Just stumbled upon this site — they make adorable little tykes’ shoes which are non-slip, easy-on, and hard for kids to get off!! Brooke Burke and Brook Shields’ children are wearing them.
What do you do for clothing for yourselves and your family members to work within your eco-consciousness? Do you wear “green” sustainable clothing? What are your guidelines for choosing clothing and footwear? Tell us in the comments section below!
Oh, and IsaBooties are on sale right now 
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We were just talking about Mind Mapping and Tony Buzan last night, and I looked through a couple of his examples. Here’s one for GreenBuyDesign:
Buzan World – Our Planet Needs Help.
MindMapping is a great tool for creatively defining solutions and connections. It’s a perfect example of thinking outside the box. It’s like outlining for creative folks. It allows you to get down those sometimes ephemeral ideas onto paper and then you see connections that you may not have consciously considered before.
Great for coaching, business design and development. Kind of like Six Degrees of Separation for ideas.
Speaking of which, GreenBuyDesign is now offering green business coaching and green investing advice. Need to green your company? Building a green business from the ground up? Want to know which green companies to invest in? Call us, at 603-617-4963 to arrange a consultation.
NCC Eco-Justice Program – Eco-Justice, Environmental Justice, Environment, and Faith.
Love it, love it, love it. Physical, spiritual and eco health tied to Social Justice. They are all part of one, just as we are all one.
Is your church involved? What are your members doing to green your church, homes and wallets?
GreenBuyDesign wants to know!
Architecture – For I.M. Pei and the Museum of Islamic Art, History Is Still Happening – NYTimes.com
It’s always interesting to me how easily tradition is embraced at the holidays. We “let our guard down” to the 
magic of history as at no other time of the year. And people are catching on to the historic importance of design and architecture.
So–is there a better time of year to consider how we live, and what designs we live in and around? Many think not.
The Source Newport Conference this past October repeatedly aligned the economic necessity of overlapping energy, policy, design, and finance as the keys to successful urban plan in historic cities. Most of the findings apply to any American city.
Interestingly, the comments I continue to receive prove that delegates and speakers found interdependence far easier to achieve than they had previously thought.
“Architects today”, says Mr. Pei
“tend to be more interested in
exposing cultural frictions-Than
in offering visions of harmony.”
Our focus at the Newport conference this year was the overlap of historical preservation/restoration/ rehab with innovative engineering and finance. Of course, I.M Pei has been illustrating this for the last 30 years in his plans, notably at the Louvre and the National Art gallery in Washington
Read Nicolai Ouroussoff’s article on I.M. PEI in the New York Times online:
Architecture – For I.M. Pei and the Museum of Islamic Art, History Is Still Happening – NYTimes.com.
This man’s life provides exciting illustrations of how history can embrace innovation and vice versa. “A lasting architecture has to have roots,” says Mr. Pei.
I live in Newport, Rhode Island. Living in an important American history city that has no plan, or vision of its future, I cannot agree more. Stumbling into the future is not a plan. I expect we need to do less of it here in the United States.
IM Pei has taken the roots of history and woven them into harmonious design. It is our opportunity to move design to its next crucial step–incorporating historically smart urban and architectural design with innovations in resource use.
Before designing the pyramid for the Louvre, Pei asked President Mitterand for three months to study French history in order “to see more than just architecture.” Such patient consideration of the overlaps in a plan are our future made feasible and lasting. And all the while harmonious. How elegant!
RB
There is a triple-tax on managing green business.
First, like all businesses, they are subject to standard state and federal taxes. Of course, not one is sure how powerful they’ll be. Presumably if we really believed in them there might be broader incentives and stimuli.
Secondly, green businesses are subject to local ordinances that keep certain types of businesses from occurring, or limit businesses that can start out based on review. This is especially true where local historic and and safety ordinances restrict consideration of wind, solar, biodiesel and other alternative (job creating) energy businesses.
Finally, and most egregious of all, where localities and regions lack long-term plans, financing and sales become next to impossible to plan — ironically because the business’ sustainability does not have local context or consistency.
The solution? Localities must consider their integrated, longer term benefits. Can zoning be altered to permit energy efficiencies and economic stimuli? Are there mechanisms that allow the local and state leadership to be sufficiently informed to the opportunities with a little familiarity with science and finance?
Right now entrepreneurs and innovation are the world’s best hope for bold solutions. Group think is causing huge problems.
SourceNewport and GreenBuyDesign both foster and support the entrepreneurs’ efforts to make change. Large meaningful changes will still require political willpower and commitment beyond what most communities currently know. But entrepreneurs are actors and solution providers with a focus on NOW!
If, as Tom Friedman encourages, we serious about greening the global economy we need to be serious about unleashing restraints on its development. Especially if Tip O’Neill was right when he said, “All politics is local.”
If the financial markets are bugging you with their roller coaster motions, you might feel there is nothing you can do. Wrong-O.
Many people are discouraged and feel helpless. And you can hear all about them on the evening news. I don’t mean to sound harsh–just realistic–when I say good economy and bad economy some people will always be victims. It is a mentality. It is a choice.
If you are NOT a victim….and if you are looking for opportunity, there is a place you can go to get useful thinking and information. Ironically, it is a place to get BAD news. But this bad news will be helpful as you plan your “recovery” strategy. Lord knows, you ought to be able to move faster than government is!
I visited http://www.riskcenter.com a few months ago because I realized risk in green investing is rarely discussed. Wrote down the URL and haven’t thought about it much during the Source Newport conference (October 16-18) and the development of the sustainable marketing program from that conference. (Our powerful program on how to build a sustainable business is nearly done! Watch for more on this!)
Riskcenter will provide you with insights on a few levels. Naturally, there is a LOT of opinion. But as I scrolled through the lists, I also found a lot of interesting resources. And more than few ideas to consider and implement.
One way to use this information is to compare their assumptions with yours for your 18 month plan–test them. The other is to become one of the authorities listed here. Write and post here–you might even see me there.
Especially when people like me refer my list (nearly 30,000 people) to a site like this–you know people are watching what happens here! Just like GreenBuyDesign.com.
Of course, it takes a little work on your part. Being a victim is pretty boring. And anyway, I see most people we know doing the extra work. And loving it.
Feel like you’ve been left standing out in the green left field? Perhaps a bit clueless? 
Tune in to our Green Business Coaching program. Put the pieces together.
Canditto is a great idea! Get copies of all digital photos taken at your event by the end of the party, even your professional photographer’s shots.
By the time you hop on a plane heading to your honeymoon, you can see your photos on your iPod and/or have a memory stick and/or CD to view later. Here’s what one happy customer had to say “Having Canditto at our wedding in May was amazing. I got one of the Canditto photos (of me and my mother at the wedding) framed and gave it to my mother for her birthday before I even saw proofs from my professional photographer. Thanks again for adding something special to our most important day!” --Laura & Matt
Canditto eliminates the need to “harass” guests after an event to email or mail you copies of their photos. It provides the instant gratification of 500-1000 photos immediately at the end of the event.
Some hosts use Canditto in conjunction with a professional photographer, some instead of. Here is a demo video of how it works:
What is Canditto perfect for?
- weddings
- bar and bat mitzvahs
- reunions
- anniversaries
- summer or ski camps
- retirement parties
- charity events
Canditto is a great green product because
- it reduces and in some cases eliminates toxins and material waste traditional to print photography: hundreds of not thousands of paper proofs which not only use tons of paper, most of which is thrown away, but also toxic inks and processing chemicals, not to mention the electricity necessary for processing.
- it reduces or eliminates physically mailing photo albums or photos themselves (gas/fuel, paper, electricity, ink, plastic), while still allowing creation of selected prints
- eliminates using disposable cameras (plastic, chemicals, batteries, landfill clutter)
Canditto is a great timesaver:
- You don’t have to collect all those annoying little disposable cameras that people only take one or two pictures with. Yes, they’re supposed to leave them on the table, but they usually don’t. And guests are familiar with their better-quality cameras, which means you get better photos for you.
- Spend more time visiting with your guests.
- Quick for your guests: it takes just a minute for your guests to download the pictures they want to share with you, and they don’t have to think about it again, except when they enjoy looking at your online photo album, should you build one.
- Your party planner or a Canditto representative handles set-up and management.
- Much easier to sort through photos after the event on the computer than with scattered hard copies.
What Canditto is going to do with funding:
Build a more compact version which can be FedEx’d across the country for rentals, rather than the current kiosk. The current kiosk design is working extremely well, but limits the company’s expansion and profits.
Canditto is an invention developed by Rush Hambleton, who is in the MBA program at Babson College. Earlier this fall, he won $30,000 in a national student business competition, beating out teams from Columbia and Stanford. He is now seeking funding to expand the business.
Canditto is currently a large kiosk prototype and Hambleton has a provisional patent for it. The funding he is seeking now will help miniaturize the device thus making it more user friendly and shippable by FedEx, etc. Part of the contest prize also included legal services, which he is using to convert the provisional to a full patent.
How was Canditto developed, and has it been tested?
Straight from their website: “Canditto was created at MIT and tested at events with more than 400 drunk party goers. It has six patented elements that make it easy for even the most technophobic and disoriented users.” That means that even Great Aunt Edna can share her photos with you. Canditto has successfully been used at events for about the past 6 months.
Get more information on the Canditto site.
Give Canditto a hand with picking their new logo: http://www.canditto.com/logo_survey.html
GreenBuyDesign was pleased to learn about this great green invention and promising company. Do you know of others? Tell us about them!
You’ll notice a new column on the right of our GreenBuyDesign site with hot green jobs listed. We think we should all be doing our best to help the world and ourselves at the same time, and what better way than to do that with our jobs. Which is where most of us spend the vast majority of our time and effort. Bright Green is a new talent agency specializing in green jobs. Give them a try through their listings over on the right under the heading Green Jobs.
Don’t be thrown off by the British pounds symbol £ instead of the US dollar sign $ next to the salary ranges – Bright Green is a new company and is still getting their site in hand. The jobs you see listed here should primarily be for the USA, but Bright Green does also have listings for the UK.
Let us know what you think of the listings and of how we’re making them available to you here! Suggestions are welcomed.
