13 Great Green Things 2011

1. The Ginger People : Delicious certified organic ginger in all shapes and sizes.  Great environmentally consious company.

2. Shweeb : Monorail technology combines benefits of cycling, and public transit with the fun of a ride.  Totally sustainable way to go!!

3. These three initiatives:

 *Green America's Hershey's Campaign : Imploring Hershey to go Fair Trade

 *Greenpeace's Chicken of the Sea Campaign : Imploring Chicken of the Sea to end its incredibly destructive fishing practices.

*Costo's decision to improve its fish sourcing practices!  Yay!!

4. The Myth of Overpopulation: Divide the sq. footage of TX: 7,487,608,550,400 by population of earth: 7b. Everyone in the world gets about 1069 square feet. In other words, we could ALL have over a thousand sq. ft. each if we ALL squeezed into Texas.  The world is not overpopulated, just horribly inefficiently configured.  To justify pre-mature human death with an overpopulation argument is diseased misunderstanding and incredibly harmful to the soul.  The facts show populations in prosperous nations grow more slowly.  This is great news. If we focus on sustainably raising living standards for all, we will see population growth slow as well.

5. 20 Most Common Essential Oils Print : Color-coded system from The Aromatropolis concisely and comprehensively describes the properties of essential oil.  The company is enviromentally excellent!  (In full disclose, it is also mine.)

6. Soda Stream : Yum!! And FUN!!!  Oh so much better for the planet than traditional soda production and distribution as well.  Hallelujah!

7. Room to Read : An amazing charity doing great work to expand literacy and gender equality in the developing world.

8. Financial Transaction Tax :From Wikipedia 'A financial transaction tax is a tax placed on a specific type of financial transaction for a specific purpose.'  It's also a critically important step the United States can take to move towards reparation of recent damage to its economy.

9. ProFounder : New crowdfunding tool designed specifically for business.  From the site: 'We set out to innovate around what we called “community funding,” or utilizing social networks for investment capital in a way that would be simple, inexpensive, efficient, and legally compliant for all involved.'

10. WhiteHouse Direct Petition Site: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions

11. Congress App : Real time application by Sunlight Labs gives in depth insight into what Congress is doing.