Conscious Consuming: Events

Showing posts with label Events. Show all posts

Friday, May 02, 2008

Slow Down and Green Up--May 2008

Happy May Day!

We hope you've all recovered from Earth Month, International Downshifting Week, and TV Turnoff Week, all of which should’ve helped us leave April feeling refreshed and rejuvenated...

May is here, and we wanted to let you know about some upcoming Conscious Consuming events in Boston:

Saturday, May 3rd - Join us at Spontaneous Celebrations’ “Wake Up the Earth” in JP— This family friendly event is free and a great way to get to know some people in your community. Visit http://spontaneouscelebrations.org/WUTEfacts.htm for more information, and stop by our table to say hello to Marty and Cindy if you can make it.

Saturday, May 10th – Conscious Consuming is tabling at Boston’s 14th annual Youth Pride celebration on the Boston Common. Youth Pride is the oldest and largest GLBT pride event for youth in the nation, and we were excited to be invited this year to spread the message of sustainability. Visit http://www.massyouthpride.org/ for more information, and please email greg@consciousconsuming.org if you are able to help table this event. All you have to do is smile a lot, hand out brochures, and help sign people up for our email newsletter.

Saturday, May 10th (3-5pm) - Celebrate World Fair Trade Day with the Autonomie Project’s Fair Trade Trunk Show and Wine Tasting at Greenward, 1776 Mass Ave, Porter Square. For more information, email info@autonomieproject.com or visit www.wftday.org.

AND BEYOND:

Conscious Consuming Discussion Series in Boulder, CO – Join us every Tuesday in May from 6:30-7:30pm at the prAna Store community room in Boulder, CO. We’ll be piloting our Discussion Series, and viewing clips from The Story of Stuff, Everything’s Cool, and Garbage: The Revolution Starts at Home. If you can’t make it to Boulder, remember that we have all of the tools for a successful Discussion Series on our website at http://www.consciousconsuming.org/events/Discussion-Series.html...why not bring Conscious Consuming to your own community?

We receive lots of great emails from groups such as Green Drinks, Slow Food convivia, Earthworks, BALLE, Community Green, etc. about events all over the US. We generally post these updates to this monthly newsletter on our blog, which now has a subscription service so that you can get emails each time someone posts a new entry. Visit us at http://consciousconsuming.blogspot.com/ to subscribe via email or RSS feeds.

Thanks and have a terrific month!

The Team at Conscious Consuming

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Sustainable Design Symposium in Boston

Sustainable Design Symposium: At the Crossroads of Art, Policy and Science
Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA
Saturday, March 29, 2008, 1-5pm

This Symposium will bring together important voices in arts, product
design and science who advocate sustainability in their work. They will
explore sustainable design in the context of art, science and policy and
showcase methods and materials for the design and creation of environmentally
responsible products and places.

Speakers are Michael Singer, Artist/Designer, http://www.michaelsinger.com
Ursula Tischner, Founder of econcept/Agency for Sustainable Design, Cologne, Germany
http://www.econcept.org and Teresita Cochran of Smit Design, http://www.smitdesign.biz.

Moderated by Terry Swack, Founder/CEO, Clean Culture, http://www.cleanculture.com.

Joint program of the UrbanArts Institute at Massachusetts College of
Art and Design, Goethe-Institut Boston and Down:2:Earth (D2E), a sustainable
living expo at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA.

Free and open to the public.

http://www.urbanartsinstitute.org - click on News and Events
http://www.d2eboston.com/events/event-details.php?id=16

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

"Local or Organic? It's a false choice"

Even though there is still snow on the ground in New England, it's time to start thinking about your summer menu. If you plan to eat locally grown foods this summer for optimal health and taste (benefiting the planet as well by reducing carbon emissions and fuel use), check out Local Harvest to find farmer's markets, community supported agriculture programs, and farms that sell direct in your area.

If you live in the Boston area, we will be hosting a potluck on March 11th in Jamaica Plain titled "Local or Organic? It's a false choice" to talk about the benefits of both. According to Samuel Fromitz, author of Organic, Inc: Natural Foods and How they Grew, the local and organic markets account for only 2% of total food sales. Instead of worrying so much about whether buying local trumps buying organic (from California), the larger job is to convince the majority of Americans to try either. For more on this topic, see Samuel Fromitz's Grist article. Come on March 11th to hear about the options, opportunities, and obstacles (there is still snow afterall) to eating sustainably in the Boston metro area. An Evite to our event will follow later in the week.

Judging by the growth of farmer's markets around the country (the number of farmer's markets has more than doubled in the past 10 years according to data from the USDA, and has increased more than 18% in the past 2 years), the American public is catching on. As Michael Pollan notes in his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma:

"...a successful local food economy implies not only a new kind of food producer, but a new kind of eater as well, one who regards finding, preparing, and preserving of food as one of the pleasures of life rather than a chore. One whose sense of taste has ruined him for a Big Mac, and whose sense of place has ruined him for shopping for groceries at Wal-Mart."

Won't you join us in becoming a new kind of eater?

Sunday, January 01, 2006