It’s one thing to make a documentary film on America’s sustainable communities but it’s another to do it by bike.

The hand brakes have been applied to the pedal-powered production phase of a soon-to-be-released documentary film called Within Reach, a 6000 mile bike tour of communities, cohabitations, and communes shot entirely using solar-powered electronics and leg-powered bicycles.

We caught up with riders, director, and producer Ryan Mlynarczyk and Mandy Creighton encamped and rejuvenating at the Joyful Path Healing and Meditation Center out in Blue Mounds Wisconsin.

For us that meant eco villages, co-housing communities which are more of an urban, townhouse style co-habitation, a co-op where everybody lives under the same roof but you each have your own bedroom.  And then we also visited a couple of the old communes that are still around.

The movie isn’t slated to be screened until Earth Day 2011 but you can catch teasers, clips and blog posts on their website, WithinReachMovie.com.

For more on sustainable communities and the full interview with Mandy and Ryan, click here.

Photos by Ryan Mlynarczyk.

Are winter energy costs freezing you out?  Why not try some space heaters that actually save space and money?

It’s unfortunately all too common for most homes, whether in a hot or cold climate, to be improperly insulated against whatever weather conditions it faces.  This could mean thousands of dollars a year in energy costs not to mention the toll energy transmission and generation takes only to be wasted on the end user.

One solution, at least for those bracing against cold, is  selecting one of the new lines of electric space heaters available.  Here are a couple things to keep in mind when buying:

1.) Only go for newer model heaters up to date with all the current safety features which bare the UL stamp of approval.

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2.) Choose a thermostatically controlled heater, as they avoid the energy waste of overheating a room.

One such model that fits these specs and was tested here at Green Air HQ is the Dayton U33 Electric Space Heater available at Air-n-Water.com.  It’s compact, thermostatically adjustable, and even electrostatically adjustable saving us from bank account busting winter heating costs.

For more specs on space heaters and ways to stay sustainably comfy, check out the following links.

Portable Heaters (United States Department of Energy)

Space Heaters: Reviews (ConsumerSearch.com)

Eco Heater: Good for chilly rooms and heating bills (GreenUpgrader.com)

Photo by oatmeal2000.

Living an eco-friendly existence doesn’t have to end when you do.

Ghoulish as it may sound, the business of burials is something we’re all fated to deal with eventually but new environmentally responsible options to handle this morbidly necessary event have emerged here in the US adding a note of green to this eerie realm of commerce.

Elizabeth Fournier, Director of Cornerstone Funeral Services and Cremation in Boring, Oregon, is the self-proclaimed “Green Reaper.”

A lot of people have chosen cremation already and a lot of that is the idea of, ‘Hey, I don’t want to take up space, I don’t want my family to shell out a bunch of cash, and I want to do something good for the environment.’ But of course, what we’re learning is the idea of cremating somebody isn’t so environmentally conscious as we once thought.  Actually burying somebody  the Green way with no chemicals, no concretes, and no metals in the soil is actually a better choice.

It’s the goal of Ms. Fournier and others in her industry to offer ways families can continue the responsible legacy of their deceased…beyond the grave.

For more on this and the full interview with Elizabeth Fornier, scythe through some of the following links:

Composting the dead (Environmental Graffiti)

Burials and cemeteries go green (NPR)

Do cemeteries impact on the environment? (University of Technology, Sydney)

Japan’s high tech graveyard solution as burial space grows scarce (Treehugger)

Artwork by amanda.f.i.

A new documentary uncovers the truly disastrous effects of the Swine Flu following the lives of a young Egyptian family living in Cairo’s ultra-poor recycling village.

Marina of the Zabbaleen, a new documentary by Torch Films, enters the lives of this largely Coptic Christian tribe seen through the eyes of three children and their mother.  Barely eking out survival in this poor community, Marina’s tribe subsists by collecting nearly half of Cairo’s municipal solid waste, separating it into its recyclable components and feeding what’s left to their pigs.

When the H1N1 virus, or Swine Flu, was declared an international pandemic, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak ordered all the country’s 300,000 hogs slaughtered.  The result was an all out halt of Egypt’s decentralized, natural and sustainable waste disposal system – the hungry pigs.

Now, the garbage heaps in Cairo are too much for the Zabbaleen to control themselves, effectively burying the unfortunate tribe under the very material that kept them alive.

For a look at Marina of the Zabbaleen, click here.

Screenshots taken from Marina of the Zabbaleen courtesy of Torch Films.

Nature’s imbalance at the hands of humans could be catastrophic but could purposefully changing the climate actually help it?

On the fringe of experimental earth science exists a theoretical and nearly improbable study of climate called geoengineering or terraforming.  The basic idea is if we do certain things to alter our atmospheric composition or sunlight intake, we’ll be able to counteract the negative effects of the damage we’ve already done.

One theory suggests that if we shot more sulphur into the atmosphere, it wold enhance a cloud’s ability to reflect sunlight.  Only problem is that atmospheric sulphur particles are what make acid rain and is usually the byproduct of dirty factory pollution.  Other theories involve enriching the sea with iron to propagate plankton growth, one of nature’s most efficient carbon removers.

In the end, the unwitting tampering with fragile climate systems seems only to have presented more problems but an open discussion of geoengineering has new solutions emerging into the mainstream.

For more on geoengineering, take a look at some of the following links:

Geoengineering our way out of trouble (Columbia University)

The human element to geoengineering (Op Ed News)

Recruiting plankton to fight global warming (NY Times)

Diagram by Kathleen Smith/LLNL