I first became aware of eco-running this past spring when my urban neighborhood, Riverwest, thawed out, and a winter’s worth of litter emerged from the melting gray snow banks. Every spring the neighborhood has to deal with the garbage that the thousands of people passing through insist on leaving behind. This year, however, we were introduced to a new, simple and ingenious approach to the clean up, courtesy of local resident and endurance runner, Sam Huber – aka The Eco-Runner.

Sam incorporates scooping up litter into his running regimen and is on a mission to convert people to serving their environment by simply picking up the trash in their path. Sam’s grassroots project is getting national attention and attracting new eco-runners (or in my case, eco-walkers) every day.

Visit Eco-Runner to follow Sam’s progress and learn more about how to green your exercise routine.

Since June first, we’ve had the most rain ever recorded here in Wisconsin. Rivers and streets are overflowing, basements are flooded, and you may have read about the lake that washed away. Here in Milwaukee, the floods we’ve gotten aren’t as devastating as those in Iowa or even a little further west in our state. After suffering mostly wet basements and some mildew, local news coverage is filled with people in boots trying to salvage their soaked possessions.

But what was interesting to me was a throwaway comment one man made on the news. Standing in two feet of water in his basement, he said he was “getting rid of all the stuff he didn’t need anyway.” It made me think of something I’d read recently about a new grass-roots movement, The 100 Thing Challenge.

The premise is this: if you have too much stuff, it can weigh you down. Editing your personal living space down to 100 things will help you let go of the past and move forward. Added benefits are that you can easily find things and you will gain a sense of control over your life. And who wouldn’t want that? Whittling your stuff down to 100 items is a little hardcore, but I think we could all stand to “challenge” our things, one by one, and get rid of what we don’t need.

Of course, I’m not advocating throwing all your stuff away in the trash. Gently used possessions are always welcome at Goodwill, and for more beat up items, try offering them on Freecycle, an online collective of community-based giveaway programs. In fact, I just used Milwaukee Freecycle to give away 12 pairs of ripped jeans to a teacher who will use them for an art project.

I can imagine that many of those people cleaning their basements out may be wishing they’d purged their possessions before the flood. Clear your clutter and concentrate on more important things in your life!

It’s a shame our leaders can only tell us to “buy, buy, buy” during an economic downturn (slump, recession, whatever you want to call this). As the price of fuel and food climbs upward, they should be urging us to grow Victory Gardens, pitching in to sustain ourselves and reduce our dependence on industrial methods and foreign fuels. When economic recession coincides with a global climate crisis, it makes even more sense.

When you grow even a small portion of your own food, you reap manifold benefits. You get the satisfaction of reducing your dependence on others for your most basic needs. Vegetables are absolutely the best thing you can eat, and when you grow your own they are cheaper, fresher and tastier. You get to control what fertilizer is used (or not) to grow them, and no petroleum is required to truck them to your kitchen. You get to slow down a bit and maybe connect with your neighbor to swap surplus tomatoes or borrow a shovel. Best of all, you get to be out in the fresh air, using your muscles with a real purpose and not just completing sets of reps. It’s the perfect solution: get in shape while improving your diet.

Michael Pollan makes the point more completely in his essay, Why Bother?:

It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labor that, having replaced physical labor with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape [i.e., driving ourselves to the gym].

I say we take his advice. Let’s skip the health club this summer and work out in our back yards instead.

(Photo: Flickr - Dr. Hemmert)

With the press coverage environmental issues are getting these days, we may think of “green” issues as something new — another shiny object the press will pick up and discard at will. The official “environmental movement,” however, has been around for over 40 years now.

Earth Day, as a concept, was first introduced at a Seattle convention in 1969 by Wisconsin’s own Senator Gaylord Nelson, a passionate environmentalist and activist, frustrated with the government’s lack of interest in/attention to environmental issues.

He thought he had found a way to bring the environment into the political limelight when he had persuaded President John F. Kennedy to make a nationwide conservation tour in 1963. Although President Kennedy traveled through Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Utah, Washington, and California speaking about the need to conserve natural resources the effort received little media attention. Senator Nelson realized he needed another mechanism for promoting environmental concern and asked himself “how are we going to get the nation to wake up and pay attention to the most important challenge the human species faces on the planet?”

While reading an article on anti-Vietnam War teach-ins that were organized on college campuses across the nation to protest that War, the thought occurred to him: Why not have a nationwide teach-in on the environment? Upon returning to Washington, Nelson raised the funds to get Earth Day started. He wrote letters to all 50 governors and the mayors of major cities asking them to issue Earth Day Proclamations. He sent an Earth Day article to all college newspapers explaining the event and one to Scholastic Magazine, which went to most high schools and grade schools. (Source)

The first Earth Day was then held, with great success, on April 22, 1970. In Senator Nelson’s own words:

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

– excerpted from How The First Earth Day Came About – Senator Gaylord Nelson

As a lot of people are remarking today, every day should be Earth Day. Until it is, however, this particular holiday is simply a good reminder for all of us to think about our relationship with and responsibility to the world around us.

(Many thanks to Flickr user, *L*u*z*a*, for the use of her photo.)

Each time I attend an Outdoor Industry-sponsored event — whether Outdoor University or a Retailer show, it becomes increasingly clear that this industry is a passionate steward of the environment. From the “green” materials brands are specifying into products, to choice of educational speakers, to the seminal work of the founding members of The Conservation Alliance, members of the Outdoor Industry, more than any other, understand their role as advocates for environmental sustainability.

At a breakfast meeting on Thursday, Jan. 24, the Conservation Alliance announced the launch of the Legacy Fund and its goal to raise $3.5 million by the Summer ‘09 O.R. show, which coincides with the Alliance’s 20th anniversary. With pledges of $500,000 from Merrill, $250,000 from REI, $1 million from North Face, and $25,000 from Keen, this is clearly an obtainable goal.

In ‘07, Conservation Alliance membership dues funded grants that protected 1,200 acres of Wapack Wilderness in new Hampshire, secured the Laural Knob granite cliff and surrounding forest and wetlands in North Carolina, removed the Dillsboro Dam on the Tuckasegee River in Tennessee, helping restore the natural river flow, and allowed Canada’s Parks and Wilderness Society to add 7 million acres to the Nahanni National Park Reserve.

The Outdoor Industry is about so much more than great products. It’s an amazing industry that can compete mightily for the hearts and minds of consumers while working collectively to care for the outdoor spaces we all love so much.