“It’s very ‘eco’.”

eco, adj., slang
1. Slang term, indicates environmentally sound manufacturing processes or practices.

2007: NPR Public Radio. I love this clothing line. It’s very eco.

First there was calorie counting, then there was carbon counting, and now there’s water counting. The leading soothsayers of the day—scientists, politicians, dystopian science fiction writers—all agree that access to fresh drinking water is going to be the source of future war.

What can peace loving boys and girls do to offset the looming threat of war? Count your water footprint, of course (not literally silly). Here are a few easy ways to reduce your daily water intake.

Use bar soaps and powdered detergents. Proctor&LeverBath&Body inc. all use a tremendous amount of water in their liquid soap products. BONUS! These water friendly products require less packaging.

Stick a glass jar of rocks in your toilet tank. No kidding. Think about it—the more mass in your tank, the less water you need to fill it up.

If it’s yellow let it mellow. Enough said.

Turn the water off when you brush your teeth, duh.

Turn the shower off when you shave your legs.

Plant sun loving perennials in your garden.

Use a dishwasher if you can. On average dishwashers use less water to clean dishes than a person.

Avoid bottled water and drink it straight from the tap. Filter it if you are paranoid. Bottled water is a huge water and energy guzzler, and studies have shown that the plastic used in most water bottles is an endocrine disrupter. Yuck.

Good luck troops. We’re all counting on each other.

(Statistics provided upon request.)

Despite my love of fusion cuisine and four-star hotels, I have a dream of one day going off the grid. I’ve gotten as far as home composting and obsessive recycling, but not so far that I’ve given up eating meat or traveling by plane. So you can imagine my delight when I discovered that the clunky, complex stuff being sold by places like http://www.gaiam.com/ will one day be obsolete. (Do the words “photovoltaic modules” scare anyone else?) According to the New Jersey Institute of Technology, one day soon we’ll all be printing solar panels from our laptops.

It’s kind of like the time you used your Epson to make that Christmas card for Grandma. Kind of.

On a similar note, I recently discovered that baby bottles are manufactured out of the most toxic plastic created by man.

Go here to read the latest, and most impassioned, attempt by Al Gore to date. Happy Sunday from RIVET Magazine.

RIVET’s GREEN issue came out in January 2006. In the months since then, the increasingly urgent “greening” of the planet Earth continues to remind us of one reason why it was so important to run that issue. Green architecture, green industry, green policy - here’s hoping that the next president we elect wins on part because of a fiercely strong and revoluntionary green platform.

But for now, we have a little bit of the bizarre. Here’s a story about a guy with green blood. They say it has to do with migraine medication and sulfur in the bloodstream…but sometimes conspiracy theories are more fun, and more likely.

Our brilliant designer, Mikeyvi, tipped me off about this story. He says, “I’ll be going around Fremont with a camera and a needle, pricking random people to see if they bleed green…” If greenbloods are anywhere, the Fremont Fair is the place to look. Any luck?

Those years of construction at Cal Anderson Park have already paid off. Sunny days, fountain-wandering, and the vaguely Teletubby-esque landscaping has made one more nook of Capitol Hill just that much better. But one thing that we know in Seattle is that it’s not a real park unless there is some kind of performance happening. In a city where even the Zoo puts on concerts (how do the penguins feel?), we can’t help but place a stage on a green place and fill the air with music.

Enter Sounds Outside, a series of shows in Cal Anderson Park. The programming is not your average park fair, though given the location of the park and the general awesomeness of a lot of the performers, no matter. It starts tomorrow (June 2), with the Degenerate Art Ensemble, Sunship, Seattle Harmonic Voices, and figeater. If you’re looking for an afternoon activity, don’t miss it.

What: Sounds Outside
Where: Cal Anderson Park - 11th Ave E. and Denny Way
When: 2-8PM, June 2

I understand that it’s nor exceptionally creative to re-post information from elsewhere, but this one I could not resist. Sheryl Crow and Laurie David (producer of An Inconvenient Truth) got into some kind of scuffle with Karl Rove. From today’s New York Times:

“I honestly thought that I was going to change his mind, like, right there and then,” Ms. David said Sunday, The Associated Press reported.

Ms. Crow was at the dinner as a guest of Bloomberg News. Ms. David and her husband, Larry David, a creator of “Seinfeld,” were guests of CNN. Mr. Rove was a guest of The New York Times.

The one thing all three parties agree on is that the conversation quickly became heated.

As Ms. Crow and Ms. David described it on the Huffington Post Web site on Sunday, when Mr. Rove turned toward his table, Ms. Crow touched his arm and “Karl swung around and spat, ‘Don’t touch me.’ ”

Both sides agreed that Ms. Crow told him, “You can’t speak to us like that, you work for us,” to which Mr. Rove responded, “I don’t work for you, I work for the American people.” Ms. Crow and Ms. David wrote that Ms. Crow shot back, “We are the American people.”

In their Web posting, Ms. Crow and Ms. David described Mr. Rove as responding with “anger flaring,” and as having “exploded with even more venom” as the argument continued.

“She came over to insult me,” Mr. Rove said Saturday night, “and she succeeded.”

Mr. Rove did not respond to a request for comment on the women’s Internet posting on Sunday.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman said, “We have respect for the opinions and passion that many people have for climate change.” But, Mr. Fratto said, “I wish the same respect was afforded to the president.”

He accused Ms. Crow and Ms. David of ignoring the president’s environmental initiatives, like pushing for alternative fuels, and for “going after officials with misinformed assertions at a social dinner.”

Whole Health Source, subtitled “Health and Lifestyle Information for a Modern World,” is a website run by Stephan Guyenet, a UW PhD Candidate in Neurobiology. Based around the assertion that we can achieve optimal health through the right combination of nutrition, exercise, and what he calls a “healthy mind.”

Laid out in the simplest of ways, an incredible amount of useful information imparts scientific, physical, and spiritual information in a conversational tone. Instead of feeling as if you are seeking out medical advice or some kind of regiment that is going to restric your enjoyment of life’s pleasures, you feel as if you are sitting down with a friend over some tea and cookies, gabbing about regular life stuff.

Complete with recipes (Black Bean Stew, Mushroom Scramble), advice on how to change your daily routine for the good of the environment, and some subtly entertaining quips like, “Beans hold a special place in my heart,” Whole Health Source just gives a lot of great information.

Basically, visit this site and learn about how normal it could be to live really well, eat really good food, and maybe be happier. There sure can’t be too much happiness to spread, can there? 

Among the slew of intriguing panels at this year’s SXSW, there’s the one called Greening the Music Industry, calling attention to the fact that all businesses can make a concerted and important effort to help our impending environmental disaster. No folks, it’s not just the oil companies or the agriculture industry - it’s even those beautiful CDs that we love so much.

For instance, take a look at what’s on the agenda for Smog Veil Records, who’s founder Frank Mauceri will be on the panel:

1. new Smog Veil HQ in Chicago - green building completion:
–solar, geothermal, and wind energy sustainability;
–use of recycled materials;
–LEED certification

2. elimination of jewel case packaging in new releases:
–replace with digipaks now;
–goal is to use completely plastic-free packaging, except for shrinkwrap;
–ultimately produce gross revenues from digital distribution greater than
hard goods, thereby replacing need for high-impact packaging;

3. stepped-up recycling program:
–use of recycled materials in building and hard good packaging;
–use of recycled materials in shipping packaging;
–use of recycled materials in office setting;
–goal is to reduce non-recyclable waste by 75%
SXSW officially begins today, so have a party with all the great music, film, and every other delicious little bit of press and gossip that it churns out.

Here’s yet another intriguing Seattle blog. Heard of Friends of Seattle? They’ve got a blog, and therefore we link to it. Rivet’s got a piece in the upcoming FAKE issue (release! oct. 21!) about urban things and planning and development. You’ll have to wait a little bit to catch that, but in the meantime, brush up on your vocab with FoS. Read through, post some comments, join the discussion. There are many things on their agenda that affect all of us Seattlites, like transit and parks and sustainability. For that matter, they affect the whole world.