The Green Expo, An Inconvenient Truth

This weekend, instead of going to GMAT classes like I was supposed to, I hung out with a good friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a while. She was working a booth at NYC's first Green Expo convention at the Hilton in Midtown.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the "light green" person I said I was when I registered and bought my ticket. I should have said I was not green at all but I gave myself some slack by saying that I at least cared to attend the convention (OK so it was to see my friend but still).

There were a lot of people that showed up at the convention! I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people checking out the event. And there were all sorts of exhibitors. Some were utility companies demonstrating environmentally safe ways of generating energy (solar, wind, water). Many others were selling environmentally friendly products from food, to clothes, to face creams.

Here are the top booths that I thought were really interesting:

1) Cardboardesign (http://www.cardboardesign.com/): I was getting a little bored about 30 minutes into the expo when I saw this booth in the corner selling furniture and decorations all made out of recycled cardboard! Some of these were fun to play with, like the vases and pencil holders which kind of morphed into a shape based on the item it was holding (vase, pencils, plants). Others were just really cool like the tables and chairs which were as sturdy the aluminum chairs and wooden tables in my house. They also were made out of recycled cardboard. As tough as sturdy as the tables and chairs were, it would probably not be a good thing if I spilled a liquid onto the surface. Even so, a really cool concept.

2) Revolve (http://www.revolvebrand.net/): While sipping on my second box of organic chocolate milk (REALLY GOOD BTW), I saw this booth which was selling some shirts with some awesome designs. Also I saw a nice hoody that was kind of furry but was made from recycled plastic bottles. Don't ask me how the same plastic bottles I drink soda from turn into a nice feeling hoody jacket but I thought that was pretty cool too.

3) HSBC: Okay sorry, this is a shameless plug for a my friend's booth. But I learned a little about what "carbon foot printing" is and also about how HSBC is covering its own carbon footprints. Hopefully I'm explaining this correctly, but one of the causes of global warming is from the release of carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere which makes the atmosphere thicker and thereby traps heat caused by the sun. Anything that creates carbon is also creating a carbon footprint. And there are a variety of ways which carbon footprints are made. For instance, from HSBC trucks (why they would have them I'm not sure but this makes it an easy example). Let's say an HSBC truck creates a ton of carbon a year from operation. HSBC will offset that ton of carbon produced by the truck by planting a trees which will help absorb some of that carbon. But it just goes to show you that even big corporations are taking environmentalism seriously.

I learned a lot and while I'm not a "heavy green" yet, I'll hopefully edge towards a "medium green" having been to this convention.

Afterwards, I watched an "Inconvenient Truth", the documentary by Al Gore on Global Warming. I have to say for a guy who I labeled as a monotone talker and sleepy politician, he was an excellent speaker and presenter on Global Warming. I learned a lot from the film and found everything interesting. I especially found the consequences quite alarming too. There were two examples that stuck out for me.

The first one involved the melting of the polar ice caps. And in the video they showed a polar bear swimming looking for a place to land. Well if there are no ice caps, then, the polar bear has no where to go, and well if you have no wear to go, you'll eventually drown. Can you imagine having the land around you all of a sudden disappear into the water and having no place to go to for land? That is scary.

The second example showed maps of what the world would look like if Greenland melted away, causing the world's water levels to rise. Florida would have a large chunk submerged. The World Trade Center memorial would be submerged. Parts of Europe would be inhabitable. We'd have to redraw the maps of the entire world. Shocking.

It's definitely a must-see movie.