Fun & Games in Seattle

Hi friends,

We recently spent a few days in Seattle, with some unexpected surprises (good ones).

Our first stop was to Xeko, a company that makes trading cards for kids (think Pokemon) but Xeko features hotspots of endangered animals around the globe instead. Carrick interviewed Amy Tucker, inventor and president of Xeko, about why she started the company and the line of trading cards. She also played a few games of Xeko with Carrick and Gareth, and they got some hints from the master herself. Here is the official description of Xeko from the website: "Xeko is the eco-adventure game for kids, by kids, making a difference in the world. Join the Xeko online adventure, play the
Xeko trading card game or collect Xeko Pals earth-friendly toys, and help save endangered animals. Be a force of nature!"
You can check out Xeko at www.xeko.com.

Once our interview was over, Amy brought us over to meet her friends at Theo Chocolates, the only organic, 100% fair-trade bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the U.S. Theo imports the cacao beans directly from farmers who are paid a fair wage and have good labor practices (much of the chocolate we're used to seeing at the store is made using slave-labor conditions, often by children). We got a tour of the chocolate-making at Theo and sampled...and sampled...a number of their dark chocolate bars they had out to try. Unfortunately I didn't have the video camera with me for the tour so we didn't get that on film. Their website is www.theochocolate.com - they started 3 years ago and have been doing very well, selling at Whole Foods and other natural food stores.

We were going to make a video about Seattle for our green city spotlights, but I changed my mind at the last minute and did something different instead. In researching the green city attributes for Seattle (Seattle is one of the Top 10 Greenest Cities in the U.S.) I found that most of the green things are similar to Portland, OR including great public transportation, parks and open space, high percentage of renewable electricity in the grid, etc. I decided it would be somewhat redundant to make a similar video about Seattle, so I took a different approach.

We stayed several days with our hosts right outside of Seattle in Issaquah in a newly-built model green community. The development is called a Rural Cluster Development (RCD) and it's a controversial development model that I thought would be interesting to explore, as one example of a green community. The houses are built close together, rating high in green building practices, and schools, shops, and public transportation are all nearby, with 70% of the land left as public open space and forest. Many environmentalists are up in arms because some of the homes are large (4,000-5,000 square feet) and it can be hard to consider such houses green. Also, in order to construct the thousands of homes many acres of land were completely torn apart and built upon. While the houses are more energy-efficient than a standard house, they don't incorporate any renewables and they are far away from a self-sustaining design like the earthships we visited in New Mexico. We toured the development to make a video and it should turn out to be a great debate issue for classrooms, about what a green, sustainable community should look like.

At this point in our cross-country journey, we headed east for the first time, beginning the way home. We still have some more interviews and videos to shoot and presentations to give, but the bulk of the filming is behind us at this point until we get home.

Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org