Celebrating a Meaningful Earth Hour 2010

Earth Hour 2010 has passed by–has its message passed us by too? In this post, I express my personal experience of seeking to find the meaningfulness behind celebrating an occasion that I believe matters.

In the days following Earth Hour, news stories jostled between it having been the best Earth Hour yet, to claims of less lights off than previous Earth Hours (see, for example, Fewer lights off for Earth Hour). I saw a number of online discussions suggesting that people “waste their time” observing this occasion, and I was blown away when I learned that some people intended to turn on all of their lights to celebrate Edison Hour, thereby thumbing their nose at any initiative trying to raise awareness of our real and present energy and climate challenges! My disappointment deepened when I visited a regular forum, only to read uncivil language shouting at the “preachy people” to go and turn off their computer forever and to stop “sitting in the dark” when more practical things could be done.

It is a truism to say that the environment would benefit more from doing something practical like planting trees in the local reserve instead of turning off our lights for an hour.  But that killjoy attitude totally misses the point of what this occasion represents: Earth Hour is an opportunity to learn from a purposeful interruption to our “energy-on-tap” lives. And ironically, did those wanting to celebrate an "Edison Hour" realize that Edison once said: "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run our before we tackle that." Indeed, their very "rebelliousness" of switching on all the lights acknowledged that energy is something we all have a choice about, either to switch on, or to switch off. I do hope those who vetoed Earth Hour in favor of "practical things" are actually out there planting the trees, untying plastic bottle rings from birds’ necks and participating in community restoration projects...

The Three Gifts of Earth Hour

Although saddened at seeing this symbolic event maligned and resented, it hasn't swayed my conviction in its importance. I’d like to share with you my own experience of Earth Hour 2010, spent with a bright young person born this millennium. A much anticipated occasion in our household, we reminded one another in the lead-up to Earth Hour to set aside Saturday night’s hour: no TV, no radio, no computer, no lights! Things were busy as usual and as the hour approached, we hadn’t managed to “plan” anything specific, although there were plenty of suggestions. Dinner over, with 10 minutes left, I realized we didn't have any candle holders, so we had to fish make-do's out of the recycling bin.  Two nice clean jars and a saucer later, we placed our candles on the table, lit them in readiness, took the phone off the hook, shut down computers, and checked that all the lights were off. My son advised that we were not allowed to use “anything that is powered smartly”.

At 8:30pm, we switched off the last light and excitedly rushed to the window to see if others were doing the same across our lovely hillside view. At first it seemed that other houses weren’t participating; a house across the way had its large TV images flickering constantly, another house had many lights on, and the hillside seemed its usual brightness. My son quickly nicknamed the lit-up houses “the Wild West” because, he told me, “they face West and aren’t turning off their lights!”. Then, as we waited patiently, we started to see lights turning off. Bit by bit, there was a distinctive change and my son became more excited as he saw people taking part. All of a sudden he cried: “Look! The lights are out in that house and they’ve turned off their big TV! They’re doing Earth Hour too!” Eager to see that others were also participating in Earth Hour, the anticipation of waiting while it took up to five minutes past the starting time paid off–many others were participating too! My son’s excitement was infectious, and I realized then that the sense of “solidarity” with my many neighbors sharing and acknowledging the point of the event was the first gift of participating in Earth Hour.

We sat at the table in front of the glowing candles. At this point, I realized that there was a full hour ahead of sitting there and wondered if this was going to work. Would he get bored with "just talk"? Would we feel tempted to go and do something with a light on? Should we go for a walk like we did for last Earth Hour? I decided to ask him what he wanted to do. He laughed and said we could do shadow tricks on the wall with the flashlight, adding that “This feels just like when we go camping, only at home! I love this!” Suddenly he proclaimed: “I want to read!” He took his flashlight and went and found his current favorite library book, The Comic Strip History of the World. When it was my turn, my flashlight alighted on the disarray of books on my desk. Not having planned this, I hadn’t a clue what I felt like reading but the one that leaped out was Al Gore’s Our Choice. “Why not?”, I thought, “It’s apt!” We settled in to read around the candles. The glow was magical–and warm too–the peace entire, broken into only by the gentle, melancholic sound of the morepork owls (ruru) in the trees outside.

As the first half of the hour ticked on, my son shared many thoughts with me. He told me about Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, Genghis Kahn, Henry the VIII, Montezuma, Atahualpa… My own reading gave me a refresher in greenhouse gases and energy use, facts I shared with him. Periodically we checked the houses and mostly we saw streetlights and the occasional car headlights, but for the most part, the houses remained dark, with the odd non-participating house contrasting starkly with its many lights.

By the second part of the hour, it was clear that we were enjoying our activities by candlelight without the hubbub of computers, TV, phones, and the inevitable relocation of family that instant lighting enables without a second thought. Obliged to remain huddled around our little grouping of candles for the only source of light, Earth Hour gave me a second gift in reminding me how important it is to recreate this closeness, tranquility, and sharing of interests on a regular basis at home, by “switching off” the distractions.

Creativity sparked in this quiet hour. In between my son’s reading about the Dark Ages of Europe and my crash course in how turbines work, a thought evolved between us that it’d be a good idea to make a climate change boardgame together, one that could help families understand the challenges and solutions through standing in other people’s shoes. We drew diagrams and created characters, all by the light of the candle. A third gift of Earth Hour: The two of us now have an ongoing passion to share for many months ahead.

Mindful and Meaningful

Seated together, telling one another things, sharing ideas, and just being close without the concern that sudden technological interruptions would burst the creativity bubble, is an incredible experience that I want our family to engage in more often. It isn’t just about making space for “quality time” with our children, something which many of us already do; it’s also about knowingly turning off the distractions that unconsciously lead our concentration astray. By disconnecting from technology now and then, I believe that we can show our children that this downtime is as much a means to connecting as being "switched on". While humans are clever enough to leave the light on way past sundown, we’re not always so alert to the downside of our brilliant inventions, our tendency occasionally to allow our inventions run us and determine our routines. For me, Earth Hour was an excellent opportunity to practice mindfulness toward the manner in which my energy usage plays out within my family life.

Framing the event as meaningful matters because Earth Hour is not about measurable mass power reduction once a year (even though it's cool to see that happen); rather, it is an important opportunity to reflect on our personal energy usage, a time to calculate the costs (financial, social, cultural, and environmental) of our energy-hungry lifestyles, and an hour during which we can ponder the ways in which each of us can make beneficial individual changes that contribute to the larger whole. The occasion was all the more meaningful to me when I saw that others also felt this way, including MiniMonos turning off its servers in acknowledgment too.

So, did I celebrate a meaningful Earth Hour? I’d say emphatically, yes, I did. I got to share it with my son–and even a handful of famous leaders! I was delighted by the spontaneous ideas that arose despite the lack of planning, and we created something together in a Eureka moment that will continue to spark our creative energy in times ahead. We’ve agreed on sharing regular “Earth Hours” as a family tradition, for family bonding, as much as for marking a concern for resource-saving. We ended Earth Hour (two hours after it began!) committed to sharing more non-distracted time together, looking for more ways to positive message about planetary and human health, and feeling positive that other people around us do “give a stuff”. For a child, symbolic occasions matter and that’s enough reason for me to say Earth Hour should matter to us adults too. Sometimes you just have to be in the dark to be enlightened.

Notes:

• The Comic Strip History of the World is a delightful way to introduce children ages 8–12 to a compact and very humorous take on major world history events and leaders. Recommended! ISBN 978-0-7475-9431-4
• Our Choice by Al Gore is recommended too, if you haven't already read it. It provides good clarifications of the technical concepts and it's a very good overview that can be easily shared with children around the kitchen table. ISBN 978-0-7475-9098-9

Friday Featured Friend -- Rosie Emery

 

We’re honored to feature the amazing Rosie Emery this week, an international singer/songwriter, environmental educator and new media producer specializing in teaching children about life’s interconnectedness. Rosie has so many talents, it is hard to know where to start but we’re giving it a go! We just love how Rosie is bringing the messages of caring for nature and sustainable living to children through music and education and we’re totally enthused by her positive, happy outlook, so she made for an easy fit as this week’s Friday Featured Friend.

Rosie grew up wandering freely among nature in the renowned Sherwood Forest, a magical place that has inspired Rosie’s strong passion for the environment ever since. Concerned about the decline in global environmental health and the disconnect that has arisen in our understanding of how our well-being is completely tied up with the well-being of our planet, Rosie became involved in environmental protection in the 1980s. Since 1989, she has been writing and performing meaningful songs, stories, and activities for children that awaken a sense of wonder for the Earth and celebrate the beauty of nature.

Rosie loves to build on children’s innate curiosity, in order to encourage children to find their own pathways to unearthing an inherent desire to care for and nurture living beings and nature. She stresses that it is more important than ever to get across the message to children about the importance of nature in their lives, given that the majority of us now live in urban centers. While making it clear that it is our responsibility as parents, guardians, and teachers, to provide children with plentiful opportunities in which to discover and cherish “this awesome place in which we live”, Rosie isn’t here to preach; she’s keen to provide the tools to help all of us nourish children’s love for nature, to make it easier for us to guide children in finding their own ways to protect the environment as befits their unique skills and talents, and she states emphatically that: “It also has to be fun! Ideally all kids would get to spend time out in the forest, on the river, in a swamp, by the ocean or just playing in their backyards and parks!  There is no doubt that first hand experience in nature is the best!” With gentle and consistent guidance and encouragement to enjoy their time in nature, Rosie believes that children will continue to protect and care for the environment as they grow into adulthood.

Underpinning much of Rosie’s efforts is the key principle of interconnectedness. She believes that it is vital to help children understand that effective earth stewardship is dependent on eliminating global poverty because the two are inextricably linked. She also helps children to see interconnectedness as requiring us to view all species as intrinsically relevant in the community of life. As Rosie sings, “We’re All Interconnected”!

One of Rosie’s principal concerns is that many children miss out on wandering around freely in nature, directly experiencing the bond we have with nature and learning about the interconnectedness of the community of life. Rosie believes that all of us must do our best to ignite a sense of responsibility toward the Earth in our children. Referring to the concerns raised by Richard Louv in his book, Last Child in the Woods, Rosie worries that children don’t get the freedom to “explore the edges” and that this creates a disconnect with the Earth that can prevent children from understanding the intrinsic value of nature. Rosie doesn’t just signal this concern though; she finds constructive means for overcoming it through her creative talents, teaching young children that the Earth is precious and in need of our care.  To this end, she motivates children’s sense of social responsibility through her music and TV programs. For example, Rosie is about to record a new CD called “I Saw Butterflies Kissing Today!”, a musical journey that will encourage children, parents and grandparents to get out and discover the wonders of the great outdoors, even if it’s just the backyard! 

Keen to help children learn about the interconnections between environment, culture and health, in partnership with WGCU Public Media (PBS) in Fort Myers, Florida, Rosie has developed and produced their Curious Kids TV/Web programs, including the Curious Kids Nature Club and Get Up, Get Out, Get Active. This summer, Rosie will begin producing a half-hour Kids TV series that will be hosted by Kids for Kids. Culturally themed to highlight how we all belong to both a local and a global community, the show focuses on the environment, wellness, and the arts. Under development also is Rosie’s program “My World, My Self”, a collaboration with the Montreal Women’s Y. This early childhood educator’s program aims to synthesize environmental education with wellness education to help children understand how our own well-being is intricately linked with that of the environment.

And as an overall means of “giving back”, Rosie creates a weekly Environmental Education blog to inspire both teachers and parents with class ideas. Rosie finds that writing this blog serves as a form of inspiration for herself at the same time because she discovers new stories, websites, resources, and fabulous articles while creating it and shares these with the rest of us for free!

So, if you think all that is great, we also learned that Rosie has created and produced with her partner, JC Little of Little Animation Inc., an incredible resource: The Little Earth Charter (LEC). Rosie’s dream is that all children around the world will grow up learning the principles of the LEC. Rosie and JC consulted with the educational team of the International Earth Charter to synthesize its 16 principles into the eight principles of the LEC, so that they could be more easily conveyed to young children. Rosie and her partner are optimistic that the program will spread as more and more people discover it. Already there are schools in Australia , the UK, Portugal, and Belgium using the LEC to inspire their learning activities. This is a truly astounding achievement.

From here, Rosie is brimming with hope and plans for a busy future. She will continue providing workshops for educators around the world and will continue to put her all into environmental education. Rosie says that: “For me it is my life's work and as long as there is breath in my body I shall be doing what I can to create fun and inspiring resources.” It is clear that Rosie’s energetic media creations make the most of relying on creativity to instill the values of earth stewardship in children; this caring and guiding approach is something that we at MiniMonos believe is essential to enable children’s own self-discovery about living sustainably and ethically. We are in total support of Rosie’s enthusiasm and proactive educational activities and we’re proud to be interconnected with Rosie too. Thank you for letting us get to know more about you Rosie!

You can follow Rosie’s activities at her website We’re All Interconnected, listen to more of her music on MySpace, become a Fan on Facebook, play some fun interactive games at Earth To Rosie, and follow her on Twitter @RosieEmery.

A few words with MiniMonos Games Writer, Deborah Todd

We were very lucky this week to have a MiniMonos team get-together with our California-based Games Writer, Deborah Todd.

Deb is an internationally renowned award-winning designer, writer, producer, and director in the interactive arena.  With more than 25 published titles to her credit, she is one of the first women game designer-writers in the industry, working with many of the early video game icons.

At MiniMonos, Deb is responsible for writing our games and creating our in-game areas and characters, along with their rich back-stories.  She is responsible for designing how our games and activities link together and tell an overall story to kids which is engaging and fun.  Deb is a hugely valuable member of our MiniMonos team and working with her face-to-face this week has been an absolute treat for all of us.

Yesterday Deb was interviewed by Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon programme and describes what makes a game compelling and what parents should be looking for when choosing an online game for their kids.

You can listen to Deb's Nine to Noon interview here.

 

Preserving a Precious Resource: Water

March 22 is World Water Day, and this year marks the middle of the United Nations Decade of Water for Life  (2005 – 2015). In honor of this occasion, our family decided to look into how important water is in our lives.

Water covers almost two thirds of our planet. Most water is found in the oceans (97.2%), with 2.1% in frozen ice caps and glaciers. A mere 0.7% of water is in the rivers, lakes and groundwater that we rely on as freshwater and that freshwater is not evenly distributed around the world: Some countries get more than enough water, other countries are parched, suffering from water scarcity and its resulting challenges, and some countries have an abundance of water at one time of the year but suffer from scarcity of water at other times of the year.

Photo courtesy: Pat Hawks

We rely on water for a wide range of human activities. Not only do we drink water but we use it for irrigating our crops, caring for our pets and livestock, transporting our goods, adding to our manufacturing processes, bathing and washing, providing energy and fuel (for example, hydroelectricity dams), fighting fires, beautifying our personal landscapes, and more. Water is a vital resource for human existence and yet, the availability of water and its cleanliness are compromised in many parts of the world.

Freshwater shortages are, unfortunately, commonplace. Drinking water supplies are threatened by increasing populations and many urban centers of the world are struggling to meet the infrastructure needs required to deliver clean water to the population. Drought (exacerbated by the impacts of climate change) is causing many parts of the world to suffer from severe water shortages; many cities are now rationing water supplies (for example, Mexico City had to cut off the water supply to hundreds of thousands of people five times during 2009 because rainfall levels were so low). It is a sobering fact that almost fifty percent of the developing world's population (2.5 billion people) do not have access to improved sanitation facilities; in addition, over 884 million people get their drinking water from unsafe water sources (UNICEF).  Polluted water is a problem in most parts of the world, from rivers filled with the tailings from mining operations to local lakes that have served as a dumping ground for toxic waste from local companies. Pollution of freshwater destroys the wildlife of rivers, lakes and streams, and compromises and threatens the health and spiritual well-being of people.

At home, saving water is, in the first place, a matter of recognizing that water is a precious resource despite it being “on tap”. As a family, we sat down and had a talk about how we save water and what more we can do. We already turn off the tap when we brush our teeth, we fix dripping appliances quickly, we don't use sprinklers or have a water-hungry lawn, and we wash the car using a bucket instead of a running hose. Could we do more? We thought yes, and we’d like to share the possibilities with you:

1. Research more about the water cycle, the uses of water and the importance of water. Understanding the bigger picture is often a great motivator for children. Jen Green’s book Why Should I Save Water? (ISBN 0-7641-3157-5) is great to read with kids ages 3-10, and Trevor Day’s book Water is a fantastic overview of all things water, suitable for kids aged 8 to teens (it’s also great for adults!) (ISBN 978-0-7566-2562-7).
2. Avoid purchasing bottled water. Municipalities have an important role in ensuring the provision of clean, healthy water to all of us as a basic right. We try to remember to take our durable, long-lasting water bottle with us on trips and ask for tap water refills wherever we go. It's always a good excuse for a yarn about local water quality with the residents! (See also Richard Metzger’s great post on The Story of Bottled Water.)
3. Monitor water usage as a family. This is a fun exercise you can do at home, courtesy of Jen Green’s book Why Should I Save Water?.  Create a chart for: Shower/bath; Dishwashing; Washing Clothes; Car Washing; Toilet Flushing; Gardening; Other Water Usage. One bucket is about 3 gallons or 10 liters of water, a shower or hand washing dishes uses about 4 gallons or 15 liters of water, using the dishwasher uses about 8 gallons or 30 liters, a bath uses about 16–26.5 gallons or 60–30 liters and a washing machine uses about 32 gallons or 120 liters. Knowing all this, ask children to record daily water usage by bucket in the home for one week. At the end of the week, tally up the buckets and see what your overall water usage is. Think about how your family can start to reduce this usage through these water saving ideas:

• Wash fuller loads of washing and dishes using energy efficient appliances
• Turn off the tap or faucet when brushing your teeth
• Avoid rinsing or washing dishes under running water
• Water plants only when they need watering; don’t over-water (this is also important for the health of the plants!)
• Wash your car with a bucket and sponge rather than with a hose; wash the car over lawn (the lawn gets watered)
• Limit shower length and use water-saving nozzles, reduce the frequency of baths and have young children share bathwater rather than filling the tub several times
• Consider having a gray water system installed in your home; while it’s a big investment, it has many water-saving benefits
• Fix leaking faucets and pipes quickly
• Pour cooled down vegetable cooking water on your plants; it's full of nutrients
• Ask your children to come up with their own suggestions.

MiniMonos is helping to ensure that clean, healthy water reaches those who most need it. Through its membership of Buy1Give1, MiniMonos provides clean drinking water to children in India through Bird India. But it doesn’t stop there: MiniMonos helps you and your child contribute a week’s worth of clean drinking water for a child in India through the purchase of every six month Top Banana Gold membership too! It is a terrific way to be involved directly in making a difference. And finally, let us know about your water-saving efforts; we're keen to learn about what you're doing to reduce the buckets of water your household uses!

Friday Featured Friend -- Suzy Gneist

A huge welcome to Felicity Tepper who was a former MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend!  We were so downright impressed with Felicity that we invited her to be our MiniMonos Adult Community Coordinator.  Lucky for us, she said yes!  So I'm thrilled to hand you over to Felicity who will also be posting on our MiniMonos blog, and will tell you about this week's Friday Featured Friend! -- Andrea

It is with great pleasure that we introduce Suzy Gneist to you this week, a friend whose compassionate and caring personality cannot help but shine through everything she does. Suzy is a mother, graphic designer and a magazine editor interested in sustainability, nature and sky (hang-gliding and paragliding), and she’s a kindred spirit with a passion for sustainable living.

Concerned about the impact of human activities on the Earth since the mid-80s, Suzy first learned about the Greenhouse Effect and how our actions contribute to it during her university studies. As part of her design portfolio, Suzy created an illustrated project on the Greenhouse Effect.

The Sun Catching House

Living in sub-tropical Queensland on the Sunshine Coast, Suzy’s dedication to living light and caring about the environment has continued ever since. She is rightly proud of her daily endeavors to reduce her impact on the environment, proactively following sustainable practices. She describes herself as “fairly light-footed on the Earth” and this is something we can vouch for!  Her home is made from straw bales, with solar power,  and Suzy is an avid and dedicated practitioner of seasonal gardening and permaculture. In fact, she has been developing and shaping her permaculture garden for eight years and considers it an ever-evolving work in progress. Her garden provides seasonal food; it works hard because it must provide much of the family’s food supply all year round. As part of creating a sustainable garden, Suzy tries to make use of unwanted items to give them a new lease of life, such as planting in a disused fridge.

 

Growing veggies

Suzy’s care for people and the environment combine in her sharing of her garden space with others. She introduces as many locals as possible, and others dropping by, to the joys of a beautiful, thriving and sustainable garden. Suzy enjoys explaining to visitors how to simplify the work involved in the month-by-month maintenance of a productive garden. A separate retreat on site allows writers and artists to source the calm and inspiration needed to complete their work. For Suzy, “artistry goes further than canvas or page into nature” and it opens up doors to meeting many appreciative people along the way.

The ethic of sharing

Currently Suzy has plans for developing a not-for-profit internet-based sharing resource that will enable local people to build a cooperative network to share personally owned items, tools, and appliances for sustainable needs. This resource will be based on trust and will benefit all members of the local community who belong to it. Suzy explains that this could be anything from food dryers to garden machinery, often things that sit idle most of the year and that others could be benefiting from. In starting small, Suzy hopes that such a cooperative will create a lot of trust between community members, extending over time into other communities. Suzy is happy for interested people to get involved; knowing Suzy’s warmth and enthusiasm, this will undoubtedly become a very successful project in her locale.

 

Arran collecting the eggs

It is not without reason that Suzy says she is a “mother” first in her list of accomplishments, because the love for her children is always totally evident! She is the proud mother of Arran and Nathan, two healthy, inquisitive, and nature-fascinated boys aged 11 and 8. Nathan loves computing (already he’s programming at 11!) but still finds plenty of time to watch insects in their environment and is an avid bug lover. Arran tries everything and has a green thumb, growing his own plants. Suzy is thrilled that they have the opportunity to grow up knowing sustainable practices at both home and at school, for their school has a basic permaculture garden, allowing the children to get their hands dirty regularly.

Joy Glows - Nathan in the garden

And we leave the last word to Suzy, summing up something dear to our hearts too: “We need to leave our children a wonderful place - so they can leave it to theirs one day.”

You can find Suzy at her gardening blog, My Queensland Food Garden, and on Twitter at @sgneist (where she leaves the kindest, brightest messages for her friends!).  Thanks Suzy, we really appreciate having had this opportunity to glimpse your ways of creating a lighter tread on Earth.

Earth Hour on MiniMonos Island

The lights are going out on MiniMonos for Earth Hour

At 8.30pm on 27 March 2010, cities, towns and communities across the world will turn off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour – showing that a simple energy-saving act repeated by many can make a big difference.  Earth Hour is a powerful symbol of the massive public support for continued action on climate change.

Earth Hour 2010 will be a major call to action for every individual, government and business to take responsibility and play a part in ensuring a sustainable future. This year Earth Hour is about more than one hour of symbolic darkness: the campaign will encourage people to live more sustainability in their everyday lives. People will be asked to go beyond turning off lights and make a pledge to start something bigger.

At MiniMonos Island we know that many of your children are already taking the pledge – living more sustainably, and taking better care of the world around us.  We thought you would understand why we think everyone should turn off their computers for an hour.  Instead of playing online, they can go kick a ball, climb a tree, fly a kite, play cards, play a board game, tell a story or look at the stars!

How to get involved

Global Citizens from all walks of life are encouraged to take part by switching off all lights and non-essential appliances in their homes or businesses at 8.30pm on Saturday March 27.  Our MiniMonos community thought about what we could do – and decided to turn off all the power on MiniMonos Island for an hour.  Since most of our MiniMonos monkeys live in the USA, we decided that the most meaningful thing to do would be to turn it off for an hour at 8.30pm PST.

Flicking the switch for Earth Hour shows we all care; about our friends, our family, the animal and plants we share this beautiful planet with and our collective future. We can all make choices that will help us secure a better, safer world.

An ongoing positive difference everyone can do easily is to take the time to go around the house now and turn off all appliances that are not being used.  You may not know that they still use power even when they are on standby.  So by turning them off at the wall it saves you money and reduces carbon emissions by reducing the need to generate more electricity.

For Earth Hour you can create an Earth Hour virtual lantern with your kids or make a real one!!!  Here is mine:

Earth Hour is a message of hope and action. Imagine what we can achieve when we all act together!

You can find out more information about Earth Hour and sign up here. Explore the Earth Hour map to see what is going on in your area.

And don’t join us on Saturday March 27 PST at 8:30pm for Earth Hour 2010!  LOL!

Friday Featured Friend -- Annie Leonard

After releasing her amazing 20 minute video, The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard continues the tale this month with the release of her new The Story Of Stuff book.

If you haven't seen The Story of Stuff video yet, I really recommend you to take some time and check it out now.  As Annie describes, "The Story of Stuff takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration".  It's a rollercoaster of vitally important, often shocking information about what happens to the stuff we take for granted in everyday life.

Annie Leonard says about her background and the inspiration for creating The Story of Stuff video and book:

"In college, I developed a fascination about the garbage on the streets of New York. Where did it all come from? Where did it all go?

After graduation I went to work for Greenpeace, investigating the international waste trade. My work took me around the world, and I learned firsthand about the way we distribute, consume, and dispose of our Stuff-what I call the take-make-waste model.  What I learned is that everything is part of a larger system and nothing can be understood without looking at all the other parts of the system. Everything is connected. When you try to trace the source and the true cost of your Stuff, whether it's your T-shirt or your cellphone, you find that it takes a whole system to make anything. 

The thing is, very few people want to talk about that system. I mean, most of our political leaders are still focused on economic growth for growth's sake, when our real goal should be ensuring that our fellow human beings live fuller, healthier lives. Right?  I don't have to tell you that the shift we need to make to ensure our children and their children live in a healthier, more just world is big. Really big."

Over the next few weeks Annie will be travelling around the US on a Story of Stuff book tour, so check out to see if she's coming to your town.

You can also find out more about Annie Leonard and The Story of Stuff on Facebook, Twitter or buy The Story of Stuff book here.

MiniMonos kids sketching out a green life

Last week I mentioned that one of our MiniMonos members, Viper, generously purchased a Top Banana membership and was holding a Going Green art competition along with friends, Porsche and Limey, to give the membership away as a prize. 

Right from the start, our vision for MiniMonos has been to inspire kids about sustainability, not preach to them.  So we think it totally rocks that this competition was initiated by Viper on her own personal website and the other kids who submitted these great entries, did not expect them to be posted here on the MiniMonos blog.  We just enjoyed watching it happen independently from us and love the cool art and great messages!

So much time and effort has gone into these masterpieces, I wish I could show all the entries.  These are just a few:

The winner -- Tawny:

 

Clone:

 

Kokeeto:

 

Purple Tanya:

 

Panda:

 
  

Wilberd:

 
 

Pandagen

 

You can see the rest of Viper's Going Green competition entries here.
 
 

Traderz grand opening at MiniMonos!

Hey Everyone, Phillies is posting!

I am honored to post about the new store on the island called Traderz! There is a list of items and some switch weekly!

So it is now open for business.

I am so glad the store opened because I was so eager to see what’s inside!

Here’s a picture of the whole store……..

  

Babbage had some things to say that were very important too!

 

He said that the items he has are extremely special and some will be switching out each week so make sure you get them while they are in the store!

I run a site called minimonosmod.wordpress.com and have just started it!

Thanks Minimonos for making and finishing and opening the store today! I don’t think I could wait another day

Now I am waiting for the Hairstyles lol!

Thanks again,

~Phillies!~

Thank you Phillies for the great post about Traderz!  The development team are working hard to fix some glitches over the next couple of days, then they will be working on some cool new updates!

 

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend -- Cool The Earth

We love hearing about other keen environmental advocates, who find fun ways to inspire school kids to take action!

A few weeks ago we described how Lynn Hasselberger created I Count For myEARTH, a great environmental awareness campaign teaching kids about trash -- in particular, the damage caused by disposable plastic water bottles.

Another incredible organization encouraging school kids to combat climate change, is Cool the Earth. Carleen and Jeff Cullen from Marin County, California, watched The Inconvenient Truth and took action to create their grass-roots, school-to-home program in 2007.

Cool the Earths' mission is to "engage kids and their families in climate change by motivating them to take simple, measurable actions to conserve energy."  The non-profit organization wants to demonstrate that every action counts and that, collectively, communities can make a big impact on global warming.

There are 5 main components to the Cool the Earth program:

This spirit-filled event is where it all begins.

Take an action, turn in a coupon, get a reward.

These monthly activities highlight a particular action.

 

A team approach makes it easy and fun to run.

See how all those actions add up to make a big difference.

At MiniMonos we're so impressed with the immediate impact the Cool the Earth community has made! Here are their stats so far:

And imagine how this positive impact will keep growing, as a result of these kids and their families changing their environmental habits over years to come.  Way to go, Carleen, Jeff and the Cool The Earth team!

You can find out more about Cool The Earth here.