Going Green with Andrea Dean

My self-imposed Sustainability Chronicles project dictates that I undertake a new eco-action each week. Well… I have been a little behind, but here is my eco-action for the month: Organize a Seed Exchange! The Big Island community was out in full force for the Kohala Country Fair on Saturday, October 4th. The morning started with a light rain, which opened up to a beautiful sunny day- the perfect planting environment. Deep inside the Green Zone was the Seed Exchange.


With help from Eddie, Jessica, Jim, Krista, Isaiah, Mike, Connie, Ajaxx, Bill, Evan, Neil, Tim, Jim and Daz, North Kohala’s first seed exchange was a great success. Krista wrote a great article in the Kohala Mountain News which resulted in numerous requests for the Mighty Moringa! Moringa was the tree that took the day. Jessica and Jim brought kalo, sugar cane (which was a huge hit with the keiki) and GMO free strawberry papayas. Jessica was spreading the gospel of seed exchange all day- letting people know that they could take freely, and come back next year with some of their abundance to share. Neil brought ipu gourd seeds, milo, kou and coco’s. Evan was the man with the hot peppers and all the answers. Anyone with a gardening question was sent over to Evan.


Mike was an enthusiastic and energetic presence all day, talking story and sharing his veggie and herb seeds. Ajaxx and Connie, who are starting a seed bank in Hawi, gave away lots of veggie starts and sold their seed packets to support the seed bank. Bill was the man with the purple asparagus and shiso. Only the truly blessed got some of that! So many other people dropped off seeds and plants- Richard, Natalie, Tim, Richard, Susan, Nelson, Jim, Peter, and many others. Daz found a shady table and held down the seed space while visiting with friends and neighbors. Allison joined us later in the day and helped fold up all the tables and chairs.


Nancy Redfeather, the Big Island’s earth mother of seed exchanges organizes the Hawaii island Seed Exchange, which happens annually at the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden. They had over 1,000 attendees this past summer. I attended my first seed exchange a few years back at Laakea Garden in Pahoa. The Fourth Annual Eastside Seed Exchange is October 11, 2008. I was blown away by how great an event the seed exchange was. Talk about kick starting your food production! You come home with so much-everything from kalo to corn- all without paying a cent. Everything is traded or given away. Perfect.


This year’s Kohala Country Fair organizers wanted the fair to be as sustainable as possible. Compostable containers were used (and are now being composted), all recyclables were collected at recycling stations, sorted and bagged, people were encouraged to bring their own water bottles to fill at filling stations, rain water was used, local foods were eaten, and many of the vendors displayed their green wares. The whole day just had a great feeling. Happy people, happy plants.

This weeks eco-action was testifying during a Food and Energy Sustainability Committee meeting of the Hawaii County Council. It all began a few months ago when I read an interview with Van Jones in the Sun Magazine entitled Bridging the Green Divide. The interview really helped to me to rethink the environmental transformation of our nation and our economy. I dropped off a copy of the article at Council Chairperson Pete Hoffmann’s office and he took the ball and ran with it. Van Jones’s organization is called Green for All and they have a Local Government Green Jobs Pledge. The pledge offers specific strategies to governments to help build “a green economy from the bottom up.” Van Jones’s new book is called The Green Collar Economy- How one solution can fix our two biggest problems- meaning the economy and the environment. Van Jones and Majora Carter co-founded Green for All and they advocate that Green Collar Jobs are: good strong middle class jobs, provide pathways out of poverty, require new skills, tend to be local jobs, strengthen communities and Oh By The Way… solve our environmental problems.


Green For All and its partners lobbied to make sure that the 2007 Energy Bill included two critical provisions: the Green Jobs Act and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program. The purpose of these programs is to make investments in green-collar job creation and job training which they believe to be essential to building a green economy which lifts people out of poverty. The Green for All Vision is so beautiful because it seeks to improve living and working conditions for low-income people, who are impacted more heavily by environmental problems than “eco-elites” like you and I who can afford to buy hybrid cars, organic foods and live in clean and beautiful places with alternative energy.

The Hawaii County Council Resolution 731-08 was passed unanimously and encouraged the County Administration to pursue getting a piece of the funding that will come to states (hopefully, after Congress votes to fund the Act in the 2009 appropriations bill). Send an email to our Congressional delegation telling them to support full funding for the Green Jobs Act and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program in the 2009 Appropriations Bill. Hawaii County Council Resolution 731-08 also asks the administration to prepare a list of green collar jobs that would be needed to make the County energy self-sustainable by March 1, 2009, as per the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative.


Also on hand to testify was Brent Norris from Green Collar Technologies, a non-profit organization with a mission to educate green collar workers on Hawai`i Island.


The resolution will now have to pass the full Council, but that does not look like a problem since 6 out of 8 council members were in the committee meeting and voted aye. A great first step to be sure. Now I would like to see the County Council, and for that matter the State Legislature, adopt the Green Jobs Pledge.


Big applause to Councilmember Pete Hoffmann for introducing the resolution and to the rest of the councilmembers on the Food and Energy Sustainability Committee for their unanimous support.

My eco-strategy for this week is No Factory Food. Industrially produced factory foods are bad for the environment and bad for our health. Processed foods that comes in cans, jars, bags and boxes create an unbelievable amount of recycling and landfill waste. I know what my household recycling pile looks like after only a few weeks. It may be “health food” packages in my recycling, but it is still excess packaging. The amount of resources that just go into packaging is horrifying (trees, energy, water). In addition, the carbon footprint of multiple ingredient processed foods are also higher than a single ingredient food. Generally speaking, a processed cereal with oats has a higher carbon footprint than just plain oatmeal. The ingredients (oats, sweetener, wheat, oil, etc..) have to travel to a processing plant, where energy is used to process the raw ingredients into a final product. The final product is then (usually) over packaged (bag + box) and shipped to your local store.


Without constant vigilance processed foods keep slipping back into my pantry. My husband buys convenience foods- boca burgers, salmon burgers, various fake vegetarian meats, spaghetti, rice milk, soy milk, orange juice, potato chips, sauce, etc… These things are here, I am busy and end up eating them. I know from my previous local foods experiments that there are two keys to success in maintaining a diet that is both body friendly and environmentally friendly. The first strategy is making the right choices at the food store and farmers markets. Right now I am shopping locally grown first and then “no factory food” is my next level filter. The second key is taking the time to prepare food. Convenience food is called that for a reason! You take it out of the refrigerator or freezer, pop it in the micro and it is done. Fresh, wholesome foods require washing, peeling, cutting, cooking and sometimes combining. I find that this is hard to do in the mad rush of my working week and therefore have found that making a bunch of great food on Saturday or Sunday is a great strategy. That way the whole family has healthy, easy stuff to grab during the week.


Yesterday my girlfriend Susan came over and we cooked together so we could both have a lot of wholesome food in the fridge for the week to come. Getting together with Susan was a great way to get cooking done and have fun at the same time. We tried some new recipes, had intellectual discourse, and listened to some relaxing chanting music. We made kabocha squash soup with fresh turmeric, Indian potatoes, quinoa salad, beet green casserole, and I attempted the Indian flat bread- Naan (it came out a little too flat!)

Mary Traynor was visiting with me this weekend on the Big Island. We were working on the Marketing Plan for my company. We are working on the concept Go Green with Andrea Dean. My company is focused on the journey of sustainable living and working and employs coaching, consulting, projects and education in the righteous pursuit of living a deep, meaningful and eco life. Following is an interview/brainstorming session with Mary focused on Authenticity and the importance of a Compelling Story in marketing.

The volume of paper that comes through the mail to us is really overwhelming. Here is a breakdown of the mail we receive:


- Letters and newspaper clippings from my mother (heavy volume, but unavoidable)
- Bills
- Junk mail (largely from environmental groups we support)
- Catalogs


I have attacked the paper incursion before, but it is something that you have to keep up with. To get off the marketer’s mass mailing lists you have to “opt out” with the DMA (Direct Marketing Association). The opting out process with the DMA only lasts three years and I guess the time went by quickly because here I am drowning in junk mail again and opting out again. Today I did three things:


1. Registered for on-line bill pay with my bank. I have resisted this up until now because of my other information management problem- too much email and time spent on the computer. However, I am now banking on the fact that this will save paper and it will be easier to pay the bills online.
2. Registered with catalogchoice.org. This is great- you register and choose the catalogs you don’t want to get. They notify the company and you won’t get the catalog any more. This is an ongoing process of collecting the catalogs you get and selecting them online. Very easy to use.
3. Opted Out from the aforementioned DMA lists. These guys drive me nuts. When I last “opted out” I guess we were still in the stone age because I remember calling them and asking to opt out. They required me to send three separate letters opting out- one each for me, my husband, and my son. My son was then about 10 years old and already receiving a copious volume of solicitations from CitiCard, apparently because he had an American Airlines mileage plus number. But anyway, after sending them their three letters, they sent me three letters back, which we then had to sign and send back.


Now that we are in the technological age of higher enlightenment, I was able to opt out online with the DMA. When I first went to the DMA website, I accidentally clicked on the DO NOT MAIL link, thinking this was the place to opt out. Unfortunately, this was a link leading to the DMA’s issue advocacy against measures in many states to get ride of unwanted mail. The correct link to opt out of junk mail is DMAchoice.org. After some propaganda about how beneficial direct mail is in our lives, I was asked to register online. Cleverly, they have now captured my email address. The registration process required me to enter a verification word. You know, the words written in that scary monster script? My verification word was “Gross”, strangely appropriate. After the initial registration, they thoughtfully offered me the option of receiving “fewer or additional catalogs” or “less or additional promotional mail”.

To make the process even more difficult and un-user friendly they required that I enter my credit card information so they can verify that it is really me opting out of all of the unwanted mail. For goodness sake- it’s not like opting out of marketing mail is an issue of national security. It was easier for me to set up my online bill pay.


But wait- before confirming that I am ABSOLUTELY SURE that I want to opt out, the DMA provided me with important information about the environmental benefits of unwanted mail. This is the message I got after entering my credit card information:


Important: You have selected to eliminate all mailings from organizations participating in the DMA Mail Preference Service.
Are you sure you want to proceed?
The average household can save $1422 dollars per year from marketing offers. By eliminating all mail offers not only will you miss out on these savings, but you’ll miss out on at least 80% of all commercial offers and discounts!
And you will miss the environmental benefits of shopping at home rather than driving to the mall!

When you click here, your name will be removed from future consumer prospect lists and you will see a significant reduction in all catalog and other commercial offers. If you wish to reconsider, click here.


Yes, well, the fact that I could survive the online process of opting out of junk mail (or marketing offers) proves that I am computer literate enough to shop online. Thereby helping to save the 100 million tress and huge amount of energy that is takes to create and dispose of junk mail, as well as the carbon dioxide that I save by not going to the mall. Although, of course, consumer items that are manufactured and shipped to your door have a carbon footprint as well. The root of this problem is not junk mail, it is consumerism. But one thing at a time.


By the way, you can go even further with this. EcoCycle.org is a great resource and goes even deeper into ways you can reduce junk mail.