I’ve been collecting sites that have information about sustainable living on my delicious account.  You can see what I’ve found (and will find in the future) through this RSS feed.

When I was walking by the bookstore last night, I found a magazine put out by Scientific American about Sustainablility, called Earth 3.0.  The whole magazine is about sustainable living.  It’s so funny how once you start studying something, resources keep popping out at you.  The cover article is “10 Myths about Sustainablity” by Michael D. Lemonick, a senior writer at Climate Central, a nonprofit climate change think tank.

From this article I learned more about the history of the use of the term sustainablility.  I didn’t know that there was a United Nations report, Our Common Future, that came out in 1987 which defined sustainable living as “‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’”

It got me thinking about how it is difficult for students to remember that they aren’t researching only to find out what they think they know.  Sometimes they discard an article because it is not directly answering their question.  I’m not exactly sure how to teach gathering material, even if you are not sure how it will link, and then making connections as you get a more global view of the topic.  But this simply written article may be a good start.

Today I am asking my students to summarize the myths, but then asking questions or making next-step statements about the information they read.  For example, I am going to check out Our Common Future next.

I hope this lesson will help them see that research is like going on an adventure with each resource having the possibility of leading somewhere else.

I just ran across an interesting resource: Good Although it has some commercial content, it is put together by individuals who want to push the world toward a sustainable future. If I were using this for research, I would definitely check the credentials of each author. While I found some writers to be educated in the field, others were activists or artists who may or may not have facts behind their deep convictions.

Just ran across this NYT article by Henry Fountain:  “Concrete Being Remixed with Environment in Mind.”  Concrete might actually help curb carbon emissions when created with a new formula:

In his mixes, Dr. MacDonald replaced much of the Portland cement with two industrial waste products — fly ash, left over from burning coal in power plants, and blast-furnace slag. Both are what are called pozzolans, reactive materials that help make the concrete stronger. Because the CO2 emissions associated with them are accounted for in electricity generation and steel making, they also help reduce the concrete’s carbon footprint. Some engineers and scientists are going further, with the goal of developing concrete that can capture and permanently sequester CO2 from power plants or other sources, so it cannot contribute to the warming of the planet.

I wonder if this new concrete is more economical as well.  It seems that the companies working on it are betting that it will be.  Concrete, and the space it takes up, was not something I had ever thought about in terms of carbon emissions.  I know that concrete supplants trees, but I didn’t think about it actually adding to the carbon footprint.  Since we do use so much concrete, it would be great if it could help reduce emissions.  I wonder what other everyday materials could be restructured to reduce our overall carbon production.

Watch this video respond with what you think about how the filmmaker uses words, images, and sounds to convey a message.  What is the most effective, influential, persuasive part?

If you want news articles to come to you, you can create a feed with a key word search.  Any time a new source is published, you will get notification.  If you look to the left of this blog page, you can see that I’ve created some feeds through Google News:  Recycling, Sustainable Living, Green Living.

Watch this short clip to see how to set it up.  Create a feed (or a couple of them) in Google News by doing a keyword search. Then go to this RSS feed creator and paste the feed URL and design the feed how you wish.  I have given you some suggestions in the video.

how_to_make_an_rss_feed_for_your_blog

We finally came up with our groups based on guiding questions that the class came up with.

What is Sustainable Living?

• Sarah
• Amanda
• Franni
• Jaylah

Why Should We Care about Living Sustainably?

• Marquis
• Taryn
• Ben
• Brad

What are the Economic Effects of Sustainable Living?

• Eric
• Joey E
• Jefferson
• Jon

What are the Environmental Effects of Sustainable Living?

• Joe D
• Curtis
• Daniel
• Amer

How can we Live Comfortably While Using Fewer Resources?

• Janelle
• Jacob
• Julia
• Ramze

Students:  Please fill in your choices for your research topic.  You must choose a first, second, and third choice.  If you do not choose, I will choose for you.

Click here for survey if it is not loading on the page.

After watching Edward Burtynsky’s TED video lecture, I clicked around his pet project, Worldchanging and found an article about the phrase “bright green” as opposed to just green.

What is bright green? In its simplest form, bright green environmentalism is a belief that sustainable innovation is the best path to lasting prosperity, and that any vision of sustainability which does not offer prosperity and well-being will not succeed. In short, it’s the belief that for the future to be green, it must also be bright. Bright green environmentalism is a call to use innovation, design, urban revitalization and entrepreneurial zeal to transform the systems that support our lives.

This thoughtful look at intersections of the economy and ecology seems like a reasonable way to get people to commit to living a sustainable life.  Maybe someone will invent recycled toilet paper that will still be soft.  A golden opportunity for someone

Since the class seemed to enjoy the TED talks so much–many students wrote about them in their own blogs–I thought I’d link to a search of dozens of TED talks on sustainability and green living.  Not all of them will give information that will directly link to our study, but all of them seem interesting.

Warning:  I have not previewed all of them.  Read the description and view at your own discretion.

TED talks “A Greener Future?”

One clip that focuses on how we use our limited resources is by photographer,  Edward Burtynsky.  He has taken photographs of areas in which humans have altered the natural landscape for our own purposes.  Take a look for yourself.