Articles by Grist staff

Readers talk back about shade-grown coffee, composting toilets, veganism, and more

  Re: Buzz Alterin’ Dear Editor: You say that shade-grown is not a make-or-break aspect of coffee choice. It is if you want to see the Baltimore oriole. The species is declining by 4 percent a year because the trees it needs are being replaced by coffee plantations. Monoculture coffee plantations are a disaster for […]

Dismember the Maine

Rural Maine residents divided as spring-water bottler moves in An international corporation descending on a rural town, bent on extracting natural resources. Africa? South America? Nope: New England. Nestlé Waters North America Inc., purveyors of Poland Spring water, is prospecting for new sources of “blue gold” in the western Maine wilderness. Some fear the pumping […]

Heavy Metal Bummer

U.S.-owned plant contaminating Peruvian communities with heavy metals There’s heavy metal in Peru, but not the mullet-and-fake-satanism kind. Children in a Peruvian Andes mining town have high levels of toxic heavy metals in their bodies — and the likely source is an 83-year-old smelter owned by the St. Louis-based Doe Run Company. An independent study […]

Arrested Development

FBI arrests six from around the country for green-themed crimes It’s one of the biggest-ever busts for “ecoterrorism” (we’ll take the scare quotes off when someone gets hurt, thank you very much): On Wednesday, federal agents arrested six people in five states and indicted them on charges related to a string of property crimes in […]