Chanced upon the No Impact Week challenge on Huffington Post a few days ago. The idea is to live for a week with zero or reduced impact on the environment, based on the year-long experiment by Colin Beavan, known as No Impact Man:

HuffPost Green and HuffPost’s Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Initiative are thrilled to announce that we are partnering with the No Impact Project, a non-profit started by Colin Beavan, to bring our readers the first No Impact Week. This week will give people the opportunity to examine and reduce their ecological footprint by taking part in a short and intense period of conscious consumption supported by local and online communities.

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As we learned more about Colin, and saw No Impact Man, the documentary film and read his book of the same title, about his family’s year-long experiment, we were downright inspired. The documentary follows the Beavans’ journey as they incrementally lowered their impact through phases, such as making no trash, only eating food grown within 250 miles, using no carbon producing transportation (not even the subway!) and finally, no electricity in their home. By year’s end their impact was down to nearly zero.

Primary takers so far are Americans and Europeans, but I really want to give myself an honest shot at it.

The global project starts this Monday, October 18.  Are you ready to try this for yourself? Take a look here or download the No Impact Week Guide here and let me know, so at least I’ll have a friend to dial when I’m ready to scream and pull out my hair from the birthing pains of this first step towards going green!

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Today, October 15, is Blog Action Day, and the theme for this year is Climate change. Visit www.blogactionday.org to see the green ruckus from all over the blogosphere today.

Plastic clogged the drains, relief goods in plastic will clog the drains even more.  The Acacia Waldorf school in Sta.Rosa, Laguna shows us an alternative: packing relief goods (food/meals in particular) using good old banana leaves…

Photo from Dale Diaz shows 500 meals of rice, tuyo and hardboiled egg in “green” packaging.

Other alternatives (taken from calls of help from We Philippines as reposted on facebook):  used (but still usable!) blankets, bedsheets, pillow cases, towels, curtains and tablecloths to pack goods with.

First heard about this revolutionary invention that lets people drink filthy floodwater from my dad.  Was super excited to read about an initiative by The Clean Water Project to bring the Lifesaver bottle to the Philippines:

The Clean Water Project aims to transform the deadly floodwaters of Typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) into life giving, pure drinking water.  It is a collaboration among old friends who are committed to doing whatever we can do, and work for as long as there is work to be done.

Inventor Michael Pritchard explains how this works:

LIFESAVER bottle removes all micro-biological contamination from water.

LIFESAVER bottle has been thoroughly tested by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showing that even the smallest of viruses were removed. Download the LSHTM laboratory test results HERE.

The smallest bacteria measures 200NM (nanometres) whilst the smallest virus measures about 25 nanometres. The ultra filtration membranes in the LIFESAVER Ultra-Filtration cartridge have pore sizes of only 15 nanometres, this means that no contamination can pass through into the drinking water.

The pump creates pressure within the bottle which forces water through the membranes leaving the dirt and contamination on the other side of the membranes.

Here’s a 10-minute video with Michael Pritchard from TED.com (filmed during the most recent TED Global last July 2009):

Shorter demo video from the BBC here:

More info on the Lifesaver website, where donations for Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) victims are also accepted.

Behind The Clean Water Project are two Pinays: Tish Vallés, a strategic planner, advocate and social entrepreneur based in New York, and Denise Celdran, an artist, environmentalist and advocate.  They say that the British manufacturer has “kindly offered a 35% discount on the bottles for relief efforts. For the $100.00 each Lifesaver bottle costs, we will help provide from 4,000 – 6,000 liters of safe drinking water. That is from $0.016 – $0.25 per liter!”

Although help is welcome from all aspects,

We are also very collaborative, and welcome like-minded action-oriented groups and individuals to participate in this project. Please email  tish@strategicstiletto.com to start a discussion.

the urgent need is funding, which can be done through paypal, cash or cheque donations. Visit the donation page or email cleanwaterfund@gmail.com for arrangements.

Found through Panjee Tapales (thanks!), who says that the Lifesaver jerrycans, which can “process up to 20,000 litres of clean sterile drinking water without the aid of chemicals,” are also coming in December!

Let’s spread the word and help getting this initiative going!

Found this through Trinka Lat: how to make a raft using used plastic bottles. Looks like these kids were doing this on a whim, but it’s an idea worth looking into…

This new report from the United Nation Environment Progamme says the impacts of climate change are coming faster and sooner, making it all the more urgent for governments to address climate change issues NOW.

…the newly emerging science points to some events thought likely to occur in longer-term time horizons, as already happening or set to happen far sooner than had previously been thought.

Pressing concerns include “ocean acidification linked with the absorption of carbon dioxide in seawater and the impact on shellfish and coral reefs” (happening decades earlier than existing models predict, and melting glaciers, ice-sheets and the Polar Regions (example: the Greenland ice sheet is melting 60 percent higher than the previous record of 1998), which can cause sea levels to rise by up to two metres by 2100 and five to ten times that over following centuries. The report says “thresholds or tipping points may now be reached in a matter of years or a few decades including dramatic changes to the Indian sub-continent’s monsoon, the Sahara and West Africa monsoons, and climate systems affecting a critical ecosystem like the Amazon rainforest.”

Damaging and irreversible impacts as a result of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere include:
– Losses of tropical and temperate mountain glaciers affecting perhaps 20 percent to 25 percent of the human population in terms of drinking water, irrigation and hydro-power.
– Shifts in the hydrological cycle resulting in the disappearance of regional climates with related losses of ecosystems, species and the spread of drylands northwards and southwards away from the equator.

The good news is there is hope:

Recent science suggests that it may still be possible to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. However, this will only happen if there is immediate, cohesive and decisive action to both cut emissions and assist vulnerable countries adapt.

United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, says: “This Climate Change Science Compendium is a wake-up call. The time for hesitation is over. We need the world to realize, once and for all, that the time to act is now and we must work together to address this monumental challenge. This is the moral challenge of our generation.”

See Impacts of Climate Change coming faster and sooner: New science report underlines urgency for governments to seal the deal in Copenhagen. Click here for the full UNEP report.

Global environmental expert Nicky Perlas recently appeared on ANC to talk about Climate Change and Typhoon Ondoy.  He confirmed one thing most of us already knew to be true but hoped against: that Super Typhoon Ondoy is just the first of many.  Global warming is upon us, and now is not the time to be in self-denial and dillydally.

What can we do?
 
Here’s a great suggestion from Roy Cabonegro, Sec-Gen of the Partido Kalikasan Metro Manila:

Each of us has communities. Many of these were affected by the flooding.

The flooding is both induced by climate change and because of our lack of preparedness as communities for necessary adaptation measures for more of this that is now inevitable due to the ill effects of climate change and our bad governance.

In each of our barangays, town/cities, province and region, as we become more organized and link together, citizens must claim our right for appropriate immediate and long term plans, programs and actions for climate change adaptation. Such adaptation measures must be specific to each community and sufficiently financed.

Let us do that now. Let us involve ourselves in direct governance now!

Those who live in Paranaque, Las Pinas, City of Manila, Pateros, Taguig, Pasig, Makati, Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas, Valenzuela, Quezon City, Marikina, Antipolo, Tanay, San Mateo, Montalban– we are mobilizing local PK MM chapters in these areas now to engage our LGUs (barangay up) to work on this. We need to work together on this.

Contact us (roy@partidokalikasan.org)

Thanks

Roy Cabonegro
Sec-Gen, Partido Kalikasan Metro Manila