Articles by Katharine Wroth

My favorite side effects of the ivory-bill discovery

Best local creation to emerge from the recent discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas: a haircut that pays tribute. For $25, you too can sport a moussed mohawk painted red, white, and black.

Second best: the ivory-billed cheeseburger. Um ... gross.

And finally, best factoid to surface in the media hype: the former name of bird town Brinkley, Ak., is Lick Skillet.

New ads give recycling a smackdown

OK, I was watching bad TV last night, and this ad came on for Glad ForceFlex trash bags. Apparently these are very exciting trash bags because they stretch, which makes them better for bulky items. Such as, according to this chipper ad: cardboard boxes and two-liter soda bottles.

Glad! Have you heard of a little thing called recycling? I know your success depends on people not recycling. But do you have to be such wankers about it? (In fairness, I should note that the company donated its stretchy bags for the Great American Cleanup. Which is noble and all. But sort of cancelled out by the "just chuck it!" campaign.)

Even though my letter to eBay didn't get a response, I'm going to continue my crusade and pen a note to the good folks at Glad about this one. (And not just because of Umbra's encouragement.) We'll see what happens.

High energy costs don’t get in this brewery’s way

Hey, I don't want to get a reputation. But here's more news from the beer-and-rising-energy-costs front: The New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colo., is hopping on alternative energy instead. To wit: The company uses methane captured from its wastewater to help power its facilities, and uses a biodiesel blend in its delivery trucks. No big surprise from an outfit whose employees voted, waaaay back in 1998, to make it the nation's first wind-powered brewery.

When it comes to sustainability, New Belgium is "pretty impeccable," fellow beermeister Garrett Oliver of the Brooklyn Brewery told Fortune Magazine in 2003. "They're the people the rest of us look up to."

Now your $9 ballpark beer comes in an eco-cup

It's a single piece of news, but a revolution in its own right: starting Friday, the Oakland A's will serve drinks in compostable cornstarch cups, and provide compostable cutlery too. McAfee Coliseum staffers will dig the items out of the trash at the end of each game -- pausing only briefly to wonder if they should have taken that internship with Dad's friend's company instead -- and ship the whole beery, mustardy mess to a composting facility.

It's all part of stadium manager George Valerga's plan to reach a 75-100 percent recycling rate. And the San Francisco Giants are considering composting too. OK, OK, California did pass a law requiring special-events venues to increase their recycling. But hey, whatever it takes to make America's ballfields greener. Let's go A's!