Social entrepreneurship is a way of using business to tackle social issues. Furniture on the Street is a social enterprise project that sells contemporary-designed pieces of outdoor wooden furniture. The key is that the tables and chairs are made by unemployed youth and the factory work prepares them for the job market.

As part of the programme, students get a one-year carpentry course and are taught the design process. The good looking planters, garbage bins and benches are made out of reclaimed wood and the frames are made locally.

The workshop activities provided include model-making, teaching basic computer design software skills and visits to timber yards. It’s a way to give the students and their customers a complete environmental focus.

Students can design the benches, work on the graphics and colors and see the concrete results when the products are purchased. And it’s not just a charity–a city council in north London bought ten benches. Says one of the organizers “We use local labor, our frames are made locally, and we have an environmental focus. You’re not doing us a favor. You get a competitive product.”

And they are making money and the trainees are getting jobs. All of them so far have gone on to continue their education and one is studying furniture design at a university. They want to extend the programme now to include fencing and metalwork.

It has been defined as a “halfway house between profits-driven businesses and charities” that can “take the profit motive to parts of the voluntary and public sector that have in the past been hostile to it.”

The gateway to a livable future is found in our communities. Seek it out.

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Source: Treehugger

My birthday is coming up and Corey treated me with an early present. She got me a Grub Hoe from EasyDigging.com.

This thing is awesome. I’ve been obsessed with gardening tools for the last year, and since we expanded our planting area this year I really needed something for cutting into untouched soil. In a catalog last year I saw an Italian Grape Hoe being used and really wanted to find something like it. None of the local stores carried anything nearly as burly as I wanted.

Easy Digging grub hoes (Azadas) from Bellotto of Brazil. The head is solid and simple, and the company includes a strong handle and even a file for keeping it sharp. I’m impressed.

I got it out in the garden yesterday and tilled about 300 square feet in an hour. The technique is easy to adapt to and the head sliced right through my hard clay soil with ease. I had a pickup load of aged manure and another of sand delivered. That’s what I’m tilling in now, down to about 6 inches. Next I’m going to double-dig the bed before laying out the plan and beginning planting. There is still a lot of work but I’ve got a ton of springtime energy to keep me going.

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris’ blog on February 26.

How green is your toilet paper? Not sure? Here’s the guide that will give you the answers: Greenpeace has just released on Monday its latest Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide.

The report is providing customers with important information about tissue products and toilet paper using 3 criteria: usage of 100% recycled paper, at least 50% post consumer recycled paper and bleached without toxic chlorine compounds.

Each category includes ranking of brands, where products that meet 3 criteria are recommended, products that meet 2 criteria are defined as “can do better” and products that meet only one or no criteria at all are “to be avoided”.

Let’s focus for a minute on toilet paper, the most popular product among the ones reviewed in this report. The brand in the first place is Green Forest, which uses 100 percent recycled and 90 percent post-consumer content, as well as chlorine-free manufacturing processes. Other brands that are also recommended are: 365, Natural Value and Seventh Generation.

And who’s to be avoided? Well, when it comes to toilet paper you will find there few familiar names: Scott, Target, Wal-Mart, Kleenex Cottonelle, Chramin, Quilted Northern and Angel Soft. According to the report they all use zero recycled paper (and of course zero post consumer content) and are bleached with chlorine compounds [just take into consideration the follwoing comment from Greenpeace: In the few cases where companies did not respond to our request for verification of recycled content percentages and whitening processes used, we assumed 0% overall recycled, 0% post-consumer recycled and ECF bleaching.]

The report is followed by a very interesting article in the New York Times (”Mr. Whipple Left It Out:  Soft Is Rough on Forests” by Leslie Kaufman), where I learned the astonishing fact that “tissue from 100 percent recycled fibers makes up less than 2 percent of sales for at-home use among conventional and premium brands.”

Why? Well, according the article the main reason that toilet paper made of recycled paper is not as soft as toilet paper that is made of trees. Actually the article explains “it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.”

In other places around the globe the situation is in some way better and in Europe and Latin America, products with recycled content make up about on average 20 percent of the at-home market.

The price for the American’s love for softness is very high - the article brings another devastating fact:

25 percent to 50 percent of the pulp used to make toilet paper in this country comes from tree farms in South America and the United States. The rest, environmental groups say, comes mostly from old, second-growth forests that serve as important absorbers of carbon dioxide…In addition, some of the pulp comes from the last virgin North American forests, which are an irreplaceable habitat for a variety of endangered species, environmental groups say.

And it doesn’t end with trees - there are the water and energy required in the process of turning a tree into rolls of toilet paper, and there’s also the polluting chlorine-based bleach process used to achieve greater whiteness.

Who’s to blame? well, Kimberly-Clark, which says it’s the American consumer who “like the softness and strength that virgin fibres provides”. I wounder if these consumers would make the same choice if they knew that for example 14 percent of the wood pulp used by Kimberly-Clark came from the Boreal forest in Canada.

The answer unfortunately is that in this case we cannot count on the consumer nor on the companies who make huge profits out of these soft papers (An article in the Guardian states that “paper manufacturers such as Kimberly-Clark have identified luxury brands such as three-ply tissues or tissues infused with hand lotion as the fastest-growing market share in a highly competitive industry.”).

Even if consumers in the U.S. will become more aware of their toilet paper’s footprint and choose to buy more recycled paper, my guestimation is that recycled paper usage will be no higher than in Europe (20%). And that’s the optimistic scenario.

So what’s the solution? In one word: regulation. We need global and local regulation that will ban first and foremost the use of ancient forests for manufacturing tissue products. We also need regulation that will put a price tag on the environmental damages made here, so when you buy toilet paper, you will pay their real price and not a price that ignores the environmental costs. Only this way a real change can be achieved. It’s the same with plastic bags and with many other bad habits we have. Voluntary steps just don’t do enough or do too little and we can’t afford too many years of this softness obsession to keep going on. We just can’t.

I’ll be happy to hear more ideas and thoughts how to end American’s obsession to soft toilet paper. Please add your comment!

Link to Greenpeace’s guide: http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/usa/press-center/reports4/tissueguid

According to Trendwatching.com, “while financial woes may hold back some green initiatives, the future has never looked greener.”

Mainly because creating a more sustainable economy is not an option, but a necessity. And we all know that necessity is the mother of invention. Which is why this month, amidst crumbling banks, G20 meetings and stimulus plans, we highlight 12 eco sub-trends that any marketer or entrepreneur can act on today.

Trendwatching refers to these opportunities as an eco-bounty, and they provide the following definition: “ECO-BOUNTY refers to the numerous opportunities, both short and long term, for brands that participate in the epic quest for a sustainable society. Some of these opportunities exist despite the current recession, others are fueled by it, not in the least because of new rules and regulations. Downturn-obsessed brands who lose their eco-focus will find themselves left out in the cold when the global economy starts recovering.”

They break up their trends into 12 categories, ranging from Eco-Frugal to Eco-Naked. Here are a few items from throughout the list that stood out to me:

• Green building solutions retailer Green Depot has recently opened a flagship store in Manhattan that is designed to demonstrate the high-performance eco building materials in action. A light booth made of recycled resin materials, for example, helps shoppers compare light bulbs and paint colors in a controlled setting, while the Zero-VOC Paint Bar serves up a line of paints free of volatile organic chemicals. See also Natural Interiors and Eco-Logisch.
• Dutch creative agency Spranq has developed a new font called Ecofont that’s specifically designed to extend the life of ink cartridges and toner by using 20 percent less ink than traditional fonts. The free, downloadable font is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, and works best at a 9- or 10-point size.
• Bixi is a high-tech public bike system in Montreal (even more sophisticated than Paris’ Velib service) to be launched this spring, using bikes equipped with RFID tags that allow users to track availability online via real-time information beamed to the web from the system’s solar-powered bike stands. Users will pay a membership fee of CDN 78 for one year, CDN 24 for one month or CDN 5 for one day, with the first half hour of every trip provided free of charge.
• Crop to Cup is a fair trade coffee brand with a twist. In addition to buying coffee directly from farmers, representing them in markets and reinvesting in their livelihood, the brand also allows customers to trace their cup of coffee back to the farmer that produced it. Which in turn allows them to learn about the origins of the coffee and engage in a dialogue about the product.
• Philadelphia-based RecycleBank enables households to earn RecycleBank Dollars, redeemable for discount coupons at Whole Foods, RiteAid, Starbucks and participating local companies just by leaving their recyclables out to be collected. RecycleBank containers are embedded with identifying barcodes which collection trucks scan to track how much each household is recycling; the more customers recycle, the more they earn in RecycleBank dollars—up to the equivalent of USD 35 per month. (available in parts of Omaha)
• Luscious Garage is the first woman-owned and operated autoshop in San Francisco dedicated to servicing hybrids with a specialty in converting them to all-electrical plug-ins. Since opening in 2007 this unorthodox auto garage has attracted customers seeking a more friendly car repair experience with the garage’s laid back décor featuring plants and books. So far, the vast majority of customers have been Prius owners, but Luscious Garage is planning to diversify beyond hybrids in order to increase the company’s customer base. Which goes to show that ECO-FEEDER businesses may never be the next HUGE thing but they’re sure fun to start up if you’re the niche/long-tail entrepreneurial type.
• Welsh clothing brand Howies offers a line of super-durable clothing called Howies’ Hand-Me-Down that features jackets, backpacks and messenger bags designed specifically to last for 10 or more years. The company crafts its products painstakingly and uses high-quality components like organic tweed and ventile—an extremely tightly woven cotton fabric that is inherently water-resistant and uses 30 percent more yarn than conventional fabrics.
• And from the map gurus themselves: Google Maps Transit Layer, which is available for over 50 cities worldwide, overlays public transport lines onto the main map view, allowing the user to easily plan a green(er) journey to their destination.

When the invitation showed up in the mail, we knew this was an event we couldn’t miss. The premier of the documentary film I.O.U.S.A. was to take place in downtown Omaha at the Holland Performing Arts Center and be broadcast to over 400 theaters across the country. After the film, a round table discussion featuring Warren Buffet, Pete Peterson and David Walker would provide insights into the film.

The event didn’t disappoint, our evening was spectacular on all fronts. After a brief introduction by the film’s director, the lights dimmed and my eyes opened wide in anticipation. The film clearly explained the state of our nation’s current financial crisis. It drove home the importance of not only national policy, but also personal responsibility.

I.O.U.S.A. examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.

The numbers were staggering, the nation now has over $53 trillion in total liabilities, and that isn’t going anywhere soon. The nation’s budget is far from balanced, running a deficit year after year. Currently, our national dept is equal to 64% of our GDP and growing. Within 20 years, it is projected to exceed 100%.

In 2008, the Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of $357 billion ($553 billion excluding the Social Security (surplus). That estimate reflects the impact of the economic slowdown and legislated stimulus efforts, but not pending supplemental funding for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other purposes that could add more than $180 billion in deficit spending over the next two years.

The federal budget should serve as the fiscal roadmap for federal policy making. However, the budget and its related process have major weaknesses when it comes both to understanding and to managing the
financial condition of the United States government. The annual budget process focuses on the immediate budget year and largely discounts the future implications of current decisions. Decision makers do not devote the same level of scrutiny to future impacts as they do to current costs.

The film’s graphics did a fantastic job of offering a clear understanding of the scope of the problem, how issues are interrelated, and where the crisis is headed. As a way of throwing the staggering number in perspective, the $53 trillion was put into more understandable numbers. They calculated the burden to:

• $175,000 per person living in the United States
• $410,000 per full-time worker
• $455,000 per household

As the film ended, citizen’s were challenged to demand that Washington policy makers begin to address these issues. Rethink our priorities. We should focus on critical societal needs and programs and policies that work. In addition, we should not assign responsibilities to the government that we personally are not willing to pay in taxes. And also recognize that there are no easy answers.

The discussion that followed the film was interesting, but also strange. One member of the audience opened with a question that made me wonder if he had even watched the film. He asked, ‘Does anyone really want to live in a world where we all exercise fiscal responsibility?’ How bazaar?

I was absolutely impressed by Pete Peterson and David Walker, but was befuddled by Omaha’s own Warren Buffet. He just came across like a booster for the US financial system. He kept rambling on about the size of the ‘pie’ in order to help the audience understand that we could count on growth and continued prosperity. He was no better than the guy who asked the opening question…did he even watch the film? The he made some statements that totally reflected the Horatio Alger Myth, implying that we can all be billionaires if we just work a little bit harder.

I was so happy to hear the thoughts of Peterson and Walker, both of whom came across as grounded and insightful. They drove home the reality of our current financial crisis and discussed the practical issues which we must face in order to slow or stop the impending disaster.

The messages of the film was just one more reminder of the importance of Simple Living and a sustainable financial life.

If you are a numbers person and want to see how the film’s data played out, click here to download the complete citizen’s guide on the Financial Condition of the US.

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Simple living and a sustainable life, there are so many reasons to commit. It is natural for someone who first approaches these concepts to believe that they are just about the environment. While the environment is an essential concern, the benefits of these choices extend into many other areas of life. Health, happiness, and serenity also result, but financial freedom should not be overlooked.

The content below is largely a reprint of a story posted yesterday on CNN Money, written by Geoff Colvin. I thought it was an important story to share, being that a crisis may be approaching, and I believe that answers can be found in a sustainable life.

We made it through the bursting of the Internet bubble and now the bursting of the real estate bubble. Next we may be approaching the end of the most worrisome bubble of all: the standard-of-living bubble.

That conclusion comes from the latest data on credit card debt. It’s growing fast, but the problem is bigger than that - and to understand what it means, we have to take a few steps back.

For the past several years, the average inflation-adjusted total pay of American workers hasn’t been increasing. That means we haven’t been building a foundation for increases in our living standard. You might be tempted to say that by definition our living standard couldn’t have increased, but that’s not quite right. Even with stagnant real incomes, we can always live a little better every year through borrowing and pretending that our living standard is still rising, just as it was for decades.

So the Great Bull Market made us feel rich, and we felt justified in saving less and borrowing - and spending - more.

After stocks collapsed, home prices took off, making us feel rich all over again. So we continued saving less and spending more, creating the illusion that our living standard was still rising. In 2005 our personal savings rate went negative, but even that didn’t slow us down, because our homes were still appreciating - and rising home values meant that household net worths weren’t declining.

Of course, we don’t hear those assurances anymore. Stocks are back where they were eight years ago, and home prices are where they were five years ago. But personal debt is much higher than ever before, and average pay is still going nowhere in real terms. So now how do we live as if our living standard is still rising?

That’s where the credit card reports come in. Last year, just as the subprime crisis happened, credit card debt took off. The home-equity ATM had been shut down, so people turned to the last source of easy money they had left, the most expensive debt on the menu, credit card borrowing.

Since credit card debt has been growing much faster than the economy - more than 8% in last year’s third and fourth quarters and over 7% in May (the most recent month reported)- people are apparently using it as a substitute for income. Thus, for the past year or so we have still maintained the standard-of-living illusion.

But a big crunch is coming - and here’s why. Credit card debt, like mortgage debt, gets bundled, securitized, and sold off by banks. Citigroup, one of America’s largest credit card lenders, just reported that it lost $176 million in the second quarter through securitizing such debt. That happens when the buyers of those securities observe rising delinquency rates and rising interest rates, and decide the debt is worth less than Citi thought. More generally, the amount of credit card debt that is securitized nationwide has plunged by more than half in the past five months because it’s getting riskier. That means credit card issuers will be charging customers higher interest rates, and since the banks can’t offload as much of the debt as before, they’ll have less money to lend to cardholders.

The squeeze has already started, which is why Congress is in the process of passing the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights, which would prevent issuers from changing rates and terms without warning, among many other provisions. But bottom line, the credit card money window is going to start closing - and soon.

So now what? It’s hard to see where consumers can turn next. Home prices seem highly unlikely to start rising again soon. Stocks? You never know, but the Great Bull Market looks like a once-in-a-lifetime event. Homes and stocks are households’ biggest asset classes by far. There isn’t much else to borrow against.

It may be that the standard-of-living bubble finally has to deflate. Sustainable increases in living standards have to be earned, not borrowed, and that means performing ever higher value work that can’t be outsourced. We haven’t been meeting that challenge very well; doing so will probably require much more and better education for millions of Americans, which takes time and money.

The result may feel like deprivation, but I don’t see it that way. Who knows - we might even find that living within our means and saving a little money actually isn’t so bad.

I’m just finishing an amazing book by David Wann called Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle. Mr. Wann is an avid organic gardener, and he sings the praises of growing your own food. I was totally on the program, but then the storms hit and challenged my resolve.

It just so happened, that today I read a chapter called The Currency of Nature. In it, he has a section called Ten Rules of Thumb for Those Seduced by Gardening in which he inspired me to replant.

“If at first you don’t succeed, keep planting. Wipe the slate clean by burying the evidence or hauling it to the compost pile.”

“Gardening is best practiced without shame, doubt, regret, envy, or dread. The only good garden is a no-guilt garden.”

“Harvest the intangibles. This may be the most important rule of all. It’s not just food we’re after, but knowledge, serenity, and a sense of purpose. Remember, what gardens fdo best is help gardeners grow.”

Inspired by this selection, Corey and I set out to replant. We tore out the ruined plants and tossed them in the compost bins. Then we grab the leftover seeds from earlier in the year and started the planting cycle all over again. We even took the opportunity to make some improvements. So in a way, the loss of the garden has some advantages. We got to innovate for an extra crop this year.

This book is an amazing source of knowledge and inspiration on all aspects of a sustainable lifestyle. I recommend that everyone interested in building a better future for yourself and our world read it.