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1. Riverwired.com: Top Two Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities: Leona Lewis and Anthony Kiedis
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2. Riverwired.com: Cadillac Hybrid Sucks Wallets Dry, Not Gas Pumps
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3. Riverwired.com: Get Your Kids Involved With Greening the House
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4. Riverwired.com: Trust Your Kids: Raise Them Cage-Free!
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5. Riverwired.com: Green Freebie: Win a Toyota Prius – Or Perhaps a Bike
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6. Riverwired.com: "Buycott For Change" Recognizes Responsible Business, Promotes Merrymaking
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7. Riverwired.com: Smog Envelops Beijing on the Eve of Opening Ceremonies
Riverwired.com: Top Two Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities: Leona Lewis...
susan - Anthony Kiedis
By Susan Seliger
I know you've been waiting for this – lead singer and songwriter for the Hot Red Chili Peppers, Anthony Kiedis and pop princess with Spirit (that's her Billboard-topping album not a character assessment), Leona Lewis, have been voted the sexiest vegetarian celebrities alive!
Leaf lovers at Peta.org tallied the votes and made sure these celebs passed the vegan sniff test. Lewis has been a clean-living, animal-shunning British pop singer for most of her young life. Kiedis, on the other hand, is a recent convert, who followed the healthy veggie diet recommended for his son. Big change for him after the druggie life he documented in his autobiography, Scar Tissue. So there's still hope for the rest of us retrograde, burger-chomping greenhearts.
Check out Leona Lewis and her album on her MySpace page:
And more on Kiedis on Answers.com :
Photo credits: Kiedis: http://www.venicequeen.it/images/Anthony%20Kiedis/juliacher9mh.jpeg
Lewis: from her album, Spirit.
Riverwired.com: Cadillac Hybrid Sucks Wallets Dry, Not Gas Pumps
khallgeisler - Bikes & Cars
The Escalade will hit dealerships in September and will likely appeal to the same people who were buying the top-end luxury SUV in the first place, but now it comes with eco-cachet. That little green “H” logo looks good no matter which aftermarket rims and grilles you choose.
In contrast, the standard-issue 2009 Escalade without the two-mode hybrid system gets 12 mpg in the city and 19 on the highway with gasonline or 10 mpg/14 mpg if you get the E85 Flex Fuel version. The hybrid has puts out 9.2 tons of carbon annually, according to the EPA, while E85 emits 10.1 tons and gasoline emits 12. 2 tons.
Riverwired.com: Get Your Kids Involved With Greening the House
jchait - Home & Garden
Kids can be a valuable asset when it comes to going green. Where your home is concerned, kids can be really helpful because teaching them green steps early on means they’ll be more vigilant than you even.
My son always reminds me to turn off lights, and asks about recycling, so I know first hand that teaching your kids to be eco-friendly at home works.
Here are some easy green steps your kids can take at home:
Gardening: There’s no better way to learn about conserving than actually working with resources related to gardening. Your kids can learn about growth, organics, solar topics, seed saving (instead of buying new), composting, water use and conservation, and more. If you don’t have the yard space for a garden plot, these topics can easily be taught with a container garden.
Bathroom use: Lots of green opportunities occur in the bathroom. Even little kids can learn about turning the water off while brushing their teeth, not flushing everything yellow, and reusing a towel before washing.
Recycling: Get the kids involved in your home recycling. Kids can tell the difference between the recycling bins and the garbage can. Allow them to sort recycling and if they’re confused about bins, try this trick.
Clutter: Clutter and cleaning up said clutter is actually a cool way to teach eco-friendly objectives at home. Kids can learn that broken toys can be fixed, used toys and clothing can be given away vs. tossed, and more. As you clean the house make a point of talking to kids about these landfill reducing topics.
How do you get your kids involved with greening the house?
Riverwired.com: Trust Your Kids: Raise Them Cage-Free!
ProgressiveKid - Sustainable Ideas
Parents are a jumpy bunch these days. Even before I had my daughter I was troubled by the prevailing attitude among parents that the world has become a place too dangerous to let kids be kids anymore. Popular opinion seems to be that it is now too risky to let children do time-tested things like play outside unsupervised, climb a tree, explore on a bike, or walk to school alone, all things my friends and I enjoyed as kids. Once I became a mother I began to witness first-hand the stifling paranoia among other parents about their kids' safety and to see the effect it was having on kids. Not surprisingly a new major study by Play England, part of the National Children's Bureau of Great Britain, found that half of all kids no longer climb trees and 17 percent have been instructed by their parents not to play tag or chase. Although 70 percent of adults reported having had their biggest childhood adventures outside in natural settings, only 29 percent of children have such opportunities today. Depressingly, most children reported having their biggest adventures in playgrounds.
With his 2006 book The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv alerted our generation to the alienation of children from nature and the damaging effects of childhoods spent mostly inside, citing obesity, depression, and loss of self-esteem. Likewise, the recent British study points to the importance of risk-taking to "increase the resilience of children," and "help them make judgments." Although most parents today had such opportunities for outside play and risk-taking as children themselves, many of them are failing to make the connection between their own vital developmental experiences and their children's need for the same things.
Why? Media fear-mongering in recent decades has given the public a distorted sense of the dangers of contemporary society. If we believe what we are told by ratings-hungry "news" outlets, human nature has suddenly turned inexplicably bad, predatory perverts are everywhere, and child molestations and abductions are rampant. The fact is that most sexual and physical abusers are family members—not creepy strangers. This is confirmed on the American Psychological Association website. Abduction rates are declining, with most being by family members or other acquaintances of the child. Moreover, according to the U.S. Department of Justice violent crime against children actually has dropped by nearly half since 1973. Human nature has always been a mix of astonishing cruelty and equally astonishing kindness, dolled out in varying ratios across our species' population but averaging out to generally benign behavior.
Whether stirred by media hype and/or disconnection from nature and the nature in ourselves, contemporary parental fear is unhealthy for our kids and debilitating for parents. It reflects a fundamental loss of confidence in the general decency of others and, even more sadly, in the capability of our kids. To make matters worse, parental fear over children's safety often obscures or even supplants our commitment to our children's broader well-being. Tending to our children's safety helps keep them out of harm's way (though there are never guarantees). But simply keeping them out of harm's way is not enough for kids and, as studies remind us, not even always healthy for them. Rather than focusing obsessively on kids' safety, tending to their well-being helps give them skills and awareness that they require to be confident, capable people that develop into high-functioning adults.
How we foster the well-being of our children must be answered by each of us, depending on our values and the personalities of our kids. A great place to start is to have more faith in the resiliency of our kids—and ourselves—to bounce back from hurts, mistakes, failures, and false starts. Without such difficulties, there can be little healing, learning, triumph, and success. This kind of faith is really a faith in nature itself. It is a faith in our own animal selves and in the natural cycles of living—struggling and growing, protecting and challenging, exerting and resting, acting and reflecting, falling down and standing up again.
The topic of raising kids free-range, a term used by Lenore Skenazy on her thought-provoking website Free Range Kids, came up recently in an online mother's forum I belong to. One mother expressed in extreme terms what many were feeling when she said she would "lock and chain" her kids to her because of "perverts on the loose" in a "rabidly changing world." She called free-range parenting "science fiction." Unfortunately mothers with such an approach to parenting become a far greater threat to their kids than the world at large. Thanks in part to the often grotesque influence of television and other negative media messages, parents unwittingly make their children helpless, soft, dull, and cynical to boot.
There is no fiercer mama bear than me, but I also know that my daughter requires a reasonable level of freedom to grow and gain the confidence she will need to thrive as an adult. And setting that aside, life is simply so much richer when it is lived fully, with dirty feet and skinned knees. There is nothing sweeter than knowing she is in the raspberry patch out back grazing at will in her bare feet, without anyone to answer to but the universe before her.
Julie Hall is the author of A Hot Planet Needs Cool Kids: Understanding Climate Change and What You Can Do About It, a poet, and cofounder of the green online store ProgressiveKid.
©2008 ProgressiveKid
Riverwired.com: Green Freebie: Win a Toyota Prius – Or Perhaps a...
susan - Sustainable Ideas
By Susan Seliger
A prominent Japanese tea company, Tea’s Tea, is holding a contest in America – and the grand prize is Japan's red-hot green car, the Prius. If you don't come in the big winner, the next prize is still a happy green choice: a bike. You've only got until September 1, 2008 – and you can enter every day. There are even instant winners, so start clicking.
Photo credit: http://john1701a.com/prius/images/homepage/Prius_Kayak_21.jpg
Riverwired.com: "Buycott For Change" Recognizes Responsible...
Marcus - blue marble ice cream
When Brooklyn resident and Northwestern University graduate Josh Sherman founded Buycott For Change earlier this year, he had one goal in mind: to change the world. The objective of Sherman's fledgling non-profit is to recognize local businesses that have adopted socially responsible practices that benefit their employees, the surrounding community, and/or the environment. Each month, Buycott For Change selects a "target" business and hosts a gathering to encourage participants to "simply enjoy what the target has to offer." The event serves to both patronize the selected business, and encourages participants to socialize with other like-minded members of the community.
Last month, the Buycott selected Ft. Greene's Habana Outpost as its destination, due to its use of solar power, innovative rainwater collection systems, compostable cups and cutlery, and picnic tables made out of recycled plastic bottles and sawdust. This month, the Buycott traveled to Blue Marble Ice Cream in Boerum Hill, citing its use of local, fair trade, and organic ingredients as Buycott-worthy attributes. By bringing a mob of friendly consumers to responsible businesses, Buycott For Change hopes to provide positive reinforcement and encourage other businesses to follow suit.
Seriously, check this out. It's a great cause, a great time, and an excellent opportunity to change the world a little with some fine people.
To learn more about Buycott For Change, visit www.BuycottForChange.org. If you have ideas or suggestions for future locations, email the Buycott at BuycottForChange@gmail.com.
Riverwired.com: Smog Envelops Beijing on the Eve of Opening Ceremonies
Marcus - athletes
Apparently, it's unclear whether or not the "fog" that International Olympic Committee president James Rogge reported seeing earlier today in downtown Beijing is due to pollution or excessive heat and humidity. Either way, today's haze marked the smoggiest day of the past week and, with the opening ceremonies just a day away, the I.O.C. is concerned that it may have to postpone events due to noxious air. Outdoor events, especially cycling, triathlon, and marathon running, are the most at risk, and I.O.C. officials are taking every precaution to ensure athletes' health and safety. While Chinese authorities are confident that the air quality will remain at safe levels, the air pollution in Beijing is often three times higher than the U.S. limit on any given day.
It's going to be interesting to see whether or not athletes opt out of tomorrow's opening ceremony, where they'll have to be outside for several hours. Look for Beijing's pollution to become a theme over the course of the games—it may unfortunately play a significant role in the way several of the events unfold. There's already been some controversy over American cyclists getting off the plane with pollution-cutting masks on. The smog, in conjunction with some serious humidity, not to mention the rising tensions of the China-Tibet conflict, could make things a little bit sticky over the next few weeks. Stay tuned.
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