Born in 1970 in Germany and raised in North Carolina with Indian heritage, Simran has a list longer than her arm of astonishing career accomplishments as a freelance environmental journalist and has received many awards and recognition for her work.

Simran is a contributing environmental correspondent at NBC News and is currently writing a book on environmental justice for Harper Collins. She’s also the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, which won the bronze 2008 Axiom Award for Best Business Ethics book. She’s also NYU’s inaugural Goddard Fellow, Associate Fellow at the Asia Society, and is the Lacy C. Haynes Visiting Professional Chair at the University of Kansas School of Journalism, where she’s currently teaching a course on Media and the Environment.

You may recognize Simran from her many media appearances, her work with Treehugger or our own Top 25 Hottest Girls in Green feature. She’s the co-host/writer for the Sundance Channel’s environmental programming The Green, and is also a featured commentator for Big Ideas for a Small Planet. She anchors the Sundance interstitial business series EcoBiz and creator of the Sundance web series The Good Fight, which highlights global environmental justice efforts. She also hosts the Emmy-award winning PBS production A School in the Wood, which highlights environmental education efforts on Bainbridge Island. As part of the Treehugger team, Simran co-hosted, created and oversaw all video and audio content. She also writes regularly for The Huffington Post.

She was also honored with hosting duties at a forum on global warming with Al Gore, and moderated a panel on climate change at the first Clinton Global Initiative University. Other hosting credits include the podcast for the Alliance for Climate Protection, The EcoZone Project, and the series Keep it Green on Equator HD. She has produced documentaries for MTV News in the U.S., anchored news for MTV Asia and oversaw the MTV India News division. Simran also has her own production company, SHE TV.

Simran was celebrated for her environmental work in the 2007 Vanity Fair green issue, and Variety magazine recognized her as a ‘Woman of Impact’. She was also named one of the top Eco-Heroes of the Planet by the UK’s Independent.

While it’s hard to imagine how Simran finds the time for all of this work, she still feels as if she isn’t doing enough. Of what keeps her up at night, Simran told the Whole Life Times,

“Daily, I worry about being conscious of what I eat and how I live and what I buy. But I also want to have a macro focus, and sometimes I don’t know how to do both — looking beyond just me, and my world and how I consume. How can I, how can we work toward shifting the paradigm so there is greater equity across communities, across countries? That’s the part I don’t feel I’ve fully connected to yet. Because so far we’ve mostly focused on how to consume differently — which I think is a great entry point for people — but I’m also impatient to go further. How do we re-envision our world? That’s what I want to get to. I think the environmental justice movement is a key component of that, and that’s my goal in terms of self-education and the kind of organizations I want to promote, making sure they’re moving towards looking at environmentalism as a human rights issue. So what keeps me up at night is — did I do enough of it today? And where am I going to find time to do more, because I want to talk about all of these stories.”

What Simran’s basic goal comes down to is bringing environmentalism to the people, highlighting the fact that everyone has to start somewhere – so no matter how humble your initial foray into eco-friendliness might be, it’s still big – it’s a gift to the world. Simran wants everyone to consider how small daily actions, like using reusable cups instead of disposable ones, can cause a chain reaction that helps improve the state of the planet. The real-life tips for going green that she offers as the face of green media are just what people need to get off the pollution train and start being responsible.

Simran Sethi’s Green Score: 24,783

Photo credit: Domino Mag

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Carrotmob, a new environmental advocacy group, decided to use one important fact to our advantage: the fact that corporations will do ANYTHING to make money. The premise? Everyone needs to buy stuff. But we don’t do it in an organized way. If everyone who needed to buy the same type of item got together and pooled their money, we’d have a lot of leverage against the companies that sell those items. Watch the video below to see what happened when Carrotmob pulled a big crowd together to spend a lot of money at the local liquor store that made the strongest environmental commitment.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

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EarthFirst.com’s great green job of the week is located in the Washington state area.  The Cascadia Green Building Council is currently seeking a Washington State Director.  Here are the details:

Title: Washington State Director
Status: Regular, exempt position
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Hours: Full time
Starting Salary: Commensurate with experience

BACKGROUND & SCOPE OF RESPONSIBILITY

The Cascadia Region Green Building Council (Cascadia) seeks a Washington State Director for our Seattle office. The Washington State Director is responsible for planning and implementing all of Cascadia’s programs in the State of Washington, maintaining strong relationships with partner organizations and fundraising with the goal of improving the sustainability of the built environment. This is a position of leadership within a fast-paced, mission-driven organization. Applicants must care deeply about the environment and have a keen interest in green building.

Cascadia offers a collaborative, team-oriented workplace that treats employees as the responsible professionals they are. While the work is extremely hard, the hours are often flexible, benefits are generous, and laughter is frequent.

For more details about the duties and qualifications, download the PDF at the Cascadia Job Board.

ABOUT THE CASCADIA REGION GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL

The Cascadia Region Green Building Council (Cascadia) promotes the design, construction and operation of buildings in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live, work and learn. Cascadia is one of the first Chapters of the US and Canada Green Building Councils a coalition of North America’s foremost leaders from
across the building industry.

The organization’s annual operating budget is $2.4 million with 12 full-time employees, 3 part-time employees, and a 20 member volunteer Board of Directors from across Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska. We enjoy broad and enthusiastic community support. Learn more about Cascadia at www.cascadiagbc.org.

Link [Cascadia] via [Green Jobs]

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From GreenBiz.com:

The Review added the green dimension to its ratings system after it found that 63 percent of college applicants surveyed said they would value having information about a college’s commitment to the environment and that such data could affect their choice to apply or attend a school.

The green rating is based on responses to a battery of questions that are designed to provide a comprehensive measure of a school’s performance as an “environmentally aware and responsible institution,” the Review said on its website.

What an awesome resource – this is definitely something that more and more college students want to know about. It could also foster some competition between schools to get greener, and of course we LOVE that! Exciting time to be entering college.

Link [GreenBiz.com]

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Walking through the crowded, narrow aisles of Wal-Mart, you may be inclined to keep your arms as close to you as possible and avoid touching most surfaces. After all, the place is so crowded at any given time, it wouldn’t be surprising if you took home more than just a $20 stereo. So, it stands to reason that Flowing Data’s map of Wal-Mart’s spread across America between 1965 and 2007 looks like a nasty green virus taking over the country.

It’s kind of mesmerizing to watch, really. It starts out slow and then picks up really quickly. I love that you can zoom, I just wish it had a play bar so you could pause, step ahead, go back, etc. Wal-Mart truly is a plague upon the land.

Visit Flowing Data to see it for yourself.

Link [Flowing Data]

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Perhaps it’s a fitting tribute to a country that wore the ‘Biggest Polluter’ crown for so long: a 130-foot, 50,000-lb replica of the Statue of Liberty, made entirely of foam and sprayed-on plastic. The company that commissioned the statue, however, wasn’t trying to be ironic or make a point. They really thought it was a good idea to construct this thing – which is only 13 feet shorter than the original Statue of Liberty – made up of what the Sierra Club calls ‘the ultimate waste product’.

YTB (Your Travel Biz) has commissioned the Beryl Martin Company of northwest Indiana to create the statue for YTB’s travel convention, held in August 2008 in St. Louis. See the video below:

Styrofoam, of course, is one of the worst substances ever created in terms of its effect on the environment. It’s not biodegradable, and it takes up massive amounts of space in landfills.

So, what’s going to happen to this polluting monster of a sculpture after the YTB is done with it? It’ll end up in the trash. YTB is donating it to a community to stand as ‘a memorial to fallen soldiers’, but it won’t stay completely intact for long. What do you think the community is going to do with it when it starts deteriorating?

Let’s run down the environment-killing aspects of this very stupid idea:

• It’s made of styrofoam
• It’s coated in plastic
• It will take 48 semi trucks to move it from northwest Indiana to St. Louis, Missouri in August. That’s a lot of gas and auto exhaust
• Despite the plastic coating, it won’t be long before this thing starts falling apart and raining styrofoam bits all over the place
• It cost $6 million to make

The unveiling of YTB’s giant statue of liberty is meant to get them plenty of publicity before their convention. Their goal is to be the world’s biggest travel company by 2011. Let’s give them negative publicity instead: YTB is now on our radar as a foe of the environment. They’ve already got a bad rep for being a rip-off pyramid scheme, so it’s not like many people will be surprised.

Thanks for the heads up, J.J.!

Link [YTB] + [YouTube]

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Coltan is short for Columbite-tantalite. It’s refined to create a heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum that sells for $100 a pound and is a key component in everything from mobile phones to computer chips. Most of the tantalum used in electronics comes from legitimate mining operations in countries like Australia, Canada and Brazil, but as demand for the substance has surged, illegal operations have cropped up in the Democratic Republic of Congo. There, coltan mining is being exploited as a source of revenue for warring rebel groups. In effect, it’s being stolen from the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which desperately needs the income, and illegally sold to companies like SONY.

As if that weren’t enough, the UN also discovered that Rwandan rebels and soldiers were using prisoners of war and children to do the dirty work, sending them down into the mines.

From TowardFreedom.com:

“Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms,” said British politician Oona King, who was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2005.

While most of the fighting ended in 2003, there are still Western companies that continue to mine coltan in Congo or purchase illegally obtained coltan from miners in the country. Some of the companies have been named as Eagle Wings Resources International of Ohio, Cabot Corporation of Boston, and Chemie Pharmacie Holland of the Netherlands. These companies have been charged by a London-based group called Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) and the UN with stealing millions of dollars of resources from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Despite being called to action by RAID and the UN, Western nations aren’t responding to the charges, refusing to look into the investigation. The U.S. government reportedly pressured the UN to drop the charges against the American companies involved. RAID says that the UN caved in because they’re afraid that if Western mining companies are prosecuted out of Africa, China may step in. China has signed many resource concessions with African nations including Sudan and Nigeria.

So, how exactly is tantalum used in the items that we enjoy in our 21st century electronics-laden lives? Tantalum’s unique ability to withstand extremely high temperatures makes it the perfect material for electric capacitors, which are used to store energy in the electric field between conductors in an electronic device. The more we buy cell phones, laptop computers, gaming consoles and other electronic devices, the more the demand for tantalum goes up.

At this point, there’s not much consumers can do about the issue aside from limiting the purchase of electronic goods as much as is feasible. Most of the onus is on manufacturers of electronics, who must find legitimate sources of coltan.

The world’s largest maker of tantalum capacitors, U.S.-based Kemet, has vowed to ensure that the coltan used in their capacitors is not from Congo. Their suppliers will be forced to verify the origins of the coltan they sell.

Unfortunately, coltan and tantalum changes hands so many times between various companies before it ends up in the actual product, it’s hard to verify exactly how companies get it. SONY, for one, denies that the tantalum in their products came from Congo despite allegations to the contrary.

From TowardFreedom.com:

David Barouski, a researcher and journalist from Wisconsin, says it is certain that the coltan from this conflict is also in SONY video game consoles across the world. “SONY’s PlayStation 2 launch (spring of 2000) was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan that began in early 1999,” said Barouski, who has witnessed the chaos of eastern DRC firsthand.

Apparently, statistical analysis shows that it would be near impossible for SONY to have manufactured all of those Playstations without using Congolese coltan. SONY still uses tantalum in many of their products, though they say they’re ‘satisfied’ with the assertions from their suppliers that it does not come from Congo. Many other companies can offer only vague assurances that their sources are legitimate, saying it’s impossible to be entirely sure where the metal comes from and that all they can do is trust their suppliers.

It’s difficult to say how many other metals and materials used in electronics might be mined in such a way, or how exactly they might be affecting the environment. No major studies have been done that show where each component in an electronic device is originally derived from. That’s what’s ultimately so frustrating for consumers. Since the parts for the more complex items we purchase come from so many different sources, it’s impossible to make sure what you’re buying hasn’t come at the expense of another person’s life.

Perhaps what we really need is some kind of certification system that manufacturers must participate in, that details the sources of their materials. Companies undoubtedly take a lot of shortcuts to make bigger profits, and the only way to protect against things like the Congo coltan issue is to hold them accountable. The appetite for electronics isn’t likely to die down any time soon – if anything, it will continue to grow. We need technology in order to make a better future for ourselves and the world - but that technology needs to be smart and green, not soaked in blood.

Link [TowardFreedom.com]
Photo credit: Flickr user Mngillen + Pulitzer Center

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The Japanese labor bureau has ruled that the cause of death of one of Toyota’s top car engineers was too much work. The engineer, who had been working on hybrid technology, had been under severe pressure while developing the hybrid version of the Toyota Camry. The 45-year-old man had been getting 80 hours of overtime per month in the months leading up to his death.

From The Huffington Post:

He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the pivotal North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006. The man’s daughter found his body at their home the day before he was to leave for the United States.

The ruling was handed down June 30 and will allow his family to collect benefits from his work insurance, Mizuno said.

In Japan, death from overwork is common enough to have its own word: karoshi. Working extremely long hours isn’t outside the norm there.

So, be grateful. Many bothans (I mean, Japanese engineers) died to bring us this information (er, hybrid technology).

Link [The Huffington Post]

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If you’re wondering what edible landscaping has to do with the iPhone, you’re not alone. Undoubtedly, people who were waiting in line for the iPhone 3G were wondering the same thing about the group of five activists who were first in line when the phones went on sale last Friday. They had been there for seven days and seven nights, seeking the Guinness World Record for “longest time waiting in line” and also a little publicity for their cause.

From Fortune:

Who’s crazy enough to camp out for a week on the streets of New York City for a chance to be first to buy an iPhone 3G?

TheWhoFarm, that’s who, a newly minted publicity-seeking environmental collective with an agrico-political mission: to persuade the 44th President of the U.S. — whoever that turns out to be — to transform the White House’s 17-acre lawn into an organic farm.

“We’re here to restore the edible landscape,” says Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, the group’s organizer and spokesperson and a young man given to making grand pronouncements. “We want to bring seeds of change back to the White House.”

Nice green activism publicity hack. In an open letter to several leaders including Sen. Hillary Clinton and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, TheWhoFarm listed the tasks it wished to accomplish during their week waiting on line, which included using mobile solar power, drinking NYC’s tap water, eating local food delivered by NYC community gardeners and talking to anyone who would listen about local organic farming. And, they got iPhones out of it as well. Not bad, not bad.

Link [Fortune]

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I love that the guy who made this circular bike, Robert Wechsler, just leaves it in public places.  I mean, it’s not like anyone’s going to get far with it.  He should hook that thing up to generate power.

Link [FrostFireZoo] + [Robert Wechsler]

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