USGBC turns 15

The people behind the LEED game turns 15. They have put out a series of videos on green building and sustainability.Its pretty interesting with some LEED glorification, which I feel is absolutely warranted.

Watch it here:

http://in.youtube.com/user/wwwusgbc

Sustainable Innovation Conference - Alex Steffen

Hi,

Presented in the Sustainable Innovation Conference, Sweden last month, Alex Steffen had a lot of ideas on how to make the world more sustainable . While this might take time and lot of political lobbying to become mainstream, I just picked up some points from the the talk which I could gather. Of course watching the video would be the best to gain your perspective of it.

Sustainable Innovation Conference 2008: Alex Steffen from Joel Mulligan on Vimeo.

Points:

• Favorite Quote - " We are destroying the planet and not having fun"
• Human happiness is considerably reduced.
• To think not only of the obvious problems but also of the accompanying usually bigger problems which have to be addressed. Here he gives the example of a car, where he tells that everyone only looks at the exhaust pipe and tries to attack that problem of pollution. But a whole gamut of problems like construction and destruction of the car, infrastructure, water pollution, accidents etc have also to be addressed.( Systems thinking)
• Call for higher population density as opposed to sprawling settlements.
• Walkable urban areas.
• Higher density decreases the infrastructure needed.
• Installing personal energy meters reduces energy  consumption by 7-12%.( works like mileage meter in car)
• Number of trips required for renting a movie from a store (4 minimum) over Netflix(online movie renting) . Amount of time and energy saved. Calls for more innovation like this.
• Sharing resources(like car and other accessories) to share its benefit and impact.
• To setup a portal for easy bartering system - Connect people who want to sell outgrown products to people who want to buy them. Lesser garbage for landfill. e.g http://www.freecycle.org/
• To be wary of greenwashing - hogwashing the environmental way!

Starting it off!!

Let me start this blog by posting some videos and resources I felt are important in the context of sustainability in India.

DA - Development Alternatives group focuses on strategies and technologies which can be used to embrace sustainable development and thereby eradicate poverty.

These videos in youtube helped me find DA.









Also you can subscribe to my playlist in youtube here
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=D9B2C51D09F594FA

If anyone is interested in having a discussion on these videos and  links , just comment. Anyway I will try to summarize the videos in  the succeeding posts.