Elisa's Green Scene

It's five minutes to midnight: do you know where your vote is?

This isn't a political blog by any stretch, but I think it's worth pointing out that if you care about things like the environment and social responsibility, then you might care to vote for people who care about the same things you care about. And you might care to vote with your pocketbook by spending money with companies that care about what you care abut too.

What brings this to mid of late is the fact that the board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the hands on the "Doomsday Clock" from seven minutes to midnight to five minutes to midnight. You can read a lengthy interesting post on this Doomsday Clock over at Petri Dish.

Of particular note with this time change? This time it was spurred not by concerns over  nuclear war, but rather by phenomena like global warming.

I urge you to read the post for its many links about the Doomsday Clock and for its commentary. It's a good read.

And again: whether it's your political or economic vote you rely on to send a message, now might be a good time to pull the levers!

Hat tip: BlogHer

May I bore you with a couple more wedding sites?

Wedding Site #1:

So, I blogged about a month ago about a new magazine coming out, entitled Portovert. It's targeted to those who want a green wedding. Like moi. Their first issue has been released, and their site has been pumped up, so I checked it out this afternoon.

It's a pretty good site. There is some actual valuable content from the magazine online, such as this 5 Ways to Be Greener, which immediately pointed me in the direction of alternate places to register. The lack of hyperlinks is a little odd for a web site, but i find most traditional media sites fall down on the job of adequate external linking, don't you?

The most useful part of the site will clearly be the Responsible Resources section. these aren't huge long lists of resources yet, but I presume they intend to beef them up.

All in all, I will definitely turn to this site for various aspects of my hopefully-green wedding.

Wedding Site #2:

The Offbeat Bride is the site that accompanies a recently published book of the same name, and subtitled "Taffeta-free alternatives for  independent brides." Disclosure: Author Ariel Meadow Stallings is a BlogHer buddy...and most definitely one cool chick.

Favorite part of the site? I must confess it is the Wedding Porn category! How can you not like a category so named?

Check out Ariel's "trailer" for her book...

Random post: Elevator Etiquette

Yes, I completely agree: it's a little odd for me to come back from a week of radio silence with a post about elevator etiquette. But a couple of posts caught my eye, and I just had to share.

I've always been somewhat intrigued by elevator etiquette ever since a conversation over a decade ago with a friend of my then-boyfriend. She was studying for her doctorate in some sort of anthropological studies, and she pointed out that humans have a very particular way of relating in elevators that lets us manage the discomfort of such small, tight quarters.

For example: she said that if you really want to freak out an elevator full of people, get on the elevator and stay facing the back, instead of spinning around. This completely goes against the unspoken, but agreed-upon behavior we all engage in.

Via the simplehuman blog I found a pointer to an entire blog about elevator etiquette, called Elevator Rules. Among their "rules" I did indeed find "always stand facing the door."

It's a pretty funny site in general, particularly when snarky people comment, and other people don't grasp the sarcasm and get seriously bent out of shape. But I'm kind of snarky like that, which is why I find it hilarious.

Ethical Fashion becoming a trend to watch

More than just ethical fashion, there's apparently a "Vegan chic" trend...at least according to the NY Times in this article, Uncruel Beauty. The article contains a lot of great ideas and resources, although not hip & zen, which is a shame! In fact it's kind of annoying, considering that my guest post on Treehugger is the 3rd hit on a Google search on "vegan clothing."

Also, I must confess that the concept that recycled cashmere and wool are "vegan" is new to me. I mean, I totally get it that the recycled thing makes it eco-conscious and  better than buying new gear, but really...do you think it qualifies it as "vegan"? I don't think I can do that.

I did enjoy how the article mentioned that our only choices for vegan shoes used to be Payless Shoe Source. Totally true! I used to have a closet full of them. I was so glad when microfiber became fashionable!

I also recently got a press release sent my way from an online site/blog called Ethical Design Lab. Like this blog it is an offshoot of a marketer/distributor of ethical fashion items, called Discovered In or Tiptoe (I confess I'm a little confused about the whole structure of all these names.). Whatever the structure, seems like perhaps hip & zen should check out some of these lines.

I'm digging the little green belt above, how about you?

What's Your Green One-Stop-Shop?

In a meeting today someone opined that there was no one-stop-shop online for green/eco-conscious interests...particularly wone with practical how-tos on going more green.

I proposed that Treehugger.com might be the closest thing, at least from a news and information point of view. And when checking the hip & zen blog roll it's clear there are tons of green shopping sites, some of which purport to be pretty comprehensive.

But for how-tos? Gotta agree. The site Let's Green This City tries to provide such guidance for San Francisco-ites (although their site's home page animation did something to crash my browser just now, so watch out!) But what else is out there?

Do you have any favorites? And would you consider those favorites to be real destination sites, like Epicurious is for food or Martha Stewart.com can be for homekeeping?

Apply to be Al?!

So, the Climate Project (aka the organization behind Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth) is going to train folks to be MiniMe's...taking Al's show on the road.

I should clarify that their site says that current training sessions are already filled up, but there's a link to where you can apply to be trained in future sessions. (Bear in mind: the site is all annoying and built with frames and Flash and everything else I hate, so consider yourself warned.)

Still, this would be the kind of thing I would love to do if this were 2004 when I was donating half of my time to political causes.

So, any Al Wanna-Bes out there? Did any of you apply to do this? Anyone have more information about it and what it entails? Inquiring minds want to know!

Another promising home delivery service

I've been using OrganicExpress for some months now. Every other week they deliver a box of organic produce and another box of organic grocery products to my door.

The Pros are easy: convenience, pretty good quality, and just the general way it supports eating more organic food by nudging and prompting me to choose organic, even for non-produce items like
oatmeal, cereal, spaghetti sauce, pasta, jam, juice etc.

The Con is obvious: it's not cheap. Not only because there is always some element of "mouse-finger bigger than my stomach" happening, where I order more produce than we end up using. This always happens, but in this case it is happening on more expensive items. And we're talking a premium even over Whole Foods prices. So, the question is: do I believe my time (and not having to spend it dealing with Whole Foods) is more valuable than this price delta? I guess so far I do.

Now, here's another tempting service, although justifying this one would be waaaay harder to do.

Three Potato Four cooks and delivers a week's worth of meals to your door every week. Four vegetarian entrees, two side       dishes, soup, salad, dessert, bread and fresh flowers are included, using local and seasonal organic produce.

For two people you can get all of the above for $185. Or you can get just the four entrees for $85.

It sounds dreamy. (Although i do ahve questions about whether they're capable of going vegan on all of the above...many of the items are marked vegan, but what abut the ones that aren't?)

See, this is where I would spend money if I were loaded. not sure i could ever imagine spending $600 on an Armani t-shirt, like the ones I see in magazine. But I so could spend this kind of money.

So, anyone out there tried a service like this?