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 […]
How To
40 steps on the personal path to green
A few weeks ago, I asked readers, “If a friend decided they wanted to do something about the environment, how would you tell him or her to start?” So just in case you or a friend wants to start, here are 39 of the answers, in no particular order and boiled down to their essence. Don’t […]
LV GRN: Slimy pets to eat your garbage and entertain your kids
Some of you will have seen this before, but for the newcomers in the crowd… When I first told my wife Michelle I was going to keep worms in a bin to turn our food scraps from garbage into compost, she said no way. She was like “Worms in my kitchen? Forget it.” But guess what? We have […]
How to live a $4 a gallon lifestyle in the coming $5 a gallon world
First, a bit of business. I wanted to let those of you who subscribe to the blog by email or RSS reader know that we have a very active and interesting commenting community. You may want to come have a look, either to leave comments of your own or simply to read the informative comments […]
LV GRN: Make your own household cleaners and avoid health risks
Not to go on and on, but I’m still hoping for more emails of support for my meeting with Representative Nadler on Friday. As you know, I will be asking him to help steer the country towards meaningful climate policy. Click here for details and to see how you can help. Now, onwards… Here’s a […]
LV GRN: 42 ways to not make trash
In the last, for a while, of the LV GRN posts about how to bring No Impact measures to your own life, I’ve decided to list 42 ways we adopted to avoid making trash. If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll have seen these before. But I thought the newer readers might like to […]
The human costs of consumption–a cool, new cartoon
Well, it’s not really a cartoon, but waste activist Annie Leonard‘s funny, hard-hitting and informative new animated short The Story of Stuff, about the effects of rampant consumption both on human health and the planet, does make you wonder if we’ve all gone Loony Tunes. Today’s No Impact Man homework is to watch the film […]
Winning enviro-conscious customer loyalty
First off, readers, please, please, please comment on this post. Please help me. I want to understand what it would take to get all us enviros to engage happily with a company. Now, onwards… One of the reasons I embarked on a low/no consumption approach to environmentalism for the No Impact project is that I […]