Portland, Oregon - Land of amazing microbrews, great music scene, and lots of green!

In my never ending search for "green" investments I began to wonder what type of investments are major cities making in green? I came across this little nugget from the Office of Sustainable Development in Portland, Oregon.

City of Portland and Energy Trust of Oregon offer $425,000
for innovative, high performance green buildings

I am hoping that there are many more programs like this one out there that I just have not come across as of yet. What a tremendous opportunity this program provides to green building innovators in the Portland area.

On this same topic I found a full article from a Portland Architecture blog.

OSD seeks Green Investment Fund applicants and feedback for new High Performance Green Policy

Do any of you know if there are similar programs in the metro areas where you live?

An Inconvenient Check

Mark Graban over at the Lean Blog posted this "tweet" on Twitter:

"Going to ask my credit card bank to quit mailing me 'convenience checks.'  Convenient only for ID thieves."

That got me thinking about how truly annoying and wasteful those stupid checks are. You get them too, right?  They usually come in the form of an unsolicited full page of five or six blank checks that nobody ever uses.  You probably do the same thing that I do, you immediately tear-up or shred those suckers and throw 'em away.  Waste of paper, waste of ink, waste of the mailman's time, waste of my time, and as Mark mentioned, a risk for ID theft.  What the heck?  I'd bet that the statement on the photo below is true...

New Year's Anti-Resolutions

Matthew May's blog, Elegant Solutions, is one of my favorites.  He came from the Toyota world, so he offers an insider's view of Toyota's elegant mind.  Yesterday he presented a different approach to creating New Year's resolutions:  "2009:  Don't Just Do Something."

Instead of saying what you will do or what you will add to your life, you say what you will not do or what you will delete from your life.  On that note, here are my New Year's "anti-resolutions":

1. I will eliminate blatant energy wasters from my daily life.  Living in Dallas, it will be hard to reduce my fuel usage, but I'm going to carpool more and drive the Honda Civic (35-40 mpg) more than the Toyota FJ Cruiser (18 mpg).  Also, instead of flying to Europe for vacation, we're gonna stay close (North America at least).  All incandescent light bulbs are already gone or will be gone soon.  Baby steps, but they will reduce my carbon footprint.
2. I will eliminate excessive TV & movie watching.  This past year I got fiber optic cable TV for the first time, and I was hooked.  The picture quality was so amazing and choices were so abundant that I watched a lot of everything.  It was fun while it lasted, but it's unsustainable as it's a huge time-waster.  With the start of my graduate studies and blogging, there's just no time for wasteful activities anymore.
3. I will eliminate disgusting food from my diet.  I love to eat.  My ever-expanding waistline is evidence of that.  I'll never be one for eating like a bird and I shudder at the thought of being a vegetarian.  But, I certainly would not miss all the disgusting food that I eat.  I don't need McDonald's breakfast, frozen food, fried food, anything covered in cheese and/or butter, or any processed "stuff" from the Super Wal-Mart.  I would actually like to live past 30.

Well, that's it.  I was tempted to add other items to the list, but in the elegant spirit of Mr. May's blog, I will keep to the top three.  Do you think they're achievable?  If you had to choose three things to eliminate from your life in '09, what would they be?

Happy New Year!

Christmas Morning Mimosas- "The Aftermath"

I understand that I am the "green investment" guy around this blog however I decided to go a different route with my post today. Especially with the financial markets in a holiday coma.

So I just completed another holiday week in which my brother flew in from Boston and my sister drove over from Orlando. We proceeded to pah-ty wicked hard, as my brother's fellow Bostonians would say, for the better part of a week. If I had to guess 4 bottles of champagne, 10 bottles of wine, and several hundred bottles of beer were consumed by ourselves and friends during that time. I mean who am I to change the family tradition of waking up Christmas morning to presents, stockings, and delicious Mimosas for breakfast!

All of this got me thinking- what the heck happens to all of that glass? So I jumped on the fancy interweb this morning and began googling glass recycling and the like. Wouldn't you know it, up popped this wonderful article written by Kate Galbraith for the New York Times.

The Fate of Recycled Christmas Wine Bottles

Now if somebody could come up with a way to begin wrapping our Christmas presents in recycled glass we would really be onto something!

My Green Vacation

This year, I actually saved a few vacation days till the end of the year. My wife is off of work and I thought it would be a good time for us to get away. Upon weighing the options of where to go, when to go and how much to spend, we have decided to stay at home. The logistics of traveling with two babies is a nightmare and you end up coming home needing to relax but have to go back to work. This year, we opted for the "staycation," and so far I'm enjoying it. For me, the purpose of a vacation is to recharge my batteries, hag out with people I care about and I get to do those things. It also makes me more dedicated to finding things to do close to home. We've already planned a few day trips with the kids for next week. I like that I'm spending less money, and that money helps boost the local economy.

There is also an environmental force at work (of course). We usually travel twice a year. One long plane trip and one driving trip to the beach (or somewhere else that you can drive). So if I replaced the plane trip every other year with a staycation, I would be able to save money, which could be used every other year to go on a really good trip, and save the environment a little in the process. One transatlantic flight for a family of four creates more CO2 than that family generates domestically in an entire year. Source. That means I could drive a Prius every day, but take my family on a trip to London and have the same affect as a family of four who drove a hummer all year and stayed home for vacation. Maybe I'll save my money and every 2 years take a 2 week vacation somewhere. The CO2 impact would be the same but I would be getting twice the vacation. What are your thoughts? Is anyone else considering a staycation? I know I would go crazy if I never went anywhere, but some times I think staying home is an excellent alternative.