Uncategorized

Industrial freecycling

In the tradition of freecycling, NYC-based WasteMatch offers companies the ability to post their waste to a website, in case some other company has a use for, say, hundreds of cardboard boxes.  The idea is to save on waste-disposal fees -- thus the slogan, "Out of your dumpster, onto your bottom line."

Just one of many great environmentally friendly ideas that offer a genuine service, make a profit, and require no government intervention.

(via Treehugger)

The new anthology Rio Grande chronicles the life and troubled times of a fabled river

The week before I sat down to read Rio Grande, a thick new anthology about the famed river edited by Texas scribe Jan Reid, a strange sight appeared on the actual Rio Grande outside the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas. A fiberglass statue of Jesus was discovered grounded on a sandbar in the river, drawing faithful visitors from both sides of the border to its river-stained robes. Admittedly, little connects the literature of the river and the religious relic that appeared there this fall -- except, perhaps, this: the contributors to the book and the worshipers of the statue share the conviction that the river needs a savior.

Much more on framing

Speaking of WorldChanging (and speaking of framing), Alex Steffen has an absolutely stellar post over there on ways environmentalists can frame their issues more successfully.

I highly, highly recommend that everyone read it. Seriously. Go now. It connects to what I was trying to say here, and what I was trying to say here, but does so more thoroughly and insightfully, and gives the concrete examples that I'm sure we're all hungry for. Bravo, Alex.

UPDATE: Also worth checking out: some clarification on framing from Kevin Drum.

Metabloggery

Mike Millikin's Green Car Congress is the best place to keep up with the action in sustainable personal transportation.  WorldChanging is the best place to keep up with futuristic sustainability issues of a dizzying variety.

Every Sunday, Mike contributes a post to WorldChanging, summarizing the week's developments in green transport. It's always good. This week's is no exception. Make it a weekly read.

Salmon, haiku, Grist

The scrappy B.C.-based alternative online journal The Tyee recently published an interesting pair of point-counterpoint sytle pieces on farmed salmon. The first claimed farmed B.C. salmon were escaping into the wild; the second claimed that the first was hokum.

But enough about salmon. Let's talk about the contest Tyee is running in conjunction with the pieces. It asks readers to send in ... haiku ... hey, wait a minute!  That sounds familiar!

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, well, consider us flattered.

John Emory Parks, international marine expert, answers questions

What work do you do? I’m an international affairs specialist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal oceans agency. How does it relate to the environment? NOAA oversees a number of environmental duties in the U.S., from monitoring climate and forecasting weather to managing fish stocks within U.S. waters and protecting critical […]

Celebrate Buy Nothing Day at Wal-Mart

This Friday I'll join culture jammers and lazy-asses the world over in celebrating Buy Nothing Day (inspired by those jammers exemplar over at Adbusters). Stick it to The Man by sitting on your duff; dig it.

More energetic rabble-rousers are encouraged to head to the nearest lair of Beelzebub (Wal-Mart, yo), not to feed the beast, but to congest the aisles as part of a Whirl-Mart Consumption Awareness Ritual. (See live action video of such!)

Milling About

Goodies on Gristmill There are lots of juicy bits on Gristmill these days, upon which we hope you will share your opinions. For instance, what did you think about the idea, recently propounded in Soapbox, that radicalism is the last thing enviros need in this day and age? Grist blogger Todd Hymas didn’t think much […]

Dear Father, Who Art in Heaven, Polluted Be Thy Air

Church air may be bad for believers’ lungs Whatever its effects on your soul, spending lots of time in church may be bad for your lungs, according to a new study out of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Researchers measured air quality in a small chapel and a large basilica and found levels of particulate […]

Free the radicals

Dave's recent essay falsely equates being "radical" with being "violent." Violence and radicalism are not the same. Being a "radical" just means you want to see significant, fundamental changes to society -- say, a real, true shift to sustainability or an economy that actually values people and the environment over monetary profit. These are changes, I am willing to bet, that a large number of environmentalists would love to see. They are also radical. They would require a fundamental change to society. But does that shift have to include violence? Absolutely not.