But no miracle is without controversy, as this recent SNEWS® Live podcast  demonstrates.  With a variety of sources for offsets (renewable energy, reforestation and methane combustion among them), are all offsets created equal?  How can offset purchasers be sure they’re not buying “worthless” credits?  And what about the argument that offsets are nothing more than a way for environmental despoilers to pay for their sins, rather than changing their behavior?

As Earthkeepers, we believe in making conscious choices about our behavior to improve the environment, first and foremost – and that there’s always room to raise the bar.  We also believe there’s space on the environmental agenda for any initiative that contributes, credibly and meaningfully, to a lighter footprint and a greener planet.  This is one conversation we’ll continue to follow. 

Our thanks to the SNEWS® Live team and podcaster James Mills for shedding good light on this murky topic, and for allowing us to share it.

A few weeks back we introduced you to the Earthkeeper Heroes – five “change agents” we believe are doing exciting and compelling work to make the world a greener place. 

Agent 350 is one of those heroes – actually, a whole team of heroes – working around the clock and around the world to spread a global climate movement to make 350 the most well-known, most talked about number on the planet.

Agent 350 doesn’t have a lot going for them in the traditional sense; they’re not heavily bank-rolled, they’re not an elite group of environmental scientists, they’re not even terribly experienced (median age of the team is 23 years old).  That’s precisely why we love them.  They’re resourceful, creative, ambitious … wise beyond their years and great collaborators and conveners.  We believe in their endeavor – to unite voices around the globe in an unprecedented call to action on the climate crisis – and we believe they’re just the group to pull it off.

Agent 350 and his team have just reached the first milestone in mounting their global movement – launching 350’s home on the internet.  Our favorite website feature?  This “350 animation” video that summarizes, in 90 seconds flat and using not a single spoken word, the climate crisis and 350’s critical role in stemming it.  We think it’s powerful – dare we say earth-changing – stuff.

Here, three recent discussions around the issue of transparency that have caught our attention, and might pique yours as well:

o Triplepundit highlights Creative Citizen, an “action-based green wiki” that provides companies a forum to back their green product claims – and gives consumers the opportunity to weigh in with their own opinions and experiences.

o On Leading Green, Jeffrey Hollender and Bill Breen share their views on the new standard of transparency, including pros (transparency builds trust like no other) and cons (if your transparency efforts reveal a flaw, you’d better be prepared to fix it).

o Marc Gunther explores transparency in the context of relationships between big green environmental groups and corporate America, and reviews “Green Inc.” – a forthcoming book suggesting NGOs and business may be cultivating questionable ties.

Michael Sheridan is a documentary filmmaker and experimental videosonic artist whose recent work Instant Noodles addresses the crisis of deforestation and the palm oil industry in Indonesia. His work reminds us that there are as many avenues for expressing environmental consciousness as there are individuals in the world – and that the inspirational nature of art is boundless.

Below, Michael shares his thoughts about the creation of Instant Noodles as a means of instigating fresh perspectives on everyday life, and encouraging personal behavior change.

When I arrived in Indonesia in August of 2007, I was already committed to producing new artwork for two exhibitions in the United States. In December I finished a new installation sound piece, This is Foreign for the Axiom Gallery and in January a new videosonic work Instant Noodles.

Instant Noodles was part of the exhibition Greed, Guilt and Grappling-Six Artists Respond to Global Warming at the Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts. Mags Harries and Clara Wainwright, the artist-curators of the exhibition, asked me last year if I would be interested in participating. I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to ground my new explorations in Indonesia – a country I frankly knew very little about.

I came to Indonesia because I wanted to go somewhere that I’d never been and to spend an extended period in a developing country.  For the past 15 years I have produced documentary films and videosonic art that primarily address social and economic issues in poor and developing communities in Africa, South Asia and the Americas.  But the production trips associated with these projects seldom lasted more than 2-4 weeks.

Indonesia was of particular interest because of my work’s focus on the tipping point between social order and chaos.  Indonesia is stable but in a nascent state of development.   It is 10 years into a transformation to democracy after 30 plus years of dictatorship; its economy is burdened by numerous natural disasters and intense population pressure; it is home to the world’s fourth largest population and the largest number of Muslims.  In this post 9/11 world the country struggles to maintain a moderate approach to religion.

The direction of Instant Noodles developed slowly over the first five months that I was in Indonesia.  There were many issues that competed for my attention in regards to global warming.   It quickly became apparent, however, that I needed to look squarely at the problem that makes Indonesia now the third greatest contributor to global warming, after the US and China - deforestation, forest burning and the palm oil industry.  

The impact of this reality was palpable from my 7th floor balcony in Jakarta.  From there I watched fantastic sunsets beautified by the haze from the country’s burning jungles (and burning trash, industry and the world’s worst traffic jams).  During the rainy season, October to May, torrential downpours flooded huge swaths of the city on a weekly basis.  These storms are thought to be intensifying due to temperature increases from decades of massive deforestation.  Eight thousand square miles of tropical forest, equivalent to the size of Massachusetts, is cut down each year in Indonesia.

This became a central point of discussion during the UN Conference on Global Warming in Bali, Indonesia, in December.  The conference placed on the negotiating table for the first time the need to include forest destruction in the calculations of CO2 production and in the remedies being considered.  The world has primarily concentrated on CO2 emissions to mitigate global warming but it has become equally important to understand that the world has a mechanism for soaking up CO2 – forests – and the destruction of these forests is a major contributor to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. 

Indonesia is obviously not the only culprit in this mess.  New England chopped down its old growth forest by the 1800s, Brazil and the Congo are working hard at decimating their tropical but Indonesia currently is on top of the list of tree choppers and forest burners.  Much of this is albeit illegal – as corruption, poor regulation enforcement and industrial greed runs rampant.

In Indonesia forests are cleared (or “recovered” as it is euphemistically called by the timber industry) in part to create prosperous palm oil plantations.  Palm oil is used to prepare and preserve foods such as Instant Noodles (and KitKat bars and Pringle chips….) so they can be kept “fresh” in their plastic wrappings. Indonesia is set to become the largest producer of palm oil in 2008 and is the largest producer of Instant Noodles.

Palm oil is also increasingly used as a bio-fuel.  Many are lead to believe therefore that palm oil plantations are a good thing in the fight against global warming – and certainly that is the PR being spun by the palm oil corporations.  However, according to a study for the government of the UK, over a 30-year time period, 2-9 times more CO2 will be released into the environment by the destruction of forests to make room for palm oil plantations than can be saved by replacing oil consumption with bio-fuels. 

This is the kind of information I learned as I focused on what kind of artwork I wanted to produce.  The focus on instant noodles came out of a series of conversations I had with my collaborator, premier Indonesian choreographer and dancer Sardono Kusumo.  I approached Sardono in October because I had looked at his work and noted his focus on forest destruction, the preservation of forest communities and on the impact of plastic on the environment in Indonesia.   Subsequently he looked at my work and noted my previous focus on material consumption and food.

This was the first time that my video art work would involve collaboration and performers.  I have always been very particular about making my films and video art pieces out of undirected, unmanipulated documentary material.  I was however interested in engaging with Indonesians in any way possible both because of the notion of exchange at the heart of the Fulbright Scholarship but also because I was new to the country and its issues and wanted local input.

Sardono and I started with the much broader intention to film a number of dancers in a variety of locations.  Each would deal with a different consumable product wrapped in plastic and created with palm oil.  In the end we narrowed our focus down to instant noodles because it is a ubiquitous food on the international market and a product readily familiar to an American audience.  We felt it important to address the issue through a material that our main audience – Americans – would have a direct relationship to.  We also decided to use only one dancer, the fabulously talented and very pregnant dancer, Yola Yulfianti. All of us were excited by the symbolic value of her pregnancy.

When I first met Yola however, I was concerned about her participation.  She was two weeks from her due date.  I told her I wanted to film her at the dump – picking instant noodle wrappings out of mounds of garbage.  With the motionless calm of a royal Javanese dancer she said “ok, no problem.”  At first I thought we might be having a language problem but I soon realized that Sardono regularly put his performers through extreme situations – including performances in the deep mud of Indonesian rice paddies, mounds of plastic refuse and through the depths of dense and humid tropical forests.

Sardono’s pieces are developed during rigorous and often lengthy workshop/rehearsal periods. These workshops emphasize movement exploration based on an understanding of the form’s cultural and natural environments. Many workshops take place outdoors in the mountains and at the seashore.  Breathing and mental preparedness are integral to the process.  He challenges his performers to improvise on his basic instructions and to push their physical and mental limits.

Both Sardono and Yola began in their childhoods studying traditional Javanese dance that was created to emulate the highly ritualized and elegant character of the royal courts.  The movements of the dance are extremely precise, highly articulated and often very slow.   Yola studied with Sardono as a young adult and has performed in a number of his works since 2004.  She performed in Boston in 2006 in Handel and Haydn Society’s production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo.

Sardono’s intention was for Yola to use the precise movements of traditional dance in the colorful and loud contemporary environments that I would chose to represent a cycle of consumption.  The hope was that by using one character performing ritualized acts of consumption that the notion of individual action and responsibility would be accentuated. 

My intention for Instant Noodles is that it provide a meditative experience through which viewers can see and hear the world around them with a fresh perspective.  The visual and aural experiences should be strong enough to jog people’s memories during their daily lives, for example, the next time they go shopping or throw some plastic away.  Changing personal behavior is for many of us, myself included, a very hard thing to do.  But drip-by-drip, impression-by-impression, experience-by-experience, thought-by-thought and, finally, act-by-act we can do it.  I hope my work will contribute to this process.  In Instant Noodles the precision and timelessness of traditional Indonesian dance is used as a contrasting lament for our careless consumption and the damage caused by our desire for cheap convenience.

Michael Sheridan 

Documentary filmmaker and experimental videosonic artist

Michael Sheridan is a documentary filmmaker and experimental videosonic artist.  His documentary films concentrate on international issues of hunger and poverty. PBS, ABC, The Learning Channel, The Discovery Network and National Geographic TV have broadcast Michael’s documentary work.

Michael’s videosonic artwork is dominated by themes of survival, sustainability and the tipping point between order and chaos. Currently Michael is in Indonesia as a Senior Fulbright Scholar teaching and making films.�

Why would any sane retail company voluntarily go through a long, laborious, time-consuming, detailed, and expensive process just to be able to hang a plaque in its stores certifying that they were built to certain “green” standards? Especially when green practices already played a significant role in its demolition, construction, and operational processes? Is the output worth the input? The answer is really “yes,” and “no.”

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system was created by the US Green Building Council and is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of green buildings and retail spaces. The LEED system provides real and measurable effects of a building’s environmental and sustainability impact. Its 3rd party indifference and extensive objective criteria make LEED the undisputed authority in certifying who is really building green vs. those that just claim to.

Timberland’s decision to seek LEED certification for two of our new specialty stores was rooted in our desire to both verify the “greenness” of our current demolition, building and operational processes by an independent party as well as improve on them so that we could be confident that we’re doing as much as possible to reduce our environmental impact in building and running our retail stores. We felt it worth the effort to go through this process to set a standard by which all of our other specialty stores will be built…a standard that has bite, one that can’t be disputed as having a real and measurable impact on the environment.

We are proud of our achievement for being the first mall-based retailer to achieve LEED certification. We are equally proud of the level of certification with which we achieved: “Gold” for our Northshore Mall, Peabody, MA location and “Silver” for our Rockingham Mall, Salem, NH store. However, the process in getting certification was extremely time consuming. The incremental impact on internal resources was enormous and the incremental dollar cost was not immaterial, though it should be noted that the extra expense was NOT in the actual build-out of the stores (indeed we found that building green did not add that great of an expense at all), but in the administrative help required to navigate through the LEED certification process itself.

At end of the day, it’s nice to have a peg to hang our hat on. We now have a minimum standard to act as a blueprint for all of our future stores…a blueprint that has been certified by an independent party as having a meaningful impact on the environment. However, we will not be going through the formal certification for future stores. It’s too much of an internal distraction and too expensive. For Timberland, it will be enough to say that all future stores will be built to the same, or higher, green standards. Future stores may not have a nice shiny LEED plaque hanging on their walls, but their reduced environmental costs will be no less impactful.

The real question is what’s next? How can we top ourselves? There are some processes, materials, and approaches that now go beyond LEED. Now is not the time to take a breather…we can’t rest on our laurels. Though a great standard has been achieved with LEED certification, we must continually evolve the standard to incorporate new and better materials and practices…the race has just begin…come join us!

Greg Rainforth, Senior Manager of Real Estate and Construction
Timberland

This was the topic of conversation in our office this morning – nostalgia inspired by the new video Reverb posted on their story board at Changents.com.

The answers to the question ranged from Dire Straits (1979, Providence, RI) to the Charlie Daniels Band (1982, Oxford, Ohio) to Boyz II Men (1994, Philadelphia). Regardless of the band, the venue or the date, our team of concert-goers agreed that their first concert was a rite of passage into the wonderful world of live music. And that on one hand, the experience of going to a concert hasn’t changed much over the years; on the other hand, it can be and often is a much more enriching experience that transcends the music.

Reverb is one of the driving forces behind the trend to educate and engage both the musicians and their fans to promote environmental sustainability. This summer, at concerts featuring John Mayer, Jack Johnson and the Dave Matthews Band, the bands are using bio-diesel to fuel their buses and generators. The on-site caterers are using biodegradable products and among many other things, there’s a commitment to both waste reduction and recycling.

As for the fans, if they carpool to a DMB or John Mayer concert this summer they could win DMB and John Mayer prizes. Through a partnership with PickupPal, Reverb supports this program in a fierce acknowledgement of the fact that 80% of the carbon footprint of a concert is from fans driving to and from the show. Once they arrive at the show, fans are greeted with a festival-like atmosphere in the Reverb Eco-Village where they can learn about green technologies, local and national non-profit groups dedicated to environmental sustainability, and carbon offset programs. Fans can also register to vote, participate in Eco-Trivia contests and sample eco-friendly consumer goods.

Whether you cut your concert-going teeth on hard rock, a little bit of country or something in between, there’s something uniquely powerful about a live music concert. Hats off to Reverb for realizing the opportunity to add environmental sustainability to the playlist — yet another wonderful addition to the 21st century music experience.

Take 23-year old Elizabeth Redmond (www.changents.com/powerleaper) as an example of someone who definitely has the Earthkeepers DNA. Elizabeth is a self-described, “designtrepreneur” who is inspired by the fusion of human energy transfer and renewable energy. Now, on it’s own, that inspiration is amazing but when you consider how  Elizabeth translated her inspiration into a phenomenal idea and is now dedicated to putting that idea into action, amazing becomes somewhat of an understatement. 

Feeding her inspiration, Elizabeth set out to design interfaces that generate electricity from the human body as part of her undergraduate thesis work at the University of Michigan. That work led to her brainchild called the POWERleap. It was her “Ah ha” moment. It happened two and a half years ago, and it’s been the driving force behind everything she’s done since.

POWERleap is a flooring system that generates electricity from human movement through high foot-traffic areas. It’s also a concept that is meant to engage people to take responsibility for generating some of the electricity they use every day. Imagine the next time you take a jog through your local park in the evening. You’re running around a looped jogging path that is installed with the POWERleap technology. Every step you take creates energy that is repurposed to the nearby lights that illuminate your path around the track. Now that’s Earthkeeping! It’s engaging, inspiring and provocative.

Elizabeth has a busy summer planned in an effort to bring POWERleap to life in a powerful and meaningful way. She’s already met with the 2016 Olympic committee that’s vying to get Chicago named as the host city (http://www.changents.com/change-agents/powerleaper/field-reports/7829). Tomorrow night, June 17, she’s going to be on the Sundance Channel’s, “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” and later this summer she’s participating in a renewable energy think tank in San Francisco. You can follow Elizabeth, armed with her Earthkeepers DNA, in her efforts to bring POWERleap to life in a powerful, meaningful way at www.changents.com/powerleaper. In the spirit of Earthkeepers, I think you’ll agree…Elizabeth’s is an amazing story, and then some.

Margaret Morey-Reuner
Senior Manager
Values Marketing
The Timberland Company

Click here to see more video: http://www.ceres.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=901&srcid=661

I never knew what to call these people until one day I met the most extraordinary “Change Agent” hanging out in a bar I was in and toting around his Mac to show pics of his recent trip aboard a “surgery ship” in West Africa.  We built Changents for him and the thousands like him around the world who are magnets for “fans” like me who want to jump on their team and change the world.  Yes, I know it sounds a bit wonky, but it’s true.

Changents is not about “go hug a tree” or “chain yourself to a bulldozer” – unless, of course, you have the time and inclination do that.  We don’t.  Actually, there are plenty of places for people to gripe about things or talk about things. Instead, we are the place where ordinary people can team up with extraordinary Change Agents from around the world to advance the change revolution together. We’re all about entertainment and attitude where real people take real action.  You can check the kumbaya at the door, please!

We met Timberland about six months ago and they had us at hello. Their commitment to walking the talk is what we’re all about and so we’ve partnered to bring you Earthkeepers.  You’ll have a chance to follow and interact with five extraordinary Change Agents, dubbed, “Earthkeeper Heroes.” They include: The Big Green Bus (12 Dartmouth University students crisscrossing the country this summer in a tricked-out Harvester school bus converted to run on waste vegetable oil); The Canary Project (an artist couple conveying the story of human-induced climate change and potential solutions through visual media, events and artwork); Agent 350 (a recent college grad and his scrappy team in a mad-dash sprint to build a global, online/offline climate action movement from scratch); Reverb (a group of rock and roll road warriors greening the summer concert tours of the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer and Maroon 5/Counting Crows while engaging fans around environmental sustainability); and POWERleaper (digests from a 23-year old designtrepeneur who has created the blue print for urban flooring systems that generate electricity from human foot traffic).  In addition, you can participate in the Earthkeeper Heroes contest by nominating yourself or someone else to compete for a chance to join the ranks of this amazing group.

If you got what it takes, join us at changents.com/earthkeepers!

Deron Triff

CEO & Co-Founder

Changents

The Big Green Bus
If you’re on the road and hear the sounds of a ukulele gently wafting out the windows of a tricked-out, green Harvester school bus, close behind you’ll see us – a group of 12 college students rocking and rolling across the country this summer out to educate the world about alternative fuels. Read More

Reverb
How Green is Your Guitar? I’m Adam Gardner and as a co-founder of Reverb and member of the band Guster, I can say mine is pretty green.

I have a custom-made, eco-friendly First Act guitar made of salvaged hardware and electronics, using a finish and glue with lower toxic emissions and wood harvested from environmentally certified lumber firms. Yep, pretty green. Read More

POWERleap
I’m Elizabeth Redmond- your designtrepreneur (a term my friend and colleague Joe coined meaning designer, entrepreneur, and allow me to add, inventor). Back in 2005 during my BFA thesis work at the University of Michigan, I set out to design interfaces that generate electricity from the human body. Now, two and a half years later, I’m working around the clock to turn the alternative energy paradigm on its head through my brainchild I call POWERleap — a flooring system destined for high foot- traffic urban areas that generates electricity via human footfall. Think 5th Avenue powered by the stampede of shoppers! Read More

The Canary Project
First of all there is a rule and all sensible people follow it:  don’t work with your spouse.  We are not very sensible.

I am Ed Morris, and I used to be a partner in a private investigative firm.  No, I did not carry a gun.  In fact, for the past two years I worked hard on litigation aimed at stemming the flow of illegal guns into our cities.  My client was Mayor Bloomberg’s office here in New York.  I have worked on other investigations such as the impeachment hearings of former Connecticut Governor John Rowland, anti-trust lawsuits and an arson and cover up involving millions of dollars of false inventory. Now I produce artworks about climate change with my wife.  Strange how life is. Read More

Agent 350
Three hundred and fifty is something we all eat, sleep, live and literally breathe.  You may not know it yet, but 350 is going to become the most important, talked about number on the planet.  At least that’s the plan. Read More

Same simple logic when it comes to manufacturing our products; using recycled rubber from automobile tires to make soles for our boots appeals to common sense and consumers simultaneously.  Car tires make for landfill disasters; turning waste into resource appeals to the New England ethic in us.  We save money (seen the cost of petroleum-based ingredients recently?) and make durable, beautiful boots.  Hmm.

Listening to the “experts” on both sides of the debate invited us to imagine another kind of discourse–instead of a debate, imagine a community of Earthkeepers, normal citizens who want to preserve the physical beauty of our world, not by spiking trees or parading naked in Times Square, but simply by doing small, accessible, day-to-day acts of common sense and common goodness.  What if we could invite a community to share information and inspiration around the practical notion of preserving the environment?  Earthkeeping–not radical, not political, not competing theories–just a belief that nothing is more powerful than an engaged citizen.

Earthkeepers was borne out of some passionate product designers here who set out to build a beautiful boot, using recyclable and renewable materials and thoughtful choices in the manufacturing process.  Not a “green boot;” they set out to build a beautiful, useful, commercial product, thoughtfully and responsibly.  And as imperfect as the outcome was and is, the response we got from consumers around the world was very powerful.  People liked the product, and they told us they appreciated the environmentally-conscious intent behind it.  They challenged us to go further, and they had suggestions.

It is this engaged conversation with citizens that inspires us to imagine developing an Earthkeepers community.  Imagine a forum where citizens can share information and inspiration around “earthkeeping.”  Imagine a group of diverse people who share energy and interest in the notion of protecting our planet, in the ordinary course of living their daily lives.

So, here goes– Earthkeepers.  That you have come this far to visit is in itself encouraging.  Write a post–share your question, push your agenda, teach us about earthkeeping from your corner of this precious world.  Could be a very cool conversation, and more–could be a way to translate lots of passionate talk into practical action, to benefit the world we all share in common.

We’ll see.

Welcome to Earthkeepers.

Jeff Swartz,

President and CEO, Timberland