It all began 38 years ago, and look where we’ve come.

Back in 1970, I was a college freshman in North Carolina, and I don’t recall any big events. Unless I got it confused with a peace march.

But in 1990, I wrote a 20-year retrospective for the Inquirer. People recalled how flower children gathered on the steps of the Art Museum and played “This Land is Your Land” on kazoos. They frolicked up East River Drive. They wore gas masks and carried signs: “To breathe or not to breathe.” Ian McHarg bellowed into the microphone, “You have no future.” Allen Ginsberg chanted, “Merrily, merrily, we welcome, we welcome the end of the earth.” It must have been wild!

Nothing like that this year. The air’s cleaner. The water’s cleaner. The Cuyahoga isn’t burning.  We have catalytic converters, energy-efficient appliances, Priuses and more. We have the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.

And yet, we also have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issuing dire warnings about global warming and carbon dioxide. And yet, we have mercury in our fish and concerns about bisphenol A in our baby bottles. 

So we still haven’t come up with all the answers, have we?

Seems like this year you can hardly toss a clod of good brown earth without hitting an Earth Day event.  My inbox has all but crashed several times with an influx of info.  Schools are holding programs, companies are heralding their newly-green buildings and policies, solar installations are being dedicated. The Philadelphia headquarters of SCA, a paper products company, is donating 1,700 copies of the book, “Earth Day – Hooray” to elementary schools across Philadelphia.  Cherry Hill Township is holding a “GoNeutral Boot Camp.”  Merrily, merrily we take another load to the recycling bin.

But my inbox is also crammed with marketing pitches, as if Earth Day is just one more shopping opportunity. “It’s Earth Day! Won’t you write about our (fill in blank with consumer item of your choice).”  We all need things. We all buy things. But somehow, the sheer deluge has saddened me.

Today, I’ll be voting in the Pennsylvania primary, of course.  I thought about telecommuting to work, but I really should be there. Phooey. When I come home, though, the evening will be warm and lovely.  I’ll garden for a bit (weed and water the peas, most likely), let the chickens out for a bug snack in the grass, and sit on the front porch.  A robin insists on building a nest on a ledge near the ceiling, so we need to work out how to coexist. The moon is just past full. The toads in a nearby pond have started to sing. A spice bush in the front yard casts its heady scent into the wind.

All in all, a pretty good earth to protect.

      Who’d have thought revolving doors could be so interesting? Or such an issue?

       In today’s column, I wrote about how much energy they save, compared to a swing door. 

       Here’s more:

       To see the MIT revolving door study, start here.

       Here are links to Van Kannel’s three revolving door patents: 1888, 1897 and 1900.

       Van Kannel started a revolving door company in New York. He later bought a competing company, and in 1907 International Steel Company bought him out.  The company exists today as the International Revolving Door Company, and since 1950 it has installed more than 265 “descendants” of the Van Kannel doors in Philadelphia – everywhere from Two Liberty Place to the Archdiocese to Center Square to the old Wanamaker’s building, you name it.

       The Franklin Institute gave Van Kannel a medal in 1889 for his invention.    

       If anyone was wondering why buildings don’t just do away with swing doors altogether, it’s because they provide handicapped access. (And access to people who are elderly, walk slowly, use canes or walkers, have casts... etc.) Also, it’s easier and cheaper to install card-key access for after-hours entry on a swing door.

      Finally, if you’re curious about revolving door etiquette, here’s the answer from the Charleston School of  Protocol, where “manners matter.”

      One thing that didn’t make it into the column was my tour of Center City doors.

       With Wesolowski’s encouragement, I grabbed my stopwatch and headed up JFK Boulevard and down Market Street.

      At the Mellon Bank Center, the swing doors were tempting. They were the center entrance, and a lunch cart was directly in front. Still revolving door use over ten minutes outnumbered swing by 36 to 11.

      Not bad! (Or, at least, better than some of the folks at MIT.)

      But clearly, many people need encouragement. 

       1818 Market has a sign: “Please help us to conserve energy. Use the revolving doors.”

     At the Government Services Center: even though one of the swing doors was actually propped — or stuck — open, many people still opted to spin.

     The swing doors to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange have stickers showing wheelchairs.

      One Liberty Place has signs that say “doors locked.”

      Over at the new Comcast tower, the swing doors are doubled, with a tiny vestibule in between for less air exchange — and more effort to use them!

       But people still do it.

       Perhaps we should be happy this is all that’s asked of us, door-wise.

       At Comcast, I met an engineer, and even he didn’t know for sure why revolving doors were better. When I told him about it, and about the students at MIT, he paused and looked back at the revolving doors, contemplating.   I could tell his engineer gears were engaged.

     Maybe saving energy is just the beginning, he mused.

     As the door spun and spun and spun, I caught his drift.  Just maybe there’s a way to use the constant motion to generate energy.  

     Any thoughts, MIT?

Take note of your storm drains, Philadelphia.

They’re about to get decorated.
About 1,500 volunteers picked up materials from the Fairmount

Water Works Interpretive Center on Wednesday, and any day now they’ll be descending on the city’s 9,000 or so storm drains, affixing decals that read, “Yo! No Dumping! Drains to River.”

This year, the program garnered a huge response — a six-fold increase in volunteerism from last year.

The goal is to reduce stormwater runoff pollution and improper dumping of more than you could probably imagine.

After all, fish and other aquatic issues aside, someone is probably going to be drinking this water later, so they really don’t want it spiked with your old coffee, paint thinner, motor oil or … need I be more explicit about things like dog waste?

If you see a crew, ask for one of their tip cards, with information about stormwater runoff pollution affecting the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers.

The helpful hints are brought to you by the Philadelphia Water Department and the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary.

And everyone else in the region: Yo! Your storm drains empty to a river, too.

The Newton Marasco Foundation — an environmental stewardship nonprofit based in Virginia — has announced the winners of its annual environmental book awards for literature. 

The organization looks for books that inspire young readers to appreciate and care for the environment.

And the winners are:

Children’s fiction: “Winston of Churchill: One Bear's Battle Against Global Warming,” written by Jean Davies Okimoto and  illustrated by Jeremiah Trammell, published by Sasquatch Books. A brave little bear who notices his icy home is melting rallies the other bears to convince humans to help them.

Young Adult Fiction: “The Light-Bearer's Daughter,” by  O. R. Melling, published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc./Abrams Books for Young Readers. A girl named Dana embarks on a journey through the mountains of Ireland and meets fantasy creatures such as child-like boggles, a talking wolf and a saint who tames monsters.

Nonfiction: “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon, published by Scholastic, Inc. David was the produce of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” This is the kids’ version.

Special programming on WHYY-TV12 on Sunday from 5 to 7 p.m. might interest anyone interested in helping to make Philadelphia a greener, healthier city.

The first part is an encore showing of "Philadelphia: The Holy Experiment," the local chapter in the Edens Lost and Found documentary series.

The series, which also looked at Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle, explores urban programs that have turned neighborhoods around, physically, spiritually and, of course, environmentally.

The Philadelphia chapter, hosted by local resident and actor David Morse,  acknowledges that Philadelphia, like many of America’s old industrial cities, is coping with diminished population density, building abandonment and urban decay.

Yet Philadelphia Green, a program of the Pennsylvania  Horticultural Society  spawned by Joan Reilly, Maitreyi Roy, Jane Pepper and Blaine Bonham Jr., has reclaimed thousands of vacant lots.  It has revived parks and has planted trees and gardens — and, in the end, hope — throughout the city.

The show also looks at the efforts of muralist Jane Golden, sculptor Lily Yeh, musician Kenny Gamble, gardener Mary Corby, restaurateur Judy Wicks and  grieving father Ed Elliss.

“It’s a powerful, inspiring film,” says Alan Jaffe, spokesman for the society.

The second hour of Sunday’s programming is an airing of a town hall meeting that was held in connection with the program.
Taped in February, it engages leaders of green organizations from the region and beyond, including many of the people featured in the Edens film.

Around about last December, the catalogs got to be just too much.

Several a day were stuffed into the mailbox. They were from companies I didn’t recognize and had stuff I didn’t care about.

I looked at them all and could only think, “How many trees did this take?”

I only order from a few companies -- I know exactly which chinos my husband wants -- and if I want to explore I can go online.

Then I heard about Catalog Choice. The deal is that you sign up on their web site, list the catalogs you don’t want, and they contact the companies to get the shipments to stop.

Day after day, with each new batch, I logged on and busily entered the info. I needed my exact name as the catalog had it (sometimes Sandy, sometimes Sandra, etc.), my address, my customer number if available. A bit of a pain, but if it would put a dent this barrage, I was up for it.

The number of catalogs I opted to decline finally reached 38. But I’m still getting some of them, so I checked back with the company to see what was up.

Today, 12 catalog companies say they’ve confirmed my request. The rest are pending, for more than several months. I can only assume those companies still want to waste paper, and I can’t see supporting them.

Then there’s L.L. Bean. They not only granted my request, but senior vice president Steve Fuller also sent me an e-mail confirming my “communication preferences.” It was a form letter, but still, is that nice or what? He added that I could call any time or order online.

Which is exactly what I intend to do.

Yesterday, probably very close to the moment I was blogging about junk mail, the postal carrier was delivering my daily dose of it.

The tally: one bill, one catalog, one set of coupons for “health” foods, three other offers I had no interest in and –  hooray! – a note from a friend.  She even included pictures.

Then there was this: A small box that my husband thought was candy, it looked so fancy. He left it near my place at the dinner table.

Turns out it was food, but not for me. It was “Sheba Premium Cuts” catfood.  The outside was a glossy cardboard box that did NOT look as if it was made from recycled paper. “A creature of perfection should expect nothing less,” it read. Inside was a metal container that looked more-suited to caviar than catfood. 

If the senders – Dominick’s, Genuardi’s, Randalls and Tom Thumb – know I have cats, that’s creepy. If they don’t know who has cats and just sent it to everyone hoping the odds worked in their favor, it’s even more wasteful than I thought.

Now, Coco and Charlie are certainly worth the very best. Except that they have already settled on their favorite brand and I fiddle with it at my peril.

Surely, the intent of the senders is that I’ll switch to Sheba. But I hardly want to encourage this kind of junk-mail excess. Instead, I intend to avoid it.

Toilet paper and similar products are hardly our only paper woes.

Another insidious paper use — and one that’s annoying instead of useful to boot — is junk mail.

Last month, the nonprofit group ForestEthics celebrated the fifth anniversary of the national “Do Not Call” registry by launching a campaign for a similar “Do Not Mail” registry.

The group contends that every year, Americans receive 105 billion pieces of junk mail, from credit card offers to coupons to catalogs.

They say this works out to 848 pieces of junk mail per household per year, or an average of 2.7 per day.

In my experience, that’s a low estimate.

All that stuff in my house goes straight into the recycling bin — ForestEthics says 44 percent never even gets opened — and even at that, what a waste!

“Economists would call this a market failure,” says spokesman Will Craven. “We have runaway supply in the face of shrinking and often resentful demand.”

The group contends junk mail amounts to harassment, a violation of our privacy, a potential avenue for identity theft and an environmental crisis, destroying the equivalent of 100 million trees a year.

Want to weigh in and find ways to reduce meanwhile? Click here. As of moments ago, 34,755 people had signed the online petition.

Many of them adding irate notes like this one: “All this paper could be used to make books for countries where children have no schools or textbooks.”

(MICHAEL BRYANT/Inquirer Staff Photographer)

In this morning's GreenSpace column, I’m writing about toilet paper – and, by extension, the other personal paper products most people use, including napkins, facial tissues and paper towels.

Most major brands are made with tree pulp. Environmentalists think we should be buying the brands that are made from recycled paper – preferably from “post consumer” materials, which basically means everything that has already had one use in our homes or offices, the stuff we put out at the curb.  Regular "recycled" can include materials left over from industrial processes.

 Want to know more about which brands environmental groups think you should buy?

The Natural Resources Defense Council has a consumer guide that rates household tissue paper products by category.

Greenpeace has something similar. 

Meanwhile, the American Forest & Paper Association website has interesting information from their perspective.

On its website, Kimberly-Clark gives an overview of its sustainability efforts, including a two-page report on its fiber practices. K-C says that its  percentage of fiber “certified” to have come from suppliers that practice sustainable forestry has increased from 36 percent in 2003 to 89 percent in 2006.

Jeff Wells – the ornithologist – was in Philly to give a talk at the Academy of Natural Sciences related to his recently-published “Birder’s Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk.”  He describes the birds and the challenges they face, then gives advice, including things that birders can do at home. Including buying recycled paper products.

He worries that birders aren’t making the connection, that the same people who are avid birdwatchers and who care enough to feed birds during the winter are, at the same time, wiping the kitchen counter with paper towels made from trees where birds would nest.

For more information, see web sites about the Boreal birds and the International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

Talking with the NRDC’s Allen Hershkowitz was interesting. He has shoved satellite images of forest clear-cutting under paper executive’s noses, apparently, and has trailed logging trucks to see what they’re carrying and where they’re going. He helped "green" the paper products at this year's Oscars awards ceremony.

Frustrated with the slow pace of the paper revolution, he one built his own paper mill in the South Bronx. It eventually failed, but you can read about it in two books, “Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings and the Corporate Squeeze,” by Lis Harris, and Hershkowitz’s own “Bronx Ecology: Blueprint for a New Environmentalism.”

Of course, the ultimate step people can take if they’re worried about paper products is to  not use them at all.

 Several friends have stopped using paper towels, although I’m still not sure how that works. What do they squash stink bugs with? What do they use to wipe up car vomit? I've got to learn more about this.

I’ve subbed out paper napkins with cloth, and that’s been working fine. We keep them at our places at the table, and whenever they get funky, we toss them in with the rest of the wash.

As for facial tissues, I wonder if handkerchiefs will stage a comeback. (On its website, Greenpeace sells a brownish “forest friendly cloth hankette,” 3 for $10, urging “blow on this!”)

But TP? That could be tough. It makes me think of the year I lived on a boat, sailing in the Bahamas. Conservation was crucial, although not for altruism or economy.

The longer our supplies held out, the longer we could stay in remote areas, away from towns. Ant the same time, the less room we took up with toilet paper and the like, the more room we had for beer. A tricky balance.

Talk sometimes turned to such matters at beach gatherings. With mixed results.  I remember  the night one woman noted she had pared her usage of toilet paper down to something appallingly small, like two squares.

We eyed her potluck offering dubiously. Perhaps she could have kept that little achievement to herself.

And what about the rest of our paper? How are we handling the influx of junk mail and catalogs? I’ll blog about that later.