Dear Umbra, We are having a wedding in Kauai in September and are expecting about 40 guests. I would like to make it as "carbon-neutral" as possible. We've already instituted some greening aspects -- recycled invitations, recycling at the reception, etc. -- but would like to take it a step further. Obviously, air travel is the most significant contributor. Are there any organizations offering carbon offsets for weddings? I researched Future Forests, but was wondering if there are others out there. SeanSan Diego, Calif. Dearest Sean, What a lovely, seasonally apropos question. Ye wedders and civil uniters force your guests …

Locally grown foods catching on at college dining halls The local-and-seasonal food movement is going to college. About 200 schools around the country have joined programs that supply them with locally grown foods, like Brown University in Providence, R.I., where locally farmed Pippin and Macoun apples proved so much more popular than Granny Smiths and Red Delicious that food-service buyers soon branched out to local tomatoes, peaches, and milk. And at the University of Montana in Missoula, nearly 20 percent of the dining-hall food budget goes to locally produced meat, wheat, and dairy products. Student-run farms have sprung up at …

"I don't trust 'natural.' People are always dying of natural causes."-- Woman looking at food labels, in a Richard Guindon cartoon Roll playing games? Photo: Laura Cacho. Shoppers of the world, I have just one question: Are you an eco-chump? Lots of us try to shop green. We buy unbleached paper towels and recycled products, some with more than 5 percent post-consumer content. Commend McDonald's for banning Styrofoam, and shun them for lying about beef fat in the fries. Save our paychecks because we suffer from Prius envy. Wouldn't be caught dead at Wal-Mart because, well, it's Wal-Mart. But a …

Seattle to reduce landfilling by producing less trash in the first place Seattle is pioneering programs to cut landfill costs by stopping trash before it starts, pursuing an ambitious long-term goal of becoming a "zero-waste" city. Seattle Public Utilities is using more electronic documents, radically reducing its use of paper, and instituting a green buying program for non-toxic cleaners, greener electronics, and other eco-friendly products. Manufacturers are being encouraged to institute take-back programs for their products, intercepting them for reuse or proper disposal before they are sent to the dump. Last year, 11 city-sponsored green-building projects salvaged or reused 57,000 …

New recycling plant may help Mexico cope with litter and landfills Mexicans lead the globe in gulping sugary drinks, but recycle only a thin sliver of the 9 billion PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles they use every year. Hoping to jump-start a national culture of recycling, Environment Minister Jose Luis Luege attended last week's opening of a new recycling plant near the city of Toluca, which will handle 90,000 PET bottles an hour, or 25,000 tons a year. Luege hopes to see about 2.2 billion of the nation's discarded PET bottles recycled in 2005. Mexico has barely begun to deal with …

Greens urge boycott of Harry Potter's U.S. publisher J. K. Rowling and a coalition of eco-Muggles are giving props to Canadian publisher Raincoast Books for printing Rowling's hotly anticipated sixth novel -- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, being released tonight -- entirely on recycled paper. Canadian conservation group Markets Initiative estimates that Raincoast's good green citizenship will save 28,221 trees -- more than would fill New York City's Central Park -- while increasing costs no more than 5 percent. Meanwhile, U.S. publisher Scholastic, the world's biggest Potter publisher, declines to reveal how much paper used in its 10.8-million print …

Salt Lake City played host to mayors getting up to speed on climate issues. City leaders from around the U.S. were treated to a rare bird's-eye view of the environment earlier this week at the Sundance Summit, a three-day mayors' retreat on climate change hosted by Robert Redford in Salt Lake City and at his 6,000-acre resort nestled beneath Utah's Mount Timpanogos, near Park City. In between briefings on "The State of the Science" and "Why You Should Care," and tutorials on emissions-trading programs and retrofitting public transport, a bipartisan troupe of 46 mayors representing nearly 10 million U.S. citizens …

I can't go outside anymore in Seattle without seeing a Toyota Prius -- actually make that several. To escape the onslaught, I ducked into a movie theater this past weekend to watch War of the Worlds. Just as I was thinking it would be just me, Tom, Dakota and a few alien friends, Mr. Prius showed up on the big screen to remind me that he's watching me. Is there no escape!?

Dear Umbra, OK, I hate lawns. But for a number of reasons, I have to move into a town where lawns are the law, and mowing a necessity. Can you give me the scoop on the most eco-friendly lawnmower that will still cut decently? (No, I can't have goats.) My old reel lawnmower never did a decent job, and I doubt I could talk the rest of the family into it. That leaves, as far as I know: electric (corded and cordless), solar, and (gasp) gas. My husband has ancient knowledge of electric mowers and what a terrible job they …

Seth Heine. With what environmental organizations are you affiliated? I'm the president of CollectiveGood and RIPMobile.com -- mobile phone recyclers. What do your organizations do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute "mission accomplished"? CollectiveGood recycles mobile devices (phones, pagers, PDAs) and all of their related accessories, usually in partnerships with charities, companies, and/or governments. We also just launched a new division, RIPMobile.com, which buys used mobile phones directly from the public, paying people for their phones in the form of content (music downloads, ring tones) or gift certificates from companies like Circuit City -- making recycling fun and rewarding …