Mr. Green Week: Wine and CO2?

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, we're dedicating an entire week to our expert on all things emerald — Mr. Green. After a week of tips from our advice guy, you're sure to have a shamrock-green March 17. 

Hey Mr. Green,

I was touring Napa Valley's famed wineries with my sister and she got worried about the emissions from the fermentation. So how much carbon dioxide does it take to make all that two-buck Chuck?   

--James in Berkeley, California

Tell her to pour a glass and relax. Having a bottle of wine a day would total only about 50 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year (though there's no telling what that'd do to your liver). By contrast, the average car pumps out 10,000 pounds annually. So don't just avoid drinking when you drive — avoid driving to get your drink.

This is a post from Mr. Green's archives. Got a question? Ask Mr. Green!

READ MORE:

Sierra magazine's sustainable wine guide

Ask Mr. Green: How to Throw an EcoFriendly Kegger

5 Green Facts for St. Patrick's Day

5 Apps to Green Your Travel

Mobile devices are our constant companions, especially when traveling far from home. But smartphones and tablets can do more than entertain us on long flights. Our friends at EcoSalon recommend these five must-download apps to help you save money, time and energy while on the road.

Traveling is stressful, which is funny, because we’re often trying to get away from the everyday obligations that stress us out! Whether it’s a solo business trip or a spontaneous road trip, traveling requires the seamless coordination of many variables. Between flight times, packing lists, hotel reservations, rental cars and that nagging need to check our email, it’s no wonder we often dread travel rather than looking forward to it.

This doesn’t have to be the case, though. Assembling a low-stress, efficient trip can be as easy as picking up your smartphone. We’re surrounded by gadgets that are supposed to make our lives easier, but sometimes they need a little help. Here are five free or low-cost mobile apps that will help you plan and execute your next adventure with just the touch of a button.

Q&A: Wild Author Cheryl Strayed

At 22 years old, Cheryl Strayed lost her mother to cancer, and she also began to lose herself. As she spiraled downward, turning to men and drugs for temporary pleasure, the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) caught her in her fall. While standing in line at REI, she read a description of the PCT on the back of a guidebook, and while gazing at the photograph of the vast trail, she says that something seemed to "break me open."

As readers travel through the wilderness with Strayed in her memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, we witness the ability of nature to transform and heal anyone who is brave enough to take it on.

Now a year after the book's release, the New York Times bestselling author and Dear Sugar columnist talks to Sierra about her life after Wild, why she considers herself an experimentalist, and how it feels to be superwoman. --interview by Brittany Johnson

In your book, Wild, you mention that you are an experimentalist — the kind of girl that says yes instead of no. Is that still true? 

That is still completely and utterly true. In my youth, I had to reel that in when it came to sex, love, romance, and now in my 40s it is about how to choose wisely the opportunities that I take as a writer. Like, I said yes to writing the Dear Sugar column, I thought, "What the hell, I don’t know anything about giving advice." But it led to a wonderful thing.

What is the last thing you said yes to and regretted?

I feel mixed about it. I get so busy. The irony — I have written this book about how a long walk is good for the spirit and now I can barely find time to take a 15-minute walk around my neighborhood. But I love to be generous to other writers. Just now it’s hard because everyone I have ever met and everyone that I’ve never met wants me to read their book and support them.

The Pacific Crest Trail is 1,100 miles, more than I even want to drive. What convinced you to hike it? 

I was in my 20s and was at this real bottom point in my life. After my mother died, I lost my whole family. I turned to the wilderness as a way of gathering myself. In my grief, I had done a bunch of stuff, taken a lot of risks that were self-destructive and dangerous and not healthy. My hike was to test myself against something that was risky but also really healthy.

Instead of taking away my sprit and taking away my strength — the way that the sex and the drugs were doing — getting that back and building myself back up.

You didn't see another human being for the first eight days of your hike. Did you talk to yourself a lot?

That was really intense! To go eight days without seeing a person. . . . I could have come off the trail after those 8 days and been like, okay I went through something!  I talked to myself a little bit. But there was a long conversation going on in my head. Mostly, "What the hell have I gotten myself into."

You say in Wild that the photograph of a boulder-strewn lake on the cover of a PCT guidebook seemed to “break you open.” You had seen lakes before, what was so intense about this picture?

Ask Mr. Green: What's the Best Oil Company?

Hey Mr. Green, 

What is the greenest oil company?

—Elizabeth, in La Mesa, California

It’s mighty tough to rate oil companies because of all the different ways that they can mess up the environment, and they are by nature more oil-slick brown than ecotopian green. Even their discussions of messes and methods have to be considered. For example, in ranking of oil behemoths, the environmental watchdog Greenopia looks at environmental reporting as well as five other factors: greenhouse gas emissions; production efficiency; oil spill efficiency; pursuit of alternative fuels, and stance on climate change. BP slid from first to fourth in their ratings mainly because of the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Greenopia’s highest green ratings go to Sunoco, Shell, and Hess, in that order, with Valero and Citgo at the bottom of the barrel. Before Deepwater blew, BP also got top marks from Sierra because of its work on alternative energy and its openness about global warming at a time when the drill-babies at Exxon were lobbying against action on global warming and were funding think tanks that denied its existence. BP also slipped on its oil slick in Sierra's ratings.

Green Grocery Tips: Walmart

The pursuit of sustenance has never been easy, though for most contemporary, first-world denizens, it's a largely consolidated quest. One-stop shopping is the evolutionary novelty that likely propelled Walmart to becoming the country's largest grocer. (Recall: 10,000-plus stores in 27 countries.)

This week, we've looked at farmers' markets, smaller grocery chains like Whole Foods Market, and medium ones like Publix for tips on protecting the planet while getting food for dinner. Now let's see how to keep the green ball rolling at Walmart.

Tip #4: Influence where you can.

Chris Schraeder, senior manager of sustainability communications at Walmart, said, "For such a big company, even small changes can make a big difference."

Installing skylights, light sensors, and solar installations can add up between the company's more than 4000 domestic stores, though not all locations implement each practice. The company's evaluating the environmental impact of its food products, too.

Green Grocery Tips: Publix

Chances are, you've shopped at a variety of places, from small neighborhood markets to large retailers. No matter where you buy food, protecting the planet can have a place on your grocery list — even if you forget to bring reusable bags.

This week, we’ve looked at environmentally minded shopping with the little guys at farmers’ markets and at the large-ish Whole Foods Market. Today, we'll share some tips from a larger, regional grocer: Publix.

Tip #3: Restructure, from bagging to worldview. 

Operating more than 1,000 stores between six Southeastern states, employee-owned Publix is held in not just high Southern regard. The company has appeared on Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For every year since the list began in 1998.

Publix reports that sustainability efforts from its 12-year-old Get Into a Green Routine program have reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 2.4 percent since the company began measuring them in 2007. Publix director of media and community relations Maria Brous said that a lot of little things added up.

"We put green signs on our light switches," Brous said. "Simple steps: remembering to report leaky faucets, even going back to the basics of teaching clerks how to bag appropriately so you use less bags."

Appropriately bag?

"You should always square off the bag," Brous said. "You have cereal boxes, you have cans — square it and fill in the middle. Lay bottles flat and put items on top of that. You lie the two-liter down, and you can start building on top of that."

Green Grocery Tips: Whole Foods Market

Hunting for food that's nutritious, affordable, sustainable, and tasty takes some pluck, especially when those values compete. Fortunately, the increasing cachet of the environmental movement has driven eco-consciousness into more businesses than ever.

Yesterday, we considered what questions to ask at farmers’ markets. Today, we learn what to look for at the king of the mainstream organic movement, Whole Foods Market.

Tip #2: Look for more than just organics.

Most people at least have an opinion of Whole Foods, which is pretty impressive for what's purportedly just the eighth-largest food-and-drug store in the country. While having close to 350 stores in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. is nothing to sneeze at, consider that the nation’s largest grocer, Walmart, has more than 10,000 stores in 27 countries. (More on Walmart later this week.)

For all the “whole paycheck” jokes and link-baiting kerfuffle over co-CEO John Mackey’s recent capitalism/fascism comments during his book tour, Whole Foods has a pretty sterling green rep. It’s hard to discuss the rise of organic foods' popularity without including Whole Foods.

As Lee Kane, Eco Czar and Regional Forager (actual title) for Whole Foods Market, puts it: “That’s who we are and what we’re best known for.”

The company’s other eco-driven initiatives include screening out products with GMOs, shooting for a minimum of 15 percent locally sourced products across all departments, and implanting an aggressive cull program that uses edible but not shelf-worthy perishables as ingredients in the prepared foods department.

Green Grocery Tips: The Farmers' Market

As a child, you were told to eat your vegetables. Now, you’re told to buy them local and organic too. Calls to buy sustainably sourced groceries are often and easily said, sure, but actually buying them is becoming more easily done. Farmers’ markets are multiplying like heritage-raised rabbits, and grocers sized from regional chains to national behemoths are greening their stores and the offerings inside.

This week, we'll help you make environmentally friendly decisions wherever you shop.

Tip #1: Navigate the farmers’ market like a pro.

Determining a farm's environmental impact can boil down to two questions, according to Julie Cummins, the director of education for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).

First, how does the farmer manage pests?

"You don’t have to know the names of a bunch of big chemicals to understand their answers," Cummins said. "A very environmentally sustainable farm will be doing preventative things to manage their pests, such as rotating their crops or planting habitats for beneficial insects."

Suppose the farmer says he or she doesn't use any sprays.

"I like to dig a little deeper and ask them what they mean by that. Sometimes you’ll see signs that say 'pesticide free' or 'no sprays,' but that doesn’t mean 'herbicide free' and that doesn’t mean they don’t spray, for example, methyl bromide, a fumigant they use before putting the crops in the ground."

Fran Hawthorne on the Ethical Chic Lifestyle

Hot-and-sour soup, an environmental case study: You order the soup takeout from a Chinese fast-food restaurant. The soup goes down easy, but disposing of the container doesn’t. It needs to be cleaned if it’s to be reused or recycled.

You can scrub, but the oil just clings. A spurt of dish soap won’t do. A hearty blast of hot water just creates a soapy sheen.

Fran Hawthorne — journalist, wife, and mother, not the person in her household who orders this soup — has been there: “How much water am I wasting? What are these soap pads made of? To save this little piece of plastic, I’m probably wasting more resources.”

What’s a good consumer/environmentalist to do? Globalized-first-world problems demand hard decisions.

Hawthorne’s: “It killed me to put it in the garbage pail.”

Evaluating such practical-turned-existential crises characterize Hawthorne’s recent work. She explores what the “good” decisions are in modern life’s confusing and uncomfortable spots. Local or organic? Long-term, socially responsible investments or short-term, quick-return ones? Eco-friendly or economical? How much can you ask of a product? Of yourself? Hawthorne respectively addresses the last two questions in her 2012 book Ethical Chic: The Inside Story of the Companies We Think We Love and 2010 book The Overloaded Liberal: Shopping, Investing, Parenting, and Other Daily Dilemmas in an Age of Political Activism.

Ethical Chic investigates Tom’s of Maine, Timberland, Starbucks, Apple, Trader Joe’s, and American Apparel — cool kids on the ostensibly green-business block. These companies have their virtues, ranging from using natural ingredients to selling items exclusively made in the USA.

And yet — it’s never quite simple, Hawthorne finds.

Wildlife-Friendly Trash Disposal: Trash Bins

Trash can entangle, choke, and starve wildlife. This week we’ve been suggesting tips for disposing garbage to lessen harm to animals. Yesterday we talked about twine and fishing line. For our fourth and final tip, we turn to trash bins. 

Tip #4: Wildlife-Proof Your Trash Bin

If you live in the city or suburb, you’ve probably awoken to the scratching of paws amid the clatter of trashcan lids. How can you keep raccoons and other critters from rummaging through your potentially harmful garbage?

For wildlife, the more redolent the rubbish, the better. The Humane Society suggests discouraging scavenging by minimizing odors, washing and rinsing all food containers. That includes plastic food wrap, which you should always keep  in closed bags or containers.

Never leave trash bins unopened. For extra security, strap lids with a bungee cord tied to the handles. Better yet, cart out trash the morning it’s collected rather than the night before.