How much of your current job could you accomplish via telecommuting? Would you dress for “work from home” or just wear a bathrobe? Best Buy is among other local companies and organizations that encourage telecommuting. What business sectors or industries are especially “ripe” for telecommuting?

With this in mind, “a proposal for ending the sale of pop and water in environmentally unfriendly plastic bottles in the district’s 20 metro-area parks and reserves will be before commissioners in about a month.”

Eliminating the bottles would eliminate that trash, save the energy tied up in producing and delivering the plastic containers, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 7,000 pounds a year, “without negatively affecting the park district’s ability to provide water to guests,” [Director of natural resources for the park district John] Barten said.

But others are skeptical of the idea. “I don’t like government and I don’t like being told what to do,” said Commissioner Mark Haggerty. “I don’t think we should stop selling plastic bottled water until we have an alternative.”

As Ed Kohler points out on The Deets post on the subject, “the parks offer drinking fountains at their buildings, and many have additional drinking fountains and pumps throughout the parks, so there is little chance of someone dying from thirst to the lack of water distributed in plastic bottles.”

What great alternative is Haggerty hoping for? What is he so darn worried about? Why the resistance? I wonder how much money is being made off this water and who is making it? Could be a big deal financially. Perhaps he’s hoping for an alternative income.

But Kohler brings up another (far more amusing) point:

Looking at Commissioner Haggerty’s photo on the Three Rivers site, I get the impression that he grew up in a time before plastic bottled water was sold in parks (I did too, and Haggery appears to be older than me), considering that the bottles were invented for soda in 1967 and didn’t become popular for retail water sales until much later (Perrier got rolling in 1977 with glass bottles).

I suppose the parks were dangerous then — what with all those people dying of thirst.

Bottom line:

Three Rivers Park District’s mission is “[T]o promote environmental stewardship through recreation and education in a natural resources-based park system.” Environmental stewardship and parks selling plastic bottled water don’t mix.

Environmentalists have criticized salmon farming, complaining that it pollutes water supplies and damages natural habitats. Farmed salmon are also prone to disease — which are fought through antibiotics, but can still cause outbreaks when infected farm fish escape and spread the disease to wild fish.

Way to go, Target!

Futurist Cecily Sommers from the Push Institute shares her ideas about the the future of privatization, green technology, and the media with Mpls.St.Paul Magazine reporter Steve Marsh — over home-brewed sake no less.

“Now a contentious battle is being waged at the Capitol over how to spend the millions raised yearly for the Outdoor Heritage Fund — the chunk of money that’s supposed to go for wildlife habitat,” writes the Star-Tribune’s Doug Smith.

The Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment is going to raise $7.5 billion through a sales tax over 25 years. But a guide (in draft form) to the Amendment states that the money should be allocated based on priorities like stimulating local economies and creating jobs and to “urban area habitat projects.”

Environmental consciousness runs deep as a White Earth Reservation lake here. Anyone have some suggestions on what needs improvement? The intent was clearly to protect fish, game and wildlife.  Not a bike path, or a place where people’s dogs can frolic.

What do our green people have to say about this? Is the solution plastic in this case? Why not decorate living trees? Why not plant a holiday spruce in Rice Park, and save on death and cement?

I guess the country is in survival mode for now (clearly not the survival of trees), but with the 2010 Living Green Expo canceled, who’s looking out for the environment?