Hot pix: green monitoring sites from the Greenwash Brigade

The Greenwash Brigade

Blogs and talk

"Greenwashed," a public discussion group on the WiserEarth site (Flisrand)
Joel Makower’s blog highlights sustainability business opportunities, and he has a number of posts about green marketing. (Flisrand)

Consumer Guides and Research

Consumer Reports' eco-labels center (Flisrand/Siegelbaum)
The Healthy Toys consumer action guide launched in early December 2007 to answer questions about toxic substances in toys. (Siegelbaum)
The National Green Pages from Co-op America (Markatos)
A Consumer's Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers (opens a PDF) (Flisrand)
The Organic Consumers Association helps consumers navigate the maze of food labels and other food-related issues (Siegelbaum)
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is an action group watching out for the health effects of personal care products (Siegelbaum)
Environmental Working Group reports on toxics, public health and the environment (Siegelbaum)

Architectural

BuildingGreen is a resource for technical green building information & news. (Nicolow)
Southface is an Atlanta non-profit that promotes sustainable homes, workplaces, and communities - lots of residential green building info/resources. (Nicolow)
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education tracks campus green building and sustainability activities and trends. (Nicolow/Markatos)

January 8, 2008 by Jo Easton
1 comments

Comments (1)

Shirley | Respond
January 10, 2008 5:27 PM PT

Great site. We're looking to build green in Middetown, RI. Any idea why New England is behind the rest of the country in green building?

Tools

Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

NOTE: The opinions expressed by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of American Public Media or its employees. American Public Media is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers.

Marketplace

The Greenwash Brigade