top 20 bills in NC Assembly - Part 4 (#1-5)

Part 4 (#1-5) of the top 20 bills in the NC general assembly

This is it.. the final part. Check out part 1, part 2 and part 3 if you haven't yet.

And on we go.

5. Senate Bill 1493/House Bill 1232 - Fund State Water Infrastructure Commission
The State Water Infrastructure Commission would of course identify the state's water needs and develop plans to meet them. Then monitor the implementation of the plans.

4. House Bill 1179 - Clean Cars Program/Funds
This would establish a low emissions vehicle program in North Carolina. This would basically adopt the low-emissions vehicle program that they have in California for the state of North Carolina, effective for cars sold after 2009 model year. There is a lot of info included in this bill, so if you are interested I recommend reading up. Needless to say, any bill that will require the phase out of vehicle emissions is a good thing.

3. Senate Bill 927/House Bill 1073 - Green School Construction Loan Fund/Program
This basically allows for schools to get no interest loans for the purpose of green constructions or renovations. With the number of schools going up in the state every year (especially Wake County) there is no reason why they shouldn't be building as green as they can, and this would help them cover a lot of those costs.

2. Senate Bill 1522/House Bill 990 - Land and Water Conservation Bond Act of 2007
This one looks to have been sat on a bit, but there is no reason to think we couldn't get it moved back up and pushed through. It would authorize the issuance of bonds, provided passing of vote to address the statewide needs of land conservation, Water Quality protection and Historic preservation. We are talking about a lot of money here (up to $1 Billion), that is needed in a bad way for conservation around the state. I can only hope that this one gets revisited.

1. Senate Bill 634/House Bill 557 - North Carolina GREEEN Act
This act is to grow a renewable and energy-efficient economy in North Carolina by establishing a Green Business Fund to be administered by the state energy office to provide seed grants to develop North Carolina's green economy. This version of the bill allows for $15 Million a year to be divided between Bio-fuels, Green Building and general Green Entrepreneurship. This one is important to me for clear reasons, but not only because I am trying to start a green business. I think becoming a leader in this industry can pay huge dividends for this state in the future.

With elections coming up, etc. it is on all of us to make sure the folks running know what we think is important and the type of things we want them to work on for us. All of these bills may not work out in these particular iterations, but we can at least draw some attention to them. Check out the state board of elections for info on all the candidates. E-mail them, call them, whatever. but let them know what you want. Maybe something can eventually get done.

Top 20 Bills in NC Asembly - Part 3 #6-10

So here we are for yet another installment. Check out part 1 and part 2 if you haven't yet.

And on we go.

10. Senate Bill 1149 - Use of Biodiesel on School Buses
This bill would allow $5,000,000 for grants to NC public schools for production of biofuels to be used to run school buses.

9. House Bill 1052 - Hog Farms/Methane Gas
This bill would require power suppliers to purchase electricity from farms/facilities that use hog waste to produce it.

Just found out that my #8 was ratified as well. It was a bill that prohibited any sort of control over the use of solar collectors by things such as homeowners associations, etc.

7. Senate Bill 215 - Litter Reduction Act
This bill would be an attempt to curb litter and promote recycling by instituting a deposit program for things like bottles and cans. Other states do this with a lot of success, so no reason to think it wouldn't work here.

6. Senate Bill 967/House Bill 1600 - NC Organic Economic Opportunities Study
Self explanatory, but it would be a market research study to determine what sort of opportunities there would be for organic farming in the state. I can give them the quick answer, PLENTY. But government needs an actual study with actual results, so the sooner they get it over with the better.

That 5 flew by. check back soon for the top 5.

Top 20 Bills in NC Asembly - Part 2 #11-15

Part 2 (#11-15) of the top 20 bills in the NC general assembly

So here we are for another installment. See part 1 if you have no idea what this is.

And on with the list.

15. Senate Bill 1451 - Biodiesel Incentive Fund
It may seem awfully familiar, as in #16, but this Biodiesel incentive is slightly different. This one provides for a fund to pay out to biodiesel producers to encourage development of Biodiesel in the state. The only downside to this one for me is that if emphasizes the use of feedstock for biodiesel production. The perfect bill would be to really push biodiesel from recycled veggie oil or cellulosic ethanol, but we will take what we can get I suppose.

14. My #14 I just noticed has been ratified since I first checked it, so we’ll skip that one. FYI it was for an increase in the penalty for Air Polluters.

13. House Bill 1832 - No Mining Sand from Tidal Inlet/Delta
This one is self explanatory, but it would basically end all mining of sand and damage to the ecosystem, unless it is necessary to maintain navigation channels.

12. House Bill 1846 - Tax Credit for Recycling Vegetable Oil
This bill would provide for a tax credit equal to 25% of the cost of equipment for the conversion of used vegetable oil to fuel.

11. Senate Bill 141/House Bill 1117 - Topsail Beach/Beach Renourishment funds
This would provide $2,000,000 to the town of Topsail Beach for use in beach renourishment.

Thats if for this one, check back for the rest later

Top 20 Bills in NC Asembly - Part 1 #16-20

I was doing some digging this weekend on the NC general assembly webpage to see what the state government in North Carolina was doing as far as environmental policy, I looked through every bill introduced and still in committee, etc. for the 2007-2008 session. What I have put together is what I feel are the top 20 most important bills in that category. They are in somewhat of order of importance, and I hopefully caught all the good ones, but it was a VERY long list, so I apologize if I may have missed any (and if I have please let me know and I can post them up as well). The basic goal of this was to show what our representatives are looking at, and what we can bring to their attention to help push through. I personally feel like much much more can be done, but I will save that for later, right now I just want to look at what IS there so we can all start bugging our representatives on a regular basis to keep tabs on how these things are progressing. It is actually somewhat hard to tell what the current status of some of these are, but I am sure it won’t hurt to bring them up to the folks in power. I will break this up into a few parts to kind of shorten these posts a bit, so check back over the next few days to get them all.

OK so here goes #’s 16-20;

20. Senate Bill 843 - Establish the Biofuels Center of North Carolina
The bill says the Biofuel center would be created as a non-profit organization with an annual budget of $5,000,000 for both and would be responsible for the implementation of “North Carolina’s Strategic Plan for Biofuels Leadership.”

19. Senate Bill 1222 - Funds for NC Solar Center
Appropriation of funds for North Carolina Solar Center at NCState University.

18. Senate Bill 948 - Small Dairy Sustainability
This bill would allow for consumers to contract with local farmers to become partial or complete owners of dairy animals. The original edition of this one was just to allow for people to contract with local farmers to buy fresh milk, but it turned into the current bill that would allow consumers to buy into a local farm to get fresh milk, it now would also require a health warning of the dangers of raw milk, but the nature remains the same. It would allow for small dairy farmers to stay afloat, and for people to support and take part in local agriculture and give themselves a local food source.

17. House Bill 618/Senate Bill 671 - Eat Smart...Move More Initiative
This would provide a budget of $3,000,000 for the next two years for to promote community environments that would support physical activity, healthy lifestyles and personal well-being.

16. House Bill 2003 - Biofuel Incentives
This would supply incentives for distributors of Biofuel in the form of a tax discount.

Business Update

I just want to really quickly try and give everyone an update on how things are going for GHH. I have been asked several times in the last couple weeks about when we might open. The best answer that I have right now is, we don't know. I wish I had something more definite, but right now that is the best I can do. We are currently in the status of looking for funds. Truthfully, right now we haven't yet even been able to find any positive leads. What I can for sure tell you is that we have completed our business plan, after long hours of research, editing, writing, rewriting, etc. If any of you readers out there might know someone/something that would be a good place to look for funding, we would MUCH appreciate it. Until we can find some way to get us off the ground we are somewhat on hold. Rest assured though that we are VERY committed to this movement. We will not allow this idea/dream die. Again, if any of you readers may have some ideas, or even just encouragement, please don't hesitate. Hopefully soon I will have some more definite and happy news. Thanks for reading and please come back often.

The importance of building green

For those out there that may (not sure how you could though) doubt the importance of building green, check out this post on ecogeek. Not sure exactly where they get the figures on the amount of carbon from cars, but an interesting bit of info anyway. Basically, they are saying that if all building were to turn "green" for the year, then we would save as much greenhouse gasses, etc. as are used by every car and plane used in North America for the year.

Again, I have no idea about the accuracy of those numbers, but either way it is CLEAR that building green will have a huge impact. Now all we have to do is make every builder and developer to build everything green.. Then renovate every existing building using green principles. Seems like a rather daunting task, but things seem to be moving in the right direction at least. Maybe someday we will all be living in sustainable, comfortable homes. We can only hope...

Stumbled upon this earlier

Great conservation tips here. A lot of them are kind of common sense, but it's nice to see all these tips in one place like this.

If my couch is healthy, I'm healthy

By my estimation, the average American probably spends somewhere between 700 and 1000 hours a year on his or her couch.  Watching TV, napping, reading, relaxing after a long day; some of us (Jake and I are guilty!) even have meals there.  Most of us don't give much thought to the close relationships we've developed with our furniture, but it is a fact that we are intimately involved.  So it only seems natural that we'd expect an object we're in such close contact with every day to be made of materials that won't harm us.  Unfortunately, Green Daily just mentioned a new report that links an ingredient in more than 2/3 of California furniture to birth defects and cancer.  The chemical, called PBDE (a type of bromide) seeps into the bloodstreams of pregnant women, affecting the fetus or baby via the umbilical cord or breast milk.  This toxin has even been affecting the cats who snuggle with us.

So that begs the observation: if California is noticing this problem in household furniture (and still hasn't resolved it via legislature), imagine what that says about my couch here in North Carolina, one of the largest furniture-producing states around.  My solution?  The next couch we buy (which will be very soon) will be a green one! 

Clorox going green?

Most if not all of you have probably seen these products advertised by Clorox, the new GreenWorks line. They are touting it as a "natural" cleaner, safer for the environment and the user, etc. etc. etc. Most of you may also know that my background is in chemistry, and today I had a few minutes to take a look into the ingredients of these "natural" cleaners. I add the quotes, because the word natural as it is used by corporations is a completely unregulated and VERY loosely used term. OK, so what's the verdict, is it natural or not. Well we will get to that shortly, first let me just list to you the ingredients per their labels:
water, alkyl polyglucoside, ethanol SDA-3C, glycerine, lemon essential oil, preservative (Kathon) and colorant (Milliken Liquitint Blue HP dye and Bright Yellow dye X) and also some of them contain sodium lauryl sulfate and lauramine oxide.

Now a good general rule of thumb with these sorts of things is, if you can't tell right away where something comes from, then it probably isn't natural. Alkyl polyglucoside??? Turns out is pretty readily available from chemical manufacturers such as Dow. Clorox says that it is derived from Coconuts. OK then. The use for this surfactant (which basically means a wetting agent that lowers the surface tension of a liquid) is to help form nice soapy bubbles and act as the main detergent ingredient. This is basically the meat and potatoes of the cleaning product. The other stuff is added for smell, color and preservation. So what exactly is it? well it is a synthetically produced chemical. It does appear to degrade pretty quickly (28 days) I do not know the path to degredation though, so I have no idea why it doesn't just break down in the bottle, most likely what the preservatives are preventing, as well as the prevention of bacterial growth. Dow says they are quite stable in a caustic environment, meaning pH higher than 8 or so, which is common for soaps and cleaning products.

The other eyebrow raisers; Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Lauramine Oxide (an emulsifier, meaning it allows oil and water to be mixed). could both definitely be construed as very un-natural and SLS sounds downright scary. The others, preservatives and dyes.. eh.. Then you have corn based ethanol, which I don't have a problem with using in a cleaner personally, but there is the little problem of the creation of that ethanol taking up huge amounts of energy both in production and in the transport of corn, etc.

Anyway, about the only thing truly natural in this bottle would probably be the water, the rest are synthetically extracted or produced wholly in a lab. I think I'll just use some vinegar and water...

Six Degrees Could Change the World

I watched this last night, and I just have to say that it is a MUST watch for really anyone. Not just the people like me that are obsessed with the planet, but even the sceptics among us. I really encourage anyone to check it out and the webpage if they get a chance. It is far superior to the horribly dumbed down special that CNN put together a couple months ago. This one gets a bit spectacular with the visuals, but by most accounts they are being pretty conservative with the predictions.

It is pretty scary stuff. We all know the troubles we could be in if nothing is done, but unless something really big happens soon, we might as well all invest in the future breadbasket of the world in north-central Canada.