July 31st, 2008
Cincinnati’s own monthly magazine is running a green feature this month. Check out Cincinnati Magazine’s stories on 10 Trailblazers Making a Difference, 9 Smart Moves to Save the Planet, 6 Threats to the Environment and What to Do About It, Products for the Green Lifestyle, and The Proper Way to Dispose.
Also, don’t miss your chance to celebrate the focus on green with Cincinnati Magazine’s Eco Chic event at Marvin’s Organic Gardens. See you there!
Eco Chic Evite
July 30th, 2008
Every week, Live Green Cincinnati is introduced to someone who’s out making Cincinnati a greener place. When we started the site, the intention was to be a good starting place for anyone in the city looking to find information or inspiration to reducing their environmental impact.
What can I do to help?
Many of you have asked how you can help or how you can get involved. Here’s my answer: Let us pick your brain!
How can I get involved?
The city is filled with good people working hard to make things happen. You have a experiences or specialties or ideas that would be great to tell others about. Let us know about them.
We are looking forward to giving you more of the green you need. Thanks for reading and we sincerely hope you want to get involved! Together we will prove that it can happen here!
July 11th, 2008
Traffic congestion got you down? Why not slug it out? Slugging is a phenomenon already popular in nightmare traffic cities like Washington D.C. Never heard of it? Neither had I until I watched the G Word on the Planet Green TV channel and read an article on NPR about it in the same week.
Basically slugging is car-pooling with strangers. People form lines at popular bus stations between 5-8am and 3-6pm. The drivers pull up, call out where they’re going, and pick-up passengers going their way. Why do it? In seriously congested cities like D.C., there is a HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane that moves 2-4 times faster than the general interstate traffic. A driver who picks up a slug or two at the bus station can make it to work in 30 minutes instead of 90. A slug who scores a ride makes as good or better time than the bus and rides for free. People are motivated by saving time and money, but little do they all know that they are keeping cars off the road and working to save the environment.
There are some interesting social rules for slugging, like when to talk and what to discuss. I’m sure the drivers take a gamble on what kind of Cracker Jack Prize they pick up, but in the history of slugging, there have been no reports of trouble or crime.
Recently, the Cincinnati metro ranked 33rd for metro traffic congestion, with southbound I-75 at Freeman Ave making the list as the worst traffic problem in Ohio. Cincinnati has experimented with allowing bus traffic only on the highway shoulder during rush hour, maybe it’s time to discuss an HOV lane on the most congested interstates around the city. The Park and Ride stops would make excellent slugging points. The Enquirer reported this week that local Ride Share and public transit ridership are up and that the bus transit system is looking to expand with partnerships. The stars are aligning. There’s no need to drive alone when you can carpool, ride share, take mass transit, or try slugging!
July 7th, 2008
Our “I Make Cincinnati Green” feature now turns to green homes. Not building them, but advocating for greener lifestyles and assisting home buyers in finding a place that fits their needs, minimizes their environmental footprint, and uses energy and resources efficiently.
Meet Jami Stutzman. Half of the local Realtor-duo who started ENCORE: Environmentally Conscious Real Estate of Cincinnati. Another person in the city who is proving that being environmentally responsible is not only the right thing to do, but good business as well.
Do you make Cincinnati green? Let us know.
July 3rd, 2008
Metro has introduced a lot of inventive and successful programs over the past year or so including wi-fi, the online trip planner, and free rides for college students. There’s more to look forward to as well. Metro is asking for your opinions and ideas on their service. Take the online survey here.
If you haven’t already, please take the Live Green Cincinnati survey as well. Remember that we are donating 50 cents for each completed survey to the Cincinnati Parks Foundation. Thanks!
June 24th, 2008
Have you dropped your car in favor of taking the TANK for your commute? If so, you can enter TANK’s Dump the Pump contest for a chance to win a 2 month free bus pass.
You can also win lunch, a free bus ride, and a gas card from Warm 98 by shouting out “TANK God it’s Friday” at your TANK park and ride on Friday. Listen to the TANK radio ad here for details.
As if gas prices and your environmental conscience weren’t already enough of a reason to take public transit, TANK is working hard to reward their riders. Go ahead, get on the bus!
June 20th, 2008
Just this week Cincinnati city council voted to pass Mayor Mallory’s Green Cincinnati Action Plan. This is incredible news! The plan has goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly through a list of recommendations. In order for this goal to be met, residents, businesses, and local industry will have to make some environmentally conscious changes. We can all help work together to change the city for the better.
The Office of Environmental Quality and a team of over 150 volunteers worked hard over the past few months to put the plan to improve environmental conditions in Cincinnati together. You will be hearing a lot more about how this plan will go into action soon.
Want to read ahead? You can find the latest draft of the city’s plan online.
June 10th, 2008
Who doesn’t love giving their opinion? This time, we’ll not only listen to you, but we’ll help keep the local environment looking good for your responses.
Live Green Cincinnati is launching a survey to find out exactly who is visiting and what they’re looking for. The more we know about you, the more we can work to give you what you want.
For every response collected, we’ll donate 50 cents to the Cincinnati Park Foundation. Pass it to your friends to help us support the Cincinnati Parks and make Cincinnati greener. Your answers are completely anonymous.
Take the survey here!
May 28th, 2008
Hooray, everything is taken care of and running great. Today we’ve upgraded to a new blogging software that will allow us to categorize things better, improve the speed of posting articles, and give us a whole set of new capabilities like the shadowbox photo feature.
Best of all, our new tool will make it much simpler to leave comments. You don’t need a login account or password to leave a comment, just a name and email address (that will not be published, is only so that we can contact you directly to respond if needed). You may also need to wait a few hours before your comment is posted on the website because we’re monitoring comments left to control the spam. You wouldn’t believe the kind of useless and unrelated things people post to spam the site, although if you can visualize the junk mail and telephone solicitations you’re receiving at home…you probably can imagine it.
If you have any problems or suggestions for the new blog articles tool, please leave us a comment and we’ll take care of it.
Thanks for reading!
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