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Biking for a healthier heart


Staff writer Ruth Solomon went on a mission - to lower her bad cholesterol and raise her good cholesterol. She opted to watch her food intake and ride to bike as many days as he can from her Chicago home to work at Pioneer Press in Glenview. (Jeff Krage/For Pioneer Press)
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"I was almost 50, very out of shape, and knew my bad cholesterol level teetered on the verge of needing medicine. I have four children, ages 10 to 19, and they need their mother to be alive, I thought."
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All summer long, I rode.
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The results came back with good news: My bad cholesterol was down, my body mass index was down, my girth was below 35 inches, and, even though still overweight, my favorite line on the report stated: "METS indicates fitness to be in above average category."

I was fat, but fit. And my 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease had gone down to 2.7 percent. Four smiley faces were stamped in my Heart of a Woman booklet acknowledging my progress.

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Reduce Waste this Holiday Season

Facts on Holiday Waste (from www.recycleworks.org)

From Thanksgiving to New Years Day, household waste increases by more than 25%. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons - it all adds up to an additional 1 million tons a week to our landfills. (EPA and Use Less Stuff) In the U.S., annual trash from gift-wrap and shopping bags totals 4 million tons. (Use Less Stuff, 1998)
  • Cards
    • 1.9 billion Christmas cards are sent to friends and loved ones every year, making Christmas the largest card-sending occasion in the United States. (Hallmark research)
    • The amount of cards sold during the holiday season would fill a football field 10 stories high, and requires the harvesting of nearly 300,000 trees. (Use Less Stuff)
  • Ribbons
    • 38,000 miles of ribbon is thrown out each year. The Earth's circumference is 25,000 miles - enough to tie a bow around the Earth.
  • Food
    • At least 28 billion pounds of edible food are wasted each year - or over 100 pounds per person. Putting one less cookie on Santa's plate will reduce his snacking by about 2 million pounds. (Use Less Stuff, 1998)
    • If every American throws away just one uneaten tablespoon of mashed potatoes it adds 16 million pounds of waste to our landfills. (Cygnus Group)
  • Paper
    • Half of the paper America consumes is used to wrap and decorate consumer products. (The Recycler's Handbook, 1990)
  • Christmas Trees
    • Each year, 50 million Christmas trees are purchased in the U.S. (Cygnus Group). Of those, about 30 million go to the landfill. (Environmental News Network)
  • Gifts
    • The average American spends $800 on gifts over the holiday season.
    • According to a national survey, 70% of Americans would welcome less emphasis on gift giving and spending. (Center for a New American Dream)
    • About 40% of all battery sales occur during the holiday season. (EPA)
  • Transportation
    • If each family reduced holiday gasoline consumption by one gallon (about twenty miles), we'd reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one million tons. (Use Less Stuff, 1998)

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Change the World. Start at (Baltimore) Home Communities

HGTV and its non-profit partners, Rebuilding Together, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, believe home is more than a house with four walls. Home is also our communities, our workplaces, our countries and our world. And family is not just our immediate family, however that family may be defined, but also our broader family with whom we share our workplaces, our communities, our countries and our world. So just as we do in our own homes, we all can play a vital role in helping this large and diverse family to prosper, to play, to thrive

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Envisioning a Baltimore united through one connected park

By Steve Ziger, Baltimore Sun -

Imagine a Baltimore where everyone lived within a few blocks of a park. Where you could walk easily throughout the city in a safe "green network" connecting school playgrounds, tree-lined boulevards, community gardens, college campuses, public golf courses, recreational areas and parks.

As you walked, people would be commuting on bicycle trails or participating in marathons. Children would plant and care for trees as a part of their environmental curriculum. Neighbors would grow their own vegetables. Our extensive canopy of trees would provide shade, filter pollution and help filter rainwater and prevent flooding.

Baltimore would become known as a "city in a park," attracting businesses, residents and visitors. Tax revenues would increase along with property values. Communities would come together. The healthier environment would improve our public health, with cleaner air and water, and lots of great reasons to be outside.

This is the vision of &quot;One Park,&quot; a concept of the Parks and People Foundation (<a href="http://www.parksandpeople.org">www.parksandpeople.org</a>;) to unite our diverse neighborhoods in a network of enhanced and interconnected open spaces. The nature of these connections would vary in each location, with specific designs coming from local communities and stakeholders.

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It does not turn off

A surprisingly large number of electrical products -- from air conditioners to VCRs -- cannot be switched off completely without being unplugged. These products draw power 24 hours a day, often without the knowledge of the consumer. We call this power consumption "standby power."

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Car sharing in Baltimore update

From Parking Authority of Baltimore City -

In 2006, the Parking Authority issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a car sharing company to come to Baltimore. Zipcar had brought the issue to our attention originally, but did not ultimately submit a proposal. Flexcar was the only organization to answer the RFP, but they did so to our satisfaction, and we spent most of 2007 working with them to identify potential users, working out the terms of the contract and determining a couple dozen locations for the vehicles. On October 31, Flexcar and Zipcar announced that they were merging. We met with Regional Vice Presidents of both companies and learned that it was Zipcar

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UN climate talks under pressure to drop 2020 goals

The US has reportedly pressured the UN into dropping its &quot;hard targets&quot; for greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Reuters, which quoted a delegate, the U.S. effort to avoid hard targets was successful, and the U.N. has dropped its call for 25-40% reductions from industrialized nations by 2020. Japan and Canada also supported the U.S. position that the agreement being negotiated in Bali

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The Story of Stuff


What is the Story of Stuff?

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

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