The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) is working with a team of interns and volunteers to explore the legal needs of a growing urban agriculture movement. We are developing an online Urban Agriculture Legal Resource Library, and designing resources and presentations that explore legal issues that relate to urban agriculture, including: land acquisition, zoning, property taxes, land covenants, health codes, building codes, nuisance laws, land conservation tools, and so on.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) facilitates the growth of sustainable, localized, and just economies, through legal research, professional training, resource development, and education about practices such as:

· Cooperatives
· Community-supported enterprises
· Barter
· Sharing
· Local currencies
· Intentional communities, ecovillages, cohousing
· Affordable housing and limited equity housing
· Urban agriculture
· Community-based renewable energy
· Community land trusts
· Social enterprise
· Microlending
· Local investing
· Co-op banks/credit unions

From Orlando homeowner battles HOA, wants roof to reflect energy-saving ethic:

She said she understands that her neighbors denied the request because no one else has a white roof.

But “until you get one white roof, you can’t have two. Until you have two, you wouldn’t have three,” Piper said. “If we did all the roofs at one time, with $100 of savings a year on each one and 100 homes, that’s $10,000 … for electricity that is just wasted now.”

From “Betting on the Farm” by Lindy T. Shepherd:

But Florida Hospital’s Paradis deliberately partnered with an entity outside of the hospital’s insular system, rather than re-create the project within the hospital system. “I’m big enough to do the whole thing,” says Paradis of the hospital’s resources, “but I’m choosing to talk to (Homegrown Co-op), because (those) guys are so passionate – I call Michael and Emily ‘community passionaries.’”

They will also be opening a retail store sometime in the Fall, according to the article. On Orange Avenue, on one end of the “Antique Row” along Lake Ivanhoe. Orlando has sorely needed something like this for a long time, and now thanks to a generous matching grant program from Florida Hospital, it can become a reality, despite a rough economic climate.

The Weekly article says Homegrown will not be selling pork products because of Florida Hospital’s involvement. That’s a small price to pay for such a huge leg-up in your third year of existence. I honestly can’t wait for the retail store to open, and for Orlando to become a bit more self-sustaining.

The Fair Trade Project is holding a poker run–bike style! Registration is only $5 and will start at 2:30pm at Austin’s. The 10+ mile ride will start at 4 and take you to local stores that sell fair trade: Chamberlin’s Natural Foods, Enzian Theater, Ten Thousand Villages, Whole Foods and Austin’s. You’ll pick up a playing card at each stop to complete your poker hand.

We’ll have great prizes from each stop for the person with the best hand, plus additional prizes, including great stuff from local bike shops. After we give out the prizes at 6:30, we’ll have a free show featuring local music.

Even if you don’t participate in the ride, we hope you’ll join us for the show. See you there!

Read more from The Fair Trade Project Facebook Page:

The Fair Trade Project seeks to help disadvantaged producers receive a just price for their goods while building relationships and encouraging social and environmental responsibility. When people are paid a fair price for what they produce, they can pull themselves, their families, and their communities out of poverty.

You can make a difference simply by buying fair trade products.

I get a weekly deliver of a fruit and vegetable basket from a local farm. I describe how i am going to use forever bags to store the produce. Do a search in your local area for the same service.

Do you have CSA in your area? Are you a subscriber? How much of your weekly food for meals is actually grown locally?

Download Eco Footprint Special: 350.org
ecofactory_350.mp3
Length: 3:04

Gabe LeBlanc of EcoFactory left me this message about the event being held on 10/24/09 to raise awareness about the level of Carbon in the air. More info can be found at http://350.org and http://ecofactory.com

Gabe is offering free beer to the first 350 people to arrive at Orlando Brewing at 3:50 PM on October 24th. Gabe is doing awesome stuff in our community, and I recommend everyone go and support him, or find a similar event in your area.

• Hand-made food
• It was all grown locally
• Community
• Deliciousness
• Someone made a video about it!

When Life Gives You Lemons, Preserve Them! from OrganicNation on Vimeo.

From Organic Nation.tv – A Quick Tutorial On How To Preserve Lemons (Video):

We caught up with blogger/foodie/activist Rachel Weidinger, who also happens to be an expert preserver, at her Homegrown Village booth at MakerFaire 2009 in San Mateo, California. She showed us how to preserve fresh lemons with salt so they will last a year and taste delicious added to omelets, hummus, salads and pasta:

Special thanks to Homegrown.org and FarmAid for putting on this great event! You can fiind more tips from Rachel on her blog AKitchenOfHerOwn.com or follow her on Twitter @Rachelannyes.

-Dorothee

Chris Heuer, who I’ve seen speak at a local blogging conference a couple of times, posted this audio to a phone-blogging service called Utterz yesterday, and got a cool response. Here’s Chris on The Mind Body Connection:

Do you have any experiences with this phenomenon? Go over to Utterz and reply to Chris’ post. I know he’ll appreciate it.

Thanks to the bloggers over at Simple Shoes for posting this… a fun way to think about Shrinking Your Eco Footprint.

I know I have not been keeping up with the blogging/podcasting over here at Shrink Your Ecological Footprint, but at the same time I don’t believe people should apologize for not blogging. Still, I think there are some really great resources out there for folks looking for inspiration to get themselves or others motivated to think about what is happening to ourselves and the world right now.

The Conscious Business Podcast is one of many shows published by some nice boys from Boulder at their Falling Fruit website. They are spiritual geeks, as well as often talking about philosophy and environmental issues. It’s difficult to describe exactly what they do, so instead I’d like you to sample some of their best work.

A few months ago, the guys (like the host who always introduces himself as “myself, Theo Horesh”) interviewed Joshua Onysko, Founder and CEO of Pangea Organics, an organic soap and bodycare company. Pangea is one of the epitomic example of a “conscious” business. Not only are they green, but they always pay their emplyees a fair wage and they have even opened up all of the inner workings of their business to the world for scrutiny. More on that in the podcasts though.

The interview is broken into two parts:

How to Build a Better Banana Peel

and

How Responsible Can Businesses Actually Be?

Props to Duff and Theo for their excellent program. I hope they can pass the inspiration along to you.

The video I want to focus on is a talk give by Dan Hill, who is a design, web, media, city, travel, culture, architecture, music, creative type of fellow. He takes several ideas and mashes them up to make you think about a world where you measure your usage of resources, and the possible logical ends of those measurements. You really have to watch the video to get the meaning. Go on, click the link and come back, I’ll wait… It’s a little over 10 minutes, just to warn you.

The Well-Tempered Personal Environment: Chucking social software at your local energy sources, giving you a personal energy profile, which can then be aggregated to your street, your mates, your neighbourhood, your region, your city etc.

They start playing “These boots are made for walking” because he’s passed his 10-minute time limit – each talk at InterestingSouth is between 3 and 10 minutes. The event is only one night, and doesn’t take very long, but I’m sure everyone walks away with a head full of new ideas, inspiration and questions.

I’m interested to see what people can think of once we collect 5 years worth of that data, or 25 years. After a century, the world will be in a completely different place. Who knows what our great grandchildren will have moved on to then?

Dan’s blog post about The Well-Tempered Personal Environment

See the ‘Facebook App’ slide from the talk

I’d like to post a lot of relevant links to go with this video, but that will take a little while. Check back soon for some more info.

Anyway, the message is simple – save the organic farms, save the cheerleader – wait, maybe it’s “with great food comes great responsibility”, or… you decide.

Here’s a video I recently came across that takes you to NYC’s Babeland, a sex shop where they sell eco-friendly lubes and toys. Check out the original post on Treehugger for more video: How to buy Green Lube.

Click To Play

Sandra Diaz and Jeremy Seghers of Carbon Productions speak about the issue behind this year’s Heart of Coal, Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining. Heart of Coal was a theatre production at the 2007 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival. Sandra points out iLoveMountains.org as a place to go for more information on the issue.

For more information about Orlando Fringe, check out OrlandoFringe.org, MySpace and our sister site, Blogging Fringe.

P.S. Clicking on the ad at the end of the video helps pay for our web hosting! We appreciate the support.

Ryan Price here, producer of the Shrink Your Ecological Footprint Podcast. If you take a look, you’ll realize we haven’t recorded any new episodes in a while. There are a number of reasons for this, but I think one of them is people. Gina and I are still very interested in doing the podcast, but more people makes for better conversation, more viewpoints and a richer end-product. By working together we can make something bigger and better than by working alone. This is true for environmental issues, personal health and podcasts, too.

If you’re interested in making a guest appearance, becoming a regular speaker, or just getting added to the rotation, we can accommodate your request. We use Skype to record all the shows, and right now we don’t have a regular recording time since we’ve been away for so long. Use the contact form at the top of this page to get in touch with me and tell me what you’re passionate about. We’ve got someone to cover technology and someone for personal nutrition and wellness, we could use some more specialists in other areas, so tell us what you’d like to contribute.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the first 5 episodes, and hope you’ll enjoy those that will come in the future! Leave a comment here if you just have suggestions or feedback. I’d love to know where you’re listening from.

Peace,
Ryan Price
Producer
Liberatr.net

A brand new show about Environment, Community, Life Hacking, making a difference and generally improving quality of life on the planet. At least that’s the goal. Gina Riggio and Ryan Price host, and they even give out homework assignments!

Links:

• WEH!
• Arizona Light Rail
• Orlando Commuter Rail
• Commuter Rail vs. Population Density
• The Applet of My Eye
• Coworking Orlando
• Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability
• World Changing Book
• Ecological Footprint Quiz
• Simple Shoe Company
• Specific Carbohydrate Diet on Wikipedia
• FootprintPodcast Tag on Ma.gnolia
• FootprintPodcast Tag on del.icio.us Bookmark Sharing
• Gina Riggio
• Thank you Cervo Systems and Detroit Creative Group for hosting all the Liberatr.net shows.

A brand new show about Environment, Community, Life Hacking, making a difference and generally improving quality of life on the planet. At least that’s the goal. Gina Riggio and Ryan Price host, and they even give out homework assignments!

Links:

• World Changing Book
• Ecological Footprint Quiz
• Simple Shoe Company
• Specific Carbohydrate Diet on Wikipedia
• FootprintPodcast Tag on del.icio.us Bookmark Sharing
• Gina Riggio
• Thank you Cervo Systems and Detroit Creative Group for hosting all the Liberatr.net shows.
• My Odeo Channel (odeo/3e158a6fe8fd8809)

A brand new show about Environment, Community, Life Hacking, making a difference and generally improving quality of life on the planet. At least that’s the goal. Gina Riggio and Ryan Price host, and they even give out homework assignments!

Links:

• World Changing Book
• Ecological Footprint Quiz
• Green Hotels on WorldChanging
• Presto Cleaner
• AZ Healthy Homes
• Seaside Naturals
• Simple Shoe Company
• Specific Carbohydrate Diet on Wikipedia
• FootprintPodcast Tag on del.icio.us Bookmark Sharing
• Gina Riggio
• Thank you Cervo Systems and Detroit Creative Group for hosting all the Liberatr.net shows.

A brand new show about Environment, Community, Life Hacking, making a difference and generally improving quality of life on the planet. At least that’s the goal. Gina Riggio and Ryan Price host, and they even give out homework assignments!

Links:

• World Changing Book
• Ecological Footprint Quiz
• Gentle Strength Co-Op
• Fish Hugger
• Solar-Powered Messenger Bag
• Edible Phoenix Magazine
• Smart Spaces TV – The Urban Farm’s Show
• REI Co-Op Sporting Goods Store
• Footprint Tag on del.icio.us Bookmark Sharing
• Gina Riggio
• Thank you Cervo Systems and Detroit Creative Group for hosting all the Liberatr.net shows.