Where’s Cincinnati?  Wearing Cincinnati!

Downtown’s lively hub, Fountain Square, has been hosting events and performances all summer, injecting real life into our urban center.  Today the Square is home to a Cincinnati T-Shirt Fest.

Come out and take in the fashions from all your local favorites from 11am-2pm over lunch and 5pm-10pm during indie music night.  T-shirts will be displayed and on sale from Alternative Motive, Nati Evolvement, Park+Vine, Wire & Twine, BuyCincy, and so many more.  If you’re lucky, you might even score a Live Green Cincinnati t-shirt!

A few weeks ago at Covington’s Maifest, we discovered a retired engineer who had turned recycling into an art form. Shao Lin and Sompit Xia at The Can Do Planes booth transformed used aluminum cans into model airplanes, cars, boats, animals, and so much more.

It’s a pretty incredible idea for material reuse. Making a toy or gift is a great way to reduce the consumption of always buying newly made products. Do you have a crafty reuse idea to share? If so, contact us!

If you’ve been reading along for a few months, you know there there are local dedicated green Realtors, a certified Eco Broker, and development companies working to build green homes in the area. There are national websites dedicated to finding and buying existing green homes, and now you can even find an affordable LEED certified home in the local MLS.

All that, and green building is just getting off the ground in Cincinnati.

This spring and summer when you are working in the garden or taking a weekend to re-paint the garage, remember to think green. Not only is it a healthy choice and an energy conscious one, you may also be increasing the value of your home when it comes time for re-sale. Green building is taking off because demand is rising, even during a financially difficult time for most.

If you’re planning on taking advantage of a HIP loan from Hamilton County, use it for an energy efficiency upgrade to your home!

When you’re looking for a resource to help you green your remodel, check out the Live Green Cincinnati listings. Do you know someone who provides an environmentally friendly home building material or service in the area? Contact us so we can help connect Cincinnati residents to the tools they need to green their homes.

French Rabbit wines from the Languedoc Roussillon Region of France has released a series of good French wines in a convenient and resealable package that is helping save energy

Stylish and Useful

The great thing is the wine tastes good, the package is stylish for gift-giving, and the convenient packaging makes them great for taking them on a picnic. They won’t accidentally break. You can reseal the top, and you don’t need to carry a cork screw with you.

We found these bottles of French Rabbit wines for sale at City Cellars Fine Wines, 908 Race Street downtown Cincinnati. Give Brian Hymel, General Manager, a shout-out from Live Green Cincinnati if you go and buy a bottle there.

Sustainable Packaging

In an effort to make their product more sustainable, French Rabbit has switched to bottling their product in a new take on the old “wine-in-a-box” idea. The Tetra Pak wine container is 3% the weight of a regular bottle of wine and uses 90% less packaging. The result is a 2/3rds reduction in transportation costs. The new packaging also allows them to provide more wine per container, almost 2 glasses more than a bottle.

French Rabbit packages are 100% recyclable, made from paperboard, aluminum and polyethelene. Unfortunately you can’t currently recycle them in Hamilton County. However, it’s just a matter of time before that will begin to change. Check with your local recycling facility to see if you can recycle Tetra Pak cartons in your neightborhood.

Packaging isn’t the only eco-friendly way the French Rabbit brand is meeting their corporate stewardship. For every 4 French rabbit wines sold, the company commits to planting one tree.

Energy Reducing

Don’t be surprised if you start seeing more Tetra Pak cartons on the shelves of your local stores. Because of the way they are made (aseptic packaging), they keep liquids stable without refrigeration until opened. This cuts down on the energy used to refrigerate them during delivery and while on the store shelves. Tetra Pak is a Swedish company product and found most often in Europe.

Find Out More
French Rabbit Website: frenchrabbit.com
Tetra Pak Website: Tetra Pak

The paper versus plastic debate can be superseded when you utilize a reusable bag. Using small “stuffable” tote bags like the ChicoBag and Envirosax (both available at Park+Vine) makes it easier - just stuff one in your purse, bike bag, backpack, briefcase, or glove compartment so you’ll have it when you need it.

I gave my mom two spring colored ChicoBags for mothers’ day in May. A week after, she called me to share a story of her first public ChicoBag experience. With the clever little carabiner that is attached to the ChicoBag, she could clip them to her purse so she’d have them at the ready. After work she made a stop at the drug store to get a few of the things on her shopping list. When she made it to the checkout line, she told the cashier that she didn’t need a bag and proceeded to baffle and amaze both the cashier and everyone in line by unclipping, unstuffing, and right-side-outing her reusable shopping bag like magic. After a stalled pause and an awkward silence she added, “my daughter tells me that I need to reduce my environmental footprint.” Interestingly enough, that stirred nods of understanding from the cashier and the other moms in the checkout line. So the experience was memorable, but not traumatic. Happily for me, she enjoys saving a bag and will continue to use it.

Similarly, I remembered to bring a sackful of reusable bags to the grocery this week. I expected the mixture of bags from my gift with a subscription to Martha Stewart magazine, a Star Wars convention, a small corner store in Montreal, and a few other random places to be received with confusion. Not so!

To my surprise, the cashier at Kroger not only knew to use my bags without asking, she also immediately credited 5 cents per bag to my bill. I saved 30 cents from my food purchase and six bags worth of trees or petroleum. Not bad for one visit.

It just goes to show that local stores are getting used to people bringing their own bag. Two years ago when I brought my own bag to a store, it felt a lot less comfortable to use them and in some instances caused a few stares. Now at some places like Findlay Market, you hardly see anyone accepting a disposable plastic shopping bag from a vendor. Change is happening because of us, keep up the good work!

If you’ve walked, biked, riden, or driven around the East side of downtown lately, you’ve seen the Sustainable Forestry Initiative billboards.

The SFI encourages responsible forest and land management. Wood officially labeled by the SFI is either Chain of Custody [all wood harvesting and manufacturing processes are confirmed to meet the sustainable standards] certified or 100% Certified Content [product comes entirely from a SFI qualified forest] certified.

Supporting and choosing products that have been SFI certified is an environmental move that helps reduce clear cutting and other damaging forestry practices.

Styrofoam take-out containers got you down? Check out this earth-conscious doggy bag from Marcella’s in Columbus at the Short North District.

This BioPlus Earth container is made from recycled paperboard, endorsed by the Green Restaurant Association, and is recyclable to boot (just make sure you’ve cleaned out any food residue, the paper needs to be clean to be accepted by Rumpke in our curbside bins).

Don’t accept styrofoam for your next doggy-bag. It’s a second rate material that is not recyclable and generally not biodegradable (translation: it will be around in the landfill for a long, long time). Ask your local restaurants to ditch the styrofoam and make the transition to a more environmentally responsible product like the BioPlus Earth containers.

Still using styrofoam cups for your coffee at the office? Quit that and start a win-win program that will support a local business and be kinder to the environment: check out these biodegradable hot drink paper cups made at the Clovernook Center in North College Hill. You can order in bulk from the Clovernook Center, or pick up a small pack for picnic or home use at Park+Vine. Or better yet, bring your own mug to work.

Renovating buildings rather than building new can be great for the environment and the community.

If you’ve ever worked on your own remodeling project, you know it can be a lot of work. Most major renovation projects take a lot more manpower hours than new construction. Putting the people to work on a major save to an historic building or doing some cosmetic fix-up on a house in the neighborhood is making an investment in the community. It creates work and improves the look and spirit of the neighborhood.

Renovating also saves resources. Any time you can salvage architectural aspects of the existing building over buying something new, you’re conserving materials and saving the energy used to manufacture new products.

If you’re working on your own renovation project, consider these local resources. There’s more where these came from on the Live Green Cincinnati resources pages.

Need help gathering or parting with building material or furniture?

• Building Value. An excellent place to pick up some unique and worthwhile products for your project. They will also arrange to take any building material donations you have to make during your deconstruction.
• Wooden Nickel. An amazing collection of antiques and architectural salvage.
• Cincinnati Freecycle. A give-and-take of useful seconds. Post any furniture or items you can no longer use or check out the listings to find the perfect chair you’ve been looking for.

Need skills or an extra hand with your project?

• Green City EcoStruction. Professional local service for green building and projects.
• UtiliKris. A skilled handyman located downtown who has experience choosing and working with environmentally friendly materials.

Cincinnati has been called a design center city based on the number and quality of product design and advertising firms in the area. We’re also home to 7 fortune 500 companies.

With all this, a local government pushing for a climate protection plan, and a growing green building movement, Cincinnati should be a leading center for sustainable product design.

Currently, companies like Nike, Herman Miller, Clorox, and Steelcase are leading the industry in sustainable design efforts. Surveys are also showing that individuals are increasingly looking for green products and this market is positioned for growth.

The people are asking for it, the cutting edge companies are doing it, now it’s time for Cincinnati to step in and raise the bar.

• Change business as usual. Look for innovations in design that will streamline processes and use less resources.
• Make a commitment to conserve. Choose to work with materials that are from recycled or renewable resources instead of virgin materials.
• Focus on a triple bottom line. Success isn’t just about income, it’s about a balance of people, the planet, and profits.
• Listen to the next generation. Young professionals, students, and children are being raised to respect the environment and think about consumption and consequences differently than past generations.
• Set goals. Consider reduction, reuse, and recyclability of products instead of only focusing on units sold.
• Consider the lifecycle. Look into products that escape the cradle-to-grave mindset and aim for a cradle-to-cradle lifecycle that encourages a utilized product to become the seed material of a new product.

This is a call to all locally based companies to make the choice to educate themselves about true sustainability and become environmental leaders in the business industry. You can make great change with your large companies by introducing small changes. You can also take advantage of community interest in working for a sustainable future by utilizing the Live Green Cincinnati job board to recruit talented, passionate, and sharp individuals who can make your company better. We can all make small changes in our lives to help live green citywide, but we need the the large local companies to push regional, and even global, environmental change.

This year’s Hyde Park Blast run/walk/cycle event has a new theme: Go Hard, Go Green.

Some environmental aspects newly added to the event include:

• Event-wide recycling program.
• Recycled/reusable participant bags.
• Organic fruit from Biggs.
• Eliminating paper registration forms and using recycled paper for any print materials.
• Collection point for Crocs Soles United to recycle used Crocs and donate them to impoverished countries.

The event is Saturday, June 28th. To participate, register to volunteer on the Hyde Park Blast website.

This is an excellent public effort to minimize the environmental footprint of a very large event. Hopefully, it will set the bar for all citywide events to follow!