Change Agent
Charitable works, NGOs, nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and ordinary people with great ideas on how to make a positive change in their communities and around the globe.
President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras attends the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Caracas, Venezuela, last December. He has begun appointing a commission to oversee development of a Hong Kong-like 'charter city' that some say could be an economic boon. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters/File)
Honduras envisions building a Caribbean 'Hong Kong'
Picture this: a nearly independent city-state – a Hong Kong in one of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest countries.
Sound far-fetched? Maybe so, but one country has high hopes for a changing urban future.
According to the Economist, Honduras wants to outsource development of a new city. The idea is to create a ‘charter city:’ a semi-autonomous zone with everything from governance to a separate currency managed independently and overseen by experts outside of the Honduran government.
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But Honduras faces the question of whether a ‘clean slate’ of separate rules and management can spur economic growth that has been largely elusive in the region.
The political wheels are rolling, but the road to a charter city is long and uncertain.
The national legislature recently legalized the creation of “special development regions,” although the ensuing steps are taking longer than anticipated. In December, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo began appointing a "transparency commission" to oversee the project, despite mixed opinions of the initiative held by other government officials.
Yet charter city supporters remain enthusiastic about the steps taken so far and optimistic about the direction of the project.
According to Paul Romer, an economics professor at New York University who proposed the concept, charter cities represent a “new type of special reform zone,” building on the idea of a special economic zone by “increasing its size and expanding the scope of its reforms.” His idea is to create internal start-ups, akin to the way that businesses often set up new divisions free to operate outside of old rules. Mr. Romer believes that the clean slate will allow government authorities to experiment with laws and governance.
“What types of mechanisms will allow developing countries to copy the rules that work well in the rest of the world?” he asked The Economist.
And people in developing countries like Honduras, Mr. Romer says, will respond to the initiative by embracing opportunities in charter cities. “The worldʼs poor know that better rules prevail elsewhere,” he says, citing the Gallup report that 630 million people would like to move permanently to another country.
Charter cities, Romer claims, should also be of interest to rich countries, such as the United States, struggling with illegal immigration, as they offer an alternative to residents of poorer countries seeking to migrate.
But many do not agree with Romer’s plan for building cities from scratch in the world’s poorest nations and outsourcing their design and government to rich countries. Duncan Green of Oxfam has been critical of Romer’s idea for several years, and writes that “the underlying motive seems to be to liberate development from the supposedly dead hand of dysfunctional and corrupt states, transferring it instead into the hands of benign and honest technocrats” in Honduras.
As Green points out, the Trujillo charter city proposal is incomplete at best. Even with significant outside investment and oversight, charter cities would likely suck talent and resources away from their surrounding nation-states. And even with private security forces protecting the land of new development and investment, the presence of a wealthy, employment-generating city could create huge slums outside its borders.
The allure of a Central American Hong Kong may sound appealing to some, but officials must address many questions. After all, Hong Kong was a longtime colonial outpost before becoming a semi-autonomous economic zone. Is that really what Honduras wants? Or can Trujillo skip the colonial stage?
Honduran officials have a long road ahead to bring change to the Caribbean coast. But Mr. Romer’s vision has people talking. And for Honduras, it may just have a promising direction in store.
• This article originally appeared at Global Envision, a blog published by Mercy Corps.
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Denver Broncos Tim Tebow meets with Jacob Rainey prior to the start of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park, N.Y., in December. ((AP Photo/Derek Gee))
Tim Tebow, the philanthropist
Forget Tim Tebow, the star athlete and starting quarterback of the Denver Broncos.
Forget his on-field genuflections, the Bible quotes, and the fourth-quarter "miracles."
Let's look at Tim Tebow, the philanthropist.
For all the controversy around his public prayers or his readiness to lead an NFL team to a Super Bowl, few can fault Tim Tebow's acts of kindness.
Just before each football game, when most pro-athletes put on their "game face" and ignore teammates and family members, the Denver Broncos quarterback makes it a point to visit with a struggling fan.
Minutes before the start of last Sunday's game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Tebow took time to chat with 16-year-old Bailey Knaub, a girl who has had 73 surgeries. In Buffalo, on Dec. 24, Jacob Rainey, a young football player who had lost his leg, was the beneficiary of Tebow's pre- and post-game attention. This Saturday, Tebow will meet with 20-year old Zack McLeod on the sidelines as part of The Tebow Foundation's Wish 15 program that grants requests for young people with serious medical issues.
Aren't such charitable activities a distraction from his chosen profession, asked ESPN columnist Rick Reilly.
"Just the opposite," Tebow said. "It's by far the best thing I do to get myself ready. Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn't really matter. I mean, I'll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it's to invest in people's lives, to make a difference."
Tebow doesn't just shower attention on these "coolest, most courageous people." He flies them and their family to the game, pays for their hotel and meals, gets them pre-game passes and visits with them after the game, often walking to the car with them.
Veteran sports writers, often a cynical bunch and not easily won over, are impressed by Tebow, the philanthropist.
"I'm a 100 percent believer," writes ESPN's Rick Reilly. "Not in his arm. Not in his skills. I believe in his heart, his there-will-definitely-be-a-pony-under-the-tree optimism, the way his love pours into people, right up to their eyeballs, until they believe they can master the hopeless comeback, too."
Raised by Christian missionaries, Tebow has for years now said that football is simply "a platform" for bigger things. He may be referring to preaching Christianity, but his actions suggest otherwise.
He told NFL Today co-host James Brown: "My Mom and Dad preached to me when I was a little kid that just because you may have athletic ability and may be able to play a sport doesn't make you any more special than anybody else, doesn't mean God loves you more than anybody else ... at the end of the day, it's [football] a game."
Tebow's NFL fame is giving a big boost to his foundation - with donations doubling since he took the helm of the Broncos. The Tim Tebow Foundation expects to meet the fund-raising goal of $2.5 million in March, ahead of its June fiscal-year end target.
For $25, donors get a Team Tebow T-shirt, car decal and information on where to volunteer at a foundation community function. "Before the [Pittsburgh Steelers playoff] game, we had done 100 people," foundation president Erik Dellenback told the Huffington Post. "In 48 hours after the game, we had over 4,000 members."
Dellenback also said that Tebow pays all of the foundation staff and administrative costs, so that all donations go to the outreach efforts.
Many athletes and celebrities contribute their time and money to charitable causes. Tim Tebow is not unique in that sense. His charitable foundation is by no means the biggest or most influential. But what impresses is the authentic priority Tebow places on this work. Charity appears to be central to his character and his life, not an "extra" or an activity incidental to his football career.
And that is worthy of attention.
A former soldier shouts in front of a United Nations peacekeeper during a demonstration to demand back payments from the government in Monrovia, Liberia, in 2007. Christian Bethelson spent decades as a soldier in Liberia but now is dedicated to helping the war-torn country rebuild. (Christopher Herwig/Reuters/File)
A warrior turns peacemaker in Liberia
I tell my children, ‘Watch who you marry,’” says 53-year-old Christian Bethelson. “I married an AK-47, and it stole 27 years of my life. Bad marriage.”
He flashes a smile. One of his front teeth is missing, knocked out during a torture session in military prison. He’s also got a scar from a bullet in his right leg, and a host of terrifying stories from the front lines of Liberia’s civil war, one of West Africa’s most brutal conflicts in recent history.
Like the nation itself, Bethelson is trying to leave behind decades of military rule and no-holds-barred warfare. It hasn’t been easy. Even in a quiet living room in sleepy Santa Fe, N.M., where he has come to develop his peacebuilding work and further his personal studies in meditation, Bethelson does not seem entirely at ease. He sits on the edge of his chair and gesticulates broadly, his heavily accented voice rising as he describes how he stumbled into the life of a soldier – a life he might still be living today, if not for the chance encounter on a muddy road that set him on a path to transformation.
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Today, Liberia’s Grand Cape Mount County is a roll of forested hills, cleared in no obvious pattern to make room for rice fields, rutted dirt roads, and clusters of palm-roofed homes. Somewhere, a bird is always singing.
In many ways, the region has changed little since Christian Bethelson was born there on Jan. 1, 1958. Then, as now, its residents were mostly poor families, descended from any number of the 16 tribes that were living in the area when freed black slaves from the United States arrived in the early 1800s and – despite sharing a skin color – established a two-class, colonial society that left families like Bethelson’s with scant political power or opportunity for economic advancement.
As was common at the time, Bethelson’s father had multiple wives – nine of them – and Bethelson’s earliest memories are not of playing, but of working the fields with his many brothers and sisters, scrambling sun up to sundown to scratch out enough food for everyone. From an early age, Bethelson intuited that education would be the surest path out of such a hardscrabble life. With dogged persistence, he trudged long morning hours to get to the nearest school – when his father would permit it – and then hustled home in the afternoons, lugging firewood he would pick up along the way.
Studying mostly on an empty stomach, he managed to graduate from the high school in the county seat. He knew he needed more.
“I had to go to college,” he says. “Education is the oxygen of the world. I was choking without it.”
When he learned the government was offering university scholarships for young men who enlisted in the army, he immediately signed up – only to find out the scholarships had run out. He was obliged to serve anyway.
That was 1978. Two years later, tensions generated by a century of injustice came to a head when a young sergeant named Samuel Doe murdered the Americo-Liberian president and installed himself as the nation’s first indigenous leader. Liberians flooded the streets of capital city Monrovia in jubilation, celebrating what seemed a step toward a more inclusive, democratic society.
But Doe soon proved ill-equipped to lead the nation into a more enlightened era: He conducted a macabre firing squad execution of several prominent Americo-Liberians, allowed his soldiers unchecked power, and grew increasingly corrupt. He played off Cold War tensions to stay in favor with the Americans and cracked down on political dissidence at home by sending Bethelson and other elite soldiers to places like Israel and Libya for the latest training in anti-terrorism tactics.
The oppressive measures backfired. Powerful rebel forces rose up, stormed the countryside and destroyed Monrovia, sending some 500,000 Liberians – 20 percent of the entire nation – into foreign refugee camps. By mid-1990, Doe and 500 of his remaining soldiers had retreated into the Executive Mansion, where they held out for months under unimaginable conditions.
Bethelson was among them, and even today, his voice breaks as he tries to describe those final months of Doe’s regime.
“People were drinking blood. People were eating people. Chickens were more valuable than humans. I kept a round in my AK-47 – I knew that if the rebels caught me, it would be better to be dead.”
Bethelson survived on chicken bouillon and hot water until international peacekeepers brokered a ceasefire, and he and others escorted Doe to the port for peace talks. But no sooner had they laid down their guns than a rebel faction broke the accord and opened fire. Many were killed; Bethelson scrambled aboard the peacekeeper’s ship, a bullet in his leg. (Doe was soon after tortured and executed in the Executive Mansion by a rebel named Prince Johnson, who caught international attention by releasing graphic video of the event.)
Bethelson was taken to a military hospital in the neighboring country of Sierra Leone. Slowly, his physical wound healed. The emotional damage did not.
“I would get drunk, smoke dope, listen to Bob Marley. I was never in a good stage, never experienced happiness. I had been driven from my family, from my country, from my dignity.” He pauses, and then adds: “I had no conscience.”
What he did have were years of military experience and training – assets that quickly led him back to Liberia, now plunged into full-out civil war. Under the nom de guerre General Leopard, Bethelson spent the next 13 years leading rebel forces in ruthless battle against warlord Charles Taylor. He was imprisoned for three of those years, but managed to escape and return to the front lines.
It was not until 2003, when an uncertain peace arrived, that he finally set down his AK-47. His first move was to find his wife and children, whom he’d not seen in four years. He found them living in an unfinished house, half-starved to death. But the country’s infrastructure was destroyed, and there was no work to be found. The joy of being home soon faded before a crush of impotence, shame, and anger.
“My wife and kids would insult me, cuss at me, ask why I could not find food for them. I would leave early in the morning, go to the beach and get high, and return late at night, when they were asleep.
“At that point I hated myself for having no education, for having gone into the military, for having participated in the ways that I had, for having been a rebel general. I saw myself as a criminal.”
After two frustrating years, Bethelson weighed his options. He had not worked the earth since childhood. His high school diploma was worth little, and his dream of going to college as distant as ever. He had only one marketable skill to which he could turn. Like so many other Liberian veterans, he set out to offer his soldiering services to the highest bidder in the newest regional conflict, in the neighboring Ivory Coast.
He’d not quite reached the border when the car in which he was traveling got stuck on a road turned to mud by the rains. Several other cars had gotten stuck along the same stretch, and drivers and passengers stood about in small groups, working at the tires with makeshift tools, or chatting as they waited.
Bethelson was drawn toward the conversation of a nearby group, which included some white Westerners. He overheard them talking about peace, and was struck not only by the words, but by the tone of their voices. He realized he was hearing something he had not heard in a very long time – a sense of hope.
He knew his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked haggard, even threatening, but he stepped up to the group and introduced himself as a former rebel general.
“I was afraid they’d reject me,” he recalls, “but instead they gathered around me, told me they loved me, even hugged me. I didn’t expect that. That someone could love me after all that I had done, could come up and hug me … I could not have dreamed it being possible.”
The group was called the everyday gandhis, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping war-torn communities rebuild. They quickly recognized that Bethelson could be a key ally in their work, someone who was ready to embrace peace and could help other veterans do the same.
They asked if he would consider joining them. At first Bethelson declined, believing he would be unable to meet the challenge. But after a longer conversation with a charismatic group member who went by “Uncle Jake,” Bethelson agreed to give it a try. The group gave him $100 as a token payment. He accepted it gratefully, found a car heading back, and arrived home proudly bearing bags of food for his family. He’s never looked back.
“It’s significant that this happened from me being stuck in the mud,” he says. “Being physically stuck like that created an awareness in me. I can see now it was a sign that something was about to shift in my life.”
For the next few years, Bethelson worked with Uncle Jake and the everyday gandhis, and in 2008 traveled with them to a conference inn orthern California, where he was moved by a meditation ceremony led by Buddhist practitioner and teacher Cynthia Jurs:
“I saw her sitting on the ground, very focused, and I thought, if I can be focused and quiet like her, I can recover.”
When Jurs traveled to Liberia the following year to conduct a healing ceremony through the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project, Bethelson began to formally study a type of meditation called “engaged Buddhism” with her. The practice, he says, has completely “remolded” who he is: “Meditation brings me back to my true self, to my real conscience and sense of humanity. With a deep breath, my heart feels a sense of relief, like you are thirsty, and you drink a very cold glass of water.”
Today, Bethelson and Uncle Jake have embarked on an ambitious project with Jurs’ nonprofit, Alliance for the Earth, to build “peace huts” throughout the nation. A callback to the traditional “palaver huts,” where elders once gathered to resolve civil and tribal conflicts, the circular, open-walled structures offer a way for the wounded communities to unite, and like Bethelson, rediscover who they were before the conflict. The first peace hut has been built in hard-hit Lofa County; here in the United States, Bethelson and Uncle Jake are raising funds to start construction on the second.
“The government’s doing what it can,” he says, referring to the administration of recent Nobel Peace prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, re-elected this November. “But the tribes have been divided. We all fought for different factions, and in order to have one nation, one destiny, and one people, we need to create the peace huts, where we can leave our ethnicity behind us and come together.”
As this article is being posted, Bethelson is back in Liberia, working on the peace huts, furthering his own mediation practice, and inviting former combatants to share their stories, to dance and sing, to play soccer, and to take a moment to breathe. He still dreams of attending university to pursue a degree in counseling, so that he can build his capacity as a peacemaker, and do even more to help Liberia recover.
But for now, he’s taking it slowly, enjoying his new life as a peacemaker, a civilian, and a member of his family.
“I love washing the dishes,” he says. “I love doing the laundry, playing with my kids. It sounds foolish, but I’ve got a lot of time to redeem.
“My great Buddhist teacher tells me, ‘Slowly, slowly, step by step, we’re going to arrive.’ I believe that. We’re all going to arrive.”
• Seth Biderman wrote this article in partnership with The Academy for the Love of Learning for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Seth is a writer and teacher researching transformational education. He has reported on sustainability, education, and personal transformation. The Academy for the Love of Learning is an organization dedicated to transforming our culture and has developed a wide range of programs, including Profiles in Transformation, which collects and publishes stories of people who have reconnected to their humanity, and in doing so activated their lives and the lives of those around them. Among the most dramatic of these profiles comes from post-war Liberia, where Christian Bethelson’s transformation from career soldier to spiritual peacemaker stands as a testament to the human potential for positive change.
• This article first appeared in YES! Magazine
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Julie Leven founded Shelter Music Boston, which performs at homeless shelters and other venues around the city. 'Everyone in these shelters needs their soul nurtured in some way,' she says. (Courtesy of Julie Leven)
Julie Leven brings classical music to homeless shelters
When Julie Leven and her musician friends prepare to play classical music at the Kitty Dukakis Treatment Center for Women in Boston, they noticed that everyone looks tired.
Discussion and therapy sessions take place right before Ms. Leven and her fellow musicians perform. The sessions can leave the women at the center drained.
But once the music starts, that changes. “It's like watering a flower,” she says. “They come to life.”
Leven, the founder, executive director, and artistic director of Shelter Music Boston, performs at the Kitty Dukakis Treatment Center for Women and the Shattuck Shelter – both in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood and both part of the organization hopeFound – once a month with two other musicians. They play classical arrangements on the violin and viola in a conference room at the Kitty Dukakis Center and in the common area at the Shattuck Shelter, a homeless shelter for men and women.
Leven is a violinist, a member of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and a member of Boston Baroque, the professional ensemble for Boston University’s Historical Performance Program. She was inspired to start the nonprofit organization Shelter Music Boston in May 2010 after hearing about a similar program in New York.
Violinist Julia McKenzie and violinist Rebecca Strauss play with Leven at the shelters every month. At their first performance, Leven says, she was bowled over by the interest the women took in the music – and their attentiveness.
“They were extremely responsive,” she says.
At every monthly session Leven and the other two musicians also discuss the history of the music they’re playing and encourage the listeners to share their thoughts about the music. They stress that there are no wrong answers. Some words come up frequently in listeners’ responses – “hope,” “I feel happy,” “calm,” Leven says. She's never had anyone say they didn’t like the music.
Certain musical selections seem to prompt specific feelings in the listeners.
“People often comment on feeling very elegant,” Leven says of listeners who hear Mozart. The women say they feel like they’re wearing a beautiful gown in a ballroom, she says. Staff members have told her there are fewer fights at the shelters after the performances.
But performing at shelters can provide some unique challenges, Leven adds. One night an intoxicated man walked back and forth while she was playing a violin solo and knocked over her music stand.
“I just told the other listeners, 'Well, I guess I have to start over,’ ” she says. “And everybody just smiled.”
The fact that she and the other two musicians keep returning has played a large part in winning over their audiences, Leven says. “We are back every month. That consistency has been a huge aspect of the success of this program.”
The trio plans to perform a series of concerts at Rosie’s Place, a women’s sanctuary in Boston, in February as well as starting monthly performances at Boston's Pine Street Inn, a shelter with many programs, in February.
In order to get more training in running a nonprofit organization, Leven has enrolled as a student at the Boston University School of Management.
Cindy Cummings, a friend of Leven’s and a fellow member of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, once played with Leven as a guest performer at a shelter. She was amazed by listeners’ reactions.
“I felt uplifted by the audience, because they were totally attuned to what we were giving them,” Ms. Cummings says. She was surprised how responsive the listeners were to the classical selections, a genre of music she would have expected them to regard with disdain.
“They're not like, 'Eew, it's not what I usually listen to,' " Cummings says. “They're very open.” She would love to perform with Shelter Music Boston again, she says.
Meanwhile, Leven's ultimate dream is for the program to spread nationwide. It could work well in any city, she says. “Everyone in these shelters needs their soul nurtured in some way.”
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Chrysler Transport worker James Theisen carries a 'Detroit Needs Jobs' sign as he joins a demonstration of about a dozen workers demanding jobs in front of Cobo Center in Detroit Jan. 8, 2012. (Rebecca Cook/Reuters)
Work, reimagined: Detroit gets creative
For nearly a decade, Gloria Lowe was a final-line inspector for Ford Motor Company, checking new Mustangs as they rolled off an assembly line in Dearborn, Mich. She worked at the River Rouge Complex, a hulking, mile-long structure that, back in the 1930s, employed as many as 100,000 people.
By the time Gloria started working there, just a fraction of the workers remained. (Since the year 2000, metropolitan Detroit has lost about 200,000 manufacturing jobs, despite experiencing a slight gain since 2009.)
Then one day, in 1999, Gloria was on her way back into the plant after parking yet another Mustang when an automated, two-thousand pound metal door came loose and crashed down on her head. She was diagnosed with left-side nerve damage from the top of her brain down through her feet, and later, with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.
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“What image do you have in your mind about Detroit? Do you see only empty lots and abandoned buildings, and trash all over the place? Or do you see the empty lots as we who live there see them – as opportunities?"
“I was told by my doctors that I would never work again. I was only 50 years old. I didn’t know what it meant not to work,” Gloria recalls.
She was able to find a part-time job at a law firm, helping military veterans apply for aid and benefits. During those consultations, she listened to the stories of dozens of veterans, most of them men, who “were lost and didn’t know what to do,” says Gloria.
So she started asking herself what she could do to help. Over and over, Gloria asked them, “What kinds of skills do you have?” More often than not, they’d tell her they used to be carpenters in their former lives, or woodworkers, roofers, plumbers, electricians.
When she heard this, Gloria began looking at Detroit with new eyes. These men, she thought, were like the more than 33,000 vacant, sometimes blighted, homes in her city. They have good foundations; they just needed some fixing up. And maybe they could help each other.
And so began We Want Green Too, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to “re-educate, re-train, and re-build a 21st century, sustainable Detroit.” Gloria is working to assemble various teams with all the basic skills to make crumbling homes liveable: dry walling, painting, floor repair, and so on.
In addition to veterans, she’s finding craftsmen among former prison inmates, recovering addicts, and other un- or underemployed Detroiters.
“You have people who are challenged, they don’t have jobs. Why not make their jobs re-structuring their own communities?” says Gloria.
Hey, it’s not over'
We Want Green Too is just one of many ways that Detroiters are working to take their city’s future into their own hands – to create livelihoods more sustainable than those that have disappeared. As Gloria continues to work on the housing end, her friends and neighbors are busy growing a local, sustainable food system (there are now over 1,600 farms and gardens in Detroit, producing over three tons of food annually, nurturing a new education paradigm, and creating social enterprises that build community and capital).
When pieced together, these projects aren’t merely aimed at figuring out ways for people to make a living; they’re about neighbors helping neighbors to build new lives. The city is becoming a place, in certain pockets, where citizenship isn’t defined by voting and paying taxes. It’s thought of more broadly – creative collaboration to create new ways of living out of necessity.
Nearly seven years ago, Brother Ray Stadmeyer, a Capuchin monk, realized something had to change. He was working at a soup kitchen on the east side of Detroit. Over several years, he served thousands of meals and got to know hundreds of men and woman. And a lot of them were just stuck.
He remembers seeing his clients at the soup kitchen “go through treatment and come back real excited about their sobriety, or they’d come out of prison and be real excited about getting a new life, and there was no place for them. Our sense was that we had to counteract that.”
That idea became On the Rise, an east side Detroit bakery operated by a dozen men who have recently been released from prison or drug rehab programs. The bakers also live together in a house a half-mile from the bakery.
Sixty-two-year-old Edward Collins, a supervisor at On the Rise, was one of the original participants in the enterprise. He spent 30 years moving in and out of prison; while on the inside, learned how to bake. Today he trains the new hires. He wants to show them, he says, “that a person can be incarcerated, and can be old, and also be on the bottom of the barrel and be able to bounce back.... Hey, it’s not over.”
The formerly incarcerated, the homeless, the unemployed, the young, the recovering addicts, these are segments of society often deemed burdens, or hopeless, or victims. But looked at in a different way, many of these people also have the potential to be assets to their communities, with the ability, experience, and time to directly impact their neighborhoods in meaningful ways.
On the Rise isn’t an anomaly. The bakery was hatched by one of several organizations that see themselves not as charities, but as regenerative and sustainable incubators of ideas and human capital. The Sunday Dinner Company and Cornerstone Bistro – and more recently, COLORS-Detroit – have programs similar to On the Rise, training homeless and unemployed Detroiters to become waiters, cooks, bartenders, and bakers.
And, of course, beyond the institutional projects, countless individuals, like Gloria Lowe, are figuring out ways for Detroiters to re-think their role in their city.
Take Carlos Nielbock, for example. He was born in 1959 to a German mother and an African-American GI father in Celle, Germany. Trained in Germany’s guild system as an architectural, ornamental metal worker, Mr. Nielbock came to Detroit in 1984 to find his father and immediately fell in love with the city.
Today he builds ornate and beautiful, fences, gazebos, bike racks, and windmills. He’s teaching an apprentice, 23-year-old Sharay Kodihem, who never imagined spending his days as a metal worker.
Formerly into, as he puts it, “gang-bangin’ and all that,” Mr. Sharay met Carlos through his cousin; he’s since fallen in love with metal work, and has been welding, grinding, and riveting ever since. Sharay told me that he tries to talk to his friends about what he’s doing, but they’re just not interested. ”When I tell ‘em it sounds like it’s going in one ear out the other. They think selling drugs is the way to go and there’s more than that out here.”
Seeing opportunity in a new Detroit
The founders of the Boggs Educational Center – a Detroit school set to open its doors next fall – understand where Sharay Kodihem’s friends are coming from. They understand Detroit’s education issues run much deeper than budget deficits and the debate between public and charter schools.
“Today we need to combine learning with work, political struggle, community service, and even play.” Those words, painted across the center of a mural on the back of an empty building in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, come from the school’s namesake, 96-year-old philosopher, writer, and activist Grace Lee Boggs.
Two years ago (in the pages of YES! Magazine), Julia Putnam, who will be the Boggs Educational Center’s first principal, wrote of the new school: “We will provide a response to Grace’s observation that ‘the reason why so many young people drop out from inner-city schools is because they are voting with their feet against an educational system that sorts, tracks, tests, and rejects or certifies them like products of a factory. They are crying out for another kind of education that gives them opportunities to exercise their creative energies because it values them as whole human beings.’”
Julia and her partners want to convey to their students that they don't have to wait until they’re older to contribute to society.
“You can do it right now, at six, at eight, at 10, at 12, whatever. I think kids are way more impressive and way more cool, and way more fun to be around, when they feel of use,” she told me.
The big difference between most other schools and the Boggs Educational paradigm is that theirs is not a standards-based education model. Their objective isn’t necessarily to prepare students for the global workforce. It’s much deeper, and likely more practical.
“I wouldn't say that I'm not worried about jobs in that I don't think people need them, and need to make a living. I certainly want every student that we have in our school to be a success. But for some students that means starting a plumbing business. It doesn't mean being a lawyer or doctor or engineer. It means doing something very specific, very local,” Julia said.
Speaking at a recent panel, Boggs asked her audience, “What image do you have in your mind about Detroit? Do you see only empty lots and abandoned buildings, and trash all over the place? Or do you see the empty lots as we who live there see them – as opportunities? To grow food for the community, to become more self-reliant, to begin anew, to bring the neighbor back into the ‘hood?”
And therein lies the possible future for Detroit, a place where people are undergoing, slowly but deliberately, a revolution of values: reimagining the meanings of work, of wealth, of community. It’s cultural evolution – or, as Boggs titles it in her most recent book, the next American revolution.
• Zak Rosen wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Zak is an independent public radio producer. This story was based on his recent documentary, Work in Progress. You can listen to it here.
• This article originally appeared in YES! Magazine.
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IN PICTURES: Detroit retooled
Lisa Trainer (on right, with a friend), a wildlife documentary maker from Dundee, Scotland, has captured the remarkable tale of 'Lady' the osprey on film, in an effort to raise greater awareness of the bird-of-prey's re-emergence in Scotland. (Courtesy of Lisa Trainer)
Lisa Trainer films the remarkable return of the 'Lady of the Loch'
They call her "Lady of the Loch."
For 21 years, she has been coming to the Loch of Lowes Nature Reserve near Dunkeld in Perthshire, Scotland. But recent times have seen doubt cast over whether or not this osprey afforded near-regal status – credited as the country's oldest and considered a savior of the species in the north of Britain – could go on much longer.
It is a story that has already garnered national media attention. Now Lisa Trainer, a wildlife documentary masters degree graduate from Dundee, Scotland, has captured the remarkable tale on film, bidding to raise greater awareness of the bird-of-prey's re-emergence in her home country.
IN PICTURES: Endangered animals
Ms. Trainer, who studied at Salford University in Manchester, England, hopes to propagate not only Lady's back-from-the-brink-of-death story but also Scotland's reputation for being a wildlife haven.
"Lady the osprey had less than a 20 percent chance of returning for her 21st consecutive year to Loch of the Lowes at Dunkeld. But I like a challenge and I knew that if she did make it back then it would be very emotive," explains Trainer, who took inspiration from a meeting with Sir David Attenborough, the man regarded as Britain's best-known natural history filmmaker.
"Her story writes itself and has a natural sense of drama and many questions to be answered," Trainer says. "Will she return? Can she still breed? Will she survive to make a return flight? There's more mystery surrounding Lady's journey, too, since she's not tagged – no-one really knows where she goes each year.
"She has a distinctive mark in her eye, like a lightning bolt, which reveals that it is the same bird returning each year. Thanks to the webcam on the nest you can get a good look at her eye. Scottish Wildlife Trust bloggers have named her Lady and her new partner – who is her third and whom she first mated with in 2010 – have named him Laird."
The 27-year-old osprey returned to Dunkeld last year from her winter retreat in Africa after surviving a mystery illness in 2010. During the course of her visits to the area, she has produced 49 chicks, doing "more than most," Ms. Trainer says, to lift Scotland's once-faltering osprey population.
Hopes are now high Lady will make an incredible 22nd visit this year – despite the eggs she laid last year failing to produce a chick.
"She's defied predictions so far, and there's no reason why she can't continue her reputation as Britain's oldest breeding osprey," Trainer explains. "The osprey is a species that was once persecuted to extinction in Britain. But Lady's contribution alone has played a significant part in boosting their numbers north of the border."
Trainer, now volunteering with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, made the short film, titled "Lady of the Loch," as part of her masters course. She spent five months traveling between her apartment in Dundee and the Loch of Lewes in order to complete it.
The location posed only minor challenges to filming, she notes, while the enlistment of a local micro-light aircraft pilot enabled the type of atmospheric aerial shooting evident in the documentary.
However, the fact the chances of Lady returning at all were so low meant even pitching the idea to her professors – there were no signs of the osprey beforehand – was an idea fraught with an element of risk.
"Just the simple fact she came back was worthy of a short film," adds the former journalist, "and I hoped it would raise awareness of how amazing these raptors are."
To view the documentary visit: http://vimeo.com/33233531.
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Henry Red Cloud directs the work of Lakota Solar Enterprises, his American Indian-owned and operated business dedicated to providing renewable energy to some of the poorest communities in the United States. (Photo by Dan Bihn)
Henry Red Cloud: a solar warrior for native America
Henry Red Cloud’s address is 1001 Solar Warrior Road on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. But the road sign hasn’t arrived. A windmill towering over the cottonwoods in the draw of White Clay Creek marks the location of Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center and his “Solar Warrior Community.”
It consists of a mud-and-straw-bale roundhouse for trainings, a whimsically painted Quonset hut factory for assembling solar air heaters, an array of solar panels from Germany, a horse trailer that doubles as a paper recycling center for making insulation, a vegetable garden, and a new concrete foundation for what will become a 20-person dormitory.
Here Red Cloud directs the work of Lakota Solar Enterprises, his American Indian-owned and operated business dedicated to providing renewable energy to some of the poorest communities in the United States.
IN PICTURES: Harnessing the sun's energy
The business has been part of a journey home for the 52-year-old Oglala Lakota man. He left the reservation to join the civil rights movement in the 1970s, then found himself working construction, walking high steel in cities around the country.
But when he returned home, he faced the reality of few jobs and little housing. He crafted teepees and took volunteer training from Trees, Water & People, which later became his partner organization.
One night, trying to sleep in the back seat of his car, Red Cloud had the vision for Lakota Solar: training people right on the reservation to build and install solar heaters so they could study at home and support the extended family, or tiospaye. Later, he added a buffalo-ranching cooperative to the enterprise.
“The house, the buffalo, renewable energy: I’m not into it to become a millionaire,” Red Cloud says. “I’m just here passing it on to the next generation like the grandfathers did for us. That way surely their prophecy is going to be realized.”
Red Cloud’s 16-month-old granddaughter is the seventh generation descended from Makhpiya Luta, or Chief Red Cloud, who negotiated the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which left 60 million acres of buffalo hunting grounds to the Great Sioux Nation – until Congress later whittled it into smaller reservation parcels.
“Our ancestors made a treaty with the US government,” Red Cloud recounts. But they also made “a pact with the Creator for seven generations” – hearkening to a well-known prophecy that they would suffer if they did not provide for their descendants’ future prosperity.
Red Cloud was raised by his grandparents. “You can get an education and you can live a comfortable life,” he remembers his grandfather saying, “but if you want to have a really good life, create some work for other people.”
To date, the Red Cloud Center has trained 84 people, most of whom have secured jobs based on the experience – a striking accomplishment given the staggering unemployment across Indian country.
Lakota Solar Enterprises has built and installed more than 1,200 small-scale individual solar heating systems. The heaters save low-income homeowners up to 30 percent on utility bills that, over the course of a freezing Northern Plains winter, can add up to more than $1,000.
The systems are Red Cloud’s own innovation: For two years, he fiddled with a 1970s design to come up with the $2,500 unit his business produces today.
“We’re using 21st century material and tweaking it Lakota-style,” he says.
Recently, Red Cloud has engaged 24 Northern Plains tribes as partners. The tribes have been spending millions of dollars of federal funding to assist tribal members with energy costs, such as propane. Now they can use some of the money for energy efficiency and to send tribal members to Red Cloud’s renewable energy courses.
Red Cloud also has contracts to install wind turbines and solar arrays atop public health clinics on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations. He hopes the projects will help topple what he considers to be a wall of skepticism about green building techniques – the legacy of failed development projects on the reservations.
“We are just getting back to the memory of the old way and becoming sustainable again,” Red Cloud says. “We have always had our Sun Dance ceremonies. We’re warriors doing our warriors’ deed in the 21st century for the seventh generation.”
IN PICTURES: Harnessing the sun's energy
• Talli Nauman wrote this article for The YES! Breakthrough 15, the Winter 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Talli is co-founder and co-director of the Aguascalientes, Mexico-based bilingual independent media project Periodismo para Elevar la Conciencia Ecológica, PECE (Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness), initiated with a MacArthur grant in 1994.
* This article first appeared in YES! Magazine.
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A farmer stands over a pile of maize (corn) cobs near Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Maize is a major crop in this Southern Africa country. While termites can be a pest in maize fields, the insects are used to enhance the soil for many African crops, such as bananas and other fruits and vegetables. (Mackson Wasamunu/Reuters/File)
In Africa, using ants and termites to increase crop yields
With around 1 billion hungry people globally, finding a way to improve crop production remains a challenge.
This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa faces an extraordinary soil fertility crisis, which decreases crop yield and contributes to food shortages. Local farmers report that they can no longer maintain soil fertility and that harvests are declining 15–25 percent a year. Most farmers expect that within the next five years their harvests will drop by half, and some villages are already dependent on food aid.
One way that farmers are working to increase crop yield, however, is through the use of termites and ants.
IN PHOTOS: Food security in Africa
Recent research conducted by scientists at the University of Sydney reveals that ants could also help farmers increase crop yields. The findings show that termites and ants improve soil fertility in drylands by digging tunnels that allow plants greater access to water.
The research also found that termites provide plants additional nutrients because they increase the amount of nitrogen contained in soil. This is done through nitrogen-heavy bacteria in their stomachs, which allows them to transmit nitrogen into soil through their saliva and feces.
Land that was treated with ants and termites showed a 36 percent increase in the amount of wheat produced. This research gives new scientific insight into how using termites and ants effectively reduces water waste while improving crop yield.
Using termites to improve crop production is widely practiced in Africa. Africa is home to more than 660 species of termites, and while many of them destroy crops, especially exotic crops like maize and sugarcane, farmers in Africa have found innovative ways to integrate termites into their farming systems.
In many parts of West Africa farmers place wood on soil in order to attract termites to the soil. In Burkina Faso, farmers bury manure in holes near newly planted grains in hopes that the manure will attract termites to their soil.
In other parts of Africa farmers are trying similar techniques to use termites as a natural fertilizer. In Malawi, farmers plant bananas next to termite mounds. Similarly, in Uganda, Niger, and Zimbabwe, farmers plant a variety of fruits and vegetables on top of termite nests, while farmers in southern Zambia take soil from termite nests and use it as top soil for their land.
By integrating termites and ants into their agricultural systems, farmers who depend on agriculture for their income and diet are developing low-cost sustainable practices that strengthen crop production while maximizing resources.
• Graham Salinger is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.
• To purchase "State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet" please click HERE. And to watch the one-minute book trailer, click HERE.
• This article originally appeared at Nourishing the Planet, published by the Worldwatch Institute.
• Sign-up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
Architect Jason F. McLennan is designing 'living buildings' that consume as few resources as possible while still being beautiful and functional. (Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine)
Jason F. McLennan brings buildings to life
Against the century-old church next door, the modest, modern building that houses the science lab of Seattle’s private Bertschi School could seem out of place. Its metal roof glints in the daylight, a surrounding garden of native grasses rustles in the breeze, and in-ground windows offer a view of the water that flows beneath.
Jason F. McLennan remembers when the owners cut the ribbon on this 1,400-square-foot addition.
Then, he recalls, the children started chanting. Not “Bertschi!” but “Liv-ing build-ing! Liv-ing build-ing!” Those elementary-schoolers knew what stood before them – a structure built to have minimal environmental impact, to exist in an almost symbiotic relationship with its surroundings, operating more like an ecosystem, less like a consumer.
McLennan has led the charge on this approach to building design and in 2006 kicked off the Living Building Challenge, a call to architects to take “green” a giant step forward.
IN PICTURES: Moshe Safdie: Architecture designed for dignity
And in winter 2011, children cheered an architectural feat. “It was humbling,” McLennan says, months later, gazing at the Bertschi building on an unseasonably cool summer morning.
The man who has been called a “change agent” in the world of sustainable architecture is in fact a humble one. Immersed in an expensive profession, promoting a cause that some might call trendy, McLennan is direct and decisive, a down-to-earth neighbor who can talk composting toilets or philosophy.
His gentle demeanor masks a hotshot in his field. McLennan, chief executive of the Cascadia Green Building Council and of the more recently formed International Living Future Institute (ILFI), wants to revamp the concept of “green,” which, he points out, still involves the consumption of nonrenewable resources – just fewer of them.
To be certified “living,” a building (or a park, or a street, or a remodel) must meet criteria within seven categories: site, water, energy, health, materials, equity, and beauty. “Health” includes attention to air quality, for example, while “equity” considers issues such as fair trade.
Three projects, in such disparate places as Hawaii, Missouri, and New York, have achieved living status, while about 100 others, including Bertschi, are in various stages of certification; ILFI aims to have living buildings in all 50 states, each Canadian province, and every country in the world.
A transformation to living buildings won’t happen overnight, McLennan said, but it’s a start.
“Each building, each project creates a ripple effect around it. It changes the way people think. When there are enough of these examples, then a sudden and large-scale shift will be possible. We can’t control the timing of major shifts in civilization, but we can increase the likelihood that a shift will occur.”
A lifelong learner
McLennan, now 38, grew up in the factory city of Sudbury, Ontario, where he planted trees as part of a community effort to clean up industrial areas. Then McLennan saw the city redeveloped into commercial sprawl; bulldozers leveled some of the very areas he and his fellow community members had worked to restore. It spurred McLennan – who as a child sketched houses, castles, and ships before progressing to drafting classes – to chart a career in architecture.
He attended the University of Oregon, which had a reputation for its progressive program, then joined the Kansas City-based firm of BNIM Architects. As he expanded his knowledge of and experience in green building, he began pushing the concept even further.
McLennan’s boss at BNIM, Bob Berkebile, said the young Oregon graduate joined a team designing a green-building prototype at Montana State University. McLennan, Berkebile said, not only put in long hours on the project but sometimes stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m. peppering him with questions and engaging in broader discussions about life.
“Our talks were about trying to understand the world, trying to develop a strategy for changing the outcome of the human experiment,” Berkebile said. “Jason was then and is now a lifelong learner.”
McLennan went on to become the youngest principal at the firm and grew increasingly focused on expanding the concept of green building, incorporating the biomimicry ideas of Janine Benyus – who advocates replicating natural systems – along with the architectural strategies of Berkebile and other architects.
Push beyond LEED certification – the existing gold-standard for environmental building – McLennan determined, to a design approach that doesn’t just take less but gives back.
“He’s clearly driven by an internal fire that is unique. If I had a chance to clone him, I would be all about doing it,” Berkebile said. “He is a nexus of a lot of important things in human history – the right person for the right time.”
Building as teachable moment
The Bertschi School spreads over a city block, incorporating an old church, vintage homes, and an LEED-certified academic and performance space. Around the time board members and administrators began discussing plans for the science wing, a couple of young architects attended a conference where McLennan gave a speech about living buildings.
The two, Chris Hellstern and Stacy Smedley, approached McLennan afterward and pledged to complete a living building within a year. They eventually connected with Bertschi’s administration and began designing the science wing. Hellstern and Smedley donated their fees; Bertschi students provided input on some of the features.
LEED and other green-building strategies had long appealed to Hellstern, but, he said, until he heard McLennan speak, he wasn’t sure how to do more.
“Jason … really helped to illuminate a path to being a part of something greater than LEED work,” said Hellstern, whose firm, KMD Architects, helped form the Restorative Design Collective. That organization of architects has convinced some manufacturers to offer or switch to healthier, more environmentally friendly products. KMD is rewriting specifications to eliminate toxic materials from its projects.
The permeable concrete on the walkway, the solar panels on the roof, the indoor wall of plants for treating gray water, the structural insulated panels in the lab – every item in Bertschi’s new addition was chosen to meet living building standards and to help the students learn about natural resources. Three times a month, Bertschi administrators lead tours of the buildings – not just for prospective students, but for teachers and students from other schools, and, of course, architects.
The most popular feature on opening day– this is, remember, a school – was the composting toilet.
“We had a line out the door,” said Stan Richardson, Bertschi’s director of technology and campus planning. The longest segment of any tour, Richardson added, is the discussion in the bathroom.
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McLennan sees it as simply one element of the larger picture. Living buildings must consume as few resources as possible, and what they produce should be reused, be it water that would otherwise go down the drain or human waste that would be flushed into the sewer. Natural systems reuse and regenerate.
“This project exemplifies integration,” McLennan explains. “In most buildings, the systems are the backdrop. There is no system in this building that is not a teachable moment. They all matter, and they all have something to offer.”
Less bad is not good enough
The living-building philosophy stretches the green-building concept, which, McLennan points out, still relies on using fossil fuels, unhealthy building materials, and the labor of people who are treated unfairly. Moving toward a living building process, then, is about more than just construction; it’s about a fundamental shift in attitudes, culture, and economics.
But while it is easy to push living building among architects and environmentally conscious communities, McLennan acknowledges the obstacles, particularly the political ones, in society at large. Not to mention the additional, upfront costs of living-building materials, or the difficulties in finding the appropriate local sources – though he hastens to point out that the long-term savings, such as in utility costs and the broader conservation of resources, make up for that. Fighting climate change, habitat loss, pervasive toxins, and social injustice, he believes, are worth the undertaking.
“You can’t help but feel a great deal of despair and a great deal of concern for humanity and other species. But if you’re really paying attention, you can’t help but be made optimistic by some of the intelligent work all around the world,” he said. “Complex human beings can be optimistic and hit with despair at the same time. You have to sit with your pain and be smiling.”
McLennan and his wife, Tracy, try to adapt the principles of living buildings into raising a family of four children – “living” as lifestyle, if you will. They shop consignment, choose minimal packaging, participate in a CSA.
His briefcase is worn and scuffed – a look that, in a child’s stuffed animal, would be called “loved.” He drives a Prius, but because he lives on Bainbridge Island, Wash., he can walk to the ferry and ride the bus around Seattle. He lives in a 1970s house, which he improves, as finances allow, to living-building standards.
But McLennan is no environmental saint. Although he does as much as he can via email and by phone, he flies to presentations of his work – sometimes that’s the only effective way to get the word out, he says.
“I’m not perfect,” he explains, nor is the living-building movement asking people to be. What it does instead, he says, is urge people to change.
“The world of green building is a world that is a little less bad, but that’s no longer adequate,” McLennan explains. “All planetary systems are in decline. It’s time to examine the whole paradigm. It’s no longer good enough to be a little less bad. We have to be a lot more restorative.
“That’s why we have to get to work. You have to persevere.”
IN PICTURES: Moshe Safdie: Architecture designed for dignity
• Kim Eckart wrote this article for The YES! Breakthrough 15, the Winter 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Kim is a Seattle-based writer.
• This article originally appeared online at YES! Magazine.
• Sign-up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
A tourist cools off on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a sweltering heatwave in Washington in 2010. Filing reusable bottles with tap water instead of buying bottled water could keep nearly 1 million tons of bottles out of landfills, as well as save money. (Larry Downing/Reuters/File)
12 simple ways to go green in 2012
As we head into 2012, many of us will be resolving to lose those few extra pounds, save more money, or spend a few more hours with our families and friends.
But there are also some resolutions we can make to make our lives a little greener. Each of us, especially in the United States, can make a commitment to reducing our environmental impacts.
The United Nations has designated 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. Broadening access to sustainable energy is essential to solving many of the world’s challenges, including food production, security, and poverty.
Hunger, poverty, and climate change are issues that we can all help address. Here are 12 simple steps to go green in 2012:
(1) Recycle
Recycling programs exist in cities and towns across the United States, helping to save energy and protect the environment. In 2009, San Francisco became the first US city to require all homes and businesses to use recycling and composting collection programs. As a result, more than 75 percent of all material collected is being recycled, diverting 1.6 million tons from the landfills annually – double the weight of the Golden Gate Bridge. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, for each pound of aluminum recovered, Americans save the energy resources necessary to generate roughly 7.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity – enough to power a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years!
What you can do:
- Put a separate container next to your trash can or printer, making it easier to recycle your bottles, cans, and paper.
(2) Turn off the lights
On the last Saturday in March – March 31 in 2012 – hundreds of people, businesses, and governments around the world turn off their lights for an hour as part of Earth Hour, a movement to address climate change.
What you can do:
- Earth Hour happens only once a year, but you can make an impact every day by turning off lights during bright daylight or whenever you will be away for an extended period of time.
(3) Make the switch
In 2007, Australia became the first country to “ban the bulb,” drastically reducing domestic usage of incandescent light bulbs. By late 2010, incandescent bulbs had been totally phased out, and, according to the country’s environment minister, this simple move has made a big difference, cutting an estimated 4 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012. China also recently pledged to replace the 1 billion incandescent bulbs used in its government offices with more energy-efficient models within five years.
What you can do:
- A bill in Congress to eliminate incandescent in the United States failed in 2011, but you can still make the switch at home. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use only 20 to 30 percent of the energy required by incandescents to create the same amount of light, and LEDs use only 10 percent, helping reduce both electric bills and carbon emissions.
(4) Turn on the tap
The bottled water industry sold 8.8 billion gallons of water in 2010, generating nearly $11 billion in profits. Yet plastic water bottles create huge environmental problems. The energy required to produce and transport these bottles could fuel an estimated 1.5 million cars for a year, yet approximately 75 percent of water bottles are not recycled – they end up in landfills, litter roadsides, and pollute waterways and oceans. And while public tap water is subject to strict safety regulations, the bottled water industry is not required to report testing results for its products. According to a study, 10 of the most popular brands of bottled water contain a wide range of pollutants, including pharmaceuticals, fertilizer residue, and arsenic.
What you can do:
- Fill up your glasses and reusable water bottles with water from the sink. The United States has more than 160,000 public water systems, and by eliminating bottled water you can help to keep nearly 1 million tons of bottles out of the landfill, as well as save money on water costs.
(5) Turn down the heat
The US Department of Energy estimates that consumers can save up to 15 percent on heating and cooling bills just by adjusting their thermostats. Turning down the heat by 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit for eight hours can result in savings of 5–15 percent on your home heating bill.
What you can do:
- Turn down your thermostat when you leave for work or use a programmable thermostat to control your heating settings.
(6) Support food recovery programs
Each year, roughly a third of all food produced for human consumption – approximately 1.3 billion tons – gets lost or wasted, including 34 million tons in the United States, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Grocery stores, bakeries, and other food providers throw away tons of food daily that is perfectly edible but is cosmetically imperfect or has passed its expiration date. In response, food recovery programs run by homeless shelters or food banks collect this food and use it to provide meals for the hungry, helping to divert food away from landfills and into the bellies of people who need it most.
What you can do:
- Encourage your local restaurants and grocery stores to partner with food-rescue organizations like City Harvest in New York City or Second Harvest Heartland in Minnesota.
- Go through your cabinets and shelves and donate any nonperishable canned and dried foods that you won’t be using to your nearest food bank or shelter.
(7) Buy local
“Small Business Saturday,” falling between “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” was established in 2010 as a way to support small businesses during the busiest shopping time of the year. Author and consumer advocate Michael Shuman argues that local small businesses are more sustainable because they are often more accountable for their actions, have smaller environmental footprints, and innovate to meet local conditions – providing models for others to learn from.
What you can do:
- Instead of relying exclusively on large supermarkets, consider farmers markets and local farms for your produce, eggs, dairy, and meat. Food from these sources is usually fresher and more flavorful, and your money will be going directly to these food producers.
(8) Get out and ride
We all know that carpooling and using public transportation helps cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as our gas bills. Now, cities across the country are investing in new mobility options that provide exercise and offer an alternative to being cramped in subways or buses. Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. have major bike-sharing programs that allow people to rent bikes for short-term use. Similar programs exist in other cities, and more are planned for places from Miami to Madison, Wisc.
What you can do:
- If available, use your city’s bike-share program to run short errands or commute to work. Memberships are generally inexpensive (only $75 for the year in Washington, D.C.), and by eliminating transportation costs, as well as a gym membership, you can save quite a bit of money!
- Even if without bike-share programs, many cities and towns are incorporating bike lanes and trails, making it easier and safer to use your bike for transportation and recreation.
(9) Share a car
Car-sharing programs spread from Europe to the United States nearly 13 years ago and are increasingly popular, with US membership jumping 117 percent between 2007 and 2009. According to the University of California Transportation Center, each shared car replaces 15 personally owned vehicles, and roughly 80 percent of more than 6,000 car-sharing households surveyed across North America got rid of their cars after joining a sharing service. In 2009, car-sharing was credited with reducing US carbon emissions by more than 482,000 tons. Innovative programs such as Chicago’s I-GO are even introducing solar-powered cars to their fleets, making the impact of these programs even more eco-friendly.
What you can do:
-
Join a car-share program! As of July 2011, there were 26 such programs in the US, with more than 560,000 people sharing over 10,000 vehicles. Even if you don’t want to get rid of your own car, using a shared car when traveling in a city can greatly reduce the challenges of finding parking (car-share programs have their own designated spots), as well as your environmental impact as you run errands or commute to work.
(10) Plant a garden
Whether you live in a studio loft or a suburban McMansion, growing your own vegetables is a simple way to bring fresh and nutritious food literally to your doorstep. Researchers at the FAO and the United Nations Development Programme estimate that 200 million city dwellers around the world are already growing and selling their own food, feeding some 800 million of their neighbors. Growing a garden doesn’t have to take up a lot of space, and in light of high food prices and recent food safety scares, even a small plot can make a big impact on your diet and wallet.
What you can do:
- Plant some lettuce in a window box. Lettuce seeds are cheap and easy to find, and when planted in full sun, one window box can provide enough to make several salads worth throughout a season.
(11) Compost
And what better way to fertilize your garden than using your own composted organic waste. You will not only reduce costs by buying less fertilizer, but you will also help to cut down on food and other organic waste.
What you can do:
- If you are unsure about the right ways to compost, websites such as HowToCompost.org and organizations such as the US Composting Council, provide easy steps to reuse your organic waste.
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(12) Reduce your meat consumption
Livestock production accounts for about 18 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for about 23 percent of all global water used in agriculture. Yet global meat production has experienced a 20 percent growth rate since 2000 to meet the per capita increase of meat consumption of about 42 kilograms (93 lbs.).
What you can do:
- You don’t have to become a vegetarian or vegan, but by simply cutting down on the amount of meat you consume can go a long way. Consider substituting one meal day with a vegetarian option. And if you are unable to think of how to substitute your meat-heavy diet, websites such as Meatless Monday and Eating Well offer numerous vegetarian recipes that are healthy for you and the environment.
The most successful and lasting New Year’s resolutions are those that are practiced regularly and have an important goal. Watching the ball drop in Times Square happens only once a year, but for more and more people across the world, the impacts of hunger, poverty, and climate change are felt every day. Thankfully, simple practices, such as recycling or riding a bike, can have great impact. As we prepare to ring in the new year, let’s all resolve to make 2012 a healthier, happier, and greener year for all.
• This article originally appeared at Nourishing the Planet, published by the Worldwatch Institute.
• Sign-up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
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