Thursday, July 31, 2008

Making a Life (Green Living)

Redefining Success and Rediscovering Joy


By John Ivanko & Lisa Kivirist

Adapted from the book ECOpreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet Before Profits (New Society Publishers)

© Elizabeth Prager
Life offers more than a paycheck, corner office and promotional title. In fact, many of us are working ourselves to death. For many people, their identity is so closely associated with their job that when they stop working, they end up passing away not long afterwards, lacking hobbies, social connections or life purpose. A shift in perspective is underway, from desiring a standard of living defined by possessions and financial wealth to a quality of life defined by experiences and genuine well-being.

The New Quality of Life

When redesigning and reorienting our home life, my family started experimenting with our own ecologically modeled Diversified Quality of Life Index, measured by various factors including the health of relationships, enjoyment of work, level of satisfaction with life and opportunity for continued development and community involvement. Community involvement can be immediately local and place-based, or it can be virtual (on the Internet) or temporal (at a Green Festival or renewable energy fair). Our currency is composed of joy, happiness, friendship, satisfying self-reliance, peace. Generating cash flow, while necessary, usually accounts for less than five or six hours of work per day on average, leaving plenty of time for non-financial aspects of our Earth Mission and pursuit of happiness. As it turns out, much of our income-producing work does not command high compensation. And we’re not afraid to walk away from obligatory or harmful relationships any more than we are to divorce ourselves from our once dependency on the conventional food system.

The Gross National Product (GNP) is the total value of the free market economy’s output of goods and services, measured in money. We’d argue that it’s measuring a false sense of prosperity. In fact, such atrocities as the September 11 terrorist acts, the Exxon Valdez disaster, violent crimes, divorces, the wars on drugs or terror, and the expanding prison network all contribute to the GNP. Not accounted for within GNP is the loss of natural capital: soil, forests, water and wildlife. Nor are the ecological services rendered by the biological processes of nature: the cleansing of water, wetlands buffering coastal areas from storms, sequestering carbon dioxide taken in by trees—all of which foster climate stability.

As if GNP is not enough, add to it the Consumer Confidence Index, an index developed to measure “consumers’ expectations” toward employment and other conditions that, statistically speaking, influence their willingness to keep spending. The Consumer Confidence Index and GNP measure the wrong things. Our health, our happiness, our deep connection to the natural world and our local community are far more important than helping support the continued—and unsustainable—increase in spending. Our family’s business life dovetails and intersects with the Multiple Ec-onomies of Ecopreneurship in which we thrive, bartering for a granite countertop installation, writing an article in exchange for an advertisement for our book and donating a set of multicultural children’s books to help raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foun-dation.

Spend Less, Live More

It turns out that our questioning of the GNP is similar to what the nonprofit organization Redefining Progress has been proposing with their Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which values things like volunteerism and accounts for loss of natural capital and for the loss of leisure suffered by people working excess hours. According to their scientific methodology, while the GNP has continued to rise, their Genuine Progress Indicator has steadily fallen since the 1970s. Economist Mark Anielski, author of The Economics of Happiness (New Society Publishers), developed Genuine Wealth, a practical economic model that helps redefine progress based on five capitals: human, social, natural, built and financial.

Our family’s life changes have helped us focus on what’s important, meaningful and authentic—and probably interpreted negatively by those calculating the Consumer Confi-dence Index. We’re not advocating millions of Americans to take a vow of poverty. Rather, we’re inviting everyone to join millions of Americans who are living below their means, downshifting their consumption, sharing instead of hording and simplifying instead of spending more at the mall. Spend less, live more.

JOHN IVANKO and LISA KIVIRIST are coauthors of Rural Renaissance and Edible Earth, and innkeepers of Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast.


The World is Flat (free audiobook)


To download, right-click (or Control+click) and select "Save Target As".


Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Hardcover
September 2008

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

Why We Need a Green Revolution - And How it Can Renew America

Thomas L. Friedman's no. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see globalization in a new way. Now Friedman brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy—both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to all of us who are concerned about the state of America in the global future.

Friedman proposes that an ambitious national strategy—which he calls "Geo-Greenism"—is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating; it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.

As in The World Is Flat, he explains a new era—the Energy-Climate era—through an illuminating account of recent events. He shows how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet (which brought 3 billion new consumers onto the world stage) have combined to bring climate and energy issues to Main Street. But they have not gone very far down Main Street; the much-touted "green revolution" has hardly begun. With all that in mind, Friedman sets out the clean-technology breakthroughs we, and the world, will need; he shows that the ET (Energy Technology) revolution will be both transformative and disruptive; and he explains why America must lead this revolution—with the first Green President and a Green New Deal, spurred by the Greenest Generation.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman—fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

www.ThomasLFriedman.com

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Friday, July 25, 2008

Clean Tech Intro: The Solar Family

/top_stories/article/37748/print

Solar power means more than solar panels. These days it can also mean collectors, towers, dyes, oh my! Here’s a guide to (most of) the different kinds of solar technologies that are out there today.

First, the basics: Anything that uses solar energy as a source of power is solar-powered. Simple, right? Well let’s not forget that the sun gives us more than a whole spectrum of light, it also gives us heat. Both are used for a wide variety of applications, not just electricity.



1. Solar Thermal

Solar thermal technologies use heat. Cleantechnica has already introduced solar thermal. The cheapest, easiest, and most financially sound solar investment you can make for a house is to install a solar thermal collector. It collects solar energy to provide warm water or warm air for your house, even in the far north. On a larger scale, mirrors can be used to focus heat from the sun to boil water and turn a turbine. Generating electricity with this method is called Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). Large scale CSP projects are already underway in deserts around the globe, and in some places they are invigorating the economy.

The cool thing about CSP is that it overcomes one of the major problems with renewable energy. It used to be true that solar farms stopped producing energy as soon as the sun went down. No longer. Heat is much easier and cheaper to store than electricity, so you can save it for the hours or days when the sun doesn’t shine. Power towers and molten salt are just two methods of producing solar power whenever we need it.

2. Photovoltaics

Photovoltaics are solar technologies that transform light into electricity. Certain elements and chemicals, called solar cells, can lose electrons when exposed to photons (light). Under the right conditions, these electrons are harnessed as electricity. For a more technical explanation, check out Wikipedia. To learn more about the use of solar photovoltaics on homes for energy-production, click here.

3. Silicon

This is the most widely used and recognizable material used to make solar panels. Paired with solar cells, silicon can produce high efficiency solar panels. However, silicon panels tend to be more expensive to make, transport, and install because they’re heavy, rigid, and require plenty of high-quality materials. Thin-film silicon panels attempt to overcome these obstacles. The downside: silicon panels work best on cloudless days when the sun is directly overhead. That’s why silicon panels are often positioned on racks to face the sun. The cost of these racks, and loading the panels on them, often consume 50% of the cost of silicon panel installation.

Another strategy to reduce the cost of silicon panels is to use less of them, but still generate plenty of energy. This is possible by concentrating sunlight onto the panel. More intense light means more energy”¦ if you don’t melt your panel in the process. This technology is called Extreme Concentrated Photovoltaics (XCPV).

4. Thin Film

Thin film solar panels are very thin and flexible; the solar cells can be placed on sheets of plastic or aluminum. They should not be confused with silicon thin-films, which use a different manufacturing method. Thin film solar panels tend to be easier to make, use fewer and cheaper materials, and are easier to transport and install. Some thin films absorb different wavelengths of light, which can make them more practical in cloudy regions. The downside: they’re still less efficient than silicon panels, so they don’t produce as much energy. Their efficiency can sometimes degrade over time, depending on the materials and environment. To learn about thin-film installations on homes, click here.

5. Solar Dyes

Here is another promising technology that is still being developed. Invented by the Swiss in the 1990s, the idea is to produce solar cells in cheap, easy, attractive dyes that can be painted or sprayed onto almost any surface. The benefit is both cost and application: the dyes are only one tenth of the cost of silicon panels and you can boldly take them where solar has never gone before. Imagine painting your house with solar cells and reaping just enough energy to power your microwave. That is the downside: solar dyes are not yet as efficient as thin film solar, and many dyes only last several years instead of decades.

6. Radical Solar Technologies

Some tech exists that push the definition of “solar power”. For example, algae can be used to produce biodiesel and ethanol. If you fill your car with this fuel, is your car solar powered? What about passive solar technology, which controls how and when sunlight affects buildings? Since the sun is a major engine driving our planet, the possibilities for harnessing its energy are infinite.


Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future

Foreword
Contents
Study Panel
Preface
Report Review
Acknowledgements
Executive Summary
1. The Sustainable Energy Challenge
2. Energy Demand and Efficiency
3. Energy Supply
4. The Role of Government and the Contribution of Science and Technology
5. The Case for Immediate Action
Annex A. Study Panel Biographies
Annex B: Acronyms and abbreviations
Annex C: Common energy unit conversion factors and unit prefixes
Annex D: List of boxes, figures, and tables


Commissioned by the governments of Brazil and China, this report identifies a scientific consensus framework for directing global energy development. It lays out the science, technology and policy roadmap for developing energy resources to drive economic growth in both industrialized and developing countries while also securing climate protection and global development goals. The report was produced by a study panel of 15 world-renowned energy experts, co-chaired by Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the United States, and José Goldemberg, former Secretary of State for the Environment for the State of São Paulo, Brazil.

Lighting the way establishes the best practices for a global transition to a clean, affordable and sustainable energy supply in both developing and developed countries. The report addresses incentives that can accelerate the development of innovative solutions, provides recommendations for financial investments in research and development and explores other transition pathways that can transform the landscape of energy supply and demand around the globe.

In addressing mitigation of the environmental impacts of energy generation and use, Lighting the way informs global action on climate change, such as implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, agenda setting for the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, and ongoing multinational talks on future global action to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Lighting the way also confronts the unequal access to energy experienced by the one-third of the world’s population without access to basic energy services, and makes recommendations for addressing this disparity as well as for promoting national and global energy security.

The complete report is available on this site in HTML format through the links at left. The complete report is also available for download in chapters in PDF files.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Simple Things to Know

Source link

1. Trees are not forests. You need forests if you want to save the planet and its animals – including humans. Forests take even longer to grow than trees, and a thousand seedlings don’t replace a single old growth tree.

Big old trees produce water, drawing it from the atmosphere and ground to replenish the world. A single big old tree can have up to twenty hectares of leaf surface area, on which a huge mass of water condenses each night.

Old growth forests with intact canopies can generate twelve million litres of water per hectare or more each and every year, and add this water to local streams and water tables. Newly planted trees, on the other hand, suck water from the ground at a rate of up to six million litres per hectare per year. See Trees- Guardians of the Earth The best way to store carbon and save the planetary ecosystem is to stop cutting down trees. Planting more trees is a great idea – if you plant a broad diversity of localised species, and if you intend to leave most of them in the ground.

A plantation is not a forest – it’s a soil-destroying, water-sucking factory operation. Wood pulp produces terribly inferior paper and destroys irreplaceable forests and ecologies. Cutting down forests while banning superior, longer-lasting alternatives is actually criminal behaviour, engaged in by monopolies that have successfully avoided anti-tort legislation. Hemp paper is superior in every respect to wood pulp and can be farmed without need for massive pesticides or gigalitres of water – but most forests are provided for free to ecology-devouring corporations, by ‘governments’ that are just packs of well-bribed lawyers. Any money returned to the public purse from logging is usually paid back to the companies through subsidies and freely provided infrastructure.

3. Plenty of viable alternatives already exist to fuel and power our civilization. Various forms of free energy are not only real – many have been patented. The Earth swims in a vast sea of energy which can easily be tapped to provide totally free electricity.

You can run your current vehicle on gas – not hydrogen – derived from simple water. One litre of water produces thousands of litres of usable gas that you can produce yourself with ease.

Free energy sources make it possible to accomplish anything we can dream of, including repairing this planet - and accessing other ones. Free abundant energy is available to everyone, and it’s the prerequisite for true freedom. Electrical power is economic and political power and free energy means no more oligarchic monopolists – no more oleaginous oil barons, old kings coal or unclear nuclear madmen. That’s why there’s no point waiting for industry or governments to provide these devices and technologies, or even let you know they exist. You have to do it yourself – or work with someone who can.

See http://gonow.to/freeenergy

4. Money doesn’t exist and the emperor has no clothes. The world’s economic system is nothing more than a fable spread by unscientific inept bean counters who call themselves ‘economists’. The entire global monetary system is a rort designed to keep everyone’s eyes off the real inequity inherent in the system – and the fact that a handful of control freaks ‘own’ almost all the world’s real wealth.

Forty percent of the world’s wealth is co-opted by institutions that produce nothing at all – bankers and other fine ants in the swarming insect hives of identically suited clones. Financial jugglers and sleight of hand specialists tie up almost half of the world’s economy and suck the planet dry. The world’s economic system is a colossal confidence game based on promises of never-ending growth that must one day be broken. It’s a pyramid scam in which the first ones in are the only ones who can win – and it only works for a while because another sucker (consumer) is born every minute.

While everyone continues working for madmen, few can’t see that everyone on the planet could be housed, fed, educated, healed and entertained for ‘free’ – if most of the wealth wasn’t sucked into the infinitely greedy gullets of gangsters, warmongers and conmen that most people mistake for leaders and pillars of society. Money certainly doesn’t equal merit, and any so-called meritocracy is doomed to become a corrupt den of nepotism and undeserved privilege. Meritocracies are neither democratic nor egalitarian.

Anyone who holds onto an excess of money is corrupt and the only routes to supreme wealth and power – and the only ways to hold onto them - involve weapons and death. An excess of anything implies a lack of balance, and hording money is a sign of dangerous greed and insecurity, a lack of trust in providence and Humanity that inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you can call alienated disappointment a ‘fulfilling’ lifestyle.

Money is literally invented and shunted from one hidden account to another in a modern electronic sleight of hand. It’s an open secret that many groups have the ability to totally bamboozle the computerised accounts in which everyone is forced to place their trust and Trusts. You can be elevated to wealth in an instant or have all your assets disappear just as quickly in the New World Order.

Identity theft is a very low-level aspect of a thoroughly falsifiable system that controls the lives and fortunes of presidents and potentates – and you. Intelligence agencies control everything on behalf of unseen masters; they display a narrow-minded one-track intelligence, with no integrity or wisdom beyond the ruthless dictates of racist dynasties. All true power flows down from the unseen observers at the top of the societal pyramid.

Keeping workers on the edge of terror and making them afraid of losing everything they’ve worked for – terrified of being thrown into the deliberately maintained underclasses of poverty-stricken ‘underprivileged unfortunates’ - is all it takes to keep most people from seeing the truth or rocking the boat. Modern citizens are all slave labourers on the Titanic, and the unsinkable ship of civilization is headed for an iceberg we could easily avoid. Unfortunately, there aren’t nearly enough lifeboats - and the ship’s owners think there are too many passengers anyway.

In the uneconomic hypnotic surreality under which most people live, something is only ‘worth’ what someone is prepared to pay for it. Nothing has any intrinsic value at all and everything – and everyone – becomes equally disposable. The world isn’t a precious pearl of paradise but a resource to be exploited and cast aside – like human beings.

Oil and food are not more expensive because of some sudden scarcity, or even because of increased demand – they’re more expensive because the ‘owners’ of these resources are charging us more for them, because they can; we let them get away with it. The world’s wealth has been sequestered by individual families for their own gain. It’s that simple. Do I need to name names?

You can read more in this link

15 Future Wonders of Green Technology

As the world increasingly focuses on sustainable initiatives, green architecture is a booming industry. Everything from single-family residences to giant 1.2-million-square-foot complexes complete with giant skyscrapers is getting the green treatment, and the innovation that’s going into these plans is more complex than ever. Some of these structures will debut as early as the fall of 2008 while others present a view of what 100 years from now may hold, but all represent amazing leaps in green technology that push the boundaries of what we’ve ever thought possible.

Architect David Fisher has proposed a plan for rotating towers that produce all of their own energy through wind power. The ‘Rotating Tower’ would be built by stacking ‘platters’ on a central concrete core with wind turbines located between each of them. Each floor will rotate 360 degrees about once every 90 minutes; as the floors will rotate independently, they will create a constantly changing silhouette in the sky. Inside the concrete core will be elevators, emergency stairs and lobbies. The Rotating Tower will be built in Dubai in the next six months.

As water becomes an even hotter commodity in the future, engineers are looking for ways to ensure a continued supply of fresh water to meet the needs of the world’s growing population. Charles Patton is tackling this problem with his ‘Seawater Greenhouse’, a carbon-neutral desalination method which is being incorporated into the design of the Teatro del Agua. This ‘Theater of Water’ will be a performing arts center in Spain’s Canary Islands. It works by coupling “a series of evaporators and condensers such that the airborne moisture from the evaporators is then collected from the condensers, which are cooled by deep seawater.” The center will operate almost entirely on renewable energy.

The ‘Dice House’ is a zero carbon home, which can either stand alone or function as attached multiple dwellings. Designed by Sybarite, a British architecture firm, the Dice House is a 9 x 9 meter cube that sits on an octagonal plinth. Three levels inside the cube have large, plentiful windows to maximize views. A large thermoplastic ‘umbrella’ on the garden roof of the house shades and insulates the house and collects solar energy.

The new Las Vegas ‘CityCenter’ is the largest privately financed development in North America. This $8 billion project is a joint venture between MGM Mirage and Dubai World. Designing the CityCenter will be renowned green architects including Pelli Clarke Pelli, Foster + Partners and Rafael Vinoly. MGM Mirage has trained over 10,000 construction tradesmen on green building practices to be put into place in the structures. CityCenter, which will house hotels, casinos, restaurants, retail space, entertainment space and a $40M public fine arts center, is touted by its developers as a model of sustainability. Recycling construction waste, using environmentally friendly materials, emphasizing natural light and incorporating an onsite co-generation power plant are just a few of the sustainability initiatives that will be put into place.

Architect Sheila Kennedy has designed the Soft House, a structure that harvests energy through solar-energy-collecting textiles hung in the home like curtains. These thin-film photovoltaic textiles can create close to 16,000 watt-hours of electricity, providing about half of the home’s power. Though the high cost of this solar technology makes the Soft House unlikely to become reality any time soon, Kennedy hopes that the design will show others that renewable energy technologies can be incorporated into structures in creative and unexpected ways.

The world’s first passive house museum is set to be built in Ulricehamn, Sweden, functioning as a visitor’s center. The building’s heat will be supplied entirely by the body heat of visitors and the equipment located inside. Solar cells on the roof will provide part of the energy used to run electrical equipment and heat water. The circular design of the structure will allow efficient circulation of air to enhance the passive heating and cooling of the building.

The Chicago Spire is an ambitious project currently under construction in the Windy City. At 2,000 feet, the spire will be North America’s tallest free-standing structure and the tallest all-residential building in the world. Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and managed by the Shelbourne Development Group, the Chicago Spire was designed to mimic the natural form of a nautilus shell. The structure is anticipated to have a LEED gold rating; it will be outfitted with rainwater harvesting systems, geothermal cooling and high performance glass designed to protect migratory birds. The Chicago Spire is set to be completed in 2011.

Frasers Broadway, a commercial, residential and retail complex, will be Australia’s most sustainable building. The designers, including Pritzker Prize winners Foster & Partners and Ateliers Jean Nouvel, will incorporate such eco-friendly features as a gas-powered co-generation electricity plant, green rooftops, a wastewater recycling plant, smart metering and solar power into the design in an attempt to achieve carbon neutrality. The 250,000 square meter development will be located in the old Kent Brewery in Sydney.

Pelli Clark Pelli architects recently got approval for their design for a new green Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. The transit center will consist of a glass tower and a five-and-a-half acre public park, and will be packed with sustainable features like green roofs, passive solar shading, wind turbines, a rain and graywater recycling system and geothermal heating and cooling. The aim of the building is to centralize the region’s transportation system while also providing a community space. The center will be completed by 2014.

China’s population is exploding while its industrial ventures are producing more pollution than ever – a combination that makes it difficult to be eco-friendly. A new sustainable housing project called Habitat 2020 aims to be one of the leaders in bringing environmental initiatives to this growing country. The Habitat 2020 building will feature an ‘active skin’: a membrane between the exterior and interior walls that will absorb air, water and light from outside and dispatch it inside as clean filtered water, natural air conditioning and electricity. The same funnels on the membrane that pull these resources in will also emit clean, CO2-free air from inside the building. This urban megalopolis is set to be complete in 2020.

Another project that aims to act as a ‘living’ structure is the California Academy of Sciences museum set to open in San Francisco this fall. The museum will have a 2.5 acre, undulating green roof that will integrate it into the surrounding Golden Gate Park. The 400,000-square-foot, $484 million structure will likely be the first public building to achieve a platinum LEED rating. Designer Renzo Piano has incorporated a planetarium, a rainforest with free-flying birds, a coral reef home to 4,000 fish in a saltwater aquarium and a natural history museum into the building.

Maul Dwellings designed the ‘Landscape House’, which won the AIA’s 2006 Committee on Design competition to design “a house for an ecologist”. The house not only features a double roof for enhanced air circulation, louvered shutters to harvest energy, a ‘Water Pod’ to house efficient plumbing systems and a solar dehumidifier unit to capture moisture from the air for drinking water, it also is designed for deconstruction and reuse. Though this innovative structure wasn’t originally intended for widespread residential use, its intelligent eco-friendly features make it a great source of inspiration for future green homes.

Kuwait will soon have its first LEED skyscraper. The Sabah Al Ahmed International Finance Center will be a 1.2 million square foot, 40-story tower that includes four stacked courtyard atriums ranging from 8 to 13 stories each. The tower will generate some of its own energy from a photovoltaic system as well as the wind turbines that will crown the roof. Inside will be office space and a 4-star business class hotel. The International Finance Center (ICF) has been precertified at the gold level under the LEED rating system.

London-based Foster + Partners, who are also working on the aforementioned Frasers Broadway complex, have another green complex in store. This one will be located in Singapore City, measuring 150,000 square meters and set for multi-use functioning. The complex’s exterior will be covered with solar cells, and direct sunlight will also be harvested by tall ribbon-like canopies rising into the skyline. The slanted design of the facades will allow wind to flow into the building for a natural cooling effect, and vertical green spaces will provide ambient temperature moderation. The building will also be equipped with a rainwater harvesting system, geothermal heating, chilled beams and an ice storage system for cooling.

The furthest-reaching green wonder of the future is IwamotoScott Architect’s vision of San Francisco in 2108. This stunning winner of the History Channel’s City of the Future competition shows what a totally eco-conscious San Francisco could look like 100 years from now, complete with algae-harvesting towers, geothermal energy ‘mushrooms’ and fog catchers to distill fresh water from the city’s foggy atmosphere. Designed to make the most of the area’s microclimate and geology, Hydro-Net is a network of both above-ground and underground systems that takes the need for alternative energy sources in mind with a connected network of water, power collection and distribution systems. Carbon nanotube walls would collect and disperse hydrogen produced by algae, which would be used to hover-cars in underground tunnels.


Saturday, July 12, 2008

Towards Sustainable Lifestyles

UNEP/UNESCO youthXchange Training Kit on Sustainable Consumption: Towards Sustainable Lifestyles (2nd Updated Edition 2008)

What is UNEP UNESCO youthXchange?
YouthXchange is a train the trainer tool that aims to promote sustainable consumption patterns among young consumers worldwide. The kit provides statistics, case studies, games, examples of real companies going more sustainable, and direction on how explain sustainable lifestyles to a young audience. The topics are tackled under youth-oriented headings: clothing, leisure, travels, underground culture, experiences of other young people etc.

The message
The fundamental message the youthXchange training kit delivers is: there is a trend worldwide that tries to make the world more sustainable also through consumer actions, change is possible through day to day actions and networks among people that are engaged locally and globally.

The target
This group is composed of youth - in both developed and developing countries - that have access to education, media, and internet; they are likely to shape attitudes, values and behaviour and the habits they develop now will influence the future consumption patterns. They are the future decision makers.

For more information, see www.youthxchange.net

This publication is available in: Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, Flemish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Mexican, Norwegian, Portuguese, Slovenian, and Spanish.

Website ISSN: 92-807-2569-6
Guide ISBN: 92-807-2128-3



Language: English
Publication date: March 2008
Programme: Youth | Consumption
ISBN: 92-807-2128-3
Pages: 84