Dear Umbra, I'm the poster child for a late-twentysomething environmentally responsible adult. I use less than 100 gallons of gas a year, less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, less than 20 gallons of water per day, less than 100 therms of natural gas during the winter in Minnesota. I take my garbage out once every two months because nearly everything is recycled, composted, or bought in reusable containers. My house, built in 1921, scores a 9.8 out of 10 on the Energy Star assessment (I document it on my website). All my investments are socially responsible. My job …

Dear Umbra, I am totally frustrated with my in-laws. They know how important it is for us to raise our infant in the least toxic environment we can manage. However, when we go to their house, I have no control over the situation. We arrived there for Easter vacation only to find out that three rooms had been painted and two newly carpeted -- and not with eco-friendly materials! There was also a new dresser in our room that smelled horrible! I was furious. The next day our son woke up with a swollen eye and a cough. They thought …

When right-wing pundits and corporate flacks compare environmentalists to watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside), they mean it as a slur. But when eco-socialists look at the wider environmental movement, they see a big green tomato that had better ripen up, and soon. Hybridizing the analyses of Karl Marx with those of modern-day ecological economists, they maintain that we'll never stop degrading the ecosphere unless we tackle capitalism and the unsustainable growth that lies at its core. For at least one part of their argument -- that economic growth is out of control -- eco-socialists can call …

Dearest Beloved Readers, Another turn of the seasons (still four, at last count) has brought us together again on the eve of Earth Day, the moment in the sun for the environmental movement, the fifth anniversary of Grist, and the second anniversary of my ability to freely pontificate into your inbox. It's been a nice, quiet year here in the stacks, though there was a phase upstairs of eating only grapefruit that took quite a toll. (I do so much heavy lifting of reference volumes -- The Encyclopedia of Niggling Concerns; Paper Products: A Comprehensive Bibliography -- that, alas, I …

OK computer. U.S. consumers are being cheated out of the chance to buy the greenest possible computers, according to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and other environmental groups that have joined forces on the Computer TakeBack Campaign. The campaign's latest report card examined 28 computer manufacturers' practices regarding hazardous materials, worker health and safety, and systems for taking back used products. CTBC found that fewer relatively eco-friendly computers are offered for sale in the U.S. than in countries with stronger environmental regulations, such as Japan and European Union nations, which have worked to eliminate hazardous materials from electronics and required …

On the money. California unveiled the design on its state quarter last week: a picture of John Muir, an image of Half Dome. It's an apt representation of American environmentalism at the moment -- rich in history, but not worth much at present. Modern environmentalism can fairly be described as an American invention. It got its rhetoric from John Muir, its fighting savvy from David Brower, its sense of the world from Rachel Carson, and its institutional framework from the Congress of the Nixon years, which bowed before the loud will of the American people in the years after Earth …

Dear Umbra, I've been Googling all over to find a place where I can recycle old CD cases, to no avail. I'm moving soon and would really like to find an environmentally safe way to dispose of these things. Do you know of any place they can be dropped off, or any other alternatives? MelissaEdgewater, N.J. Dearest Melissa, Here's an answer not just for you, but for all those readers who write in with insanely specific recycling problems: If you've called your municipal recycling experts and Googled all over the place, consider that you've done your best and call it …

Dear Umbra, So I was sitting there at lunch, eating my crackers, when I spied a recycling symbol and was confused. What is "pre-consumer" content? I mean, if the label is true ("carton made from 100 percent recycled paperboard -- minimum 35 percent post-consumer content"), what is the other 65 percent? And what is paperboard? KevinLaurel, Md. Dearest Kevin, Pre-consumer content is the stuff picked up from the cutting-room floor and recycled into new paper products. Paper that was wrinkled, or the odds and ends of a sheet after the pattern was cut out for the cereal box, or the …

Dear Umbra, In reference to your polystyrene response: The polystyrene I have seen recently appears with a No. 6 recycling triangle on the bottom. But I've heard there is no market for this stuff, even though our local recycling company claims to want us to collect all Nos. 1 through 7. How can this be? GailSan Bruno, Calif. Dearest Gail, It's a trick. Since recycling became the Next Big Thing in the 1980s, towns have been testing all sorts of rules, collection bins, and guidelines to see which work best. Some places commingle everything: Glass, plastic, and paper all get …