves the same purpose on a much grander scale. We can't keep slapping up monster-sized mansions, enormous bleak glass skyscrapers and endlessly clogged mega-freeways without cluttering our cities and creating tremendous stress on our society. Thoughtful decisions are crucial when dealing with public spaces, too.

I always like to look back to see what worked in the past before leaping to conclusions about how to shape the future. "Preservation" is the magazine published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation -- a favorite charitable organization of mine. The magazine is a perfect vehicle for examining the architecture of the past, then using what we've learned to make our lives better right now and in years to come. The January/February 2008 edition is called "The Green Issue." It's full of informative articles, as usual, but I was particularly fond of "A Cautionary Tale," by Wayne Curtis, who offers an often neglected positive viewpoint regarding the "green" value of older buildings.

In the past, houses and buildings needed to be constructed to accomodate weather fluctuations because heating was difficult and air conditioning was unheard of. So, depending on the location, builders relied on such things as high ceilings, sleeping porches, and shutters to help provide comfort to inhabitants. Using local materials was common, both in construction and landscaping. And buildings were made to last through the ages.

Preservation of older buildings is not just aesthetically desireable, it's practical. The energy used to renovate an already-existing building is almost always far less than what would be required for new construction. Yvon Chouinard, founder of the Patagonia clothing manufacturing company is quoted as follows: "The most responsible way to buy clothes is to shop at Goodwill. And the most responsible way to build is to recycle an old bulding."

Take a look at the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon, to see how that area has become a vibrant, artistic part of town thanks to much historic preservation and adaptive reuse of buildings.

The dynamic Gallery of Modern Art for the Tate Museum in London was formerly an abandoned power plant.

Architecture Week has a library of interesting adaptive reuse projects.

Architectural Heritage Foundation is a non-profit firm that redeveloped Boston's old City Hall.

Multi-Housing News reports on a Seattle project that successfully turned a 1919 warehouse into environmentally friendly lofts.

Architectural Record talks about the reuse of an unusual site: the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh.

This page about the history of Citadel Outlets shopping center in Los Angeles leaves out the many years that the huge structure sat abandoned and decaying. It's at the side of the freeway on the way to Disneyland, so many Angelenos happily watched its transformation.

Thoughtful consumers play an important role in creating public surroundings that are vibrant and nurturing. If you know of an adaptive reuse project in your area, please send along a link in your comment. Thanks!

© 2008 Cynthia Friedlob

Death and Rebirth of Hippie

This year marked the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, an event which actually began in January of 1967 with a "gathering of the tribes" known as the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park; then continued to build with the June release of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and the incredible Monterey Pop festival. That summer, thousands of young people literally invaded the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco on a quest for unforgettable music, a communal lifestyle of total freedom and, of course, psychedelic drugs. Heady times -- no pun intended.

But, as Jim Newsom wrote:

"The Summer of Love deteriorated rather quickly out in the Haight. As too many people arrived, the upbeat spirit of optimism and community gave way to despair and disenchantment, the drugs got harder and heavier, free love gave way to STDs. By mid-summer the glow was fading. On October 6, a group of hippies staged a mock funeral on the streets of San Francisco called 'The Death of Hippie.'"

The beautiful summer of the flower child may have turned into a terribly harsh winter, but the cultural impact of those times is undeniable, prompting many celebratory events this year. In New York, there was a 40th anniversary psychedelic art exhibit at the Whitney Museum and "Hair" was re-staged by the Public Theater; on the west coast, an anniversary tribute Monterey Pop concert was headlined by a reunited Big Brother and the Holding Company along with Jefferson Starship.

The hippies were the antithesis of today's consumers, united in a sub-culture of free food, free stores, free love (and the resulting free clinics), second-hand clothing, shared housing, and a bias against large corporations.

Fortunately, it appears that "Hippie" has been reincarnated in this era in a slightly different version, perhaps just as the Eastern religions that took root in the West back then might have predicted. This time around, there seems to be a broader appeal and a more durable foundation than the Haight could offer. Take a look at just a few examples of what's going on -- or still going on:

The Freegans, The Simple Living Network, Buy Nothing Day, The Rainbow Family, The Farm, No Impact Man, The Global EcoVillage Network, The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, The Fair Trade Federation, Living Water International -- there are literally thousands of individuals, groups and organizations representing the spirit of the counter-culture movement of the Sixties, a movement that was not just about sex, drugs and rock and roll as detractors like to opine, but was also highly politically motivated and aware.

It's encouraging that there is increasing awareness now about protecting the environment from dangerous exploitation, ensuring decent working conditions for those who make the products we use, and celebrating the inherent goodness of the simple life. We know that we can't sustain, or justify, our society's over-consumption when so much of the world's population is suffering without even such basic necessities as safe water to drink.

I like to think that many of the current worthwhile efforts for social change are a direct result of the Sixties -- and proof that Hippie really is back.

Good morning, Starshine.