EcoLocalizer

See a Battery, Pick It Up

Rhonda Winter — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:08:07 +0000

See a battery, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck. Especially if you take the battery that you found and safely recycle it, keeping dangerous toxic poisons out of our seas and drinking water.

I found this used battery near the ocean in Pacifica, right across from our friend Rick’s Salada Beach Cafe. It has since been safely recycled, and kept from polluting our waterways.

Our oceans are already turning into acid. We have to start today to try to make things better. Keeping one more toxic battery or piece of plastic out of our oceans, collectively, will make a difference. Once you start looking, you may be really surprised just how many “disposable” batteries litter our streets and sewers. Next time you see one, pick it up; what you do matters.

Green Music: The Treasure Island Music Festival

Becky Striepe — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:00:55 +0000

One of my friends recently attended the Treasure Island Music Festival in San Francisco and texted me about their awesome green initiatives. From the show. Yes, I’m sort of a nerd for this kind of thing.

We’re all about musicians lightening their footprints around here. According to the folks at Live Earth: “A single concert event can produce as little as 9,000 kilos (close 20,000 lbs) to as much as 90,000 kilos (197,000 lbs) of solid waste in a single day.” That’s a ridiculous amount of waste and doesn’t even take into account things like CO2 emissions from concertgoers driving to the venue or indirect emissions from the food and whatnot.

The folks at Treasure Island Fest set out to do things a little differently. Not only did they have a kickass lineup that’s making me more than a little bit jealous, they implemented all sorts of impressive green initiatives. Check our their greening and sustainability statement:

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Did Diet Coke Cause My Cancer?

Rhonda Winter — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:27:12 +0000

Recently I have been reading very disturbing research about how Diet Coke can possibly cause cancer and kill you. The artificial sweetener that is used in most diet beverages, aspartame, once ingested, becomes a lethal poison called methyl alcohol. Small quantities of this noxious substance can lead to blindness and death; even the most miniscule amounts of this aspartame toxin are strongly linked to cancer.

This is an image of the cancerous tumor that was recently removed from my body.

9500 Liberty Documentary Fuels Immigration Debate

Keith Rockmael — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:35:49 +0000

For anyone who has seen the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, they might get that same feeling of “us” versus “them” that fills the truly indie 9500 Liberty. Body Snatchers grabbed its content and texture from the red scare, the McCarthy era where people believed that Communists (or rather aliens) launched an invasion of the small town. 9500 Liberty takes that same feeling with a Virginia town that according to some locals has been invaded by Zapatistas but the scary thing here is that the film here is a documentary.

In the McMansion and McMall loaded Prince William County, a wealthy suburb of Washington D.C., directors Annabel Park and Eric Byler weave a hot button topic film that shows a community hatefully splitting itself in half — one side the conservative, wealthy lower and middle class Anglos who wish their community to remain lily white and the other side the immigrants who moved into the lower and middle class neighborhoods but also built the McMansions, cook the food and represent much of the quiet economy of the town. The film shows the racial divide that forms as a result of a one notable blogger who creates a fear campaign camping and gets the city council to enact an immigration policy that requires police officers to question anyone they have “probable cause” to suspect as being an undocumented immigrant.

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Billionaires for Wealthcare Reinvent Guerilla Musical Theatre

Rhonda Winter — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:47:10 +0000

CNN highlights the Billionaires for Wealthcare enthusiastically singing the praises of a public option, as they entertained unsuspecting attendees at a health insurance conference in Washington DC last week. Wolf Blitzer and Jeanne Moos discuss the increasingly popular use of guerilla musical theatre across the nation. Cleverly orchestrated performances and mini-musicals seem to have become much more popular with folks now than rabid screaming teabaggers.

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Our Oceans Are Turning into Acid

Rhonda Winter — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:59:16 +0000

Sigourney Weaver narrates “Acid Test“, an illuminating and terrifying NRDC documentary that explains how quickly our planet’s oceans are acidifying due to all of the carbon dioxide that we are pumping into our air. This pollution is causing rapid changes in our oceans’ chemistry that will completely disrupt all life on the planet as we know it on a scale that has not been seen for tens of millions of years.

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Billionaires for Wealthcare Sing the Praises of a Public Option

Rhonda Winter — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:59:38 +0000

The brave Billionaires for Wealthcare are back in fine voice. This group of talented guerrilla performance artists graciously entertained attendees at a conference of health insurance industry workers with a seemingly spontaneous performance of a clever operatic anthem about our desperate need for a public option.

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At the annual conference of America’s Health Insurance Plans, (the corporate lobbying group that recently released a threatening report about how any inclusion of a public option in health care legislation would cause private insurers to grossly inflate their rates even more), attendees were entertained by the Billionaires for Wealthcare with their clever rendition of the ever hopeful song “Tomorrow“.

Michelle Obama’s Straight Talk on Women and Health Insurance

Rhonda Winter — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:00:29 +0000

First Lady Michelle Obama talks straightforwardly about women and why we all so urgently need health care reform in this five minute short that was just released by the White House. At the moment I know that I am existing in something of a self-absorbed cancer bubble of my own, but I actually found this quite moving and powerful.

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Show Your Support for Water Recycling in SF

Rhonda Winter — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:23:15 +0000

If you are going to be anywhere near San Francisco City Hall this afternoon, please consider going to the fourth floor to voice your support for greywater recycling. There will be a meeting at the Building Inspection Commission today to vote on a SF city amendment which is attempting to make it more complicated for city residents to recycle and conserve our own water.

Time: Wed, Oct 21, pm @ 2pm

Where: SF City Hall, Room 416

Rain barrels made from recycled food grade containers for water conservation.

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Atlanta’s 5 Seasons Brewery Producing Rainwater Beer

Becky Striepe — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:00:46 +0000

Back in September, Atlanta’s 5 Seasons Brewing debuted their first beer from harvested rainwater at the National Conference for the American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association. Now, the brewery is producing all of its microbrews from rainwater!

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