Since we moved to Alaska our lives have become more green in some ways and less green in others.

More Green

• Set up 3 green community blogs, carmen moderates one of them
• Joined a recycling project committee
• Joined a local e waste recycling group
• Volunteered at an e waste recycling event
• Maintain e waste group’s website
• Installed a programmable thermostat
• Hoarding cans to take to the only recycling outfit in town when we get around to it
• Use green cleaning products, soap, and detergent
• Grow our own tomatoes
• Work for a company that promotes sustainability
• Bought a timer for when I have to plug the car in and only let it run for 4 hours as opposed to 10+ hours

Less Green

• Drive 30 miles, round trip, per day to get to work
• NO RECYCLING of paper, plastic or glass (we want to, we just can’t)
• Use more energy to heat the house
• Grow our own tomatoes (it’s an indoor hydroponic garden)
• Use a space heater
• Get take-out that comes in styrofoam containers

Needless to say, things haven’t been perfect but we’re still trying and that was the purpose of this whole project, to try and be more green.

I’m hoping once carmen gets a local job that we’ll be able to spend some time each week blogging again like we used to. I’m still posting on the lea page and carmen has been pretty bad about updating hers, but if you’re on ravelry you can look her up!

At this point some of you may be asking, why the hell is lea writing about HER addiction on the main LT site instead of her own? Well, I’ll tell you. Comic books, for the most part, are sadly not green. They are usually made with non-recycled paper, and *wonderfully shiney* ink full of chemicals. Granted, most comic aficionados keep their comics and read them over and over again, comics aren’t like magazines and they’re not usually thrown away after one read, and they spend the rest of their glorious lives in little plastic sleeves. Oops, there’s hit number three- my comic books live in plastic *boo hiss* but, really, they need it!

Ok, so if you’re keeping points the score is as follows:
Non-Recycled Paper 1 point
*Glorious* Chemical Ink 1 point
Plastic Sleeves 1 point

So it’s green movement zero, kill the planet three. Sigh, I’m a bad greenie…

But here’s the thing, like almost everything else on the planet comic books can be green too!

Maxeem Konrady found a way to make comic books eco friendly whereas the process used to make the materials necessary to make a traditional comic are pretty painful.

Here are some facts from the article linked above:

Paper Production

• Consumes an enormous consumer of energy and resources
• Is the number one industrial process water user in the country
• Is the third-worst contributor of air emissions among all industries
• Is the fourth worst in discharges to streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans.
• Is the fourth-largest producer of carbon dioxide, contributing to global warming as it depletes the very trees that stave it off.

Green Comic Possibilities

• Vegetable-based inks
• 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper bleached with oxygen instead of chlorine

According to the article “the impact of using alternative materials is significant: using recycled paper not only saves trees, it also conserves energy and natural resources, using only 60 percent as much energy, reducing water pollution by 35 percent, and air pollution by 74 percent . Not to mention keeping paper products out of landfills, where they account for almost 40 percent of all municipal solid waste.” Very cool.

Why don’t comic publishers use green technology and recycled products? It costs them more, which in turn will raise the $3 price of a comic book which could decrease profits and potentially kill the comic industry.

What can we do? I want to do some more research and see what can be done. More to come on the ‘greening your hobbies’ series.

Today though, I thought I would write about something I’ve been thinking about lately, magic beans green stocks.

It all started after I bought carmen a terrapass to help ease her mind after I convinced her that we needed to upgrade to a larger vehicle. In November we purchased a Hyundai Tucson but before you start booing and hissing and sending us hate mail let me make note of a few things of importance.

• We carpool just about every day to and from work and everywhere else, meaning we use the gas of one vehicle to get us almost anywhere and rarely do we need separate vehicles for anything.
• Our dogs are quite large – tenga weighs 85+ lbs and princess kasey weighs a dainty 65 lbs – needless to say a compact car is not for us. We tried for several years to pack everyone into a VW Golf but we ended up having so little room that the dogs couldn’t go on camping trips with us and, due to it’s compact nature, the Golf started to smell like dogs!
• We boutght a terrapass to offset the emissions the Tucson makes.
• We’re moving to a place where 4WD is almost mandatory of any vehicle and Hyundai’s have a very high safety rating which is good because I worry about carmen driving in the cold, dark, and snow that will soon be imminent.

That being said, I am very happy with the Tucson, carmen is probably still on the fence because of the gas mileage issue, but overall our finances have not suffered as a result of buying more gas. We have to fill the Tucson only as often as we usually had to fill the Golf and there’s only a 2 gallon difference in tank size.

Ok, long story short - I bought the terrapass but then began to think about investing in green projects I wanted to invest in, to play the stock market, maybe make some money, and start my own personal version of what terrapass is doing. The terrapass company is great, I think they do great things with the money they are given and they invest in lots of cool projects but there’s still overhead. I’m assuming some of the money from each pass is portioned off to pay company costs, the salaries of the employees etc. but what if I wanted to cut out the middle man and be able to invest more in green projects? Thus comes the idea of starting my own personal green stock portfolio which I will have some day…

Today I did some research into green stocks, probably sparked by my spontaneous visit to the wallstrip website where a girl I grew up with appears from time to time *Hi Lauren!* and I think green investing, if done responsibly and smartly could be pretty cool.

First, Sustainable Business has a really great list of green companies and their current stock situations.

Second, the worlds most sustainable stocks of 2007 published by Sustainable Business which is a very interesting list.

And Third, several of the most sustainable stocks of this year are also currently some of the best performers in wallstrip’s portfolio. Who knew a mexican food chain and a coffee roaster would be among some of the most progressive stocks around?

The full list for the top 20 this year, published here by Sustainable Business, are:

The SB20 List for 2007- Alphabetical Order

Best Water Technology (Vienna: BWT.VI) (Austria)
Canon (NYSE: CAJ) (Japan)
Comverge (Nasdaq: COMV) (USA)
Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) (USA)
First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) (USA)
Fuel Tech (Nasdaq: FTEK) (USA)
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR) (USA)
Groupe Danone (DANO.PA) Netherlands
Herman Miller (Nasdaq: MLHR) (USA)
Interface (Nasdaq: IFSIA) (USA)
Land Securities (London: Land.L) Britain
NIKE, Inc. (NYSE: NKE) (USA)
Novozymes (Copenhagen: NZYM.CO) Denmark
Ormat Technologies (NYSE: ORA) (USA)
Precious Woods (Geneva: SWX: PRWN) Swizerland
Renewable Energy Corp – REC (Oslo: REC.OL) Norway
Royal Philips Electronics NV (NYSE: PHG) Netherlands
Schmack Biogas AG (Germany: SB1B.DE) Germany
Vestas (Copenhagen: VWS.CO) Denmark
Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI) (USA)

Honorable Mention:
Google, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG)

Cameras? Shoes? Coffee? Fast food? Really??? Very cool but somewhat surprising all the same. It will be interesting to keep watching over time and see where the market goes – today solar and wind power look good but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

As such, we have been TERRIBLY busy lately. Preparing our house to sell, in a bad housing market ***but think happy thoughts***  has consumed almost every waking moment we have free. We’ve been packing up the house and trucking our crap to storage, we discovered the magical reuse center where lots of our belongings are being donated, cleaning, meeting with realtors, and NOW we’re doing repairs/painting around the house to prepare it to be on the market by the 4th of July EEK! Needless to say, we have been unfortunately distracted from our planetary saving and life changing tactics.

Alaska is an interesting place and unlike anywhere carmen has ever lived before – I’m from there so I know what to expect but to carmen everything will be new and uh, hopefully exciting! The thing about Alaska, especially where we’re moving, is that it is rural and there aren’t any city-wide recycling programs anywhere in the state. I have corresponded with a lot of Alaskan government officials including the Lt. Governor’s office, the mayors of the two cities we will live between, and many other people involved in the refuse community up there. I can’t legitimize anything but with very articulate explanations about why recycling currently won’t work for alaska (costs millions of dollars and requires trucking/shipping all recyclables to Washington state) it will be an interesting place to live. It was weird when we were there for 2 weeks and we were throwing away aluminum cans, soda cans, and plastic soda bottles. Knowing what I know now about recycling, thanks to carmen, it really bothered me. So one of our major projects when we move there is trying to recycle without a recycling program. There are places that take aluminum so we can just drive our metals over to them periodically but NO ONE takes plastic! It will be interesting to see what we do to minimize our use of plastics but how can some plastic use be avioded? It’ll definitely be a project to keep us busy during the long winter months that’s for sure…

So please readers (if there are any) don’t lose hope. We’re still here, we’re just super busy what with the moving and house selling plans AND trying to find jobs from 3,000 miles away! We’ll work hard to keep everyone posted of our progress and I’m sure we’ll have some wonderful stories to share once we move there. I mean really, who could not have stories after driving across canada with 2 big dogs and all our worldly posessions! And then there’s carmen, in nature! I’m sure she’ll be full of excitement about the moose and other wild animals she’s going to start seeing on a regular basis.

Carmen and I just got back from spending two weeks in Alaska, land of dial up internet, pretty pretty nature, and flesh eating mosquitoes. We had a lot of fun up there spending time with my family, seeing my little, though taller, sister graduate from high school and going on a small road trip from Fairbanks to Anchorage on a “mission from god” to find my mom a new reclining chair.

While we were in Alaska we did the following:

• Visited somewhere that still had snow on Mother’s Day
• Drank a lot of very expensive wine, more than we I should have but it was fun and I wasn’t sick so all is well
• Dug a hole to China attempting to statisfy my sister and retrieve the time capsule we buried there over 10 years ago. Alas, I couldn’t find it even though I knew exactly where it was within 2-3 feet!
• Forced my sister go walking in “nature” twice
• Introduced my mom to geocaching
• Got lost geocaching and left my sister stranded in the woods on a bench with nothing but a cellphone. It wasn’t that traumatic for her though she just sat there and waited which is good because if she had come looking for us she would have been lost too!
• Saw exactly 1 moose, 2 reindeer, and some funny looking cows
• Spent a lot of time with friends and family
• Shopped and Dined with a friend from college who lives in VA now but comes to AK in the summertime
• Spent more time than is healthy in malls
• Saw the mountains but not Denali

We probably did lots of other things that I’m forgetting but you don’t need a play-by-play do you?

While in Alaska we both realized how nice it is to be somewhere rural and “in nature” where people own houses on land for reasonable prices far from their neighbors and everyone is so laid back that jeans and carharts are the norm anywhere you go. We also realized that Alaska, especially Fairbanks, does not have an active recycling program, meaning everything goes to landfills! EEK! It’s funny, I started recycling to humor carmen and have learned to appreciate it over time but now after being in Alaska and thinking about how much non-biodegradable material is going into landfills, especially in a place so beautiful as Alaska it totally freaked me out! So much, in fact, that I spent part of today writing the local Alaska government officials about it to see if they’re doing anything to promote recycling. We’ll see what happens or if anyone responds to me. I sent 2 Mayors emails along with the Governor and Lt. Governor and 2 Senators. I attempted to write the congressmen but he only holds audience with Alaskan citizens *way to not get my vote if I ever chose to move there, not that I would vote for you anyway because you’re a Republican!* It would be cool though, if someone emailed me back and said they’re actively looking into ways to start a recycling program, it’s a lot to ask and is totally wishful thinking but I think something’s gotta change.

Ok, so we’re back now and hopefully we’ll start posting more often in the coming weeks. Carmen is busy with work so it might just be me for a while but we’ll see what happens.

Now, I leave you with this pretty picture taken just prior to abandoning my sister in the woods in order to be grown-up idiots looking for tupperware, also known as geocachers.

My adviser has been pushing me to go for an MBA after graduating but there are a lot of factors that keep me from seriously considering it.

1. More school?! Are you serious? It will have only taken me 7 years to get my Bachelors. Actually though, I took a break to move across the country to be with carmen, get a CMT (certificate in massage therapy), get some real-life “work” experience, and now work full time and go to school full time. I feel like I’ve been in school forever and will only have a crappy B.S. in Technology Management when it’s all said and done.

2. Holy crap school is expensive! I’m $30,000 in debt for undergrad alone and we just finished paying off all of carmen’s loans – and she’s been out of school for quite a while! Now I’m looking at $30,000+ more for an MBA AND I will have to continue to work full time while getting it. I feel like I’ll be dead before being able to pay for all this. Life sucks enough now just doing undergrad work I can only imagine it gets worse when you’re in graduate school. I keep hearing carmen’s horror stories from back in the day along with my other super smart friend at Virginia Tech. and neither one seemed to be very happy about being in grad school. It’s a lot to consider.

3. I don’t want to be a manager! *stomping foot, crossing arms and pouting* The whole MBA thing always flashes “MANAGER” like an annoying neon light whenever I think about it. But then I read about people with MBAs who are working in the sustainable industry who are far from being managers. Simran Sethi totally rocks it with her work on Treehugger.com along with her hosting gig at Sundance Channel’s The Green and occasional guest appearances on The Oprah Show. Also, almost everyone on staff at Terrapass.com has an MBA, they’re totally cool and also, not managers… I think I really need to think about what exactly someone with an MBA does. The only people I actually know who have MBAs are all managers and I don’t think I could do that. I want to be in the middle of the action, I’ll lead people but I don’t want to be so stuck in bureaucracy that it means sitting at a desk and attending meetings all day instead of getting my hands dirty.

4. I don’t entirely know what I want to be when I grow up! Blame it on genetics, but I take after my mother in terms of what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t even think she knows what she wants to be yet. To prove my point, here are things I have shown interest in in the past:

• Egyptology (the ratio of mummies to Egyptologists is not that competitive, plus, curses that kill you!)
• Forensic Pathology (still very interesting yet too germ-filled for one with OCD)
• Fly Airplanes (I would love to again but see #2 above – grad school is on the extra value menu compared to the cost of flying)
• Professional Archer (also with the expensive and very time consuming – no work, no school, no life, just archery. All. The. Time.)
• Library Clerk (boring)
• Massage Therapist (highly lucrative yet I’m a specialist and I was too unmotivated to start a business)
• Cashier at Whole Foods (HATED IT!)
• Land Surveyor (fun, dirty, no money)
• Computer Call Center Representative (learned a lot but got paid very little)
• Computer Programmer (fun but I run out of things to do and I like to break things and fix them more)

Here are things that I am interested in today:

• Green Building (I wrote an entire thesis on this for my degree and my dad was a carpenter so I’ve enjoyed construction my whole life. Plus, tools? Pretty.*)
• Breaking Computer Programs (I have a knack for breaking things, why not get paid for it)
• Technical Analysis (Fixing broken work processes to make things better)
• Research (I like to learn)
• Being on Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women list (how cool would it be to make the list as someone who deals in sustainability)

I like everything too much and can’t narrow it down to just one thing. Actually, I think if I did I would just get bored. But really, my goal is to make Forbes and if I want to do that I have to get an MBA. There’s one big problem though, I have a problem with change. When I think about getting a new job, going to grad school, and/or moving to a different state my heart starts racing and I can’t breathe. Fortunately for me I have one more year until I graduate and thus have a year or more to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. The idea of attending school #17 doesn’t sound too bad though.

The more I think and read about it, the more interested I am in both carmen and I each getting an MBA just to up the statistics of women who have MBAs. The Aspen Institute wrote an interesting document about women and MBAs here check it out if you’re interested.

* for those of you who are geeks this should come to no surprise that I am referencing BTVS here:
DAWN: (worried) So, what do we do?
BUFFY: Easy. We burn the house to the ground and collect the insurance. (Dawn continues looking worried) Plus, fire? Pretty.
from “Flooded” Season 6, Episode 4

So far, I have found that it’s the little things that bring such great inspiration in life and make me want to be better. Carmen plays a large role in inspiring me to think positively and be less apathetic about everything. She’s the driving force behind keeping me from constantly spitting my gum out on the ground outside because, you know, apparently that’s bad – who knew. She also helps inspire me by bringing new ideas and things to do into my life that keep me entertained – I have a very short attention span.

Aside from carmen, I recently found inspiration from one of my favorite authors, Jeanette Winterson, on a day when I was feeling like everything was particularly futile. I felt like my participation in such things as the Human Resource Campaign’s “take action” pleas were as good as sending spam e-mail to local and national government officials. I was also skeptical of the difference I, myself, can make in the world. Then I happened upon Jeanette Winterson’s February Column and like a sign from the universe, she inspired me by writing the following:

For the first time ever, I have momentarily given way to despair. I look at my geo-thermal heating system, and my eco-bulbs, and my recycling, and my half a bag of rubbish per week, and all the trees and hedging I’ve planted – not just now but over the years, and I feel like I’ve done nothing – or rather the something that I have done is nothing.

But I know I can’t think like that. No matter how little, no matter how pointless it seems it has to be done, because as well as the direct impact, there is something harder to quantify, which is a spirit of change. And that only happens when more and more of us believe that our efforts are worth the effort.

If one more person says to me ‘Ah but China… meaning so what’s the point of anything we do, I will stuff their smug, knowing despondent face in a bucket of low-fat yoghurt.

HOW WE LIVE MAKES A DIFFERENCE. If we fall victim to the ideology of apathy we go straight down into that Dante circle of Hell reserved for those ‘who willfully live in sadness.’ The sad shake of the head, the worldly-wise shrug of the shoulders, what can we do? Answer – everything we can do, big and small, and bring up the kids to do better. There might still be time. I believe in second chances and miracles, whatever the weather, whatever the science. Oh God, give it a go. Who is to say for sure that it’s too late?

I can’t willfully live in sadness and despair and if I do I don’t deserve to be here wasting the Earth’s energy for no reason. Maybe what I do with my life won’t make a difference. I would like to hope it does, but if it doesn’t at least I can go down saying I did all I could in the time I was given. Living that way makes a difference to at least one person, me.

The idea of trying to change my life and habits in order to “be green” can be somewhat overwhelming at times.  After only a short period of trying to learn about what I can do, I am already amazed at the sheer volume of information and ideas I find every day.  Which is great – it means that there are LOTS of other people like me and lea out there, trying to do the right thing.  But again – change can be overwhelming if you try to do it all at once!

So.  I am trying to start small.  One step at a time.

One of our first steps on this journey was over to the incredible online store Reusablebags.com.  If you haven’t come across this site yet on your internet travels yet, please head there now and check it out!  If you are like lea and I you will risk losing hours of your day checking out every single one of the product options.  But it will be so worth your time – you didn’t really want to work today anyway, did you?  The site carries a wide range of reusable grocery and produce bags so that you can stop using disposable bags for every shopping trip.  They also offer a great selection of reusable water bottles and lunch boxes – everything you need to start decreasing your consumption of these ordinarily disposable items.

Image from Reusablebags.com 

In addition to the great products and fast, friendly service at this site – you’ll also find a ton of useful information about the problems caused by the out-of-control consumption of plastic and paper (yes, paper is bad, too) bags – and what you can do to help.  If you need convincing that this is a real problem – just look to our left sidebar for the plastic bag counter (courtesy of the site) – it scares me every time I see it!  Check out their Fast Facts to get started with some background info – then click on Take Action to learn how to get started on changing this alarming trend.

For our part – lea and I were very excited to receive our (first of many, I’m sure) shipment of reusable goodies in the mail today.  We now have an assortment of reusable grocery and produce bags, as well as brand-new water bottles, to start us down the path away from our disposable lifestyle.  Look for product reviews coming soon as we try out our new tools and share with you what works best for us!

For those of you looking for a green job, treehugger.com has a wonderful Green Jobs board filled with cool jobs around the country. Check it out

 *** A word to the wise about the “numerous” green jobs in Colorado, the ConnectingColorado.com website requires you to register with your SSN before you can view their job postings. I strongly advise people to be cautious with such sensitive personal information ***