Sustainable Initiatives by Andrea Dean

In this podcast I interview Tom Baldwin. Tom and his wife Shannon Casey own Uluwehi Farm, a permaculture farm in North Kohala on the Big Island. Tom talks about what permaculture is and how it helps farms and homesteads to be more productive. Tom just got back from a trip to Australia where he sat at the feet of the permaculture master- Bill Mollison, the founder of the permaculture system. Tom will be sharing that new knowledge and his permaculture farm experience in January when he is co-teaching a Permaculture Design Certification course with Craig Elevitch and Nik Bertulis, the course starts Jan 5th.


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In this podcast I interview Tyler Mongan, Founder and Publisher of the Honu Guide- a guide for sustainable living in Hawaii. The Honu Guide is a resource book that is published once a year. The Honu Guide features well written articles on sustainability issues in Hawaii, and has a coupon book and resource directory that links people to green goods, services and organizations. Their distribution model is also innovative- organizations can sell the guide as a fundraiser for their organization. Schools take note- the Honu Guide is much healthier than a Krispy Kreme doughnut fundraiser! As a green business owner and writer- I think the Honu Guide is a great way to get the word out about my work.


If you are an itunes user, you can subscribe to my podcast through itunes and receive automatic weekly updates. Or you can listen below:

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Well the days are flying by. I finally got a new home page mocked up today. None of the info is correct, and there is still old stuff on the page, but let me know what you think of where I am going with the design.


We just installed Twitter Tools for WordPress and I am posting this blog post to test all of the cool functionality. Gotta go!

Day two was a major technical day. Mary and I both decided to consolidate our websites and blogs. I had www.coachandreadean.com and www.andreadean.com and decided just to focus all of my efforts on andreadean.com. We moved Mary’s wordpress site from akamaipromotionalstrategies.com to akamaipromotions.com. I have never moved a WordPress site from one domain to another, so that was a fun technical learning curve.


As for my site, I re-thought all of menu items and emailed the new menu and sidebar to Maya at Jelly Designs who does my custom design work. My website is a combination of a custom site and a WordPress site.


Whew! Late night…on the phone with the server hosting company for quite some time. We also got Mary’s new wireless skype headset working, which was an accomplishment.

If you want to become a green business, organization or community- you need a plan to get there. And you need to have a common definition of sustainability that everyone can agree upon. Many businesses here in Hawaii are taking the first steps towards sustainability, picking the low hanging fruits (conserving energy, waste, water), but few are looking into the future. How can planning for sustainability help you to take advantage of new markets? How can planning for sustainability help you avoid future resource problems? How can you communicate sustainability to your customers, your suppliers?


I was a part of a group of 30 sustainability leaders on Hawaii Island who were trained in how to use The Natural Step framework for strategic planning for sustainability. The Hawaii County Resource Center and the Kohala Center partnered to bring The Natural Step senior trainers Sarah Brooks and Mike Purcell to Hawaii to train us.


Now a group of us are working to localize The Natural Step for Sustainability Primer, highlighting local examples of sustainable practices.