7gen Bloc

I just finished reading Paul Hawken’s new book Blessed Unrest. It is a beautifully written, extensively researched, deeply thoughtful but in the end unsatisfying read. While Hawken talks convincingly about the convergence of the environmental/sustainability movement with the social justice and indigenous rights movements (collectively described as “the movement,”) and the significance of the millions of organizations that have arisen world-wide to tackle the many issues that all these movements encompass, I don’t believe that this alone will adequately address our challenges.

Sheila, our Doyen of Donational Doings, has been quite conscientiously forwarding to me news and notes pertaining to all the cool donations we’ve been making to laudable causes and needful folk, and I, for my own humble part in these great machinations, have been dutifully ignoring them while other stuff sucks up my time like a Hoover with an oscillating overthruster. So let’s play catch-up:

On Wednesday, June 13, our Global Warming task team (called the Carbon 42 task team) rolled out the 7th Gen climate change program 20/20 by 2010 to the employees of 7th Gen and to two of our manufacturing partners. We as a company (and we as humans occupying present earth) are aiming to reduce our overall carbon footprint by 20% while increasing our use of renewables by 20% all by the year 2010.

Today is the year’s longest day. As we sit on this serendipitous ball of water-drenched rock, sailing through the space at 66,700 miles per hour, we will arrive this afternoon, at 2:06 pm Eastern Daylight Time, at that place in our annual 149.6 million mile journey around the sun at which the Earth’s gladfully tilted northern axis points most directly at the sun and our hemisphere is most fully bathed in its lifeforce.

Cross-posted from the Change It blog... If you’re one of the faithful visitors to the Change It web site then by now you’ve noticed new profiles appearing on the Participant page. I’m so excited to finally share with you more names, pictures and Change It statements from the students who have committed to joining us in DC for a week of tough activism training July 20th to the 26th.

Our friend Aaron at ForestEthics wrote yesterday to let us know about his organization’s campaign to preserve vital caribou habitat in British Columbia in order to save the region’s dwindling herd and a whole bunch of other things, too. Like 6 million acres of priceless wilderness, vast tracts of sacred old growth inland rain forest, and you know… all kinds of irreplaceable stuff that will never be again if the bulldozers and chainsaws show up.

So on July 11th a whole lot of 7th Geners are going to do the Dream experience. I am not sure what that will be, but we will have a camera crew to capture. Here is a guest blog from Daniel Shearer our ongoing Dream-blog voice...WR

While researching an article on Green Chemistry for the upcoming Non-Toxic Times (which, keep your fingers crossed, will come out next week), I stumbled across an entry on the same subject in the ever amazing Wikipedia that contained something I didn’t know existed: a set of principles to guide chemists in greening their labs and the things those labs create.

You have to love Consumer Reports. Their vigilance when it comes to looking out for consumers is as boundless as their enthusiasm for the job, and, as I learned late last week, no detail gets overlooked along the way.

Was recently in San Fransisco and met up with Hilary Abell, the Executive Director for Women's Action to Gain Economic Security ( WAGES ). The mission of WAGES is to promote the social and economic empowerment of low-income women through cooperative business ownership. We are working with WAGES on a project which is outlined in this interview with Hilary... WR