The Green Living Conference on May 3rd was a huge success! The conference featured many local vendors and five excellent speakers and a fantastic lunch provided by That’s a Wrap. Unfortunately Invest Green couldn’t talk due to their compliance not letting them, but you can find out about them here. I’d highly recommend this conference to anyone that wants to learn more about green living. They are holding another conference in November, so be prepared, I’ll announce more about that one when I get more details.

Topics they covered included retrofitting the suburbs for green living, rainwater and gray water harvesting, GM presented on what alt fuel cars they have coming down the line, green building, and what kinds of harmful chemicals are in everyday cleaners and how they affect people. I’ll post a blog covering each topic in the coming days.

Kudos to Greg Peterson of yourguidetogreen.com, Christy Grace, and all the other people that put on this great conference.

Call to action canceled. Looks like AZ Biodiesel will be moving to a new city. Update forthcoming.

Check out the popular posts to the right. –>

The City of Chandler Arizona has ordered AZ Biodiesel to cease operations because of zoning compliance issues and refuses to let them operate while these issues are worked out. AZ Biodiesel is a small company making WVO Biodiesel and can’t afford to be shut down while waiting for Chandler to complete this 3 to 6 month process. AZ Biodiesel has the full support of the city’s fire marshal and has been safely producing biodiesel for their own vehicles for three years at their current location. They are located in a light industrial zone which has been approved for biodiesel production in the City of Phoenix. AZ Biodiesel is the only source of biodiesel made from waste oil in the Phoenix area and it would be a huge shame for the city to loose this valuable resource. Please encourage the City of Chandler to let AZ Biodiesel operate while this process is completed by emailing, calling, or faxing them at the address and phone numbers below.

**Update please read before contacting the City of Chandler. Please check the comments below for the response you’ll get back from Chandler and also AZ Biodiesel’s response to that. There are definitely two sides to every story and maybe both parties have some blame to accept for this mess. As far as I can tell AZ Biodiesel wasn’t trying to get around any planning and zoning laws, they were under the impression they had followed all the rules and had done everything the City had asked. That was until they were shut down without warning. It seems there was some sort of communication disconnect between the City and AZ Biodiesel and instead of working with AZ Biodiesel to fix any issues they shut them down and told them they’d have to wait. Hopefully our letters can help move this process along and get these issues resolved without having to make AZ Biodiesel move or go out of business.

Wow, looks like Arizona college students are making big plans for this year’s Earth Day. Great to see that students are getting involved and making this push.

With Earth Day 2008 set for April 22, students and professors at the state’s universities and community colleges are preparing exhibits, games, fashion shows, movie showings, musical performances and other events to raise awareness about the environment.

Scott, the activities coordinator for Yavapai College’s Verde Valley campus, said the school will show “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary featuring former Vice President Al Gore, to inform students about how the environment is changing.

“It’s up to the next generation to take care of the planet,” said Scott, who is a humanities freshman at Northern Arizona University. “It’s important for people to realize that the Earth is changing and we have to be a part of it or it won’t be a part of our lives for much longer.”

[Read More]

Find out what some of the events are around you at our Earth Day Events Page. Please let us know if we are missing any events.

Just a couple days ago I posted about cohousing and today I noticed this story about Manzanita Village in Prescott. They are receiving a matching grant from the Arizona State Land Department to enhance it’s urban forest and to expand it’s networks of information sharing. They are going to achieve this by hosting workshops where they install cisterns to collect rainwater that falls on their common house. They will be using this to water new forest garden catchment basins that they will also be installing at the workshops. On April 26th and 27th Andrew Millison, local permaculture expert, and Prescott College Instructor, and Macrae Nicoll, of High Desert Rain Catchment will lead the workshops at Manzanita Village. For the full story head over to www.readitnews.com.

If you’ve been to ASU’s main campus you’ve probably seen all the trees full of fruit and maybe assumed the school was using it in it’s cafeterias around campus. I guess not because I just ran across an article saying that some student groups have begun harvesting the fruit to be used around campus. I think it’s great that they are doing this and I hope it’s something that sticks. It makes sense that you’d use the fruit that growing right here. There is a good variety of trees there, navel, Seville and blood oranges, cumquats, limequats, lemons and pecans which are all organic. Thanks to the student group VegAware for doing all the hard work to make this happen!

Here’s the article about it at eCollege Times