The GLRPPR Blog

Recently, I gave a presentation at the Midwest Environmental Education Conference called “Stemming the Tide of Sustainability Information.” What follows is an extremely condensed version of the talk, with links to the more general tools I talked about. If you’re interested in seeing the slides from the original presentation, they’re posted on IDEALS, the University of Illinois’ institutional repository. Click on the link in the Files box to view the slides in PDF.

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The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), hosted by the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), is pleased to announce the availability of its online “Ask an Expert” service for the submission of questions related to electronics and their environmental impacts.

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Earlier this week, GLRPPR announced that three of their topic hubs had been repackaged as LibGuides. This announcement probably left many of you wondering, “What exactly does that mean?” I aim to answer that question with this post.

LibGuides is a web 2.0 platform that libraries use to create topical guides to help their users find information. It combines the best features of social networks, wikis, and blogs into one package. Librarians can incorporate RSS feeds, video, web links, bibliographic citations, search boxes, and other finding aids.

LibGuides also allows librarians to create polls and allows users to comment on specific resources and tools within each guide. Users can also sign up to receive e-mail alerts when new content is published, either for particular topics/keywords or for a specific librarian (in this case, GLRPPR).

For a list of GLRPPR guides, visit the GLRPPR profile page on the UIUC Library’s LibGuides web site. You can also see the list of guides I’ve created on my profile page.

The presentations from the recent Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR)/Region 7 Pollution Prevention Roundtable conference are now available on the GLRPPR web site.

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Laura Barnes and Joy Scrogum of GLRPPR are winners in the P2tagteam world. P2Rx is sending delicious prizes to the top bookmarkers for the P2Tagteam on the Delicious site. Laura won a quart of custom made ice cream for being the top bookmarker. The ice cream was delivered frozen.

Joy received a bag of chocolate kisses for her bookmarking efforts.

You can see photos of the winners and their prizes on GLRPPR’s Facebook page.

In case you have not heard, Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place.

Instead of having different bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers. Even if you’re not on a computer you own, you can still get to your bookmarks on the Delicious website.

If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting.

For more information on Delicious, see their Help section, which includes an excellent list of frequently asked questions.

P2Rx has started a collaborative tagging effort on Delicious to encourage P2 professionals to share the resources they find and bookmark. If you locate a resource that you think would be helpful to other P2 professionals, simply add P2TagTeam tag in the Tags field when you add the bookmark to Delicious. For more information on P2TagTeam, visit the P2Rx web site or contact Laura Barnes (lbarnes@istc.illinois.edu).

I recently discovered two add-ons for the Firefox browser that make it much easier to locate relevant web sites in the sea of results from your favorite search engine.

The first is Search Cloudlet, an add-on that inserts context-aware tag clouds into a traditional Google, Yahoo and Twitter interface to help you navigate more efficiently through search results. You can see an example of a tag cloud at Wikipedia, where they also have a nice explanation of how they work. Search Cloudlet also allows you to include and exclude particular tags from your search results, which makes it easier to find what you need.

The second is DeeperWeb, which uses both tag clouds and topic mapping to organize Google search results. Like Search Cloudlet, the tag cloud feature allows you to exclude certain terms from your search. In addition, DeeperWeb includes “zoomies”, which are mini-search engines that arrange results into categories to make them easier to navigate. I particularly like the Metrics catagory, which pulls out statistics and other numerical data. Other zoomies include: Answers (from sites like Ask.com and Yahoo! Answers); Business News; Wikipedia; Blogs; and Resources. You can also limit your results to a particular time frame (past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year).

What’s your favorite tool to help you wade through search results? Post your answers in the comments.

One of the topics Rick Yoder covered at the recent GLRPPR conference was Delicious, a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place.

Instead of having different bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers. Even if you’re not on a computer you own, you can still get to your bookmarks on the Delicious website.

If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting.

For more information on Delicious, see their Help section, which includes an excellent list of frequently asked questions.

P2Rx has started a collaborative tagging effort on Delicious to encourage P2 professionals to share the resources they find and bookmark. If you locate a resource that you think would be helpful to other P2 professionals, simply add P2TagTeam tag in the Tags field when you add the bookmark to Delicious. For more information on P2TagTeam, visit the P2Rx web site or contact Laura Barnes (lbarnes@istc.illinois.edu).

It’s the final day of the GLRPPR/Region 7 Conference in Indianapolis, IN. On the agenda for this afternoon is a webinar presented by Natalie Hummel of the U.S. EPA providing an overview of two new measurement tools developed by U.S. EPA Headquarters. The GHG Calculator is designed to assist P2 managers, staff and grantees in calculating greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions from established conversion factors in the following categories:

• Electricity Conservation (GHG reductions from electricity conversation or reduced use of energy)
• Green Energy (GHG reductions from switching to greener or renewable energy sources)
• Fuel Substitution (GHG reductions from reduced fuel use, substitution to greener fuels)
• Greening Chemistry (GHG reductions from reduced use of GWP chemicals)
• Water Conservation (GHG reductions from reduced water use)
• Materials Management (GHG reductions from green manufacturing processes and waste management scenarios)
• Cross Reference to other applicable tools (A reference table that provides end users an overview of applicable GHG tools and models)

The P2 Results Database, a web-based tool, designed to collect and quantify P2 progress related to air, water, waste and energy reductions from non-profits, local, state, and federal entities plays a significant role in demonstrating P2 benefits on a regional and national level. A critical part of the P2 Results Database is documenting cost savings that result from government, businesses and facilities implementing P2 activities. This database uses a P2 cost calculator to quantify cost savings based on established methodologies and sound research. Over the last several months, the Pollution Prevention Program worked to update and redesign the tool to enhance functionality and better document cost benefits over time. Today’s webinar will also provide an overview of the cost calculator tool.

If you were unable to attend this week’s conference and/or the webinar provided today, or if you would like to recommend the webinar to your colleagues, the Western Sustainability and Pollution Prevention Network (WSPPN) will be providing a similar webinar on June 18, 2009. See the GLRPPR calendar entry for the WSPPN webinar for details and a link to the event registration page.

For more useful calculators and links to your regional module of the P2 Results Data System, see the GLRPPR P2 Measurement & Calculators Sector Resource.

So, there I was at the back of the room during the Tuesday morning 2009 Environmental Summit plenary presentation by Marueen Gorsen – a smart & witty presenter who made the start of a rainy day very tolerable.  She was opening up about the conundrum we all face – how to justify buying more stuff when consumerism (spending = 70% of the US economy) is at the heart of our environmental problems.  Specifically, she offered her rationalization for buying an i-phone.  She said it was because she wanted to use a nifty (& free) application called Good Guide.  Scott Butner later mentioned that one of the developers of the application has history with the P2 community and specifically with our P2Rx sister center, PPRC.

I didn’t think more of this until I heard a Living On Earth podcast this morning, in which author Daniel Goleman expounded more on the virtues of the Good Guide than on shilling his new book, Ecological Intelligence, even going so far as to take a shopping field trip using the app to buy shampoo.  Glad I looked it up – because I’m not a terribly good listener, I’d been hearing its name all along as “Good Guy.”

BTW, I added GoodGuide as a P2TagTeam bookmark on delicious, too.

For many years, the GLRPPR home page and subsequently the GLRPPR Blog have featured a “site of the month.” This feature was invented as a way of highlighting sites from organizations within the Great Lakes region and beyond which GLRPPR members might find particularly interesting or useful. This feature was created before there were RSS feeds for each Sector Resource on the GLRPPR web site, and before there was an RSS feed devoted to all new additions to the GLRPPR Sector Resources in general.

Upon recent consideration, GLRPPR staff members have decided to retire the “site of the month” and instead do more to highlight a variety of resources as they are added to the GLRPPR web site. Watch in the near future for blog posts highlighting recent additions to the web site or describing resources on the site that you may have overlooked. We’ll also be featuring themes for blogs posts to better foster the sharing of information on specific topics and networking among organizations in the region. More information on themes will be posted soon. Since the LINK newsletter was recently folded into the GLRPPR Blog, we’re hoping that you’ll come to use the blog as a source of information in the same way as you did the newsletter. If you have suggestions for resources or information that you would like to share with other members via the blog, please send your suggestions to our blog coordinator Wayne Duke.

Note that the “site of the month” category will remain on the blog as an archive of the sites that were so featured. The posts describing these sites are of course also cross referenced in appropriate topical categories (i.e. a post about a site related to agriculture would also be found in that category as well). An older list of sites of the month featured on the GLRPPR web site prior to there being a related blog category can also be found at http://www.glrppr.org/news/site_of_the_month.cfm.

The Printers’ National Environmental Assistance Center (PNEAC) website now offers The Industrial Stormwater Permit Guide to assist businesses in complying with federal stormwater regulations.

PNEAC has developed an easy to use on-line tutorial about the Industrial Stormwater Permitting requirements. This program explains federal stormwater regulations for business (not just printers), and the options available for compliance. It also provides detailed guidance on which states have permitting authority and links to state and/or federal forms that industrial facilities must submit to be in compliance with the regulations.

The tool walks the user through the regulations in order for the user to determine whether they must obtain a Stormwater Permit or are exempt from permitting requirements, and then walks the user through the process of completing and submitting the “No Exposure Certification.” It is an easy to use tool utilizing a lesson format which also provides a visual guide for understanding compliant vs. non-compliant stormwater situations.

This new tool was modeled after the EPA Hazardous Waste Manifest Compliance Assistance tool that PNEAC previously developed. You can find the full compliment of compliance assistance tools at http://pneac.org/videotraining/.

It’s holiday time again, which means you’re probably going to buy at least one gift for someone, as well as items for celebrations and holiday meals. You may wish to consult Consumer Reports Greener Choices web site, which provides information to help choose more environmentally friendly products. Articles and “green ratings” are available for the following product categories: Appliances, Cars, Electronics, Food & Beverages, and Home & Garden.  Within these sections, you’ll find links to articles, information on conservation of resources (such as energy, water, fuel, etc.), resources for shopping greener, and information on recycling and disposal. The “Hot Topics & Solutions” section of the site includes the Eco-labels Center (which helps you interpret what product labels really mean), the Electronics Recycling Center, the Global Warming Solutions Center, and sections on Energy, Water, and Waste.

The “Toolkit” section includes calculators to help save energy, water, and money, as well as a Toxics Search tool to find out whether there’s a potential for exposure while using a particular product, and how that can affect your health. The “Community” section of the site includes links to Consumers Union campaigns, forums and resources for further information, as well as blogs on cars, food safety, green homes, and safety.