I just finished a loose car share arrangement with my friend Jacques, the founder of this blog. We both live in West Mt Airy, and while he telecommuted by day, I used the car as needed, and then he had the car most nights and weekends. It was his car, so it was not a pure car share, and he recently passed it on to his son down in DC. So goodbye car sharing bliss, hello Septa and my sore two feet!

But the experience with Jacques got me thinking about the possibilities. After all, PhillyCarShare, the poorly run but virtuous nonprofit recently vacated the “village green” in West Mt Airy (near Weaver’s Way Co-Op) when it removed the red prius that had been there for two years. Ditto removal the mini-cooper at Emlen and Lincoln. Ditto removal the Prius at Tulpehocken station. PCS is rationalizing its locations, especially in Philly “suburbia” in the face of an unstoppable onslaught from national behemoth Zipcar. And Zipcar has no presence whatsoever in NW Philly. So it’s time for me to take things into my own hands.

So now, without a car, I am putting out to our local sustainability universe, a simple question: Is it possible to do a do it yourself car share, for say $100-200 a month, with 3 or 4 people participating? I could easily spend that much using PCS for about 5 car rides; instead, I would probably use the car 3 or 4 times a week, have much more flexibility, and be a pioneer.

Here is the ad I posted today in the Rideshare section of Craigslist. Let me know your comments, ideas, and whether you’ve seen this before!

Further reading here and here.

Can you measure the good that a corporation does and certify it as a “B” company, one that buys its supplies locally, hires underprivileged workers from the community, or helps to improve local schools? This article in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer explains this new concept that attempts to develop a Leed-type certification that extends beyond sustainability to systemic corporate altruism: “Last week, Philadelphia City Council’s Finance Committee forwarded to the full Council for consideration a proposal to give a business-privilege tax credit of $4,000 annually to companies meeting B Lab certification standards. If the plan is approved, Philadelphia would be the first city in the country to recognize sustainable businesses in that way. B Lab is working to get legislation introduced in six states, including Pennsylvania, that would legally recognize B corporations and, more to the point, qualify them for investment, procurement, and/or tax incentives.”

My concern: Will “B”eing good really foster corporate action towards real social change of the type that is needed (rebuilding our country’s educational or health care systems) or simply lead to empty posturing and endless debates as to what is really corporate “kosher” and what is not? Whatever the answer, the real news here is that the era of corporate social responsibility, ushered in by pioneers such as Ben and Jerry’s and the Body Shop is about to become mainstream. If you are interested in green jobs, for example, there will now be a whole sector of certifiers looking at the sustainability and ethics of various corporations. Will this lead to real social change, such as better conditions in the global sweatshops that produce the keyboards on which we blithely type our blogs? Stay tuned.

As a former risk management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, I really enjoyed this piece from Huffington Post. The author explains our tendency to normalize outlier events such as 9/11, swine flu, etc and ignore real risks like port security, long term health care and sustainability. Something he does not mention is the benefit of a systems approach which would require us to look at the interconnectedness of risks and the greatest risk of all — lack of coordination by free nations in pooling resources to mitigate risk. If anything, the resonse to 9/11 in terms of airport security is at least a step in that direction. But you might think, somedays, that a Boeing 747 is the beginning, middle and end of all risk, but it’s really just an outlier. In fact, the rash of jet hostage taking in the 60s and 70s represented a greater risk to our security than any airport terrorist attempts after 9/11. It’s time to focus on the inliers . This will require us to, for example, collaborate with developing nations on sustainability, instead of finger pointing as to who is most to blame for environmental demise.

Are you one of those people who go ballistic when you notice two Philadelphia police cruisers idling and parked just so that the two cops can chat from the convenience of their driver seat??

How about the multiple delivery trucks idling while their driver makes his/her delivery??

How about the two Fairmount Park Trucks nicely parked at the curve and idling while their drivers are catching up on the latest…

I am one of those people – I know how you may feel.
Hell, not only those city employees pretend to be working when they are not, but to add insult to injury, they are polluting our shared air while wasting the gas that our taxes pay for.
Anything else??

Let me be clear: humans are social animals – I do not mind two policemen shooting the breeze, I do not mind the delivery truck driver stopping to ask for directions. I MIND THAT THEY LEAVE THEIR ENGINE ON.

Hell, the first starter motor was installed on a car in 1911, almost 100 years ago. So this is not about gaining time to get the engine started. This is about mindfulness, this is about caring.

I will go further: the City of Philadephia GreenWorks plan has ambitious goals and so far the city has yet to provide environmental sensitivity training for its workers.  I do not mind clueless city workers, I mind that their cluelessness hurts everyone including themselves.

Turns out that the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania have laws that prohibit vehicle idling. I wonder how often these laws are enforced on drivers of city vehicles?? I wonder how often these laws are enforced on anyone???

The Philadelphia Clean Air Council decided to do something about this issue by opening a new website where you can report idling vehicles.

1. Write down any vehicle information you can see: Company name  or City Department, Tag Number, Asset Number. Any information that can identify the vehicle.
2. Got to http://www.idlefreephilly.org
3. Click on the map where you saw idling and report the problem.
4. Air Management Services and the Clean Air Council will receive emails and can respond to the issue.  The City of Philadelphia’s clean air agency can issue a ticket if enough information is provided.

Finally, I have two simple suggestions to enforce the “No Idling” laws in Philadelphia:

• Place “No Idling Signs” around the city such as this one from Vancouver – Canada, as many other cities have already done.

• Use the army of parking enforcers from the Philadelphia Parking Authority to enforce the Philadelphia No Idling laws. That will bring more income to the city and improve the health of its citizens.

According to a piece in NY1 news, the Yankees are going green with their victory parade:

Atlas Materials in Red Hook, Brooklyn is donating recycled confetti strips for the Yankees parade down the “Canyon of Heroes” in NY’s financial district.  They say parades these days are much more environmentally friendly than ticker-tapes of the past.

“What we’re doing here today is taking 1,200 pounds of shredded, recycled paper to be delivered to the buildings of Lower Manhattan to start the process of what kind of paper should be thrown from the windows tomorrow. It will all be cleaned up by the sanitation department and recycled yet again. So this is going to be a green parade,” said John Cioffi of Atlas Materials.

From the looks of this pic, lots of New Yorkers will be emptying their waste baskets as well.  Wonder if that stuff will be recycled too.  All in all, good news, but small consolation for Phils fans.   Next year, if the Phillies win, there would be no ticker tape parade in NY at all, just a good ol’ fashioned Philadelphia parade.  Now that would be the most environmentally friendly thing of all.  So, wait ’till next year!

PhillyEcoCity has covered the activities of West Trenton based Terracycle Inc.  several times, most recently in this post: Terracycle or How to Turn your Trash into Gold

Until now, Terracycle has been selling its products from kites made of Oreo cookie wrapping material to school bags made out of drink pouches and wall clocks made out of vinyl records  through major national retail chains such as Target and Wall Mart and more recently through its website.

The store is a pilot site where Terracycle’s founder Tom Szaky is testing the possibility of opening a chain of stores that would be selling 200 of products that Terracycle manufactures out of recycled materials and containers. The store is also a collection point for 48 types of waste materials the company uses. For each recyclable item brought to the store Terracycle makes a 2 cents donation to selected charities.

The store is located in Palmer Squarre – Princeton NJ, near the Bent Spoon Ice Cream Store.
Here is a picture of Tom Szaky taken by a reporter of the Times of Trenton NJ, at the opening of the store.

As we previewed earlier this week, today was International Climate Day of Action, including a synchronized global rally featuring photogenic human chains forming the number 350.   I was there. My daughter was there.  I brought my roommate too.  And it was rainy and miserable and inconvenient.

Those of us who care about the environment would like to see a New America. An America that is eco-conscious, that is galvanized to concerted action. An America that believes that the upper limit that some scientists think is safe for the environment, 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide, is still achievable, even though we passed it (we are now at 387 PPM!). Some say that the “horse is already out of the barn” and it’s too late.    A herculean task.  Imagine trying to abolish slavery from all 50 states instead of just the South and certain territories.  Pretty damn hard, and who would be the ones to lead the charge?

The answer to that question today is you and me.  The people from 350.org believe that a New American and global mindset can be created by simplifying the message, and galvanizing around a number, in this case 350. I think they have a point. I brought my 6 year old daughter down on a miserable rainy day to Independence Mall, and when we lined up to form the human 350 as part of the Zero, she said I don’t want to be part of the Zero, I want to be part of the Five! Mission accomplished. With the rain, and the gooey Fall Harvest donut admittedly purchased from Dunkin’ Donuts, and being part of the big human Five, I think she will remember this day for a long time. I brought my roommate too, and she wasn’t so enthusiastic about coming either.

But for me that is the metaphor here. We have to make space in our hearts and souls for the daughters of our daughters to enjoy a safe, 350ppm or whatever the hell the right number is, planet, and this is a little abstract, projecting out into the future. This is a movement that requires one to make sacrifices to help the “theoretical other” — others we may never meet…it is a movement of inconvenience. To quote Creedence Clearwater Revival, “I want to know, have you ever seen the rain, comin down on a sunny day?”

One of the most important thing we can do as a society is to support children in developing a wonderous, reverent, informed relationship with Nature.
Here is what a few dedicated educators are doing to introduce second graders from North Philadelphia to Nature.

Philadelphia has 2 composting firms – PhillyCompost and Bennett Compost and city wide composting efforts are still distant plans.

It’s now illegal to throw your food waste into the trash in San Francisco…what about Philadelphia??

San Francisco inhabitants use green colored trash bins to gather food trash that are collected by a fleet of specialized city trucks.

Considering that San Francisco is collecting 500 tons of food scraps every day – how much food scrap could we collect in Philadelphia and how much money would the city of Philadelphia save on the fees it pays to dump its trash in the regional landfills?

To become the greenest city in the country, Philadelphia will need to take initiatives that may annoy  some people such as: banning plastic bags from stores or getting serious with educating its thousands of employees about good sustainability practices. Good intentions and ambitious goals alone will not make it.

See here for more details: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113969321&sc=fb&cc=fp

Climate change is the biggest challenge facing our world. On Oct. 24 stand up with thousand of people around the world and speak out to limit carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million. If you’re in Philly, meet me at Independence Hall: http://www.350philly.org.

Curious about why 350 parts of carbon dioxide per million?
See http://www.350.org/about/science