Green travel ideas from two environmentally conscious travelers

Here’s a good question to wake you up - Is your God LEED certified? It’s a bit presumptuous and might earn you a whack on the head with a Bible, but there’s a good case for demanding that your House of Worship be certified green.

Let’s start with Park51, better known as the $100 million Cordoba House project in Manhattan two blocks from Ground Zero, which many people oppose. But two things happened recently, which virtually ensure the project will go through.

First, President Obama announced his support for the project. Secondly, it was reported that Park 51 would be the nation’s first LEED certified green mosque.

It gives the mosque a layer of protection against critics and serves as a model (in terms of construction and design) for new Houses of Worship that are being built.

The indirect environmental impact of a green-certified Church is much more than a green hotel or a green school or federal building, considering the Church’s influence and capacity to mold public opinion. 

According to the USGBC, there are only 15 LEED certified Churches in the US, as of April 2010. Many others have basic green initiatives in place, but haven’t gone in for a comprehensive green makeover or certification of any kind.

It does underline the point that there is no ‘holy green edict’ that Churches need to follow.

Related posts:-
White House Aiming for LEED Certification

Photo - Gryffindor

There’s an oil well leaking in the Gulf of Mexico, and the oil spill is threatening the marine environment of the Gulf Coast.

You might also have heard that tourists afraid of the oil spill are cancelling beach vacations in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Doesn’t have to be like this, though. You can still enjoy the white sandy beaches (they’re all oil free, as of now) and also volunteer to help clean up the spill while you’re there.

You can find volunteer opportunities by state here - www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/.  Click on the Volunteer info link under Claims/Volunteers in the menu.

As reported earlier, BP is providing oil spill cleanup training to thousands of paid workers and volunteers. If nothing else, the training you get would make it a learning vacation where you pick up a valuable skill while also enjoying the local attractions.

Instead of running scared from a teeny-tiny spot of oil and adding to the economic pain felt by the Gulf Coast, spend your tourism dollars on their pristine white beaches and help make sure they remain pristine.

Photo - Bonnie Woodson

Some of you might choke on your morning Starbucks when you read this, but its true - British Petroleum has created thousands of green jobs.

The twist is that these workers are being hired to clean up the mess BP itself created, when their oil rig exploded 50 miles offshore from Venice, Louisiana and toppled over into the Gulf.

The oil well is now leaking well over 5000 barrels a day into the Gulf and the resulting oil slick has reached the Louisiana coast.

If it continues to spread, Deepwater Horizon will end up as a marine environmental disaster bigger than Exxon-Valdez.

So BP, the state and federal governments have teamed up and are hiring and training thousands of people to help clean up the oil spill wherever it hits shore. They’ve hired over 1000 people in Venice alone. That was the twist - the green jobs BP is creating.

The cruelty in the twist is that most of those hired were fishermen. Emphasis on ‘were’ because the oil spill has put an end to the shrimp season, and the fishermen in and around Venice are now unemployed.

The same thing is happening in other states where the oil spill is likely to reach ashore. In Pensacola, Fla., a staffing company named Advanced Employment Solutions is hiring 300 to 500 workers for the cleanup - they’re offering $10 to $18 per hour, and the work will go on for between 3 to 18 months.

Workers applying for these jobs said they were interested not just because they needed the work but also because its for a good cause and they wanted to help.

The loss of life, damage to the economy and marine life is tragic. But if there is a silver lining here, it would be that BP might have unintentionally triggered off a revolution in green jobs.

They’re pumping in millions of dollars and training environmental cleanup crews by the thousands, and the effort will likely continue for most of this year.

It might just be enough to set in motion a cleanup industry that can sustain itself beyond this BP incident and thrive by tackling other zones in dire need of a cleanup.

Photo - public domain (source)

Related posts:-
The Sticky Green Residue of Travel

When you’re planning on poking around the Antarctic, everything is an extreme, including the carbon emissions and offsets, and the impact of waste, its treatment and disposal.

The National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) took a bunch of journalists to the US base station in Antarctica to give them a first-hand view of how things work.

The highlights of the insights they gained:-

Carbon emissions per person for a 2-week trip with travel from Washington DC to Christchurch, NZ and then to McMurdo Station, Antarctica and back = 25 tons (offsets required for 25 tons = 639 tree seedlings grown for 10 years)

Twenty countries run 40 year-round research stations in the Antarctic. Over 1000 staff stay at McMurdo Station in summer and a few hundred in winter.

Everyone is required to carry pee bottles while visiting senstive areas so as to leave no trace, and clean the bottles personally afterwards.

Raw sewage was dumped into coastal waters from 1957 until 2003. A sewage treatment plant was set up at McMurdo Station in 2003 for treating human waste and gray water.

Human waste from the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is buried in the ice sheet, which moves an average of 30 ft/year. Today’s human waste will eventually end up in the Southern Ocean. 

The research and gains for science have been invaluable, but then, so is the Antarctic. On balance, I’d prefer to believe the earth is flat and inhabitable, rather than letting scientists run-amok.

Water conservation by itself doesn’t make for an eco-friendly golf course. Ever wonder how many golf balls must be soaking at the bottoms in the water hazards in golf courses?

Hint - it takes between 100 to 1000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally, and around 300 million golf balls are lost each year in the US alone.

But now there’s a solution - EcoBioBall aka biodegradable golf balls. Not only do these balls dissolve when dunked into the water, but they’re also made of fish food. So every time you hit a ball into a water hazard, you have an excuse - you’re feeding the fish.

The concept behind Albus Golf’s EcoBioBall is neat and simple. Once it hits the water, the outer layer (made of recyclable plastic polymer) dissolves within 48 hours, releasing the fish-food inside.

Albert Buscato, CEO of Albus Golf, tells CNN that since it is a single-use ball, the cost will be considerably lower than the average golf ball and Buscato is confident this means the “goldfish-friendly” option will be a hit with buyers.

Of course, its going to be a while before something like this makes its way into championship golf. But it is good for practise, when you’re trying to get past the water hazards. It is also perfect for cruises, where you no longer need to be afraid of losing the ball or polluting the oceans.

More details here - www.albusgolf.com/

When the World Monuments Fund (WMF) announced its 2010 Watch list of endangered monuments, no one batted an eyelid. After all, monuments which are older than your great great grandpa are supposed to start cracking up.

But closer inspection reveals that 15 out of 93 monuments are actually from the 20th century.

Wiener Werkbundsiedlung - Vienna, Austria (1920s–1930s)
Sanatorium Joseph Lemaire - Overijse, Belgium (1937–1987)
New Gourna - Kurna, Egypt (1945)
Las Pozas - Xilitla, Mexico (1944)
Corozal Cemetery - Panama City, Panama (1914)
Tecton Buildings - Dudley Zoological Gardens, UK (1937)
Atlanta-Fulton Public Library - Atlanta, US (1980)
Miami Marine Stadium - Miami, US (1963)
Cultural Landscape - Hadley, US (1959)
Phillis Wheatley School - New Orleans, US (1954)
Taliesin - Spring Green, US (1911)
Taliesin West - Scotssdale, US (1937)
Merritt Parkway Bridges - Connecticut, US (1940)
Parque del Este - Caracas, Venezuela (1958)
Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Central University of Venezuela - Caracas, Venezuela (1950s)

These places are too new to be on the WMF endangered monuments list. Also note that 11 out of the 15 belong to the Americas and 7 - almost half, are in the US.

Photos public domain - Source (1, 2)

As re-reported by Bnet.com, Oklahoma has unveiled a series - seven, to be exact - of sustainable travel programs designed to meet the growing needs of consumers interested in sustainable and eco-friendly lodging and travel options. I found this article to be interesting on a number of fronts, including this statistic:

“…U.S. Travel Association research shows that 51 percent of consumers would continue to patronize sustainable travel service suppliers regardless of an economic downturn, and 48 percent said continued support of sustainable travel is a necessity.”

51% is an astonishingly high number to me, and it’s encouraging.

The article highlights the potential partnership between Oklahoma’s Colcord Hotel and Clean the World,   non-profit which provides third-world countries with “gently used” hygiene products like soap and shampoo from hotels around the world.

It appears as though a major push to increase recycling will be the first component of these sustainable travel programs. This is a good first step, and it will be interesting to see what the next steps will be. We’ll have to wait for feedback from the programs to determine how these efforts are being received and what new efforts will be made in the future.

Photo: Serge Melki

According to this article from Environmental Leader, Atlanta is in the process of constructing a sustainable, two-mile long racetrack for car and racing aficionados. It will be called the Atlanta Motorsports Park, and it will be (an incredibly expensive) private club - $100,000 to join. What’s attractive about this park, though, is that it will be very environmentally friendly, an idea which, in the past, has not necessarily go hand in hand with a racing track.

Check out the future park’s green attributes:

- waterless urinals

- tank-less water heaters

- using reclaimed water for all irrigation

- recycling all the garbage and oil

- high efficiency HVAC systems and lighting

- thermal resistant windows

It’s wonderful to see such an environmentally responsible project being built in an industry which is known for nasty emissions and waste products.  Hopefully this is the start of a new green trend in this arena.

The White House is going green, and we’re not talking about St. Patrick’s Day green. President Obama is aiming for LEED certification for the White House from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and president of USGBC, which has offered to help advise the White House on the process, told National Geographic that “LEED certification of the White House is absolutely possible and viable.”

However, Fedrizzi noted, it will not be easy because of the building’s historic status and the security required to protect the President and his family. 

The Obama greening effort will make changes in procurement, energy and water systems, and waste.

Next stop  - Congress. If President Obama manages to turn the White House green, it could shame the wastrels on Capitol Hill into making a greater effort towards conservation.

Photo: Public domain photo, work of the United States Federal Government, taken by Lawrence Jackson.

The Eco Ironman Jon Alexander (http://ecoironman.blogspot.com/) has taken on a Mission Impossible - he is competing in Challenge Barcelona’s Ironman-distance triathlon, and striving to keep his carbon footprint for the effort to near-zero.

The Challenge Barcelona triathlon on October 4, 2009 includes a 3.8km swim, a 180km bike, and a marathon (42.2km).

Jon Alexander went vegetarian a year ago, and says he feels he’s actually gained an edge and feels more ‘lean and mean.’

He wears shoes made of recycled fibre which are lighter than other sports shoes he used to wear - which again gives him an edge. And for the swim, he’ll be wearing an eco-friendly wetsuit made of limestone.

Why is he doing this? Well, one reason is that he’s raising money for the Wilderness Foundation. On his blog, Jon Alexander says that “it’s becoming increasingly about discovering and celebrating the inventiveness that some people and companies are showing in response to the global crises we find ourselves in. The idea to make bikes out of bamboo, and to use your company’s profits to help other people learn to do the same; the bravery to jump ship from a major TNC powerhouse and make shoes the way you believe they should be made… it’s really powerful stuff.”

Even more impressive  - it’s not not just about the triathlon, but it seems to have turned into a way of life. Instead of using a gym, he works out in the outdoors in Hyde Park, and he evens runs to work and back. He won’t take a plane. Instead, he travels by train. 

Jon hopes that his success at balancing competitive athletics with a green lifestyle will provide inspiration to others to do the same. He admits that ”I’m a pretty extreme example, but if I can fit in enough running, cycling and swimming in the London area’s wilder places to do an Ironman, and do a fairly full-on job at the same time, I think I’m hoping to provide some inspiration that anyone can get out and find their version.”

Photo from The Eco Ironman Blog