Carl Boyd graduated from UIC’s Industrial Design program and has worked professionally in exhibit and product design. He interned at Prairie Fish, one of the nation’s first retail design firms committed to green design. As an initial member of the Foresight Design Initiative, he launched Chicago Green Drinks, organized Chicago’s first Eco-Transportation Show, and designed exhibits for the Chicago Department of Environment.
He’s served as a judge of green design for the 2008 International Housewares Show, and Chicago’s Greenworks Awards.
Carl Boyd co-pilots an ongoing project called Normal - started in 2003 - designing modern, practical products that are locally-made using sustainably-preferable materials and processes. Normal products are sold across North America, have been featured in Wallpaper, TIME, New City, Chicago Tribune, Time Out and in several TV spots. They have been selected for Museum exhibits nationwide and abroad.
Carl currently teaches product design, focusing on sustainability issues, at Columbia College, as well as at the Art Institute this coming Spring.
Ted is always looking for ways to minimize his ecological footprint. Professionally, Ted is working to gain the skills necessary to turn his passion for sustainable development into action, as an entrepreneur or financing sustainable businesses.
Ted studied economics and international business at Saint Louis University’s campus in Madrid, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and was honored as the Distinguished Student in International Business for his class. As the founder and president of the SLU Madrid Business Club, Ted focused the club’s activities on sustainability.
While working for commercial real estate multi-national Jones Lang LaSalle’s Madrid office, Ted strove to implement sustainable practices both within the firm and for its clients. He proposed and designed an Environmental Sustainability Action Plan for JLL Spain. Green Building and Environmentally Sustainable Development remain a passion for Ted: he believes that the intersection of sustainable infrastructure and sustainable attitude is where we’ll find a sustainable society.
Ted currently works for a private equity firm in Madrid, learning skills that he hopes to apply to finance Environmentally Sustainable Development in the United States and around the world.
Cherl Petso is the Associate Editor at Disaboom.com, an online magazine for people with disabilities. Her writing expertise includes articles about the environment and sustainable living, and vegan/vegetarian issues. A vegetarian for 16 years and a recent vegan, Cherl is passionate about animal rights and issues. She enjoys writing about simple ways to lessen the impact on the Earth.
Cherl recently moved to Denver, Colorado from Bellingham, Washington. She enjoys hiking and hanging out with her puppy.
A freelance writer specializing in environmental and health topics, Linda recently was part of a core team of writers who developed content for GreenYour, a website devoted to greener living.
She wrote an environmental column for five years for Good Housekeeping magazine called Green Watch. You can find her articles in Plenty Magazine’s online newsletter, Fit Pregnancy, Good Housekeeping, Arthritis Today, Profiles (Continental Airline’s in-flight magazine), and Microsoft’s Encarta.
She served on her town’s environmental commission for 15 years and remains an active volunteer. Her personal essay column for the local newspaper offers her take on the natural world and on environmental topics in her neck of the woods.
Dayanti Karunaratne is a freelance journalist based in Canada's capital city, Ottawa.
Since graduating from Carleton University's journalism program in 2006, Karunaratne has worked on the news desk at the Port Hope Evening Guide, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Molokai Times. Karunaratne's writing appears in the Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Magazine, the Globe and Mail, and other lifestyle publications.
Christie Nash is currently a Projects Coordinator at the Trent Centre for Community-Based Education whose mandate is to bring local organizations and academic resources together to create community- inspired research projects. She has recently completed her M.Ed in Education and Community Development and Comparative International Development Education at OISE/UT. Her professional experience has taken her around the world, including Thailand, India, Nunavut, and other parts of Canada.
She currently resides in Omemee, Ontario (where Neil Young spent his formative years!) in an 1861 log cabin with her boyfriend, Mark, and cat, Fergus.
Marie Oser is a best-selling author, columnist, and host/producer of VEG TV. A vegan lifestyle expert, and environmental advocate with a focus on nutrition and its role in disease prevention, Oser specializes in creating original gourmet recipes with a solid nutritional bottom line.
Many prominent medical and nutrition professionals endorse her work, including Dr. Colin Campbell, Professor Emeritus, Cornell University and principal researcher of the groundbreaking CHINA STUDY, and Neal Barnard, M.D. founder and president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, DC.
Marie is president of VEGTV, Inc., a video production company producing content for TV and new media. VEGTV streams hundreds of lifestyle videos to more than 1,000 sites globally. In her role as Director of Product Development at Smart Planet Kitchen, she has created, Marie Oser’s Lean & Green, a new line of vegan and Fair Trade Certified products. Marie has appeared on CNN, ABC, National Public Radio, QVC, WUSA, WNBC, KCAL, KOVR, Home & Garden Television (HGTV), FINE LIVING, TECH TV, and Discovery Channel.
Vegetarian since 1971; vegan since 1990, Marie left a career in TV advertising to pursue her interest in food, health, and nutrition. Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, she studied psychology at St. Joseph’s University. Marie is a gourmet cook and organic gardener living in California, writing her 5th book and hiking every day with Travis, her Yellow Lab companion.
Cars aren’t usually the first thing to spring to mind when people think of “green” (unless we’re talking paint colors). After all, their use results in large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, respiratory problems, and diminished water quality.
It’s easy to see that cars are part of the problem. However, as the preferred way to get from A to B, cars can also be a part of the solution. In fact, cars need to be a part of any comprehensive short-term plan to build a sustainable society.
Certainly we must also make an effort to reduce our dependence on cars.
In the short-term we should all aim to lower our ecological footprints by using public and self-powered transportation options whenever possible. And in the longer-term we need to start reorganizing our communities around people rather than cars.
Still, cars are likely to remain a major means of transportation for the foreseeable future.
Taking individual action and letting the masses continue with business as usual is simply not an option. You may laugh that the train gets you to work in 20 minutes while your coworkers sit in traffic for hours, but unfortunately their emissions are effecting you as much as them.
Luckily, we seem to be moving in the right direction.
The public has responded with perhaps its most powerful voice, consumer demand: the SUV fad is dying out and automakers are finding that efficiency and value are keys to long-term success. As well as through the collective voices of government and media: when Detroit came to the taxpayers asking for financial assistance, the overwhelming response from Congress, President Obama, and the media was that addressing environmental sustainability was a prerequisite to assistance.
Other market forces have also responded as entrepreneurs have teamed with venture capitalists to launch electric vehicle start-ups, hoping to do for transport what they did for communication and commerce with internet start-ups. Click here to check out some of the cool cars they’re bringing to market.
To effectively combat the immediate challenge of man-made climate change—and eventually build a sustainable, prosperous global society—we must continue taking large strides to “green our rides.” As much as any other aspect of our lives, we control how we get from point A to point B. For those instances when public and self-powered transportation are not practical, green car technology is developing at warp speed.
Seems like only yesterday that the hybrid was the latest and greatest, now the Prius is old news and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are in the pipeline with fully-electric vehicles on the brink of competitiveness. This moment should prove to be crucial for the auto industry, opportunities abound and it will be interesting to see who rises to the occasion.
Click here to learn how much you can save by driving your current car more efficiently.
Click here for tips on reducing the amount you have to drive.
Drive a diesel? Click here to learn about cleaner, more efficient biodiesel fuel.
Discover the latest developments in improving technologies, tightening auto standards, fuel alternatives and how to make your current car eco-friendly. Find out which companies are investing in energy efficient vehicles.
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I am so ready to buy a high-tech, high-quality, efficient vehicle made in America. here’s hoping I can soon…