By my favorite seven-year-old artist, Jane Avery, daughter of Laura Gabbert, one of the incredible director/producers of No Impact Man the documentary. An explanation of the work by the artist herself: “No to cars, no to trash [represented by the tall skinny trash can] and yes to worms [used in composting]!”
Environment
A few of my brothers and sisters
My little girl Isabella is four and she is an only child. But when she goes to the playground and a stranger asks her if she has any brothers and sisters she says yes. She says she has one brother and one sister. Her sister is called Frankie and her brother is called Billy. “Are […]
Companies who make durable products could cheat the recession while saving the planet
In an article in Metropolis Magazine, writer John Hockenberry suggests that, in the present economy, the only way to coax money out of consumers’ wallets is to give us what we wanted all along: products that last and don’t go obsolete or break down in a year. In other words, the products should deliver real […]
A production process that improves its environment
On Saturday, I bought some cherry blossoms at the farmer’s market and put them in a vase. Soon we will have pink and white flowers on our table. Before I bought the blossoms, I asked the vendor if it hurt or damaged the trees to cut these branch tips from them. She said no. In […]
Register for No Impact gifts with AlternativeGiftRegistry.org
Just thought you might think this was cool: a gift registry where you can ask for non-material things. Administered by the Center for a New American Dream, AlternativeGiftRegistry.org functions like any other online gift registry except that you don’t have to encourage people to buy new stuff. Entries on sample registries at the site look […]
Avoiding pharmaceuticals as a way to keep our water safe
I happened to be in front of a TV the other day and just about every single ad was for some sort of drug. The ones that always get to me are the ones for hay fever, from which I suffer. Some years ago, I discovered the “neti pot,” a method of flushing out your […]
LVGRN: 20 ways to keep the landfill empty
Organic material–food and paper, for example–rot and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, when sent to the landfill. When the liners meant to seal landfills eventually crack, toxic substances can leach into the water table, causing hard to trace illnesses in faraway communities. But perhaps the worse thing is, when we throw something in the […]
To save the planet, we’ll have to bury the party political hatchet
I’m sick of inter-party animosity. I’m tired of progressives who won’t listen to a person who identifies as conservative. I’m tired of conservatives who won’t listen to a liberal. How unlikely is it, anyway, that either the classical liberal or conservative ideologies provides the best policy solution for every situation? Doesn’t it make sense that […]