Recently in Green Culture Category

Labor Secretary-nominee Hilda Solis is going to promote green jobs - making sure policy supports green technology and investment so jobs stay in America.

What is a green job?
Time Magazine defined green jobs the article, "What is a Green Job Exactly?" in May, 2008. They interviewed Phil Angelides, chair of the Apollo Alliance who defined a green job like this, "It has to pay decent wages and benefits that can support a family. It has to be part of a real career path, with upward mobility. And it needs to reduce waste and pollution and benefit the environment."

The article continues, "labor leaders see green jobs as a way to fight outsourcing and keep manufacturing alive in America." I understand why manufacturing is important to the American economy, so it's great news that the Obama administration is going to support the development of green collar jobs.

But I'm still wondering: what's the white collar equivalent of a green job?

As I threw a bunch of wilted greens on my frozen, snow covered compost heap this morning, it occurred to me that I must be doing this wrong. These greens are going to blow away or join the rodent-chewed, sagging gourds that I tossed on once it was time to transition from harvest time to christmas decor inside. So I did some research on how to compost in winter and here's what I found.

• This is a good summary of an article from Organic Gardening courtesy of EnviroMom:  How to Compost in the Depths of Winter. Key points: chop and shred your browns and greens, keep pile damp, don't turn it! I'm defnitely not out there turning my heap over so I get points for that!
• Winter Composting Tips from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources by Vicky Viens. From the winter composting strategies she lists, I guess I would fall into "build your pile", since I continue to toss our kitchen organics on there, and little else. She mentions several other tips for people who keep a compost bin, and goes on to suggest bringing a bin inside and enriching it with worms, "Worms eat more than one-half their weight daily and produce excellent compost." I am not interested in bringing a worm bin indoors at this point. Too risky.
• I like this tip from (link is a PDF) The Cornell Cooperative Extension: "One common mistake [when composting] is to pile all the winter's kitchen scraps onto your pile without layering or mixing in browns. All-green piles are almost always stinky! If your pile is excessively wet due to the spring thaw, turn it and add more browns to soak up this moisture."

I am going to have to carve out some time to get outside and stomp those half chewed gourds and deflated, moldy pumpkins into a pulp!

It's so hip to be green! The problem is you have to be super resourceful and rich to be green right now. I wanted to start blogging about being green because I truly think it's going to be a revolution that changes our daily life: the food we buy, our kids' toys, how we get to work (do we really need to go somewhere?), what our jobs are, how we buy our energy and the type of energy we buy.

Why is this blog called Green is the new Internet? I was inspired by Nancy Floyd, who delivered a very concise speech on renewable energy and economic policy at the Democratic National Convention in August, 2008. My favorite part of her speech:

"Let me put it this way. Green technology is where the computer industry was in 1984, the year the Macintosh computer was introduced. Think about how far we've come since then. That's how far-reaching and how transformational green technology will be. Thousands of new companies. Millions of new jobs. In fact, investments in wind and solar technologies have already created 2.4 million jobs."

And so, Floyd confirmed what I was already thinking: green IS the new Internet. I really wanted to follow the movement since the last time I was this excited about a potential cultural phenomenon it was 1996,  I was out in San Francisco and I wanted to create a website to share stories, pictures, and gossip with my friends. Although I don't work at facebook, I do work in social media at CarePages and I'd like to spend some of my free time looking ahead to the next industry that has the potential to make meaningful, postive, and sweeping changes in our lives.