Greentime Episode #1 – Introductions
Rhett and Amy introduce themselves, talk about what sustainability and green living mean to them, talk about the unique challenges facing urban apartment-dwellers when they want to think green, and ponder things to come. Please don't forget to get involved…visit the website, comment, email the show, and keep coming back! Help us help make a difference and be good examples for others!
Oh, and Zamis the cat makes his first cameo.
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Anonymous said,
March 21, 2007 @ 10:15 am
Greentime, New Green Video Blog, Launched…
Rhett Aultman and Amy Hale, winners of a 2006 Vloggy Award for best documentary, have launced a new video blog called Greentime. Greentime aims to serve as a record of the authors’ ongoing experiment to live a more green and sustainable lifestyle…
Gene Shinai said,
March 21, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
Hi,
I really like the focus of your Video blog I too am an urban dweller. I live in low income housing in Hillsboro Oregon. I have switched to green power and use public transit exclusively. My next challenges are to change out my light and to learn to eat more sustainably. The latter project I feel will be the most daunting. You wouldn’t know of any low sodium microwave dinners that are locall produced woud you? Seriously, I am looking for an alternative to beef which is easier on the environment, preferably locally grown? Anyway, I wll be tuning in regularly. See you soon.
-Gene.
zach said,
March 21, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
If you were giving advice to a big local company who is trying to committment themselves to promoting green lifestyles and behaviors locally, within their community, what are 3 specific things you would encourage them to do?
Thank you,
Zachary
Rhett said,
March 22, 2007 @ 7:45 am
Gene,
Thanks so much for the kind words and comments. It’s excellent that you switched to green power. Are you self-generating or using the green power option from your local utility company? We’re going to do a video on green power within the next couple of weeks ourselves.
Eating sustainably is actually one of our first changes, and it is, like everything else, something we think a person should be ever-vigilant about and do in small steps. Sadly, we don’t know of any low sodium microwave dinners that are locally produced. Of course, as we live in South Florida, what is local to us won’t be local to you. Have you perhaps considered making your own microwave dinners? Pasta, stew, and things like that actually can freeze and reheat pretty well, and that’s something can “cook Sunday and eat all week”.
Thanks for tooning in, and we really do hope to hear from you again soon.
Rhett said,
March 22, 2007 @ 8:40 am
Zachary,
Wow. That’s a really big question, and one we don’t necessarily have an answer to off the top of our head. The thing is that sustainability and green behaviors aren’t things we do in a bubble, so in order to get a good idea of what things said company would do, I’d do better knowing what the company’s business is.
This is just my opinion, but I would think that there are some general rules of thumb, though. The best way to encourage green behavior is to actually find ways to make people do it without thinking about it. A company can do this, for example, by offering goods and services not traditionally considered “green” and ensure that their production and delivery are done in sustainable/green ways. If you do this, then every consumer of the goods or services has actually done something green without even trying. So, the first thing a company can always do is green its own goods. The question of whether or not to openly market the greenness of goods and services is another matter, of course.
The next good strategy is to offer consumers an incentive for being green. At my workplace, for example, the cafeteria will discount a beverage purchase by a nickel if the purchaser uses his/her own cup. Whole Foods does something similar with their shopping bags, where you get a nickel back for every bag they don’t use when bagging your groceries. The idea is to encourage good behaviors with incentives. This is a lesser strategy than the previous one, though, because it requires that you inform consumers and that they care. I’d argue most Whole Foods shoppers don’t make use of the incentive because it seems low to them and they’re not thinking about bringing bags to the store.
Another good strategy is to use that company’s position as being a pillar of the community for good. Large local business carries sway in local government– the company should use that to their advantage. Depending on the company’s line of business, it may also consider throwing its name behind local events to help get them the funding and promotion they need. For example, my father is a veterinarian and, for years, was a booster of local charity events supporting animal welfare. It was win-win, because being seen in the community was good for his practice, and the animal welfare charities got the social backing of a large local veterinarian. It’s important to remember that, in your community right now, there are plenty of people who want to spend their free time as cheerleaders for sustainability. They want to do the work, but they need financiers and boosters to give them legitimacy and to gain access to the media and halls of government. That’s where socially conscious businesses come in.
I’d love to talk more about the specifics of this business, if you can tell me.
Will said,
March 22, 2007 @ 10:17 am
Hi,
Just to offer encouragement, and agree that a lot of suggestions “out there” assume you have your own house in the country. My ex-girlfriend’s grandfather was John Seymour, and he was really bad for this.
Best of luck…
Will
Gene Shinai said,
March 22, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
Hi Rhett,
I get my power through PGE’s Green Source: http://www.portlandgeneral.com/home/products/renewable_power/default.asp#green
As to food, Hillsboro has a Farmer’s Market that should be opening soon for the spring. I have a friend who says that she will help me learn to can so I can have local produce year around. I hope I have the skill to do it. I’m so used to eating out of a box. I’m taking a class right now through nwei.org on how to be a better steward of the earth in my personal living. I’ll let you know how this all turns out.
-Gene
Cat said,
March 22, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
Hi Rhett!
We’re in a bit of a pickle here in St. Petersburg, FL. My residence, which is a ten story condominium, does not have any recycling facilities. I know I can take my soda cans to a grocery store for the deposit and recycle them there, but what do I do with my cans without deposits, plastic, cardboard and newspaper? Any ideas?
Thanks so much!!
Cat
Pete said,
March 23, 2007 @ 1:43 am
Hi Rhett and Amy
Just a few words of encouragement from me in the UK. The issues surrounding living in urban and suburban communities are vastly more difficult than going ‘off-grid’ in some backwater place in the middle of nowhere. Most housing in the UK is around cities or large towns and the further south you go, the more dense the population. Strangely though, our transport infrastructure doesn’t cope well with linking shopping areas and similar services with smaller villages. So transport is a major issue here. What about for you?
Amy works from home, but how big a part will (personal) transport play in your green future? You must get out sometime – when you’re not making documentaries or vlogs etc – so what happens then? Have you forgone all air transport? Has the car been sold off? Have you got room in your apartment for a couple of bicycles?
Love to know!!
Rhett said,
March 23, 2007 @ 6:56 am
Cat,
I don’t know that I have a good answer for that yet. Believe it or not, we have a similar problem. We’re lucky that there’s a Whole Foods about four blocks away from us and we can always drag our recycling down there, but our county is supposed to provide recycling infrastructure.
Two possible places to start– check out the website for city and county government and use a search engine to search those sites specifically for recycling information (Do a google search of “site:www.whateversite.com recycling”) and see what your local government says. They may offer you aid. If that falls through, then perhaps this is an issue worth taking up with your condo’s owners association? When we lived in Gainesville, FL, there was no municipal recycling of note, but many apartment complexes ended up funding recycling because tenants asked for it.
We’ll eventually be doing our own video on this when we figure out what our choices are. In the meantime, if you come up with a solution, please by all means email us and tell us what you did. Send a picture, and we’ll have your smiling face to add in a future episode.
Rhett said,
March 23, 2007 @ 7:24 am
Pete,
Amy actually used to live in the UK, and I have no doubt she’ll be popping in to offer her own personal commentary on that, so I’ll leave that for her.
As for where we live. We live in one of many towns that cluster the outskirts of Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Really, we live about 10 miles from the major points in the city. That said, however, these towns actually have pretty good design, and shopping and services are not far. A little careful choosing of where one lives gets you access to quite a bit! We live within a short walk of three grocers, dentists and doctors, hardware and home improvement stores, several restaurants and pubs, and a shopping mall. My commute to work is 4 miles each way, which I could be doing on my bicycle or with something similar. Bicycling here has some unique problems, like arriving to one’s job after bicycling in temperatures around 90 degress F (32.2C). If I wanted to as well, there’s a bus line that connects us. South Florida itself is a continuum of three different counties that span a north-south distance of something like 90 miles (I’m estimating, since it’s about an hour’s drive to the northern parts and a half an hour to the southern parts). Anyway, the majority of our driving actually is done on the weekends and when we want to go to an event or see a friend, but there is probably room for improvement there. For example, the three counties are linked by a common rail line.
We try to liken sustainability to a diet. Most people who try to diet to lose weight swear off all sorts of different kinds of foods and try to eat very little. What ultimately happens is that the honeymoon period wears off and they end up back in the same habits again, and sometimes worse. So, we’re taking the approach to sustainability that works for people who are successful in changing their diet and exercise– we’re investigating each part of our life as it comes up, looking at it from the eyes of what the costs and benefits are, and asking if there’s a better way. So, no, we haven’t sold the cars yet, but we are fixing up the bike and we are looking into our options. It may not be dramatic or cause an overnight change, but it’s one that we believe wins in the long haul.
If it doesn’t win for the long haul, there will be a great video record of what not to do, so at least we’ll have helped out by closing off part of the debate over green lifestyles.
Amy said,
March 23, 2007 @ 7:50 am
Hi Zach,
I don’t know if this would be helpful to you, but I believe very strongly in telecommuting, and in businesses doing what ever they can to support their employees not being in cars. If there is a way that you can promote employees working from home even one day a week or investing in technology that will allow people to have meetings from distances without traveling, conference software, I really think this would be a huge step.
I also think it’s important for businesses to reduce paper usage by sending reports and memos electronically when it’s convenient for them to do so. You may have been talking about non-business-related Greening of the local community, but I think for businesses trying To promote sustainable activities, setting an example is a good place to start.
Amy said,
March 23, 2007 @ 7:58 am
Hi Pete,
As Rhett mentioned I lived in Cornwall for six years so I’m very familiar with the transport situation there. Although I possess a UK drivers license, and I did have a car, most of my time was spent using public transport, and I’m sure you can imagine how long it took me to get anywhere at all. I think that outside of London, the UK does have tremendous problems with affordable public transport. In rural areas it is quite crippling indeed. Now that essential services are being depleted in villages, it makes it even harder on the population.
As for us, one thing to remember is that we are not going off the grid. The point of this exercise is about cutting back in sustainable ways, and figuring out what our limits are, while making a firm commitment to Greener living. I still have a car, but I do live within walking distance of most things that I need. And I have not given up air travel at all, I need to visit my parents, friends and colleagues back in the UK
Overall, I think that the UK has a much more environmentally sound sensibility. People over there are much more sensitive to these issues, and I think that there are efforts to make Greener living a part of everyday life regardless of where in the country you live. I want to try to incorporate that sensibility into my life in South Florida. Thank you for your support, please keep sending us your perspective. We value it!
Stephen said,
March 24, 2007 @ 6:56 pm
Its Zammis! Get it right! From Enemy Mine! Zammis four five!
Oh, the the video was good too.
Stephen said,
March 26, 2007 @ 2:54 pm
Rhett and Amy,
My family has a house in the hills of Maine, that I think is environmentaly friendly.
We couldnt hook up to the power grid because of the location, being on top of a mountain. We have a small bank of solar panels that we use to charge the battery that starts the Desert Storm desiel generator we got from an Army surplus store. We used to have that hooked up to an Inverter, that went to a bank of 30 batteries, and we would run everything in the house off of that. But the inverter kept blowing due to lighting strikes, so we bypassed that with a penny, and just use the generator. ( that was probably a good thing, since we needed to change out the batteries every 2 years, and I was pretty sure they ended up in some Asian country )
While I was up there, we even recycled our hair clippings. We would use that as kindling to start the fire we used to burn our garbage. That way, we never had to drive to town to make a dump run, and since we had a steady NW wind, we never had to smell the burning garbage, cause it would blow into the neighbors yard.
So, just look around, and you can find ways to make even an apartment Eco friendly.
Hope this helped,
Stephen
Rhett said,
March 27, 2007 @ 9:38 am
As a bit of trivia, Stephen is Zammis’ real dad, so he’d know best how to spell his name. He’s also a very long-standing friend of ours.
It’s funny, because I knew you grew up in the hills of Maine, but I never realized how off-grid you were. There are certainly a lot of advantages you can pick up that way, not the least of which is that being off-grid often forces conservation so that even if you’re running a diesel generator you might be doing much better on the whole than a regular home using coal-supplied electricity on the grid. Garbage incineration, done right, can be a good and clean source of heat, but that all depends on what you burn, of course. You can’t exactly burn plastic cleanly.
I’d really love to see some pictures of your family’s home one day. It sounds really interesting.
ezri said,
May 17, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
my orange stripey cat is named zammis too! (except i spell it ‘zamise”) he got the name because he made sounds just like the baby zammis in the movie when he was a kitten.
Rhett said,
May 18, 2007 @ 6:44 am
Hehe! How funny to find another Enemy Mine inspired cat. Something a Haitian fellow mentioned to me down here is that “zamis” means “good friend” in Creole. The spelling might be different or something, but I thought that was kind of cool.
Do you have a picture of Zamise? We’d love to see what he looks like.
Nathan said,
June 3, 2007 @ 1:22 am
Great intro…Japan could learn a lot from you guys. The English level in this is way over the level of my students however I think I can use bits and pieces in a lesson or two!
Rhett said,
June 5, 2007 @ 9:07 am
Nathan,
Japan? Students? 私は少し日本語を話します。 Maybe we could make a video or two that might better target your students? It might be a fun language experiment for us. We’ve joked before about how great the word グリンタイム sounds.