Sustainability from Indiana to California Documented by Changing Gears
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin 
on 06.29.08
Melissa is inspired by her experiences in the Netherlands and the first time she ate an heirloom tomato at the farmer's market in San Diego. Andy is looking for a thrill bigger than hitting a leadoff homerun in the final game of the Brownstown little league invitational tournament in 1989, when he was 12. Together, they are Changing Gears.
Melissa and Andy are pitting their relationship and their initially untrained bodies against a tour from Bloomington, Indiana, to the coast of California. Along the way, they are photographing and blogging about how sustainability is being expressed by the people and communities they meet. The higher goal is a documentary film about the journey across America and bringing the best ideas about sustainability back to their hometown at the end of the trip.
Currently, the pair are wishing they could float over the flood devastation which throws unexpected detours at every curve. As any bike tourist knows, a short detour on a "tired day" can be a real psychological blow. But their posts and blog document both the unfortunate tragedy of high waters and the seeds of hope in sustainable destinations along their route, including videos of interviews with experts they meet along the way.
We wish Andy and Melissa luck. You might want to bookmark their site, Changing Gears, and enjoy the journey with them.
Tips on how to plan your own bike trip:
Tips for Bicycle Trips, part I
Tips for Bicycle Trips, part II
Warm Showers: Couch Surfing for Bicyclists
Via tipster crashdavis9 and ::Changing Gears
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I have been interested in going green, and I want to know why, going green is more expensive than the old way.
Since going green is reuse, recycle.
If we are recycling, and reusing, I am not sure why being green has to be more money.
Thank you
Debbie
@Deborah: There are lots of reasons why in some cases this is the case, but overall I don't think you are correct in your assessment of costs. To make things reusable and recyclable, not to mention renewable, requires more planning, often a larger up-front cost, and in many cases a better, longer-lasting product. When most people buy things they don't consider how long they will last; if I buy a$4 pack of 50 paper cups instead of a $10 ceramic or glass one, I feel like I am getting a bargain. This is because I don't think about how I have to keep buying the disposables. I also don't think about how producing more garbage is going to drive up my taxes or how using the extra energy to produce the disposable will, over time, raise the cost of gas and fuel oil and electricity.
Green electricity is more expensive because we have less experience at producing it; it won't be for long.
The extra money spent on insulation efficient appliances, if they are more expensive, is almost always seen as savings on energy bills fairly quickly.
As for other things, like low-VOC paint and environmentally friendly materials, we might pay more now. But "conventional" materials might cause more health problems (and related costs) later in life, and environmental costs to our children and grandchildren should be factored in, too.
Your belief is right. Green should be cheaper. And it is- if you consider all the costs and benefits, to you and to others, over the life of the product and beyond. Remember, it was the desire to make things cheap (hence affordable) that got us into this whole global warming mess in the first place. Same goes for "cheap" disposable stuff and unsustainable land use and fishing practices- now we have decimated the world's ecosystems, quietly causing massive economic damage that will last generations. We could have switched to nuclear and started researching renewables as early as the 1960's, and I guarantee the now-developing countries would have followed suit (as they are now in choosing terrible American-style community planning). But we chose "cheap" coal and oil, and so now we must figure out how many trillions of dollars it is going to take to fix it all.