First off, thanks to all the readers who made phone calls to New York State Assembly members yesterday. You really did make a difference in getting diesel fumes out of kids lungs. And by the way, if you live in New York State, and you’d like to help some kids by dialing a couple of […]
Consumerism and Materialism
Healthier planet, healthier people
One thing I go on about on this blog is how in many ways we benefit rather than sacrifice when we change our lifestyles and public policies in order to treat the planet more kindly (see here and here, for example). Because very often, making the planet more healthy makes the people more healthy, too. […]
A company I’d buy from—part 2
I was talking yesterday about how a company could make a loyal customer out of me by being the first to make a good-faith effort to clean up its own environmental mess. The example I used was a way to easily return CFL bulbs, which contain toxic mercury, for recycling and disposal in a non-crushable tube through the postal service. […]
A company I’d like to buy from
The way I see it, if a company makes a product with toxins in it, then that company should take responsibility for making sure that, once the products are used, the toxins don’t end up in the environment. About as likely as a dog cleaning up after itself, right? Maybe. But I’ll tell you this: if a company adopted […]
When corporations co-opt the environmental message
I am grateful to readers Brett and Anne for reminding me how bottling and canning corporations promoted individual environmental action back in the 70s as a way to shirk their corporate responsibilities. Beverage industry interests told us all to clean up our own garbage through a front organization, Keep America Beautiful (KAB), so they wouldn’t have to. “People […]
Are we too selfish to change?
What changed that? Marketing. Factory owners wanted to keep their production lines churning and factory workers wanted to keep their tummies full. Repetitive consumption seemed like the answer. Slowly but surely we convinced ourselves that new was better than old. It became ok to throw things out. It became ok to waste. In fact, out with the old […]
A day in our life
One of the questions people ask me again and again is to describe a day in the No Impact life. I always think it’s a funny question, because I’m so used to it now and it seems so routine. All the same, I thought I might as well answer it: If I get it together, I wake up […]
On not throwing the baby out with the bathwater
A few months back, I was at the farmer’s market with Michelle, and a gorgeous woman with a mane of blonde hair rode by on a tricycle with a bench for her child on the back. Michelle had noticed the woman a bunch of times before and had told me about her. “There she is!” […]