I spent this past weekend in the lovely city of Chicago at the Naturally Healthy Children’s Expo. I met lots of great, new (and some seasoned) green parents and, of course, adorable kids! We gave away lots of magazines and KIWI Care Packages. It was a great time. There are many reasons, like the NHCE, why the Windy City is our Pick of the Week.

• City Hall has a 20,300-square-foot rooftop garden.
• The city has 2.5 million-square-feet of green roofs planned or already in use.
• They host a Green Festival. Next year’s fest is in May!
• On the city’s website, has a Center for Green Technology that is set up to help business and home owners learn about green technology.
• Chicago’s Green City Market, the Windy City’s sustainable farmer’s market.
• Chicago’s architecture is getting a green makeover.
• They even have a guide for building green roofs!

Need we say more? Chicago is a great city, but when you add in their green initiatives, it really soars!
Chicago’s City Hall before the garden (pictured above).
Chicago’s City Hall after its great green makeover.

October is the beginning of fall and the time of ghouls, ghosts, and goblins. It is also “International I Walk to School Month.” In this month, 42 countries will participate in the month dedicated to walking to school– wow!

Why? The meaning of this month varies in each community. Some communities focus on the development of healthy habits, like the exercise walking to school allows. Other communities choose to focus on the environmental friendliness of walking to school.

Below is a list from www.iwalktoschool.org of activities to celebrate the wonderful act of walking to school.

Examples of Walk to School activities:

• Designate “Walking Wednesdays” to encourage walking one day a week and potentially extend the event to a month or a year-long activity
• Develop walking themes for each day of the week: bright, highly visible colors day, “walking hat” day, bring a healthy lunch day, etc.
• Set up a competition with awards for the classes with the most walkers
• Offer an option to students who ride the bus or carpool to walk once they arrive at school.
• Organize a walking school bus from nearby neighborhoods. For information on how, visit www.walkingschoolbus.org
• Plan a school-wide event to recognize the day such as a picnic, an assembly, an awards ceremony or a pizza party for the class with the most walkers
• Fill the month with activities throughout the day that pertain to staying physically fit, eating healthy and caring for the environment.

Check out their website for more information and how to get involved.

As a college graduate, I understand the stress of finding THE SCHOOL. It is tough to choose among hundreds of schools which one will suit your academic, housing and extracurricular needs. Now add in environmentally friendly to your already growing lists of “must-haves.”

It is a growing trend among high school seniors to make their school decisions based on their environmental leanings. But how do you know which school is green? How will you be able to tell if the campus is LEED certified? And which school recycles and which school has clean-up days? Does the campus hold regular eco lectures?

Now KIWI has the perfect resource for parents and students looking to broaden their academic, as well as their eco horizons. The KIWI Green College Report is a list of the 50 greenest colleges and universities in the United States. Also, there is no hierarchy (meaning there is no number 1 green school) to KIWI’s list, so each school is as eco-friendly as the next.

Also KIWI has featured each of the schools that signed American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. 300 Presidents of various colleges and universities signed this pledge stating their move toward to achieving carbon neutrality.

Interested? (Well, who wouldn’t be?) To download your free copy, please click here.

While we here at KIWI prefer canvas bags (like the EcoBags one feature to the right), sometimes you cannot avoid the dreaded plastic bag. What do with them all? They seem to multiple like rabbits!

Thanks to realsimple.com, we now have 10 inventive ways to resuse and not get the plastic bag blues! You can use plastic bags in the following manners:

1. As knee pads.
2. As hand protectors (for those dirty dog deeds!).
3. As paint preservers
4. As makeshift rain hats
5. For easy kitchen clean-ups
6. As wrapping paper
7. As wet umbrella holders
8. As shoe protectors
9. As cookbook protectors
10. As plant fillers

For the more in depth instructions on ways to reuse your plastic bags, visit here.

This Saturday I dare you to try something. Go carfree! I mean it– walk, ride a bike, take public transportation. It’s not that hard!

Every September 22nd, the World Carfree Netwrok celebrates “World Carfree Day.” This day urges “people from around the world get together in the streets, intersections, and neighbourhood blocks to remind the world that we don’t have to accept our car-dominated society.” OOh, we’re on board!

The World Carfree Network is also holding a “Street Conversion Design Contest.” This is a challenge to architects, artists and well, everyone to come up with ideas for all the streets we will not need when we are “carfree.” The deadline is November 15, so get thinking!

What is the “carfree movement”?

World Carfree Network uses the term “carfree movement” rather broadly, to refer to:

• those promoting alternatives to car dependence and car culture, including alternative modes such as cycling, walking and public transport;
• those promoting carfree lifestyle choices, within either a car-dependent, car-lite* or carfree local context;
• those promoting the building of (usually mixed-use) carfree environments^# on either brownfield or greenfield sites (usually sited to ensure easy access to a variety of non-automotive transport modes);
• those promoting carfree days, using the events as tools to bring about long-term on-the-ground change in infrastructure and priorities (example: Bogota); and
• those promoting the transformation of existing villages, towns and cities (or parts of them) into carfree environments.

To learn more about the Carfree Network and the World Carfree Day, click here.

“Kids are so powerful, and the biggest power they have is access to and influence on their parents. They can say, ‘Hey, what kind of car are we buying next– a hybrid?’ ‘Why are we driving an SUV, Dad?’”

-Laurie David, when asked “What can kids do with information about global warming?” in the latest issue (Sept/Oct 2007) of KIWI.

I think it has been made abundantly clear that I love TV and movies. And I love it even more when TV (like NBC) and movies (like Evan Almighty) go green. But lately I have been viewing all the green hype with a little bit of skepticism. Sometimes I feel like the “green” label is slapped on and there is no real environmental effort behind it. For instance, what exactly made the Emmys green? Well, like any good blogger, I did my research. This year’s Emmys were chock full of recycled paper, hybrid cars and bio-diesel fuel. Yay!

My favorite efforts of the green Emmys can be seen here, in a FOX in-depth look into the eco-friendly Emmy Awards. It’s a short video, but very cool inside look into the eco backstage of the awards. A couple of things the small screen did to help reduce the footprint of the golden statues.

1. Solar panels were used to power the whole red carpet.
2. The red carpet will be recycled.
3. The stage’s blue rug was made from recycled plastic bottles.
4. The wood room where the stars went to relax (”the green room” haha) was made from old high school bleachers.
5. The coveted swag bags were made of canvas.

Of course, there were more green efforts, but these five are so cool. I love that the green room was made from high school bleachers. That is just too cool. And just because we all need a little more of The Office in our lives…

I really hope that environmentally friendly practices become a way of everyday life! Let’s keep it coming!

-Stacey

Everyone knows the three r’s of the green movement- reduce, reuse, recycle. One question that arises from this mantra is what can I actually recyle, reduce and reuse? Sure, we all know paper and glass, but what else? Thanks to Co-op America, we now know more! Co-op America is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1982 whose mission is to harness economic power to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.

According to Co-op America, here is a list of of “21 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Recycle” (or reuse!).

1. Applicances
2. Batteries
3. Cardboard boxes
4. Cds/DVDs/Game disks
5. Clothes
6. Compact fluorescent bulbs
7. Compostable bio-plastics
8. Computers and electronics
9. Exercise videos
10. Eyeglasses
11. Foam packings
12. Ink/toner cartridges
13. Miscellaneous
14. Oil
15. Phones
16. Sports equipment
17. “Technotrash”
18. Tennis shoes
19. Toothbrushes and razors
20. Tyvek envelopes
21. Stuff you just can’t recycle– Co-op America recommends that when practical, send such items back to the manufacturer and tell them they need to manufacture products that close the waste loop responsibly.

For complete instructions on how to recycle and reuse these 21 items, go to Co-op America’s site right here.

One of the oldest cities in the world, London is doing its part to be eco-friendly. That is why we choose it for our Pick of the Week. London has many environmental initiatives that make us Yanks a green with envy.

First, London is one of the greenest cities in the world– literally. Two-thirds of the city is covered in water or green space, including homes to a variety of animals and plants. The city includes the following wild habitats: ancient woodlands, chalk grasslands, parkland, rivers & streams, and wastelands.

Also, on London’s official website. They list ways for the everyday Red Coat to make a difference in London’s environment. Click here to see their list of ways to help the environment.

And London doesn’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk. On June 1st, the entire city went dark for Lights Out London. For one hour (9 pm-10 pm), an estimated 2 million light bulbs went out around the capital, saving roughly 750 MWh of electricity– enough to run 3,000 televisions for a year. Pictured here is the iconic Big Ben clock tower and the Houses of Parliament in their dark glory.

On top of programs such as this, London now testing hybrid buses on routes in Central London, they introduced a plan for “Low Emission Zones,” and the buses have routine emissions checks to ensure they are within standards. Plus London has one of the best public transportation systems around. With easy and convenient ways to get around without a car, London definitely has parts of America topped.

So to London we say, “Cheers Mates!”

We know this sounds a little silly, but it is true!

The average dairy cow burps 100 to 200 liters of methane a day! That is a lot of gas contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions. A UK based environmental research company, Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, is working to develop new diets for cows.

The new diet aims to reduce the burps of cows using new plant-breeding methods to develop foods that are easier for the cows to digest. Agriculture is responsible for about 7% of UK greenhouse gas emissions and a large proportion of two of the most potent gases with 37% of methane and 67% of nitrous oxide.

Here’s hoping the cows’ new food allows them greener manners!

To read further, check out the Yahoo article.

Endangered Species Chocolate has been known for their commitment to the eco community and well, delicious, chocolate. They use all-natural and organic chocolate to create awareness about the plight of the environment, and more specifically the fight for endangered species.

Not only do they provide the world with better for you chocolate, Endangered Species Chocolate is getting everyone in on the act! This wonderful candy bar company is not handing out Golden Tickets with a lifetime supply of chocolate (shucks!). They are offering visitors to their newly designed website the chance to pick the new animals to appear on the Endangered Species label!

Until July 20th only, head on over to www.chocolatebar.com and enter up to 3 of your favorite endangered animals. Stumped to think of an animal? Try looking looking for ideas at the IUCN Red List.

Up to five new milk and dark chocolate bars are being developed, so start thinking of worthy animals!

After pretty much every question posed (Why is the sky blue? What is Will Ferrell’s full name? What are the greenest cities?), someone responds with “I’ll google it.” Who hasn’t google themselves? Google has become our go-to for information. The search engine is used so much that it has become a verb!

So, besides being the most used search engine, Google is now hopping on the eco bandwagon. They plan to be carbon neutral by the year’s end. How do they plan on reaching this fabulous goal?

Google has devised a three step program for themselves:
1. Increasing the energy efficiency of their operations.
2. Aggressively pursuing clean and renewable sources of energy.
3. Purchasing carbon offsets for the emissions they can’t reduce directly.

Over on the eco side of the fence, we couldn’t be more happy to have them. With Google maps, email, images, video and standard search, it is great that they are going carbon neutral. For more information on Google’s goals, click here.
Now we can google all we want and with a free conscience.

We, here at KIWI, decided that we need to highlight different things all around the eco world. Certain objects or people need recognition for their work in the organic and natural movement, thus KIWI’s Pick. Every Monday, we will debut a different product, person, movement, or in this case, a state.

Kiwi’s pick this week is California!

California is a state that is leading the way in green and eco friendly options. Recently, Yahoo has released its Top Ten Greenest Cities in America. While Hastings, Nebraska tops the list, California has the most cities with three. These cities include San Carlos, Mill Valley, and Walnut Creek.

On top of having three of top ten greenest cities on Yahoo’s list, California’s other cities are paving the eco way. One of the cities on this road to environmental recovery is San Francisco. In a recently revealed plan, San Francisco is hoping to have 51% (now 13%) of its electricity provided by renewable energy sources, like geothermal, solar, and wave energy.

So, congratulations California! You are KIWI’s Pick of the Week! Keep up the excellent eco efforts.

Everyone who thinks giving blood is scary, say I. I! Or at least, I used to think so.

This week, for the first time, I gave blood. I was surprised to find out that it is actually relatively painless and quite quick. My friends and I donated through a local radio station’s blood drive and even though the wait was long, it was worth it. I found out that one pint of your blood can save up to 3 lives.

Think about that- giving up about one hour of your time can save 3 people’s entire existence! Also, 60% of Americans are eligible to donate, but on average only 5% of Americans actually give blood. We should change this statistic!

There are four steps to giving blood:

1. Registration
2. Health History & Mini Physical
3. Actual Donation
4. Refreshment- free cookies and juice!

Visit www.redcross.org or www.givelife.org for more information on how and where to give blood.

Fun Fact: The Red Cross calls your bandage “a badge of honor.” Donate and wear it proudly!

Here is my badge, along with my friends!

-Stacey

It seems like everyone has a Myspace– from bands to writes to everyday people. Now the earth has one. Huh? Well earth awareness now has its own page. OurPlanet is the site that allows everyone on Myspace to express their hopes, ideas and goals about the environment. The site includes forums with topics that allow everyday Myspacers the ability to discuss growing problems.

It also features other profiles with different environmentally friendly non-profits and causes– right now it is the MUSE campaign and TreePeople. There is also an incredible widget with “Go Zero Tips.” This features different ways to cut back on your energy uses. Bonus, it can be added to anyone’s Myspace profile.

What I really think is great about OurPlanet is its location. Myspace is visited by so many young people everyday, not to mention the over 100 million registered profiles. This website could be the beginning of awareness for the “techno-tots” and well, pretty much everyone else. Because, who doesn’t have a myspace?

Let’s hope OurPlanet is just the beginning of this “eco techno” revolution.