Short Film Showcase and Party in partnership with WMEAC and BALLE

Join us on Tuesday, May 15th for a Short Film Showcase and party to celebrate our exciting collection of the best global and domestic sustainability films!

Come experience the expedition team’s journey and witness the latest efforts in sustainable tourism, adventure travel, wildlife conservation, community development, education, sustainable food and more! Learn about exciting travel destinations and discover ways YOU can get involved. Mix and mingle with your community, our event sponsors and the GLP team while enjoying live music, local beer, and fantastic food.

Find out what our premieres are all about!

Find out what Green Living Project is all about!

Event Sponsors:

If your looking for a place to learn more about permaculture, natural building, and ecological design we recommend checking out the Lost Valley Education Center outside Eugene, OR

The Green Living Project Mobile tour had been exploring NYC this week and kicked off our green discoveries at the East Brooklyn Farmers Market. Recently, there has be a groundswell of interest in urban gardening and farming. Every month in Brooklyn there are new urban retrofits, rooftop farms, and community gardens in development and this energy is regenerating spaces across the city at a unprecedented speed. East Brooklyn is a great example of this community oriented dedication. The East Brooklyn Farmers market is a colorful bizarre of flavors, wares, and produce, from authentic Caribbean food, to heirloom organic vegetables grown in the neighborhood, this farmers market has something for everyone and the best part is that it’s located right next to a large and beautiful community garden. The mobile tour team talked with a growing youth composting cooperative and with the MacArther Genius award winner Majora Carter of Sustainable South Bronx who just happened to be visiting in the area.  Later that week the team went to an amazing Permaculture fundraiser for the Imani Garden which featured a traditional New England lobster dinner and a excellent intro to Permaculture talk by Teddy Tamirat sponsored by the Green Phoenix permaculture group that is active all over NYC.

We stopped in Eugene, OR at SeQuential Biofuels, a cute gas station right off of Interstate 5 that has made a commitment to environmental sustainability, and to the local economy. Rolling in to the station, we met Ian Hill, cofounder of the station, who talked to us about about the biodeisel pumped into our tank, from farm to fuel line.

Our biodeisel begins its story in a Canola Field where it grows into seeds which are pressed into oil. That oil is then taken to Burgerville, a small chain of fast food restaurants in the Portland, OR region that serves many seasonal foods grown in the region. The oil is used in their fryer, and when it’s time to change the oil, Burgerville sells the used cooking oil to Encore Oils, SeQuential’s oil collection service. It is then trucked down to their processing plant in Salem, OR where it is cooked into biodesil, and distributed to filling stations throughout the region, including their flagship station where we’ve just arrived. They also sell e85 for flex-fuel vehicles that is recycled from a food processor in Cornelius, OR. Once it’s in our tank, the biodiesel reduces the carbon dioxide emissions of the SolTrekker by 78%, reducing the health impacts of our travels on both our neighbors and our planet.

Even the presense of the station is a sustainability sucess story. The site it was built on was a gas station for 50 years, until neighbors started complaining of gasoline flavored well water. The operater of the station went bankrupt, and the land was listed as a brownfield “orphan site” theoretically managed by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (The DEQ). The land became a toxic hot potato, changing ownership several times until Lane County took ownership in a tax forclosure. At this point, Ian, Tyson Keever, and Tomas Endicott found the site. They had met in college at the University of Oregon, and approached Lane County and the DEQ to begin soil remediation on the site. As a result of their work, the well is once again in use, and soil petrochemical contamination has been reduced to trace levels. The project won the 2007 EPA Phoenix Award for the Community Impact – UST category

Walking in to the convenience store, I’m struck by the contrast between the gas station vibe of the place and the products on the shelves. The first thing I saw were the doughnuts. Instead of the usual selection, they featured the local bakery Holy Doughnuts such delecacies as ginger pineapple, strawbery, apple strudel, and chocolate maple. Where I would expect a soda fountain they had four taps of draught kombucha from two different local companies. They sold produce from local farms, organic juices from local producer Genesis Juice, and a full sandwich deli that features local bacon and eggs, 100% hormone, antibiotic, and nitrite/nitrate free meats, and all organic produce. — it’s the first gas station I can imagine going out of my way to get lunch at.

The building itself is another sustainability story. They use 30% less energy than a typical convenience store of their size, with passive solar heating and cooling accounting for a significant reduction in heating and cooling costs. They have to turn their air conditioning on an average of 30 days per year, and last winter they didn’t have to turn on the heat once. The station also features a living roof and bioswales to help control pollution and run-off.

For all of these innovations, I think the most exciting piece of this story is that the company was started by three kids with a big idea and and the drive to make it work. Ian put it best when he told me “we need more people to go after the wacky ideas they have, to just give it a try.”

When we’re in the region,  we’ll be proud to fill our tank with Biodiesel from SeQuential.

About the Author: Davi Rios is passionate about living sustainably and encouraging others to do the same. Davi sees the mobile tour as an opportunity to share that passion with others, and is particularly excited about the school presentations. In Davi’s free time Davi enjoys partner dancing, and hopes to one day begin a career splitting time between writing and teaching dance.

By now most people have heard of the popular trend of “buying local” goods and services as a great way to make a positive impact on your local economy and as a way to boost regional sustainability.  Well, now with the continuing economic volatility there are more reasons than ever to become full fledged “locavore”.

I love food carts!  The great thing about them is that they have a high stumble upon factor.  For instance, walking around downtown Portland OR you can’t throw a stone without hitting a food or bike car so your choices on food are excellent, but unfortunately your choices on to go containers are not.  Extra packaging with food cart food use to push my eco-guilt buttons, well no more, because now we have the Go Box service.  The Green Living Project mobile tour team interviewed Go Box’s founder Laura Wiesse while traveling through Portland.  Laura explained how Go Box partners with food carts to offer customers a reusable container service that is convenient, brilliant, and affordable.  Customers pay a one time fee for a subscription and get their food with a reusable container, and then return the containers to drop location to be washed they’re given a Go Box token for their next container.  It’s simple, it’s cheap, and it will stop all lot of unnecessary waste from ending up in landfills.   Go Box was recently featured on the Sustainable Business Oregon blog and is growing fast.  Finally, more food cart food, less food cart trash!

Hands on outdoor learning is a wonderful way to get young students to connect with their subject matter.  Sauvie Island Center takes this direct connection seriously by having kids pick and prepare there own meals while learning about importance of sustainable land management and wholesome local food.  Here elementary kids are eating their own homework even before their pets can!

Sauvie Island is a beautiful fifteen-mile-long, four-and-a-half-mile island just outside the Portland, OR city limits and the the Sauvie Island Center is located at Howell Territorial Park which includes an organic farm and orchard.

Allowing kids to come and connect with the land is a Sauvie Island Center tradition which they carry on through frequent events.  Earlier this month the mobile tour was on hand while they held a summer cooking camp and farm tour event inviting children and their parents to learn about local food and gourmet cooking.  Chef Paul Folkestad and members of Le Cordon Blue College taught the day long class. On the menu was farm picked salad, penne pasta with kale based pesto, greek yogurt with fresh rasberries, and lavender lemonade! The kids picked their own salad greens, learned about the importance of organic local foods, and even the meaning of the word emulsify! They all had a great time and so did the GLP Mobile Team as we caught all their excited smiles.

This is part of exciting trend to connect students with local organic farms that is sweeping the country.  If your would like to learn more ways that you can be involved in getting local organic foods into schools in your please check out the Farm to School movement.

In early 2000, Wisconsin Tourism launched their Travel Green initiative. With it came a set of pilot programs to help identify key locations where eco-tourism had a strong foothold. Bayfield came out on top. The city continues to breed the most Travel Green-certified businesses in the state. “They pretty much live it,” said Ruth Goetz from the Wisconsin Governor’s Tourism Council.

Year-round Bayfield residents, Steve and Nancy Sandstrom, own and operate the state’s premiere eco-accommodation – Pinehurst Inn. Built in 1886, the historic home was once owned by a lumber baron. In fact, much of the surrounding woodland was decimated by logging in the early 20th century. Knowing they could provide a place to share their connection with the land, Steve and Nancy purchased the property in 1996. “It was a no-brainer when we found out this place was for sale,” said Nancy. “This is where we were suppose to be.” This husband and wife team is committed to limiting their environmental footprint and sharing a model of sustainable business with others. “The more attention we pay to how we are doing business, the more we benefit the community, the visitor, and Wisconsin as a whole,” she said.

Pinehurst Inn includes abundant examples of sustainable innovation. An organic plot borders the side of the house, a rain “garden” collects roof runoff (and funnels it to the plantings below), and giant solar panels lay nestled in the native landscaping. It’s the hope that these details serve to communicate facets of sustainability to the inn’s many guests. “Visitors come away with a better understanding of how small changes can lead to big impacts on the land,” said Nancy. The couple is happy to play the role of educator in order to set a lasting example for their guests. “Bayfield has a real opportunity to continue to build itself as a sustainable tourism destination. And if we can continue to guide that process, all the better.”

Summer in Portland!

Portland, OR is a paramount US city in terms of innovative sustainability thinking and so it’s fitting that its the launch city for the Green Living Project Mobile Tour.  Davi and I on the mobile tour team have been keeping ourselves busy this week working on a best of Portland reel that will dive into some the most exciting green projects, people, and stories happening in the Portland region.  So far in last couple of weeks we’ve explored the Lost Valley eco village and education center and got schooled in some neat permaculture and forest garden techniques by head instructor Rick Valley.  If you’re looking into learning eco building or permaculture in the near future be sure to check out their excellent upcoming summer and fall courses.  We recently celebrated amazing organic beers at the annual North American Organic Brewers Festival, there we watched some folks make delicious solar powered beer, pedal a mobile beer bike, as well as, pedal a mobile organic beer bike bar (now that’s a tasty mouthful).   It’s great to see that the organic beer market is alive and thriving right now on both coasts.  This last thursday we filmed at the Ecotrust Sundown Concert Series in downtown Portland which will be happening consecutive thursdays through July (you catch us filming tomorrow July 7th from 5:30-830pm).  If you like good music, good causes, and good food then the Sundown is the place to be, the best part is that it’s free!  You can check out our footage from the beer festival at and all our mobile exploits via our facebook and twitter pages.

~Evan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIvTbK7TzpQ