Sunday, October 26, 2008

Day 188 of our Green Year: One Million Acts of Green


Last week, I was watching CBC Newsworld when they broadcast a story about CBC's One Million Acts of Green. It was an interesting concept and it follows what Layla and I are trying to do, which is making a series of small changes in our lives that we hope will add up to big change.

For CBC's initiative, they want to have one million acts of green that are small, but add up to one big change. As it is described on the website, "It is not about overhauling your life; it's about one act from each individual amassing to a million. It can be as simple as switching to compact fluorescent lightbulbs, starting a recycling program or walking to work. You can do one act, or you can do all one million! It's up to you."

This is a great idea and kudos to CBC for showing that small changes can make a big difference for the environment. With Our Green Year, we know that not everyone can do what we do. However, as we have stressed in our interviews with media, if we can do 365 green things, someone else can do 10. If one million people do ten things, that adds up to a huge difference.

So, for this blog, we are promoting One Million Acts of Greens and asking you all to register your acts of green as we have. As of this writing, the total on the website is at 89,498 green things done and 6.1 million kilograms of greenhouse gases saved. Good for you CBC!

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Thank you to Jim Caudill from Bonterra, who was nice enough to drop me an e-mail and thank Layla and I for talking about his vineyard yesterday.

He sent us a pdf file that showed his vineyard has been growing organic grapes since 1987, well before green was the new buzz word for business. If you are interested in seeing the pdf, which also talks about the organic industry and is actually quite interesting, send me an e-mail to craigbaird@wildmail.com

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In an effort to help show people what not to do in terms of going green, a good friend of ours, Jay in Ontario, dressed as me during a Halloween party at his sister Min's house, and took a series of shots of him/me doing bad environmental things. Here are the photos below:


As Jay shows us, running the air conditioner while wearing two shirts is bad for the environment!

Jay shows us that talking on the phone while leaving the fridge open is a great way to waste energy.

Leaving the water running while reading a magazine (that could be read online) is a no-no.


Jay should know better than to use bottled water, let alone microwave it to heat it up....


Throwing out glass bottles is a big no-no! Recycle those Jay!