Environment, what environment?

The biggest obstacle to sustainable living today is our lack of contact with the natural environment. The average American spends 18 hours indoors for every hour outdoors, and most of our outdoor time is spent in unnatural settings like parking lots and city streets. As a result, we have lost touch with nature—the rhythms and patterns of life outside our engineered, air-conditioned world.

Our lack of experience with the natural world makes it difficult to evaluate alternatives as we strive for sustainability as a species. How, for instance, can we gauge the environmental impact of one detergent over another when we don’t know where our water goes?

Lacking experience on which to base our decisions, we rely instead on manufacturer claims to evaluate products and politicians’ promises to evaluate policies. Our reliance on second-hand information, in turn, makes us vulnerable to “greenwash”, intentionally misleading campaigns to make environmentally hostile products ands policies appear green. Victims of our own ignorance and those willing to take advantage of it, is it any wonder that many of our products and policies continue to harm the environment despite our good intentions.

The cure for nature deficit syndrome, as it’s sometimes called, is of course nature. We can all take steps to develop our environmental awareness:

Walk to work - Walking every day along the greenest route possible not only puts us in touch with nature, it can heal our hearts and minds.

Take a hike – When the opportunity arises for more extended forays into nature, take it. Weekend hikes are within reach for most of us, providing a chance to reconnect with the rhythms of nature.

Plant a tree – I hardly live in the wilderness, but yesterday when I arrived home a red-tailed hawk swooped out of the bushes carrying a mouse in its talons. Without the landscape around my home, I doubt it would have been there. The National Wildlife Federation offers a Gardening for Wildlife program that can help get you started.

If you run a business, consider how your products and services could make your customers more aware of their natural environment. Games can encourage kids to go outside and explore. Remodeling can be an opportunity to open up the home to the outdoors.

Employers can also take action to put their employees more in touch with nature. Rewarding them for walking or biking to work, for instance, can make them more aware of their local climate, vegetation and wildlife while also making them more fit and more productive. Biophilic design of the workplace can help too. Biophilic design is based on the concept of biophilia—our genetic dependence on contact with nature. It promotes natural materials, air and lighting, indoor plants and organic water features, and maximum exposure to nature. Its proponents cite a variety of studies suggesting it can improve worker productivity and health.

In implementing strategies like biophilic design, keep in mind that the goal is to encourage direct experience of nature. Other strategies like energy conservation and recycling are equally admirable, but they may not succeed if their adopters lack direct environmental experience. It is nature, after all, that teaches us these basic principles of conservation, and in nature we see their benefits and challenges play out.

Without our own direct experience of sustainability in action, our own actions can be easily misdirected, lead to unintended consequences, and fall prey to greenwash and political rhetoric. With direct experience of the green world to guide us, we can begin to heal our fragile Earth.

Biofuel primer

Are ethanol and biodiesel the fuels of the future or a quick fix? Farmland Fillup: Understanding the Biofuel Boom, by GTF director Dr. George Elvin, provides an introduction to the biofuel boom sweeping the U.S.

NanoBioBuilding

Nanotechnology and biotechnology promise dramatic changes to the way we design and construct buildings. Already, dozens of nanomaterials are available in the architectural marketplace. This exclusive report analyzes the long-term impact of nanomaterials and biomaterials now in development on architecture and the design process. Download your free copy of NanoBioBuilding: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, and the Future of Building now.

Welcome to Green Technology Forum

I’m delighted to introduce Green Technology Forum and its accompanying blog, GreenTechBlog.

At Green Technology Forum you’ll find news, commentary, interviews, and original research covering emerging nanotechnology and biotechnology. You'll also find advising and research services for businesses seeking the environmental, social, and economic rewards of clean technology.

Green technologies have been called the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st Century, and nanotechnology and biotechnology are leading the way with revolutionary advances in almost every industry. But their complexity and uncertainty can make them challenging to work with, and their rich environmental, social, and economic potential can seem out of reach.

In providing a forum for exchanging ideas and offering insight and advising, our goal is to help businesspeople understand the potential of nanotechnology and biotechnology and make informed decisions about where they want these emerging technologies to take them. By working together to understand their risks and rewards and make informed decisions about their use, we can employ these technologies to benefit customers, the environment, and the bottom line.

I’m Dr. George Elvin, director of Green Technology Forum, and I’ll be hosting GreenTechBlog. I am an advisor, speaker, and author on emerging technologies. I’m also an associate professor in the College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State University.

I am committed to enriching my clients’, readers’ and listeners’ lives by helping ensure the responsible and beneficial use of emerging technologies. That’s why I devote my energy to fostering dialogue and nourishing businesses that employ nanotechnology and biotechnology in environmetnally and socially responsible ways.

As you explore these exciting, challenging opportunities, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@greentechforum.net if we can be of service. We want to help you reap the benefits of green technology.

To learn more about Green Technology Forum visit our about page.

Dr. George Elvin

director

green technology forum

Electric car runs with the wind

The Eclectic claims to be the first energy-autonomous automobile, running on solar and wind energy. The 3-seater bills itself as a production and storage plant for renewable energies that can also be recharged by electricity.