TI-I-I-M-MBERRRRR January 30, 2008
Posted by shomriel in Ecosystems.Tags: certified lumber, Forest Stewardship Council, Gibson guitars, Home Depot, Julia Roberts, Les Paul, Lowe's, Rainforest Alliance, Scientific Certification Systems, Smartwood, sustainable forests
add a comment
I blogged a while back about Julia Roberts’s new Malibu mansion, built from sustainably forested wood. A sustainably managed forest is more than just one where trees are planted to replace those cut down; the entire ecological balance must be taken into account as well as the state of communities affected by the forest. There’s a whole certification process that goes into this type of wood, headed up by people who really aren’t motivated by money (yes, there are still a couple of those folks kicking around) and surprisingly enough, encouraged by such giants as Lowe’s and Home Depot, who give preference to certified lumber and thus a big boost to small, conscientious manufacturers. This certified lumber tends not to be sold at prices that accurately reflect what goes into the process (while people like the idea of sustainably forested wood, the average consumer will only spend slightly more on it). Your average guitar player, however, may be a different story.
Less Julia Roberts and More Bilbo Baggins January 24, 2008
Posted by shomriel in Ecosystems, Lifestyle.Tags: Bilbo Baggins, compost toilet, J.R.R. Tolkien, Julia Roberts, Lord of the Rings, low-impact home, solar paneling, The Hobbit, Wales
add a comment
Not so much a $20 million Malibu mansion as a lovely hillside home in the Shire. But the concept’s the same… roughly. Ok, I’ll admit I’m stretching the association a bit. This house in Wales is slightly less, shall we say, ostentatious than a multi-million-dollar mansion. For about $6000, if my pound-to-dollar conversion skills are at all accurate–not even a 30,000th of Miss Roberts’ cost–this “low impact home” built into the side of a hill uses straw bales throughout for insulation purposes, as well as a woodburner for extra heat. Underground air is used to cool the fridge. Solar panels provide the light, and there’s even a compost toilet, and so much more. And you get to feel like you live in a fantasy novel, at no extra cost.
But Think About the Trees, Angels, the Trees! January 21, 2008
Posted by shomriel in Ecosystems, Lifestyle.Tags: Canada's Boreal Forest, Forest Ethics, Gisele Bundchen, Ipanema, Victoria's Secret
add a comment
I don’t know why it never occurred to me when I was perusing the shiny Vicky’s Secret catalogs that get delivered to our apartment on a weekly basis. Probably because I was too busy wiping up my liquid envy from Gisele’s legs (All of me reaches up to her knees). But hot damn! A lot of paper goes into these catalogs. And if my household alone can fill up our entire recycling bin just with the ones we get every month, then how many forests are getting chopped down for the 395 million catalogs that get sent out every year? Initially, none of the paper used for their catalogs was recycled and Canada’s sadly unprotected Boreal Forest was providing this paper. Once protests were staged, VS did start to come around. Good thing. In the age of Internet, there is absolutely no need for ecosystems to be destroyed in order for us to flip through glossy pages.
