05.04.12 - RIP Adam Yauch
Happy Friday Blog Readers!
I hope you are all ready for Cinco De Mayo tomorrow! The weather here in Portland is supposed to clear up this weekend, so be careful if you go out on your bicycles.
Fortunately it seems as though Portland is a bit safer for cyclists than places like Toronto, for instance. The mayor of Toronto is actually actively working on doing away with bike lanes. The nerve of this guy!
In other news, sadly, musician and activist Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed away this morning, what a bummer!
Also, here’s an easy way to help fight climate change; eat half as many hamburgers and half as much bacon as you are currently consuming. It is better for you and the planet. Yay!
Finally, here’s an interesting article by OPB’s Cassandra Profita about how Facebook is trying to make their energy hoarding data centers as sustainable as possible, even though that is technically impossible at this time. But even though that’s the case, I think you have to give Facebook a hand for making several breakthroughs in data center sustainability.
Have a great weekend!
-Mark
04.18.12 - Events coming down the pike, or is it pipe?
Hello Blog Readers!
Welcome back to the blog! First off, I want to welcome Alexana Winery to the Willamette Valley. ecoShuttle looks forward to transporting many a guest to your new establishment, good luck to you and see you soon!
Secondly, I want to point out that there are some excellent events on the horizon, including Memorial Day weekend.
Do you have any plans for Memorial Day Weekend? If not, you should book a wine tour to check out Alexana Winery and then you could stop by Archery Summit and a winery of your choosing. Okay, just a suggestion!
Some other things we are looking forward to this summer: Waterfront Blues Fest (this year’s lineup includes the Steve Miller Band, Galactic and Booker T, among others), Pickathon (featuring Thee Oh Sees, Blitzen Trapper, The War on Drugs and Neko Case, among other amazing bands!).
And now, some random yet important facts:
The Cincinnati Reds were the first professional baseball team.
Park benches and cosmetics products both contain toxic coal ash.
The first cell phone call was placed on April 3rd 1973.
Okay, that’s all for this week. See you next time!
-mark
03.30.12 - Better Living Show 2012 Blog
Happy Friday Blog Readers!
I just want to thank all the wonderful folks who came out to the Better Living Show last weekend at the Portland Expo Center. We had a great time and we were even on the local news for approximately 1/18th of a second, woohoo!
This year’s show once again demonstrated that there is so much going on in the world of sustainability. Some of my perennial favorites include sustainable fashions and clothing options, the bamboo industry displays (they had this giant water mill on display, I’m not sure what purpose that thing served exactly, or how in the world they got it in there, but it was awesome!), and the electric cars display, which were right across from our booth. This year they had a Tesla Roadster, Fisker Karma, a Nissan Leaf (like the one we own), and a Chevy Volt (sweet car!). 
What else, oh yeah, we totally got to drive Daryl Hannah, as well as Miss Teen Universe and Miss Teen USA. Great girls, all of them! And of course, our booth neighbor this year was once again our friend Bill who represents the Portland area Toyota Hybrid automotive club. Good to see you again Bill!
We have some exciting summer activities coming up this summer so look for me to update you on those things in next week’s blog post. Stay dry this weekend!
-mark
03.15.12 - Organic Beer Blog
Hola Blog Readers!
As I write this and look out at the rain-soaked landscape here at ecoShuttle, I can’t help but pine for those days of sunshine and beer that are just around the corner in Portland. While the weather isn’t here just yet, I would like to list some delicious ORGANIC beers that are available in the Portland area, as well as some local brewpubs featuring organic beers that you can visit either on your own or as part of an ecoShuttle brew tour that we would love to help put together for you.
First off, some of my favorite organic beers have to be the ales produced by Fish Tale Organic Ales. The Organic India Pale Ale and Mudshark Porters are both delicious (I especially love how they’re able to combine two of my favorite things, sharks and Porters!), and these are both available at most Fred Meyer stores and some New Seasons groceries. Additionally, you can actually visit their brewpub in Olympia—they have an awesome Happy Hour too, featuring $3 16- oz. pints and half off on select appetizers. I’ve never been to this place but I think if you’re ever in the Olympia area that it is worth checking out.
Another favorite has to be the Bison Organic Chocolate Stout. If you don’t like darker beers you may not like this, but if you do, I suggest you check this out as it is very rich and flavorful. Another delicious offering is their Gingerbread Ale, and I haven’t seen this in the Portland area but according to their web site is available at New Seasons. Bison Brewing is based out of Berkeley, CA and does not have a brewpub for you to visit, but the Chocolate Stout can be found at most Fred Meyer stores, New Seasons groceries, and at the Grain and Gristle on tap.
Last but certainly not least is Hopworks Urban Brewery, aka HUB. HUB delivers many fantastic beers, and their brewpub offers delicious, affordable food. I think the coolest thing with HUB, however, has to be BikeBar, which opened last year their location on N. Williams. It’s a bar for cyclists, how cool is that?
Also, my co-worker Will owes me a growler of HUB beer because my Cincinnati Reds had a better record last year than his Chicago Cubs. Will, if you’re reading this, where’s my growler?!
Wow, this topic might deserve a part-two in the coming weeks; there are just so many incredible organic beers/brewers I didn’t get to in this blog, dang! We’ll get ‘em next time! Have a great weekend, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you want to set up a brew tour to visit some fantastic brewpubs.
-Mark
PS- I’ve got to have this!
02.24.12 - Rainbow Wedding Blog
Hello Blog Readers,
Happy Friday! How the days are just flying by, it’s unbelievable. I just recently attended Basic Rights Oregon’s LGBT Wedding Expo on behalf of ecoShuttle and I had a great time (http://www.kgw.com/lifestyle/
We here at ecoShuttle would also like to congratulate our fair neighbors to the north in Washington for legalizing marriage rights for all people, hopefully that will end up being the case, anyways. One of the interesting facts I learned at the Expo was that according to Forbes Magazine in 2004, gay marriage industry could expand by an additional $16 billion. So not only is it the right thing—it also makes sense economically (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2009/0527/p02s07-ussc.html).
Lastly, Indiana has suddenly decided to put through the legislature a measure to stop making specialty LGBT license plates whose sales benefitted at-risk LGBT children. Unbelievable, yet not surprising! (http://www.queerty.com/need-another-reason-to-hate-the-dmv-theyre-homophobic-too-20120224/)
-mark
02.10.12 - The Birth Control Blog
Hello Blog Readers!
I can’t believe it is Friday already, niiiice! Now, as you may or may not have noticed recently, there has been a lot of craziness in the news regarding the mandate that employers’ health care plans, under the 2010 Affordable Health Care Act (http://www.healthcare.gov/law/full/), include funding for birth control care for women. This aspect of the Health Care bill may not seem like it, but it could end up having a better impact for the environment than any of the other things the Obama administration has attempted.
You could argue that Obama’s selection of Lisa Jackson as a legitimate leader of the EPA (http://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/administrator.html), or his blocking of the Keystone XL Pipeline, or his mandate for dramatic vehicle mileage improvements, or investments in alternative energy would have the greatest impact of all the things Obama has done to the environment (http://e360.yale.edu/feature/forum_assessing_obamas_record_on_the_environment/2427/), but I’m going to stick with the birth control mandate, here’s why, according to an Oregon State University study (http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2009/jul/family-planning-major-environmental-emphasis):
“ the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives – things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.
The research also makes it clear that potential carbon impacts vary dramatically across countries. The average long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S. – along with all of its descendants – is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.
“In discussions about climate change, we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime,” said Paul Murtaugh, an OSU professor of statistics. “Those are important issues and it’s essential that they should be considered. But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and increasing global consumption of resources.”
In this debate, very little attention has been given to the overwhelming importance of reproductive choice, Murtaugh said. When an individual produces a child – and that child potentially produces more descendants in the future – the effect on the environment can be many times the impact produced by a person during their lifetime.
Under current conditions in the U.S., for instance, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.
And even though some developing nations have much higher populations and rates of population growth than the U.S., their overall impact on the global equation is often reduced by shorter life spans and less consumption. The long-term impact of a child born to a family in China is less than one fifth the impact of a child born in the U.S., the study found.”
I couldn’t have said it any better myself, and believe me, I tried -(http://www.ecoshuttle.net/index.php/2011/10/27/standing-room-only/). Okay, well that’s all for this week’s blog, I hope
you have a safe and sustainable weekend!
-mark
02.03.12 - Meatless Mondays Blog
Hello Readers, happy Friday! You may or may not have noticed, but our Green Tip O’ the Week for this week was about going meatless one day out of each week, which is a great way to help slow our complete and utter destruction of the planet. Okay, so that is a pretty dramatic statement, but the truth hurts, huh?!
Anyways, I have to admit that I have been a lifelong consumer of meats and cheeses (along with plenty of veggies!). At the same time, I freaking love the heck out of animals of all kinds, especially dogs, sharks, dolphins, llamas and the occasional spider.
I have a hard time reconciling my love for meat with my love for animals, but meat is so delicious! On the other hand, it isn’t terribly good for you, or the environment. In South American rainforests alone, grazing land for meat-destined animals ends up clear-cutting a football field’s worth of rain forest land each minute of each day (Smithsonian Institution, “Smithsonian Researchers Show Amazonian Deforestation Accelerating,” Science Daily Online, 15 Jan. 2002).
I could spend the next 10 blogs describing the awful environmental impact of the meat industry, but I think people already know about that, or at least you folks reading this know about it. So instead, I will end this week’s blog with a call to action; join me in going meatless at least one day a week. I’ve decided Mondays are a good day because I love alliteration, and “Meatless Monday” just rolls right off the tongue. But to be honest, I ate meat on the same Monday I declared a personal “Meatless Monday”, but that’s because I had to meet some friends for a birthday at Portland City Grill and their happy hour menu favors the meat-oriented folks. So I ended up making this Tuesday my meatless day—my point is to be flexible with it to fit your schedule.
Just one day makes a huge difference and according to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off U.S. roads. – Mark
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/community-tips/meat-industry-eat-lower-food-chain_
htt
p://www.emagazine.com/archive/142
01.27.12 - State of the Union
Hello Blog Readers! I’m not sure if any of you had a chance to watch the State of the Union, but I did, and here some environment-related takeaways that I noted: First off, Obama has doubled down on green energy, in spite of pressure from his opponents:
“I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising.” (http://huff.to/yfZC9B)
Secondly, Obama is still invested in off-shore oil drilling as well as fracking for natural gas. One thing that interested me about Obama’s reference to fracking is that he wants to know what specific chemicals are being used before we get too involved with tapping into our massive natural gas deposits. The issue with fracking is that it adds strange things to the water table (http://bit.ly/cOzSR6). Sometimes, people who live near areas where fracking takes place suffer strange illnesses generally thought to have derived from their drinking water, and in some cases they’ve been able to ignite the “water” coming from their kitchen faucet. I hope Obama sees to it that the gas fracking industry guarantees safety from pollution of our water tables as well as looking into the cause and effect of fracking in addition to the recent swell in the number of earthquakes occurring in areas near where fracking is taking place. This is something that should be strictly regulated by the EPA and not the “industry experts”, who always seem to weigh in on the side of the industry (http://bit.ly/hTo93v). As for Obama’s stance on drilling for oil, it’s really is just a reflection of the status quo.
I think it was important that Obama indirectly referenced the controversial Solyndra issue. If people are able to successfully scare the administration away politically, from investing federal money into alternative energies, we will find ourselves in last place in the alternative energy economy, and we’ll still be reliant on the old, heavy polluting fossil fuels we’ve been burdened with for years. Our competitors in places like China are able to make bold investments in alternative energy because they face zero opposition in regards to doing what they know is right for their economy (http://bit.ly/yobk8W), even if they are still slow in coming around to the moral issue of taking care of the planet for future generations. -Mark
01.20.12 - Good News Blog 1/20/12
Happy Friday, Blog Readers!
It’s time for another good news blog! First off, we’re happy to see that the Keystone XL Pipeline was rejected—at least for now. If you’re not familiar, large deposits of tar sands in Alberta, Canada are being utilized for oil extraction with the intention of shipping to refineries in Texas via a pipeline that stretches across a delicate Midwestern aquifer.
If the pipeline had been approved, the increase in U.S. emissions would only be a fraction of 1%, in spite of the fact that tar sands oil produces 5 to 15% more emissions than oil extracted through traditional drilling methods (http://wapo.st/A8BjAT). One of the main reasons for scrapping the pipeline lies in the protection of the Ogallala Aquifer. If the pipeline were to leak, there is a good chance there would be chemicals seeping into an aquifer that is heavily depended upon for drinking and agricultural purposes.
Additionally, pipelines, sturdy though they may be, are prone to explosions and ruptures. Just recently near my alma mater-Ohio University in Athens, Ohio (go Bobcats!)- a gas pipeline exploded. Fortunately only one person was injured, but it could have been deadly (http://bit.ly/rtYeqh). The other primary reason to oppose the pipeline is that we need to start shifting away from the use of fossil fuels rather than finding clever ways to extract oil and prolong our use of such energy sources.
Aaaand! The other good news is our buddies over at Bamboo Sushi, with whom we have worked many times in the past, have been recognized as the most sustainable restaurant by Food Republic (http://bit.ly/ADHJB3). Also, as Cassandra Profita points out in her blog from Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Ecotrope (http://bit.ly/xYVMkw); they don’t use Bluefin tuna because it isn’t sustainable.
Nice work Bamboo Sushi, nice work! -Mark
01.06.12 - Midwest Blog, Part 2
Hello Blog Readers,
Welcome to Part 2 of the Midwest blog! The first leg of the trip I was looking at Chicago, now we’re moving on to the second part, rural NW Ohio! I must admit, I cannot make any similar comparisons between the nightlife in Chicago and the nightlife of Van Wert, OH, where I spent the other part of my time in the Midwest.
First off, a little history about Van Wert: Van Wert is a small community about 35 miles east of Ft. Wayne Indiana. The local economy is built around the auto manufacturing, farming, and insurance industries; which, except for the insurance industry—have been tanking the last few decades. Van Wert is not known to be home to progressive stewards of the environment, that being said, they have experienced a local jobs boom from an unexpected place: Green energy!
Wind turbines have been popping up all around rural Van Wert. 
The amount of labor required for the project, along with the amount of money being injected into the local economy has created a mini-boom in spite of the climate change deniers and global warming skeptics in the area. The construction of wind turbines is creating many construction jobs. 
The company responsible for the $700 million dollar alternative energy investment is none other than our friends over at Iberdrola Renewables, a company ecoShuttle has worked with over the past few years. Hopefully this influx of renewable energy and investment will change the minds of folks in rural Ohio and encourage them to help put a stop to strip-mining
and fracking . 
On a sad note, however, there has been a total lack of regulation in NW Ohio that has resulted in the utter decay of Lake St. Mary’s, the lake my family grew up swimming and water skiing in. 
What was once a bustling lake with boats and happy swimmers everywhere is now a cesspool of algae with a rapidly declining fish population. The Lake was originally a reservoir for the Miami-Erie Canal, but when the canal had lost its usefulness, the lake was repurposed for recreation—and it was a blast! That is until unregulated chemical run-off from farms, and unregulated waste from hog farms infiltrated the lake from underground. It is now a health-hazard to be anywhere near the lake. 
For folks who grew up playing in or near the lake, and for folks whose incomes were based on the lake, this has been an unmitigated disaster. Hopefully people will take another look at EPA regulations and the difference it can make in our lives. -Mark