About Susanna Speier

Susanna Speier strives to inspire her readers to innovate realistic and environmentally sustainable lifestyle adjustments. Susanna Speier's sustainability articles have been published in Earth911, Green By Design, The eCo Times and G Living. She is also a screenwriter and a playwright. Memberships include The Dramatists Guild, Women in Film and The Hollywood Hill. Additional information on her work—including publication archives, production archives and plethoras of links—are available on her website.

Posts by Susanna:

What Deformed Frogs Say About Our Drinking Water

On Sunday, April 5th of this year, Thirteen/WNET’s Nature Series premiered Frogs: The Thin Green Line. Emmy award winning filmmaker, Allison Argo, blended poetic cinematography with masterful soundscapes in a disarmingly straightforward masterpiece delineating the relationship between sewage water and the growing number of frogs being born with defects.

“It’s uncomfortable to realize that we are part of the problem,” Argo explained to me in a phone interview on the topic, but “It’s also exciting and stimulating to realize that we are part of the solution.” Argo’s ability to maintain an optimistic perspective on this bleak situation is grounded, in part, by the day-to-day lifestyle adjustments she makes. She switched to public transportation for her travels between her Cape Cod studio and Boston, she has been swapping old light bulbs for more energy efficient ones, and she is building a frog pond in her yard this summer.

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Green Real Estate Search and Ratings: GreenHomeFinder.com

The growing percentage of buyers and renters looking for sustainable real estate, to date, have only been served by generalized listing sites like Craigslist and local online classifieds. Now, GreenHomeFinder.com provides a “one stop shop” for a new niche – listing and rating the green features of properties online.

With databases set up to provide prospective renters and buyers with links to everything from the prospective neighborhood’s bamboo flooring contractors to the eco-friendly dry cleaners, Greenhomefinder.com is poised become the most comprehensive green property search engine in the United States. Property owners and managers who take advantage of this opportunity can now get properties listed at no cost for the next year and listing packages, products packages, services packages and advertising space is available for various reasonable fees.  Owners and property managers wanting more exposure can also purchase a “Branded Listings” package that enables the lister to add more photos  and information.

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Arthur Frommer Discusses Eco-Friendly Travel Tips at Tattered Cover

Arthur Frommer discussed his new book, Ask Arthur Frommer: And Travel Better, Cheaper, Smarter, with a captive Tattered Cover Bookstore audience the evening of Friday, May 8th in Denver, CO.  The condensed encyclopedia of travel, targeted to meet the budgets a recession stricken audience, stresses the importance of vacationing in US national parks.

When an audience member posed a question about the connection between travel and climate change, Mr. Frommer responded “we believe we’re part of a community and have to understand the world.  It’s a balancing act.”

He and his daughter, Pauline Frommer, also a highly lauded travel writer, also offered the following eco-friendly travel tips:

• Book nonstop flights when you can
• Rent a hybrid when you get there
• Target destinations that are making a big eco-friendly
• Travel with eco friendly tour companies like The Sierra Club and Intrepid Travel
• Look into volunteer opportunities sponsored by organizations like Earthwatch and American Hiking Society
• Consider going on biking tours