If you’re an urbanite, you likely think of nature as something that exists outside of the city limits. That thinking is prevalent, and may contribute to the growth of nature deficit disorder among our kids… and ourselves. “Nature,” however, is all around us, and city government officials, planners, and community advocates are realizing that actively incorporating green spaces into urban settings makes for more livable environments (remember the High Line?).

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While certified green theatre may still be an anomaly, the live entertainment design community is discussing its environmental impact, as well as broader notions of sustainability, both online and in person. Yesterday, Live Design magazine published a blog post (the first in a series) from lighting designer and theatre consultant Curtis Kasefang on the concept of “sustainable theatres.” Kasefang’s notion of a sustainable performance space can be summed in up in one word: reuse.

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Got a child looking at colleges? Or, are you looking for yourself? More and more, sustainability efforts may be one of the criteria you and others use to choose a “good” school. For several years, the Sustainable Endowments Institute has made the search for that information a little easier with the publication of its College Sustainability Report Card. The 2009 edition was released last week, and colleges and universities around the country are bragging (or not) about their “grades.”

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What were you thinking about on September 16, 2008? Green business ideas probably weren’t at the top of the list… September 15 was the day that Lehman Brothers went belly up, and you were probably more focused on your portfolio and savings. As such, Tim Sanders’ book Saving the World at Work (released on — you guessed it — September 16) got buried under talk of a second Great Depression.

Sanders and publisher Doubleday decided to give the book another go, and relaunched it on September 16th of this year. I’m glad they did: while the title led me to believe I was going to be reading another “how to” book on greening the workplace (which is not a bad thing), Sanders goes well beyond tips on saving paper and electricity.

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But will it float...?

David de Rothschild’s Plastiki is a seaworthy boat made from reclaimed plastic bottles. Michael Reynolds’ Earthships (the subject of the documentary GARBAGE WARRIOR) are homes built from reclaimed materials, and designed to provide basic needs for the homeowner: energy, food, water, and waste disposal. Put the two together, and you get the Landlord Independent, a work-in-progress by Providence, Rhode Island-based artists and activists Dan Gladstone and Zachary Weindel.

Their idea: a boat designed as “an open biodome,” or a “micro-continent,” according to Weindel. The Landlord Independent currently isn’t much more than a giant raft (made mostly from found and reused materials), but Gladstone and Weindel envision both energy and food production (including animals and gardens) onboard. Besides a concept of more sustainable living, the two young artists see “seasteading” as a way to free themselves from “…leases and rents, mortgages and taxes, electric bills and grocery-store visits.” Eventually, they’d love to build seafaring communities around the concept.

Nuts? Revolutionary? Something in between? You make the call…

via The Providence Journal and The Providence Phoenix

Image credit: Dominic’s pics at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

You probably don’t use the words “sustainability” and “prison” in the same sentence very often. The housing and feeding of inmates requires huge amounts of water and energy, though, and generates tons of waste. The Sustainable Prisons Project, a partnership between the Washington State Department of Corrections and the Evergreen State College, works to make prisons more efficient… and perhaps even reduce recidivism rates by providing “green collar” training to inmates.

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In 1987, the United Nations’ Bruntland Commission defined the concept of sustainable development as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs…” Is this an accurate definition? Certainly. Does it capture the imagination, and prod people to action? Probably not…

This Fall, Arizona State University’s Art Museum is going to take another, and very different, stab at formulating a definition for sustainability. A series of projects gathered under the title Defining Sustainability will not only display artistic renderings of the concept (or specific examples of it, such as greener transportation or recycled shade structures), but also bring together “artists and designers, faculty and students [to] engage the greater Phoenix community in their creative processes and in conversations about sustainability.”

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Pope Benedict XVI added to his growing reputation as the “green Pope” yesterday (July 7) with the release of a new encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). A call for sustainable development in the broadest sense, the Pope’s letter addressed the human and environmental costs of “business as usual,” and established “doing well by doing good” as the business philosophy most consistent with Church doctrine and Biblical teaching.

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Think this whole “green” thing is just a fad? Maybe some elements of it, but if trends in higher education are any indicator of larger patterns, sustainability will continue to play a role in how we live, work, and play. In late June, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) released its annual Digest, a collection and analysis of stories from the previous year’s weekly newsletter. Just the size of the publication should give us hope: according to Acting Executive Director Judy Walton’s “Introduction,” the 2008 Digest is 50% larger than the previous edition.

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The next time you’re at the wine shop trying to figure out which wineries produce vintages that fit your palate and green values, you may want to consider a bottle from Chile: according to wine writer Tim Pawsey, the country “already practices significant sustainable viticulture, and is a leader in biodynamic farming.” Currently, thirty-two wineries in the country use organic production methods, and about 2% of wine-growing land is devoted to organic agriculture.

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Uttering the phrase “green design” can evoke images of mud-plastered huts and clothes that just scream “itchy”… all bathed in a faint whiff of patchouli. A new project from the Nature Conservancy attempts to banish such sensations, and demonstrate that beauty and function can exist hand-in-hand with sustainability.

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