Dear Grist readers,

Please give to Grist today. It’s our last shot at $25K!

My staff has been struck by a curse:
We have to keep speaking in verse.
But a timely donation
Will offer salvation –
Give now, or this curse will get worse!

Grist readers, at the risk of incurring the wrath of the raven that put this curse upon us, I’m going to break from speaking in verse for just a moment so I can ask you, in all earnestness, to support Grist today with as little as $5.

We gotta get just a few more gifts by midnight to earn an additional $25,000 from a generous donor. We are so close to our goal of 3,000 gifts, and we don’t want to leave that money on the table. Please help us meet our goal and capture the gold. We don’t want to be doomed to meetings like this:

If you value our clever reporting,
And the changes that we are exhorting,
If we’ve made your life better,
And you have some spare cheddar,
Then isn’t this Grist worth supporting?

Doggerel-ly,

Chip Giller
Founder and CEO

P.S. Giving online make you a wreck? You’re also welcome to send a check: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

P.P.S. If we reach our goal by May 15, Grist will receive $25,000 from a generous donor.

Donate now to end this curse
that forces us to speak in verse.

Once upon a workday dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a serious tale of gloom ‘n’ doom ‘n’ eco-gore,
While I nodded nearly groaning, came a thought that seemed worth honing:
If we make this funny, we will surely get folks in the door.
And lo, green news won’t be a bore.

Grist was born and, 12 years later, has 1 million fans or greater!
We’ve helped you and your friends explore climate news and views galore.
Carpools, bike lanes, urban gardens – our punny fun we hope you’ll pardon.
At Grist.org you get the score, on what to praise and to abhor.
So now what am I rhyming for?

You see, there is this awful curse, that forces us to speak in verse.
But you can spring us from this chore!
Please give a buck, or three, or four!
Our fine nonprofit needs an offer, from your wallet or your coffer.
We need 3,000 gifts or more by May 15 or just before.
Please give now, we do implore.

Edgar Allen Poetically,

Chip Giller
President and Founder

P.S. Giving online give you the heebie-jeebies? You may also send an old-fashioned (but most welcome) check to: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

P.P.S. If we reach our goal by May 15, Grist will receive $25,000 from a generous donor.

Scott Rosenberg joins our team as executive editor after many years as a journalist and online innovator. He was a co-founder of Salon.com, where he served as technology editor and managing editor and got people thinking — and talking to each other — in whole new ways. He’s written two books, one on creating open-source software and one on blogging, and founded a site called MediaBugs.org that tracks inaccuracies in the press. In short, he’s kind of a dreamboat.

I’m particularly excited to collaborate with Scott for two reasons: First, I’ve long admired his work (and considered stealing some of his ideas when I founded Grist). Second, and more important, this is a crucial time for Grist to have someone like Scott helping steer the ship. We’re reaching more people than ever before, in an era when the stakes for our planet and all of us who live on it are impossibly high — and we’re committed to arming you and millions of others with the knowledge you need to take action. With Scott at the helm, we’ll bring you juicier stories, give you new ways to communicate with us and with each other, and keep spotlighting the way to a cleaner, greener, more sustainable future.

Thanks for being part of Grist Nation, on this auspicious day and every day. We couldn’t do what we do without you. Well, you and those eerily self-aware commas.

Please give Scott a warm welcome, and stay tuned for great stuff. And check out his first post.

Well, that was a nice trip down memory lane, even if it got a little smelly toward the end — especially when my Trashtivist garbage bag was merged with the other household garbage, the stuff that was just too gross to carry around with me for a week. And by that I mean the diapers. Just five (full, ahem) diapers weighed more than the rest of the entire week’s worth of garbage for four people.

When I did this same type of carry-my-trash-around protest in college, I was experimenting with what it would mean to shrink my personal ecological footprint in an extreme way. Looking through that lens again made me kinda nostalgic: Oh yeah, I remember that guy, the one who was frustrated at his sophomore-year roommate for owning a digital alarm clock (which had to be plugged in — duh — and thereby would be a needless waste of energy).

But let’s face it: When you consider the big picture of what really makes a difference, it’s not actions like carrying around your trash — rather, it’s getting policies in place that require manufacturers to reduce waste. Bigger picture still: Landfills just aren’t such a significant problem compared to, say, coal plants. Given a limited amount of time, you need to put your effort where you can get the most leverage.

In my life, I try to walk the talk, but doing so can sometimes lead one down a path of granularity, getting caught up in details that aren’t worth the time. So don’t sweat the small stuff, such as paper versus plastic. In your personal life, it’s the larger purchases — a new appliance, a car, a house — that especially merit attention. (Sure, bring your own mug when you go for a latte, but don’t pat yourself on the back if you drove to the coffee shop in an SUV.)

So what would be better than me hauling around my own garbage for a week? Extended producer responsibility laws, like those in Germany and other countries, which require manufacturers to take certain electronic products back at the end of their life, and ultimately design the products more intelligently in the first place. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

The garbage truck comes today to take away Percy, my seven Clif Bar wrappers, and all the other trash. But you still have time to donate to Grist. Come on: I dare you.

Take-out lentil soup smells really good … at first. Courtest of LA OC Foodventures via FlickrThe bag is about half-full and now it’s starting to smell.

Yesterday, keeping the family peace took priority over reducing our waste, and today you can really tell. Jenny had an errand to run, and we were too busy to make dinner at home, so we got take-out and ate outside at a picnic table. Again with the take-out! I’m a disgrace.

Normally, we are fairly prepared for such trying moments. We keep plastic utensils in the glove compartment of the car, and we bring containers and cups with us when we get prepared food. This time, we forgot. I don’t want to blame anyone or point any fingers, so I’ll just say we forgot and leave it at that. (And maybe I’ll let Jenny carry around this stinky bag for a couple of hours this weekend.)

Back in college, when it was just me, I probably would have punished myself by not eating in a case like this. You can’t do that with kids. You have to feed them.

I got pad thai, and it came in this waxy container that can’t be recycled or composted. The kids got lentil soup. There’s still a little muck left in their soup containers, and it really stinks.

Come to think of it, the soup containers might be compostable here in Seattle. They aren’t on Vashon Island, where I live. Well! How about that? An unexpected advantage to commuting with your garbage.

But, man, it really smells. It’s embarrassing. Help me save face by making a donation to Grist.

What on earth happened to Percy? He’s shot. GristPerversely, I’m now taking some pleasure in creating garbage. I’m not sure that was the point of this dare, but there you have it.

My trash bag has more stuff in it now, but not much more. The best thing in there is Percy.

Percy, you may recall, is Thomas the Tank Engine’s chum, the friendly green train. I’m not sure how he entered our house — maybe via a friend of my daughter’s — but this particular Percy is completely corroded. He looks like he’s been splashed with battery acid. We have a lot of old toys in our house — we usually get our toys secondhand from a local consignment place, and therefore have a high tolerance for imperfection. However, this Percy is just beyond repair; aside from the corrosion, his wheels no longer spin.

He’s heavy, too. Percy is weighing me down. Still, I don’t think my trash bag totals more than a couple of pounds. I’ll put the bag on a scale tonight and report back.

Other stuff in there: a plastic pasta bag, a plastic carrot bag that couldn’t be recycled or reused, some pipe-cleaner creatures that my kids made but are now garbage because the colorful fuzz has worn off, and some garbage from my lunch yesterday.

Let me explain: I usually bring lunch from home but occasionally indulge in a form of take-out, bringing along my own container (for salad, say) or cup. Yesterday, I somehow forgot to take along my cup. So my take-out burrito netted me not only some excess tinfoil and the thin wax paper on which it was served, but also a waxy cup (I was too parched to pass up a glass of water). Horrors!

In a way, the bag of garbage I’m carrying around is acting like a hairshirt punishing me for my sins — neglecting to pack a lunch, forgetting my cup. In a sick way, I like the reminder: See how much I suck? Look at my garbage! Must be my New England Puritan roots showing through.

In any case, people, you only have a couple more days to support this act of loserdom. In other words, please give a gift in honor of a dude touting around his trash for a week!

This isn’t my garbage. Not yet, anyway.Courtesy of pinguino via FlickrSo far, we haven’t produced much garbage. I’m not bragging. Honestly, it’s a little disappointing. I’m carrying around this white plastic Seventh Generation trash bag, and the bag itself is more garbage than what’s in it.

We started yesterday. It was chaos. My wife, Jenny, was supposed to get home at 5, and instead she got home around 8. To keep everybody happy, we had chocolate. My daughter and I had these bite-sized Green & Black’s chocolate squares we got with a restaurant receipt a while back, and my son had a Hershey’s Kiss. So those wrappers are in the bag. I had a Clif bar. That wrapper is in the bag. Our garbage makes us look like sugarholics.

 Jenny came home. We had wrapped half a cherry pie in plastic wrap (many of the cherries from our own yard), then finished the pie, so the plastic wrap is in there. Usually, we wash plastic and reuse it, but this stuff was just nasty and unsalvageable.

When I did this back in college, I had less control over the waste I produced. For example, I went to the dining hall in the evening for an omelet and it was served on a paper plate. So I carried around this gross, sodden plate for a week, reusing it every night. Now, I wouldn’t use a paper plate. And even if I did, it could go in the compost.

That’s the other thing — I can compost now, so I don’t have food waste. And there’s more recycling than we had in college. It’s not that my family and I haven’t created waste; it’s just that most of it isn’t garbage. We made Indian food the other night, but the chickpea can and the tomato can were recyclable. We finished a bottle of lemonade, but it was glass, so it’s recyclable. We order stuff from Amazon, but those cardboard boxes get recycled.

I hope to have trashier stories for you as the week goes on. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, how about a non-wasteful gift to Grist?

Back in college, I carried around all the garbage I produced for a week to demonstrate the wastefulness of the average student. It wasn’t a great way to meet women.

Well, now I’m married, so I don’t have to worry about that anymore. But I still worry about the environment, and I still want to call attention to garbage – my own and everybody else’s. That’s why, with a little prodding from my staff here at Grist, I’ll be reliving my college stunt. Starting July 11, I’m going to carry every scrap of trash my family produces wherever I go. That includes me, my wife, our 5-year-old daughter and our 2-year-old son.

I know what you’re thinking: Um, that toddler … he’s probably not potty trained yet, right? Don’t worry: I draw the line at carrying around that kind of waste. Which is good news for the other commuters on my ferry, not to mention my co-workers.

Speaking of which, I hope people ask me why I’m carrying around a bag of garbage. I won’t lecture them this time. I promise. And I won’t even mind if they start calling me the Garbage Man. Or Land Phil. Or Oscar the Grouch. If it helps them think twice about the next thing they throw away, I’ve done my job.

Now you do your job: Donate to Grist in support of my dare. That’s the easy part. I’ll do the heavy lifting.

Dear Grist readers,

Would you give $5 to have a platter full of green news, astute advice, and tips for taking action at your fingertips? Today, ONE DAY ONLY, we’re asking for your help.

As the big cheese of Grist, I know there’s plenty of stuff to scare the holes out of your Swiss when it comes to the state of the planet, like a nuclear crisis looming in Japan, fracking’s effects on our water supplies, and the potential castration of the EPA.

But at Grist, we see gouda things happening too. We’ve responded to your cries with stories of hope and eco-victories and ideas for taking action in your own ‘hood — and we think it’s working.

Readers like you are out there reforming Kellogg’s, making over city streets, and reminding President Obama that you care about the Clean Air Act. In fact, our reader survey showed that nearly 90 percent of you have been inspired by Grist to get off your gruyere and make a change in your life. Wowzers.

You people are smart and passionate, that’s for sure. But are you passionate enough to keep our Beacon in the Smog burning bright? Your tax-deductible gift will keep Grist writers like David Roberts, Tom Philpott, and Sarah Goodyear shining a light on the inspiring stories, solutions, and innovators that might just turn this country around.

So if you like Grist as much as we like you, please throw us some cheddar. We promise to put that queso to good use.

Cheezy-ly,

Chip Giller
Founder and Prez

P.S. This is the one and only time we’ll ask for your donations this spring — no moldy emails clogging up your inbox, we promise! So please consider making a gift today. We’re hungry for your support.

P.P.S. Giving online give you the heebie-jeebies? You may also send an old-fashioned (but most welcome) check to: Grist, 710 Second Avenue, Suite 860, Seattle, WA 98104.

Set a course for adventure …Photo: Jemingway

Leaving aside the venue, the conference looks to be amazing in a Fast Company-, Wired-sort-of way — lots of smart, highly successful, digitally wired superstars, all with an interest in making the world a better place. You know, folks like Shai Agassi, Shona Brown, and Blake Mycoskie. More names to drool over: “Sir to You and Me” Richard Branson, Russell Simmons, Sophia Bush, Bar Refaeli, The Roots (the house band on this cruise). I rank many decks below such luminaries, but still hope to catch up with some of them.

These types of gatherings are certain to be thrilling in the moment (OMG, I touched Kristen Bell!), but I hope this one will be meaningful, too. For me, the opportunity is to talk with many leading tech and social-good entrepreneurs about how  to tackle climate change, the foremost challenge of our time — how to make true strides to cut back on emissions, surmount the communications challenges related to the issue, and push back against political intransigence. And also to discuss new ways to shine a light on all the amazing innovations occurring in the fields of energy, food, transportation, and design. Sometimes I feel as if a revolution is taking place, but not enough people are aware of the momentum and the revolution hasn’t yet been named. Among the crowd on the boat will be CTOs, artists, engineers, designers, marketers: plenty of minds to help figure out how best to connect the dots and, you know, save the world.

I’ll report back with some of what I learn, and may even post video clips of my discussions after I’m back on land. And, yeah, being the curmudgeon that I am, I’ll also try to bone up on the cruise industry and its environmental record. So bring on the glorious ship of steel! She’s named “Celebrity Century.” When doling out industry grades last year, Friends of the Earth gave my home for the next three days a C-. I’m hoping the conference merits an A.