OCEANA

NAUTICA and OCEANA team up to help restore and protect the Gulf Coast

Now OCEANA has teamed up with NAUTICA to let consumers lend a hand. With every purchase of NAUTICA Deck Shirts, NAUTICA will donate $50 to OCEANA to support its efforts to protect the Gulf of Mexico, up to a maximum of $25,000.  The Colors of the Coast promotion is available through NAUITICA’s Facebook and Twitter sites.

Not only do you get a cool polo shirt, but NAUTICA will also give you free gifts for supporting this great cause. You don’t even have to leave your garage to do it! Now that’s making a difference made easy.

Personally, I am fascinated with recycled glass utilized in building construction. I observed a variety of creators during the past decade, and continue to do so. However, most of my researched finds are historical. Bless the Roadside Architect site that illustrates global glass building passions that started long ago. (Please view all the pages to Roadside’s informative site).

Getting up to date, the most popular reference to recycling glass for building is from Earthship Biotecture. The site and data is thoroughly inspiring, but it’s a much bigger picture than my focused personal mission to build an exterior recycled glass wall.

Persistence pays, as I finally landed on the site of artist Jackie Stack Lagakos, titled Bottled Structures. She was originally inspired from visiting a village in Simi Valley, California that was built in the 1950s with found bottles, sand and cement. Jackie’s journey continued and brought additional inspirers, mentors and friends to her life and interest.

From those varied roots, Jackie developed her own visions with bottles, smashed tile, mirror, stained glass, stone and mortar. As you can see from her images, Jackie’s masonry skills helped give birth to her unique bottle walls, benches, mosaic tile floors, birdbaths, plaques, murals and paths.

Jackie has been at this for awhile, more than a decade, and she expanded into mosaic art. Yet I only discovered her gifted bottled skills earlier this year. I was so thrilled, especially after numerous discussions with naysayers, that I contacted her for advice. Almost overnight she replied with Bottle Instructions 101.

What a gal! Now recycled glass building can be shared while marketing deserved artisans who refine the skill to suit custom requests. One-of-a-kind creations are the style of choice for this art form and isn’t it refreshing when good designs make environmental sense?

Monica’s company handbag materials are milk cartons, juice boxes, telephone books, and newspapers. The craftspeople are artisans from across the globe. Designers are both staffed and sourced.

To seal the hip, whimsical, smart ‘n green image visioned, Monica adds salvaged items like seashells, fashion magazines and coconuts to her designs. Individuals can shop online and minimums are reasonable for small specialty boutiques.

Another company is English Retreads in Colorado. Founder and designer Heather English gained inspiration from floating down Boulder Creek on an inner tube. One of her first bags produced in 2001 is still a classic: named Model T with seatbelt straps.

Relan is in Minnesota where they make the Elsie handbag pictured. It’s a precious small lined purse with a tire rubber handle. The exterior is made from a piece of billboard about the size of a tennis court. The billboard’s graphic pattern and colors are preserved in interesting and attention-arresting ways, then stitched together to create an innovative, functional bag.

Relan bags are designed for those who combine individual style with a sense of purpose. Companies are encouraged to reuse exhibition banners, billboards or vinyl signs. The PR program concept is for customers to place orders in advance when they see a banner they love.

This is a mini preview of many companies and methods to bag it with innovative eco style. Buy consciously, folks!

In 2006, a stunning four-year study was released in the journal Science that predicted the world would run out of wild-caught seafood in 2048. Overfishing was one of the major factors scientists pointed to as a cause of fisheries decline and habitat degradation.

But there’s a slim ray of sunshine. A West Coast pilot program has been gaining momentum that allows consumers to track where the fish they buy came from, right back to the boat and the fisherman who caught it!

Pacific Fish Trax is a program run by the Seafood Consumer Center and funded by the state of Oregon. Originally formed in 2005 in order to develop new methods of helping fishermen conserve weak salmon runs, it tracks western fish like albacore, salmon and tuna on its journey from the rivers and the ocean to the dock, and on to your supermarket. The program also includes fish genetics and the conditions of marine ecosystems.

Pacific Fishing Trax was one man’s vision. Fisherman Scott Boley realized that having a centralized website would bring together scientists, managers, fishermen, and marketers and help connect them with people who cared about sustainable fishing, habitats and the communities whose lives  depended on these increasingly fragile resources.

to track salmon, hoping to keep fishermen away from weakened salmon stocks and steer them toward healthier ones. California began its own pilot program in 2007.

Tagging salmon as part of Pacific Fish Trax

In 2006, Oregon researchers began recruiting commercial fishermen to tag and map chinook salmon to follow their migratory patterns. The state of Washington began their own pilot program 

This was the first time all three states had such tandem programs.

It’s hoped that by improving the traceability of our fish, it will help buyers choose fish that’s good for you and that doesn’t hurt the ocean and be harder to pass off “farmed” fish as the more popular wild kind.

There’s currently a conference on this topic taking place in San Francisco – the Sustainable Seafood Multi-Stakeholder Summit. The agenda covers issues including:

• defining sustainability
• wild versus farm fish
• sustainable aquaculture practices

All are hopeful that tangible results will come from this conference. Afterwards, the Online Collaboration Network will coordinate sustainability, certification and traceability communities progress. A follow-up conference - ”Sustainable Seafood Asia’ - will take place in the spring in Bangkok.

Knowing where your fish comes from could be an important key to making sure our children’s chidren know fish as more than a textbook reference.

By Delia Montgomery

Meet Bruce, a guy who takes more stuff out of the trash than he puts in. Sculpture and Mobiles by Bruce Gray in Los Angeles is his unique biz. His Found Objects collection is made from articles that were pulled from dumpsters or company trash donations.

Woods in Bruce’s sculptures are acquired from sustainable growth trees, not rain forests. In fact Bruce is a Rainforest Action Network activist who makes custom metal creations for businesses, architects, individuals, and the film industry.

Check out his video for a peak inside his eclectic-surreal studio. Not all his sculptured art is derived from trashed objects, but it’s easy to understand why his works are displayed in many museums and art galleries. Also find Bruce’s creations frequently featured in newspapers, books, magazines, and on television.

Pictured first is Motorcycle #1 featuring model Eve Ellis. Made from heavy industrial steel found objects. Two heavy massive railroad equipment gears create wheels, a train coupling link for the seat, giant train springs for shocks, oversized chain, and a BMW R75/5 motorcycle engine with tail pipes. Slightly oversized, it almost looks ride-able! But it’s only meant to be enjoyed visually. Bruce describes it as half retro and half futuristic, – like it was used by “The Terminator,” or “Mad Max,” or some other very intense post apocalyptic character. Suitable indoors or out for $25,000.

Pictured Spikeball, sized 24x24x24, is fabricated of welded railroad spikes. It can go on the floor, on a pedestal, or it can be hung from a beam or tree branch. Bruce says he thinks of welding it to a long pole so it would look like a dandelion. How cute, and available for $4,000.

Pictured The Tank Dog, sized 22x31x26, is one of a series of dogs. Each canine sculpture is unique. This one is constructed using a gas tank from a BMW motorcycle and is available for $1,500.

Bruce’s sculpture productions are art in welded steel, stainless steel, brass, copper, and aluminum. To summarize his recycled style, it’s fun, colorful and visually stimulating. His sense of humor is conveyed through object works of people, animals, insects, or dinosaurs. Each is honored a unique personality.

Although Bruce satisfies a unique clientele, he is truly inspiring to any trash hunter. Let’s hope his Found Objects collection continues to grow with appreciation from all.

Yes Men pose as Dow Representative, apologizes for Bhopal


Yet, there is a positive side to manipulating information on the web. A new form of activism has evolved (check out these topics for dinner discussion “culture jamming” and “identity-correct.) The Yes Men, “a genderless, loose-knit association of some 300 impostors worldwide,” developed their own prankster techniques to expose misleading marketing campaign coverups and human rights abuses caused by the media, government, and giant corporations. Their activism capitalizes on the internet’s chaotic dimensions – launching false websites, having no physical addresses, filling the 24-hour news hole – not to mention, speed. In previous projects, the Yes Men impersonated the corporate heads of ExxonMobil and Halliburton, and even printed and distributed over 2 million copies of a utopian version of the New York Times.

The Yes Men advocate for a better world through the use of internet technology. They prove that political demonstrations can be replaced with newer forms of activism (see Bhopal project). We have more opportunities to spread the truth creatively and mobilize without the masses. For more ideas on Yes Men activism, check out their  Fix The World Challenge page and watch their latest film, The Yes Men Movie.

Four years have passed since Katrina ravaged New Orleans. Immediately following the hurricane, investigators determined that historic loss of coastal wetlands played a major role in the depth of flooding that took place.  Plans were soon drawn up to restore the protective barrier of wetlands along the coast that had for decades been destroyed by a range of human activities primarily relating to shipping and oil and gas interests.  Given the importance of restoring these wetlands and the fact that they are still disappearing at a tremendous rate, it might shock some to learn how little has been done so far.

In 1977, Congress passed the Clean Water Act (CWA).  This act was created to gradually eliminate all man-made

High metal content tributary entering Brodie Creek in Little Rock, AR.

sources of water pollution.  Sadly, federal, state, and local governments have used the act to continually permit more discharges of pollution into our rivers, lakes, and drinking water sources.  The New York Times recently ran an expose on the horrible enforcement of the Clean Water Act that has taken place.

The article states that: ”in the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.”  Even worse, “the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment.”

While the findings in this outstanding article shocked many readers; I was not surprised.  Having worked for an environmental non-profit in Arkansas for 4 years; I was very familiar with the lack of enforcement of federal and state water laws.  While working to improve water quality in Fourche Creek, which is in violation of the CWA for turbidity and a few metals, I found that depressingly little enforcement action had been taken to protect the creek.

The New York Times article has an interactive map where you can view enforcement action by locality.  This map showed only a few fines paid out of hundreds of discovered violations in the state.  This data matched perfectly with information I received from the city of Little Rock that stated they’d fined polluters a total of $0 over the last 5 years.  Those same 5 years saw dozens, if not hundreds, of violations that led to illegal amounts of sediment, cadmium, lead, and E. coli. entering the creek.  Inspectors once found a developer to be responsible for 50X the legal limit of sediment being discharged into a creek and can you guess what that polluter ended up paying in fines? $0.

To grasp the true scale of water quality violations occurring in this country, imagine that story being repeated hundreds of thousands of times across the United States every year.

There are many reasons given for the failure of the CWA, including weak federal enforcement, lack of inspectors at the state level due to funding shortages, lack of political will at all levels, undereducated judges trying pollution cases, and many more.

After reading the Times article and browsing the accompanying maps, one thing becomes clear.  The US government, state governments, and our citizens need to do a much better job funding, inspecting, and enforcing our water laws so we can finally live up to the goals of the three decades old Clean Water Act.