Frogs are some of the most diverse and charismatic creatures on earth. They’re also some of the most endangered. - Photo By: Andrew Young/© 2009 WNET.ORG

“It’s uncomfortable to realize that we are part of the problem,” Argo explained to me in a phone interview on the topic, but “It’s also exciting and stimulating to realize that we are part of the solution.” Argo’s ability to maintain an optimistic perspective on this bleak situation is grounded, in part, by the day-to-day lifestyle adjustments she makes. She switched to public transportation for her travels between her Cape Cod studio and Boston, she has been swapping old light bulbs for more energy efficient ones, and she is building a frog pond in her yard this summer.

Subsequent to it’s April premiere, Frogs: The Thin Green Line has been generating national and international interest. Screenings of it have been hosted by the American consulate in the UK and by the San Francisco Science Museum. At the end of the summer it will have screened in Houston, as well.

Last Sunday, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof championed the issue in an op-ed column in an article titled, “It’s Time to Listen to Frogs.” The article raised concerns over the proliferating numbers of “deformed frogs and intersex fish” that are now being found all over the world. The phenomenon is attributed to Endocrine Disruptors, a class of chemicals used in certain form of agriculture and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The harm caused by chemicals that “enter the water supply through estrogens in human urine,” is not limited to the frog population alone. Kristof cites numerous scientific studies evidencing connections between amphibian abnormalities and the “increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys.”

Argo’s documentary and Kristof’s op-ed article are only two of many sources to tap for this abundance of meticulously researched yet accessible information now available to the public on this growing yet under addressed health crisis.

Additional Resources:

Allison Argo’s Documentary can be watched, in its entirety, on the Nature website – Frogs: The Thin Green Line

The article that inspired Allison Argo to build a frog pond in her back yard can be found at:
http://www.loudounwildlife.org/HHFrogPond.htm

Another website Allison Argo enthusiastically recommends is Amphibian Ark

Nicholas Kristof’s Op-ed Piece can be found through the New York Times Website – It’s Time to Listen to Frogs by, Nicholas Krisof

Right.

You know the haze that surrounds your city after the Fourth? Fireworks produce a great deal of smoke and dust which contain heavy metals and harmful chemicals such as copper compounds, which make the pretty blue color you see in the sky. Copper compounds contain dioxin, a cancer-causing metal. Green is formed by barium, which is poisonous. Also on the list are lead, potassium nitrate, chromium, cadmium, and more—all of which are linked to health problems.

Many city-wide fireworks displays are held over bodies of water, thus further polluting by entering the water supply. In a 2007 EPA study in which an Oklahoma lake was tested before and after a fireworks display, scientists found that: “Within 14 hours after the fireworks, perchlorate levels rose 24 to 1,028 times above background levels.” The perchlorate levels went down within a month or so, but it is still telling of how much water is affected by the chemicals in fireworks.

Now, don’t be discouraged when you see the burst of color next week. Not all is lost. More environmentally-friendly fireworks are upcoming. Instead of gunpowder, they use compressed air. The chemicals used will be less harmful and some say that the new chemicals will produce brighter, vibrant colors. Scientists are struggling to make these environmentally-friendly fireworks at a similar cost to their counterparts—they know it will be difficult for consumers to choose the more expensive greener option. They will look to law makers to enforce policies that will help protect the environment every Fourth of July.

What can you do? For one, don’t have your own fireworks show. Go watch the city-wide show and call it a night or watch the national show on television. Volunteer to help pick up debris after the show, or just walk around your neighborhood the next day and pick up some of the trash from the smaller family fireworks.

A gas well recovering methane gas at a landfill in Ferris - AP Photo

That idea, albeit the invention of a Hollywood screenwriter, may not, however, be as outlandish as it might originally appear. In India, for example, there are myriad small methane producers throughout the country that produce just enough methane for home uses, using small methane generators powered mostly by cow dung.

In September of 2008, San Antonio, Texas set into motion an ambitious plan that would make it the first US city ever to convert sewage into methane gas on a large scale. The plan calls for the complete recycling of at least 90% of the approximately 140,000 tons a year of “biosolids” produced by the citizens of San Antonio into water for agricultural irrigation, solid compost and now, methane gas, which will be used for the generation of electrical power.

The facilities for extracting methane gas from sewage will be built by Ameresco, a Massachussetts based natuiral gas company.  Steve Claus, the CEO of the San Antonio expects the city to realize about $250,000 annually when the facilities are completed in 2010. The facilities are projected to generate between 900,000 and 1.5 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

The idea of sewage derived biogas is being tried, on a significantly smaller scale in a number of other localities throughout the nation including Berkeley, California and West Lafayette, Indiana near Purdue University. The Indiana facility started up on June 6, 2009 and is part of an $8.2 million project to upgrade the plant’s digesters. The digesters, in turn, process sewage, grease and food waste into methane which is then used to run two microturbines. The microturbines produce a portion of the electricity needed to run the plant, representing an eventual savings of $18,000 a year for the city.

As part of its “Green Switch” program the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) extracts methane from the City of Memphis’ wastewater treatment facility. The methane is “co-fired” with coal to produce eight megawatts of power at the TVA’s Allen Fossil Plant. The TVA estimates that the methane produces energy equivalent to 20,000 tons of coal per year.

The municipality of Lille, France began running city buses on a form of modified diesel fuel derived from sewage sludge treated at the Lille-Marquette municipal sewage treatment plant in 1994. Approximately 12.5% of the energy derived from the biogas produced is used for refinining. The initial costs of the project were 4.7 million French Francs (FF) for the biogas scrubbing unit (that cost included design and research costs) and 3.4 million FF for bus engine conversion (PDF file). The first bus cost 600,000 FF to convert.

Based on an operational estimate of 4000 hours per year, the estimated cost per unit of biogas is 2.9 FF per cubic meter of biogas, which although higher than the cost of natural gas currently should become more competitive if, as expected, natural gas, diesel and gasoline prices rise in the future. Fuel efficiency of the biogas burning bus engines was approximately 60% that of diesel burning engines.

Landfill Gas

Another source of methane emissions that shows steady growth, both in the source and it’s utilization, is landfill gas.  As the name suggests, landfill gas is methane produced by the anaerobic decomposition of waste into methane and by-products such as carbon dioxide, sulfur and other chemicals which are often referred to as volatile organic compounds.

Although somewhat more controversial than using sewage as a biogas source, proponents point out that landfills will release methane regardless of what we do. It is better, they argue, to convert that gas primarily into energy and carbon dioxide than to simply allow it to enter the atmosphere. The fact that methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and that half the gas emitted by landfills is, in fact, methane would seem to clinch that argument.

Furthermore, landfills produce more man-made methane than any other source in the US. If, in fact, landfill gas production can properly be classified as a renewable energy project, it has quietly become the one of the most prolific and widespread use of renewables. Texas alone, a relative newcomer to landfill gas utilization has 24 landfill gas energy projects and, according to the EPA, sites suitable for such projects at another 57 locations.

The total production figures for landfill gas can be difficult to ascertain as the EPA combines production figures for landfill gas with production figures for the direct burning of municipal waste.  While properly classified as a renewable energy source, burning municipal waste without safeguards presents a potential source of airborne toxins including heavy metals which can hardly be considered green.

According to those figures five states, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachussetts and California all produced greater than 1 billion kWh of electrical power from the combination of the two sources in 2006. Of those, the greatest production came from Florida which produced 1.9 billion kWh that year.

Other links:

• Power Scorecard – Electricity from Landfill Gas
• US EPA – Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP)
• Wikipedia – Biogas
• Landfill Gas Data and Information – US Government

Too much stock in corn at the pump?

If finding ways to slowly ween America’s dependence on foreign oil is also a welcome opportunity to promote green, cleaner-burning alternatives, it’d be foolish — no — irresponsible not to embrace it right?

Well, when it comes to ethanol it’s not quite so easy. But it seems so simple … almost too good to be true: Grow corn, process corn into ethanol, blend with gasoline and go!

The ethanol industry has been growing for quite some time. Last week marked the 25th Fuel Ethanol Workshop and Expo (FEW) here in Denver. Every existing or under-construction ethanol producer and refiner in the country was invited. This industry expo was packed two years ago in St. Louis. Apparently this year, not so much.

Many of the big player companies are experience financial troubles (hey, who isn’t these days?). Don’t shed a tear though, taxpayers have been feeding these companies for years. Besides, while these companies try to figure out how to make ethanol more profitable, they aren’t above asking for more tax dollars (we’ll stop short of calling it a “b-b-b-bailout”).  Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. has received more than $10 billion in subsidies to encourage its expansion in the ethanol industry since 1980. That’s a lot of greenbacks for green fuel.

What did those tax dollars get us? Depending on who you ask, the answer could be: 1.) An exciting biofuel, 2.) An exciting expo, 3.) A worrying food crisis. You’d have to ask someone else how rockin’ the Colorado Convention Center was last week, so let’s look at biofuel and food.

Think back to last summer. Gas prices were soaring. Americans were shelling out three, maybe four or more bucks per gallon at the onset of a recession. That’s bad news bears for most of our pockets and it’s no coincidence folks started looking for cheaper ways to get around. Did you see a few more bicycles around town? Moped and scooter sales sure shot up. (You can buy an archived story I did on this last summer for the Palladium-Item in Richmond, Ind. Goofy newspapers selling web articles. Tsk Tsk.)

You know what else was expensive this time last year? Food. Why? Corn was being diverted from mouths to gas tanks. Experts argued the true cause of last summer’s worldwide food shortage and perhaps unsurprisingly the teams went something like this: Politicians from farming states (U.S. Sen. Grassley of Iowa) said there was no connection, the United Nations said ethanol was a “catastrophe” for poor people around the world.

Ethanol growth: Good or bad?

Now we see the conundrum that is ethanol. What’s ostensibly a green, eco-friendly product (and this itself is another debate, though ethanol generally yields 34% more energy than it takes to produce) that can also help American farmers earn a living, is instead a sort of Jekyl and Hyde “solution” to gasoline. Whether you buy into the food-fuel trade-off argument, one thing is for sure: We’ve barely used enough ethanol to put a dent into our gasoline use. A lot of gas stations have had 90-10 mixes of gasoline and ethanol, or “gasohol,” for years. Yet overall, alternative fuel use overall checks in at 2-4% of our fuel consumption and of that ethanol is only a slice of the slice of the pie. Imagine the volume of corn needed to see a bigger piece. Or imagine what a drought year might do to ethanol production, much less food production. This “boom-bust” ethanol complex has investors scared.

Gen. Wesley Clark gave the keynote speech at the FEW expo, claiming the food-fuel debate was hogwash and that our goal should be freedom from dependence on foreign oil. But with some analysts predicting that ethanolcan at best cut out 3-4% of our oil dependence, maybe the message is good but the solution is rotten.

What’s the alternative to the alternative? Perhaps an exercise in PR and message-management after heated debates over ethanol, this year FEW looked to find asylum in the broader, more general “biofuel” buzzword. Biofuels present a lot of the same problems though. Does it feel like we’re running out of places to look for green, eco-friendly, renewable fuels? Fear not.

J. Craig Venter: First the Human Genome, now biofuels.

The biofuels that FEW might want to focus on next year — and that might be a better use of taxpayers’ dollars — are those that turn organic waste into energy. “Biodiesel” doesn’t get the same press coverage as ethanol, fuel cell batteries, electric cars or solar panels. That’s because there are a lot of different groups (often privately held companies or research labs) still developing the techniques.

There isn’t one accepted way to turn, say a Butterball factory’s turkey waste into something you can run your car on. But a private company called Changing World Technologies is doing it. Scientists have discovered enzymes that break down corn plant waste and turn it into biofuel.

Remember the guy that helped map the human genome faster and almost a billion dollars cheaper than the government funded project to do the same? His name is J. Craig Venter. He thinks he can create a synthetic bacteria by manipulating its genome so that it eats waste and excreets biofuel. This is groundbreaking stuff, folks.

The unfortunate truth is that while we can find ways to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, the only real eco-friendly alternatives are still some way off. As a matter of national pride and independence, it’s important not only that we find a way to battle our oil addiction, but also that we lead the charge in new and emerging research. Ethanol serves a very limited damage control function when it comes to oil dependence, with the unfortunate side effect of possibly contributing to worldwide food shortages.

If ethanol’s future is murky, it may be time to clear a path for new alternatives and start subsidizing and funding them like we mean business before our options are few and far between.

Disease and prevention. If you have a preexisting condition, changes in your eating habits may help your body fight it and manage symptoms.  Thyroid disorders are very common and there are key foods to avoid, like soy, that a nutritionist can show you alternatives for.  If you don’t have any illnesses, take a look at your genetics.  What are you predisposed to?  Is breast cancer common in your family?  Then your nutritionist will recommend foods and supplements that may help you prevent your genetics from fulfilling themselves.

Deficiencies. Most people know that the best diet is one rich in variety.  And maybe your diet is varied, but are you getting your omega 3s?  What about vitamin D, calcium, or B12?  Your nutritionist can expose holes and deficiencies in your diet that you may not have thought of.  Or maybe you’re a supplement fanatic—your nutritionist may tell you that you’re taking too much of a nutrient.  Just as a deficiency can harm you, so can over-supplementation.

Losing weight and feeling great. If you are trying to lose a few pounds or find out if you have a healthy proportion of fat and muscle, do see a nutritionist.  For most people, dieting is short-lived and weight is gained back, whereas a nutritionist will teach you how to do a lifestyle overhaul.  Also, if you are training for a competition or getting into a sport, a nutritionist can show you how to maximize your workouts with your food.  If you find yourself fatigued or moody, there may be something going on with your food.

What to Expect During Your Visit
It can be awkward talking about what you eat with a stranger, but keep in mind, they are professionals and have seen it all.  You can expect the nutritionist to ask you to keep a food journal for at least a week.  It’s important that this be a typical week.  If you’re going on vacation, ditch the food journal and wait until you have a normal week to document.  Try and pretend like someone isn’t going to be looking at it.  A major weight loss tool is keeping a food journal, but you want to keep your eating habits as typical as possible, even if typical to you is eating a pound of chocolate every afternoon.  You will also need to note your activity, sleep patterns, supplements, and (da da dum!) bowel movements.   Yes, it’s horrifying, but it does help your nutritionist understand your body.  You will be asked to note texture, color, the works.  Make sure you note things as they happen, since it will be a lot easier to count glasses of water, snacks, etc. at the time they happen.

Once you present your journal to your nutritionist, he or she will be able to note patterns and holes in your nutrition.  For example, I went to a nutritionist, pretty proud of my veggie intake until he pointed out that I rarely ate raw veggies, only cooked ones.  Luckily, a simple salad is all it takes to remedy that, but I would’ve never seen it—we just have blind spots in our nutrition.

Some health insurance will cover a visit to the nutritionist, at least partially, but if you’re not covered, it’s a reasonable expense.  Call around and get referrals so you’re not wasting your time and money.  If it’s important to you, see someone who specializes in any allergies or restrictions you have, e.g., a vegetarian nutritionist or gluten free specialist.

Summertime is upon us. Between some relaxing, enjoying the pool, going to farmer’s markets and all the other activities that go with warm weather, you can bet a good number of us will be spending some time hunched over our gardens and lawns.

Americans love gardening and landscaping. It’s like playing in a grown-up sandbox. In 2006, we spent more than $27 billion dollars on professional landscaping and do-it-yourself projects. Granted, this was before the onset of the current recession, but here we see yet another convergence where being lean and green makes all too much sense.

Have you noticed “Save the Water” or “Use Only What You Need” campaigns in your hometown? Have you thought, “wait a minute — since when did we have a water problem?” To use Denver as an example, the combination of the unpredictable effects of global warming together with shifting populations and seasonal variability means that even a traditionally robust water supply can quickly come under threat. When as much as 30 percent of American’s outdoor water usage streams into our lawns, that means a lot of water and money keeping grass green. Useonlywhatyouneed.org claims a staggering 55 percent of our water usage is on outdoor watering.

This isn’t a new issue, as homeowners in dry climates susceptible to drought like Arizona have been seeking alternatives to water-guzzling lawns for years. The average water usage in a U.S. household is about 69 gallons. The average household water bill can fluctuate from $25/month in the winter to $80-$150/month in the summer, depending on where you live and what your supply is like. That’s indicative of the surge in summer water use, and incentive to save where possible. More on how to do that in a bit…

The water issue may be similar to global warming: ignored for too long until it becomes a huge problem to tackle. Again, with Denver as the example, the Colorado River Compact is an 87-year-old water sharing agreement between states in the upper water basin (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico) and lower basin (Nevada, Arizona and California). Until about 1990, the sharing agreement worked successfully as none of the states involved used the amount of water allocated. But now California, Arizona and Nevada are using everything they can, and it should be unsettling when cities and states are talking about having to buy water to meet their needs.

With states like California, Arizona and Nevada suffering now, it could create a strain on other states not necessarily experience droughts or traditionally having problems with their supply — like Colorado. In 2002, Interior Secretary at the time, Gale Norton cut back on the amount of water California could draw from the Colorado River supply. He said “the era of limits is upon us.”

Tips for Saving Water

Whether you’re an avid gardener, keen on long showers, or the crazy guy on your street that takes his lawn care a little too seriously, there are easy ways to save money and conserve — lean and green.

Let’s start with curbing the American addiction to big lawns and its associated water waste. It can be easier than you think!

• For starters, if you do have a lawn, mowing it with your blade on a higher setting help keeps the soil cool and reduces the rate of evaporation/drying out.

• Using organic mulch wherever you have plants or flowers helps keep moisture in, and reduces the frequency of watering needed.

• If you have a sprinkler system, check regularly for costly and wasteful leaks — I know from my college summers spent landscaping how easy it is to damage lines.

• If you are watering your lawn or garden, do it in the early morning or evening. Denver rules actually restrict watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. — this is common sense for reducing waste, increasing efficiency and saving money.

• Replace your lawn with a “Xeriscape” garden. These feature low-water plants that look great and help you save. It also adds color and vibrancy to your home. Here’s an example:

But let’s assume that you aren’t a face-in-the-dirt, hardcore gardener. Lots of us live in apartments or just don’t care about home landscaping. How else can you save and conserve? These tips are maybe obvious, but sometimes easy to overlook:

• Cut a minute or two off your time in the shower.
• Fill a pop bottle with sand or pebbles and toss it in your toilet tank — it’ll reduce the amount of water used with each flush.
• Only use your dish or clothes washer for full loads. If you wash dishes by hand, fill up one side of the sink for rinsing as it’ll save far more water than by just letting the faucet run.
• If you drink tap water, fill bottles and put them in the fridge — running water while waiting for it to cool is wasteful.
• Check for leaks everywhere — your sprinkler system, your pipes, toilets … these happen and can go on to cause damage to your house, foundation, wallet and the environment!

For a complete rundown of day-to-day tips, click here.

Think wasting water isn’t a big deal? According to the American Water Works Association, if U.S. homeowners took to conserving their water use, we could cut about 30 percent of our overall use, save 5.4 billion gallons every day, saving us $11 million each day and $4 billion every year.

It pays to save. Literally — Denver Water offers incentives and rebates for conservation. So next time you see a public bus with a “Use Only What You Need” ad, or go to water your lawn, take a minute to think about what you could do to help yourself and the environment.

An increase in the incidence of childhood cancers was the first trigger for the investigation, which discovered children with home and garden pesticides in their urine, lactating women with termite poison and flame retardants in their breast milk and in Bill Moyer’s personal blood test a veritable witch’s brew including the long banned pesticide DDT, as well as dioxin, PCBs, organochlorine and organophosphate pesticides, ad nauseum.

When the Moyer’s reports ran in 2002 I had, perhaps naively, expected the start of a grassroots movement aimed at reducing our and, more importantly, our children’s exposures to chemicals at least in those areas where individuals could make choices, such as whether or not we would put chemicals on the lawns our children played upon.

However, since 1995 and continuing beyond 2002, home use of pesticides has grown steadily and currently represents the only growth sector of US pesticide production. According to Pesticide Action Network of the 30 most common lawn pesticides 19 are carcinogens, 13 suspected of causing birth defects, 21 interfere with human reproduction and almost the entire 30 (27) have been linked to either liver or kidney damage.

The thing is chemicals are not really necessary to have a great looking lawn. With a little common sense and information just about anyone can produce a lawn that will pass muster with all but the most demanding neighbors and Homeowner’s Associations (HOAs). In fact, in some localities, particularly in places like Seattle where lawn chemicals threaten endangered species such as certain types of salmon and may be also be contributing to the decline of the Puget Sound Orca pod, some enlightened HOAs are actually encouraging homeowners to adopt a non-chemical (organic) approach to lawn care.

An additional bonus of a well thought out and well executed organic lawn care program is that you will also save both water and money. In the long-run your lawn will be far healthier than it was relying on chemical quick fixes that end up eventually causing many more problems than they address.

The Basic Rules

A lot of organic lawncare is fairly simple when you think about. The first three rules are easy if you follow them. If you don’t, however, you will set your program back. The first is to not cut your lawn too short. Set your mower at the highest setting. This is important to your lawn for a number of reasons, the most relevant of which in terms of avoiding the application of chemicals is that if you cut your grass too short it allows sunlight to reach the areas between blades of grass, which in turn, cause the seeds of weeds to germinate.

The second is avoid short daily or twice or thrice weekly waterings. Only allow your lawn water when it clearly needs it and then completely soak it. The best reason for that is that it causes the lawn to become more drought resistant by forcing the lawn to grow longer root systems. This, in turn, crowds out weeds.

The third is to leave grass clippings in place. Contrary to common belief this does not lead to thatch and will cover areas where weeds could or would otherwise emerge. It also holds water in the soil and allows you to use less water.

As far as mowing goes, I use and it is far more earth-friendly in a myriad of ways to use an old fashioned hand mower (but keep the blades sharp). On some summer days in Seattle the local air pollution board estimated that power mowers were responsible for a greater percentage of the air pollution than cars. It is also considerably more neighborly and considerate to mow with a handmower if you are going to mow early in the morning on a weekend.

Corn gluten and vinegar – Not just for breakfast anymore

Another organic lawncare strategy is to avoid weeds in the first place (pre-emergent weed control) without the use of chemical weed and feed, is to use the much more organic compound corn gluten. The most effective time to apply corn gluten is in the spring before weeds can emerge but later applications also can prevent the emergence of late growing weeds. Unfortunately the availability of corn gluten is still sporadic. In the Seattle area I was able to purchase large quantities at the Grange Supply Store in Issaquah (about 20 miles east of Seattle), however, in Denver I have not been able to find a supplier except for websites. Neeps.com has 25 lb. bags for $28.99. Eartheasy.com has 20 lb. bags for $36.95 and so on. Corn gluten is a waste product of the wet-milling ethanol production process and prices should come as demand picks up.

Vinegar, especially when it is mixed with a combination of any or all of the following: salt, corn oil, niacin, other essential oils, is an excellent broadleaf weed killer. It is best to apply it in the morning on sunny days and to completely soak the weeds in question. If worse comes to worse you can also

Finally, give the process time. It will take some time for your lawn to respond to years of chemically induced stress (PDF link).

Finally, don’t be shy about sharing your success with your neighbors and others and ask your local school district and government not to expose our children to toxic chemicals at school or in public parks by educating them in techniques that have proven to work for you:
Washington Toxics Coalition
Toxic Free NC
Citizens Campaign – Pesticide Free Schools

If your dad is of the green sort, or you are and want to celebrate with him in an eco-friendly way, here are some activity ideas to consider on the big day:

•    Plan a picnic. Take your dad on a favorite hike of yours and feast at the summit.  Or, if your dad isn’t the run-up-a-mountain type, you could take him to a ski area that runs their chairlifts in the summer and treat him with a sweat-free view.  Or, to save on gas, go to the local park or the local grass in your backyard and munch away.  After all, everything tastes better outside, right?

If your dad is a chef or enjoys cooking, let him be a part of the cooking process.  Hit up the local farmer’s market in the morning and let the season dictate your lunch!

•    Volunteer together. Pick your favorite organization to help.  Call ahead to see what help they may need on a Sunday.  Hit up the animal shelter and walk dogs, play with the animals, clean cages or whatever else they may need.  You might have another friend coming home with you!  Or check out a soup kitchen or Meals on Wheels program and step in for a shift.  Workers and volunteers in these places will appreciate being relieved to spend time with their own fathers and family.

Don’t see an organization that catches your eye?  Pick an urban trail and beautify it, picking up trash and clearing debris along the way.  Many rivers collect an abundance of trash, so if you have a river curving through your town, hit it up with a trash bag and some gloves.  You’ll spend quality time together and the ducks will appreciate it!

•    Play ball! . . or whatever. What’s your father’s favorite sport?  Is he a golfer?  Play 9 holes with him or treat him to a bucket of balls at the driving range.  If he’s a football nut, toss one around together.  If biking or running are his thing, join him!  If he’s more low-key and indoorsy, hit the bowling alley or pool hall.  Or, if he’s up for something new, teach him something or arrange for lessons in sailing or skydiving or whatever floats your boat.  Maybe you’ll end up starting a new lifelong hobby together.

Whatever you choose this Father’s Day, focus on the time with your father-figure.  Don’t get too caught up or stressed with the details.  If everything falls through, don’t sweat it, grab dinner and rent the Planet Earth series.  Whatever you decide, take a camera and document the fun you have together.  You can put the pictures in an album for him to remember how much you love him.

The growing percentage of buyers and renters looking for sustainable real estate, to date, have only been served by generalized listing sites like Craigslist and local online classifieds. Now, GreenHomeFinder.com provides a “one stop shop” for a new niche – listing and rating the green features of properties online.

With databases set up to provide prospective renters and buyers with links to everything from the prospective neighborhood’s bamboo flooring contractors to the eco-friendly dry cleaners, Greenhomefinder.com is poised become the most comprehensive green property search engine in the United States. Property owners and managers who take advantage of this opportunity can now get properties listed at no cost for the next year and listing packages, products packages, services packages and advertising space is available for various reasonable fees.  Owners and property managers wanting more exposure can also purchase a “Branded Listings” package that enables the lister to add more photos  and information.

Additional features help to protect users from potential greenwashing of traditional listings. Carbon footprint calculators and a weighted rating system where, “each feature gets a leaf value,” enables users to actively pick and choose sustainable features based on personal as well as environmental priorities.  Users can also evaluate the pros and cons of the various features based on the anticipated term of usage.  A short-term vacation renter, for example, might be more concerned about air quality and access to public transportation whereas a long term home investors might be more concerned about solar panels and insulation.  Eco-friendly renters, homebuyers and commercial property developers who don’t want to rely on the green leaf system, alone can look for another qualification feature:  green inspector provided appraisals.

Although Greenhomefinder.com’s official launch was last month, the site’s co-founding member, Elizabeth Verdisco, is still uploading.  “We’re launching sort-of in pieces,” Verdisco explained to me in a phone interview. The Olympic level athlete turned attorney and co-founding member, Mary Lynn Aschwanden worked together to create Green Home Finder, LLC.  As they conceptualized the site’s unique functions and interfaces, the coding company they hired helped them develop algorithms sophisticated enough to take on the short and the long term needs of prospective green home customers.

As Greenhomefinder.com continues to evolve, users can look forward to a blog containing articles and video content and an email-delivered newsletter.  Green Home Finder, LLC is certainly a green real estate search engine to watch.

Federal legislation has been introduced in Congress that would ban the toxic chemical BPA from food and beverage containers.

BPA, first developed as a synthetic sex hormone, can be found in re-useable water bottles, the lining of your soup or soda cans, baby bottles, sippy cups, and other polycarbonate plastic products. It has been shown to leach from containers directly into food and beverages, especially when heated. Why is this a problem?

More than 200 studies have found that low dose exposures to BPA are linked to heart disease, breast and testicular cancers, reproductive problems, and other diseases reaching epidemic proportions in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted research that revealed detectable levels of BPA in the bodies of 93% of Americans.

And how is the industry responding? An internal memo leaked to The Washington Post last week describes their strategy of attempting to block progress through a range of PR ploys including an ad campaign starring a pregnant mom actress discussing BPA benefits.

This despite mounting research showing that extremely low levels of BPA can harm health, particularly during early infancy. And despite the availability of safer alternatives, such as stainless steel, glass, and other containers that don’t leach hazardous chemicals.

Urge your Representative and your Senators to support the Poisonous Additives Act (HR 1523/S 593) co-sponsored by Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California).