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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Earth Day 2008: Green Is Going Mainstream?

While I was driving all over creation yesterday looking looking for shrubs (wasting gas, destroying the ozone etc...) I was thinking about how, in 2008, it's cool to be green. Leave it to us to commercialize and capitalize on the green movement.

I wonder what the real hippies think of the commercialization of the green movement? We love being trendy in this country. But, isn't being trendy sort of "anti-hippie?" On the one hand the green movement is now reaching the mainstream which makes for a much higher success rate (Al Gore must be a happy camper these days) but on the other hand we are sort of bastardizing the whole movement, aren't we? Discovery Channel is launching a new network called Planet Green that is devoted to, well, being green. But when I looked at the sneak peaks On Demand, I realized that they are planning to run more of those gimicky shows like HGTV already has. Are they really trying to make the world a better place to live or are they just trying to produce a hit TV show. I know, it's a stupid question. All the shows are these fast paced green-me-up-overnight type shows. I don't know why but that just rubs me the wrong way.

With Clorox making green cleaners and HD devoting a fair amount of advertising to "eco friendly options" it seems like the world may REALLY be making a very necessary shift which is awesome for the planet. And maybe this means that affordable solar panels are on the way? Wouldn't that be awesome?

In virtually unrelated news - my new favorite magazine is Mother Earth News and in honor of Earth Day I'm ordering myself a shiny new subscription. It's filled to the rim with good (mostly easy) ways to help the environment including lots of gardening related stuff. I also ordered my nephew a Mother Earth shirt for earth day - on the front it says "40 Years of Oil Left, 5,500,000,000 Years of Sunshine Left, CHOOSE WISELY".

Earth Day Contest: Congratulations to Leslie and Chet for winning the new Brita faucet mount filter system and Filter For Good bottle. For their Earth Day resolutions, Leslie is planning to try worm composting (rock on, Leslie!) and Chet and his wife are growing more of their own food and what they can't grow they'll try to buy locally. Leslie has an in-home daycare and I think it's really great that she's exposing the kiddies to good stuff like gardening and composting. I don't know Chet very well but I see that he lives down the street from me in Evanston. Congrats, guys! If you will kindly email me the address you'd like me to send your Brita filters to, I'll get those in the mail to you right away.

Happy Earth Day, gardening bloggers!

4 comments:

  1. I am so excited Gina! Thank you so much (and thanks to Brita, too)! This is such a great way to start Earth Day and I can't wait to tell the kids when they get here. I imagine we'll be going through extra water for a while! We're also celebrating by planting our seeds for the Great Sunflower Project so we'll be having a great day!

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  2. happy earth day... (to celebrate I'll be sitting at work trying to finish a project that I don't really understand so that I don't get fired and am able to go on my high school reunion trip this weekend... yay earth day. *sigh*)

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  3. Gina, I admired the image in your sidebar for the Garden Blogger - Seed Exchange. I clicked on it and went to their web site, liked the idea, joined, and looked for the code to put it in my sidebar. I couldn't find the code. I have sent an email to Colleen asking about it. Is there something I should know about it? If you reply to this comment, I will receive it in an e-mail. Thank you.

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  4. Thanks! That is really great!

    I also just got a new job at the Lincoln Park Conservancy and worked with volunteers planting, mulching and trash picker-upping around North Pond for Earth Day.

    It sure seems like people are starting to get into this whole "environment" thing! ;)

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