Green is the New Black

Guest Blogger: Justin Demutiis

Green is good, but it’s not just a temporary new year’s resolution. In an age where green is the new black, it has become not only a trend, but a lifestyle commitment to help save our planet.
Below is a small example of the amazing amount of “green” products on the market today.

Nothing packs our landfill quite like paper and cardboard. Below is an example of how I not only recycle boxes and packaging, but I will also eventually repurpose them.

Finally, is recycling simply inconvenient for you? Well the iRecycle app makes it one step easier. It will tell you where you can recycle anything from a car battery, to CD’s. And for something fun, I have Eco Citations to hand out for major infractions. Let’s just say that several H2′s in my apartment complex have received an Eco Citation, and there are many more to hand out.



I thought I would end this post with a reminder of why saving our planet is a good idea. I like to think that when I have kids, they will enjoy the same beauty of nature that I did.

Sometimes the greenest thing you can do is buy something
only once, and keep it for the rest of your life.

More about Justin DeMutiis

My first glimpse at becoming a professional photographer came when I was a freshmen in college. I became one of eight college students in North America to win a scholarship to attend the North American Nature Photography Association's annual summit. To this I owe my style. Not long after, I found my true calling in Wedding Photography. A place where all my technical skills seamlessly blend with so many things I love. More than that, wedding photography provides something that nature photography and all other forms of photography couldn't for me, emotional impact. To me, nothing compares to providing a timeless set of images that tells the story of one of the most important and happiest days of two people's lives. http://www.justindemutiisphotography.com

Belly Crawling for Conservation

By Clay Bolt

A few years ago I became fixated on one simple, elegant statement in Piotr Naskrecki’s landmark book, The Smaller Majority. Simply put, the author writes that 99% of life on planet earth is smaller than a human finger with most being smaller than a fingernail. This immediately sent my head spinning. I looked out onto my backyard and began to wonder what might be out there to discover, photograph and share with the world. It didn’t take me long to realize that even in an area with a temperate climate such as where I live, this statement inevitably holds true. As a macro photographer, my obsession with insects, plants and other small creatures suddenly found a renewed sense of purpose.

Considering humankind’s obsession with discovery, it surprises me that more photographers aren’t as obsessed with macro photography as I am. What other discipline of nature photography offers so much in terms of an opportunity to make fresh new imagery, which may in fact, also represent behaviors and species completely new to science? Going a step further, these images can also make a tremendous contribution to conservation due to the well-documented fact that invertebrates and other small creatures are tremendously important to the well-being of every eco-system in the world.

The July-August 2010 issue of Audubon Magazine contained a fascinating article on the All Taxa Biological Inventory (ATBI) project currently being conducted in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Due to the variety of species being found and its inherit biological richness, the article compares the GSMNP to the tropics. Kevin FitzPatrick, a photographer and iLCP member who has spent the last several years working for the ATBI recently shared with me that researchers believe that they have discovered an estimated 1,000 new species in the park over the past 10 years. What else is out there waiting to be discovered is anybody’s guess but most believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I’ll leave you with this: What if every major nature photography “star” decided to focus their cameras on their own backyards over the span of a year? Can you imagine the incredible new insights and imagery of our natural world which would result from such an experiment? All of us who have a passion for nature and photography should be out getting our knees and elbows dirty from time-to-time. There is so much to see with such little investment if we can only slow down, and change our perspective. It will change the way that you see the world.


Clay Bolt is an award-winning natural history and conservation photographer whose work has been featured by The Nature Conservancy, Outdoor Photographer Magazine, The Telegraph UK, Outdoor Photography (UK), Garden & Gun, Partnership for the Blue Ridge and Wildlife in North Carolina Magazine. In 2009 his work was highly commended in the CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year awards in London. Clay was a major photographic contributor to the book Conserve A Legacy: Natural Lands & Waters in South Carolina (2010) and is a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers.

Although Clay Bolt has photographed nature around the world, his passion and focus continues to be educating the public about the importance of protecting and cherishing the wild places, plants and animals of the Southeastern, United States.

MTR Mining - What About the Science?

By Carl Galie

According to the EPA website, “The mission of the EPA is to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment – air, water, and land – upon which life depends.” In theory this sounds all well and good, but in practice it is another story. Every time there is a change in the Whitehouse, the EPA is required to play ball and enforce the environmental laws of the land as the current administration sees fit. This was never more apparent than in the Bush years when it appeared that the EPA lost its power to protect public health and became almost invisible in the coalfields of the Appalachians.

I recently had the opportunity to attend an EPA hearing in Charlotte, NC on coal ash regulation. For eight hours I sat and listened to testimony from passionate witnesses on both sides of the argument. Opponents against coal ash regulation gave compelling testimony about the potential for job loss in the construction industry if coal ash was to be considered a toxic material. There was also testimony in favor of regulation from everyone from scientists who offered facts about the toxicity of coal ash to concerned residents who live near impoundments, and told stories about health issues brought on because of living near a coal ash site. As I drove home from the hearing and thought about the compelling arguments from both sides, I was left with one burning question: What about the science?

If coal ash was as toxic as the scientists presented it, and they had cold hard facts to back their research, what was the point of these hearings? It seemed like a no brainer to me if the EPA’s mission is to protect public health, then regulate coal ash. Unfortunately it is not that easy. We are a nation of laws, and according to the law, public hearings must be held before enacting something like coal ash regulation. So I left the hearings wondering if the old adage that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” applied here. Was this how environmental regulation worked? Whoever makes the most noise wins? What about the science?

According to the Ilovemountains.org website, “Last April, the Environmental Protection Agency took a bold step toward curtailing mountaintop removal coal mining when it issued draft guidelines that reduced the practice of valley fills — which bury streams and poison Appalachia’s water sources — unless they met a high standard. The guidelines were just one of a series of draft rules issued that day that would reduce the impact of mountaintop removal coal mining. And every day since then, Big Coal has been arguing that the rules are too costly and need to be overturned.” The EPA is currently accepting public comment on its restrictions on mountaintop removal and we will soon know if the EPA will be allowed to rely on good science or if congress will once again interfere.

Another example of political interference can be found in the introduction of H.R.6113: The Electricity Reliability Protection Act of 2010. The purpose of this bill according to those who introduced it is “to protect electricity reliability by prohibiting the use of funds for carrying out certain policies and procedures that adversely affect domestic coal mining operations, and for other purposes.” Translation, it would cut off funding to the EPA for doing their job in the coal fields. Bills like this show the power and influence the coal industry has over our elected officials. You either play ball with the coal industry or loose. Fear tactics work.

With the shift in the balance of power in Washington, the next two years could be very challenging for the EPA without our support. On November 4, I attended an EPA public meeting regarding the Ore Knob mine superfund site in Ore Knob, NC. The meeting was to inform the public about the assessment, cleanup, and upcoming activities at the site. Ore Knob mine was a copper mine that operated from the 1850’s until 1962. While this was not a MTR site, this mine is located in the New River Basin, and many of the water problems the community is facing near this mine could possibly be repeated in the coalfields. I decided to attend this meeting in order to better understand what was happening at this old mine, and learn what the estimated cost of cleanup was since this scenario could repeat itself over and over in coal country as MTR sites are mined out and closed. What I heard was both startling and heartbreaking.

The EPA concluded that high concentrations of manganese and cadmium were contaminating many of the wells and springs near the old mine site and they had determined which direction the contamination was spreading. The immediate cost of doing a quick fix to slow down the pollution was over $7,000,000. When asked how long it would take to find a permanent solution for the problem, the EPA told the community they had no idea because it could take years once a solution was decided upon since they would have to wait for funding approval. Since most of the property owners attending the meeting were elderly, my guess is that a permanent solution will not occur during their lifetime because once again their fate was in the hands of politicians who hold the EPA purse strings.

As I left the meeting, I began to think about the cost of remediation for this 47-acre site and wondered what the cost could be 50 years from now if an MTR site like the Hobet 21 mine in West Virginia, which is over 10,000 acres, began contaminating the water in surrounding communities. The cost would be astronomical. Who would end up paying for the cleanup? The American taxpayer is funding the cleanup at Ore Knob.

Just to put this into perspective, I’ve attached an overlay of the Hobet 21 mine superimposed over a map of Washington, DC provided to me by ilovethemountains.org. Maybe the next time our congressmen introduce a bill to protect us from the EPA we should all think about who ultimately ends up paying for the sins of industry before buying into political fear tactics. It’s time we make congress accountable and ask them “what about the science” before allowing them to cut off any EPA funds?

Carl Galie is a North Carolina photographer who left his home in the West Virginia coalfields in 1986to follow a dream. For the last 15 years Carl has devoted his work to conservation issues. Working with organizations like Roanoke River Partners, The Roanoke River Basin Association, and The North Carolina Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, Carl’s photographs of the Roanoke River basin have helped protect and preserve that region since 1995.

He is currently documenting the vanishing beauty of coal country, focusing his attention on the devastating affect mountaintop removal of coal is having on our nation’s water resources.