Envirovents Green Events
Blogging about green events around the world!Archive for August, 2008
Greensumption
Now this isn’t an event, but from time to time Envirovents wants to notify the public of something great we found. A friend sent this over and I think it’s a great piece of work.
Check out Greensumption on Youtube.
It’s a cleverly made piece that sums up what Envirovents thinks about a lot of green business. We all need to be more aware of what we are doing, especially when we believe we are telling everyone we’re being more environmentally friendly by simply buying a Prius. A Prius will move us slowly in the right direction, but very slowly. I’m actually amazed when people try to argue with me that their Prius is better than my car. Not only did I buy mine used, but it still gets about 38mpg highway, sometimes as much as 42mpg! I’m looking to sell my car soon, giving public transportation a shot. I hardly drive my car anyway because it’s faster and easier to take the train. The fact that we all need to own our own vehicles is pretty ridiculous. It’’s the urbanization that created it. If we really need to, we should be driving around in very small vehicles the size of golf carts, which can be loaded onto other transport to take us to another city, then roam around in those. Unfortunately that doesn’t make enough money or feed the ego, so we’re lead to believe that bigger and better is the way to go.
Solfest, Powered by the Sun
It’s been a little while since the last post, but for good reason. Lack of funding. Being green is not such a great market to be in unless you’re selling green products, energy, or housing. While the green economy is increasing, there is still little money to be made in the rest of the green industry. Many green companies are non-profit and aren’t doing what they are to make a profit. Those who are making a profit, are still not looking to reap in gobs of money to pay for their fancy lifestyles, which they don’t have. Funding comes mostly from grants, because when the economy is in a lull, less people donate or put up funding for causes. Other capital can be raised by Venture Capital, but a majority of them are looking for high profit companies to invest in, not some company trying to do something good for the environment and just be financially sustainable. So this post is just to say that green is still struggling a bit, but we’re all still hopeful and chugging along, even if it’s slowly. Envirovents has been on hold for a re-strategizing before official launch. We think it will be for the better, as now we know what we’re in for. We’ll be posting an event that we are hosting very soon. We hope that will be the catalyst for official launch.
Green events have also slumped a bit recently, mostly because events happen closer to Earth Day. I do receive new event notifications quite often, but not very many are standing out right now. Solfest in Hopland, California is coming this weekend. I’ll be there for sure because it’s one of the largest festivals of the year. I went last year and had a great time, learned a lot, and met some great people. I highly recommend checking it out, or at least stopping by the Solar Living Institute at some time. The facility is one of the best examples of sustainable living and showing how you can still have a luxurious facility without giving up anything at all. The place looks like a resort, but everything has been carefully created through sustainable design and materials. They even have small tablets which describe how they were designed and what they give to the land, people, and animals. On top of that, their solar array is actually powering the facility as well as nearby homes. It is one of the largest arrays in northern California, with 10 Killowatts of solar and 3 Kilowatts of wind power. Check out their website for more details.
