Climate Culture
All Stories
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Guerrilla bike lanes and asphalt devils: Remaking the streets with protest art
Photo: c/o Peter GibsonWhen Peter Gibson first set out with spray paint and stencils into the streets of Montreal, he had protest on his mind, not art. He had little sense that his small act of sabotage would usher him into the boundary-pushing realm of street art — or land him in the back of […]
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Minneapolis house gets by without a furnace or fireplace
A lot of people talk a good game about passive heating, but are they willing to face getting through a Minneapolis winter with no furnace and no fireplace? Paul Brazelton is. He recently finished retrofitting his home to become one of less than two dozen passivhauses in the U.S., which will mean facing 20-below winters […]
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Go, fight … green? Can sports teams save the planet?
Photo: IscanWhen the 2011 Major League Baseball season got underway last April, teams rolled out the usual promotions for fanatical fans: giant foam fingers, T-shirt giveaways, beer in unbreakable, aluminum bottles. The Seattle Mariners took a slightly different tack. At two separate Monday night home games, 5,000 fans were given bags of gardening soil, composted […]
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Paper wine bottle is classier than a box and just as compostable
Typically, drinking wine from paper vessels doesn't exactly scream "classy." Think about wine from a box … or a Dixie cup … or a paper bag. But the makers of GreenBottle are trying to break that trend with the world's first paper wine bottle. The bottle has a thin layer of plastic on the inside, […]
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This is the funniest video about repurposing you’ll ever see
What if you have metal can, and you don't want to make a throw away of it and then everyone is sad because you make a litterbug? Flula has ideas! He also has ideas for repurposing shirts, pants, monkeys, milk jugs, and branches. (You cannot make a car from branches, but you can make a […]
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Greenie Pig on ‘shrooms: A trip into wild-food foraging
Photo: Elisabeth Kwak-HefferanFarm to table? Please, so 2009. Forest to table is where it’s at right now. And while foraging one’s own nettles, berries, or chestnuts (or paying top dollar for them at hip restaurants) has both foodies and greenies all in a tizzy these days, no other gathering activity has quite the cachet of […]
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Letter from an imprisoned activist: Time to ‘play dirty’ for the climate’s sake
Delaying a decision on Keystone XL doesn’t redeem Obama’s failure to take advantage of his opportunity to turn the tide of climate change.Photo: The White HouseIt goes without saying that politics is a dirty system. It’s so dirty that I believe there are only three reasonable approaches to politics: apathy/despair, overthrowing the system, or playing […]
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Hilton hotels recycle soap for charity
Pretty much nobody besides Eloise and Leonard Cohen stays in a hotel for long enough to go through a bar of soap. They can't put your slightly-used soap out for the next guest, though, so hotels throw out more than 2.5 million bars a day. Hilton Hotels have now realized how stupid this is, and […]
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Ask Umbra: Is it bad to leave a window open when the heat is on?
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, When I was in college, I had a friend who thought she was eco-conscious, but she used to crank the heat and then leave the windows open for “fresh air.” Years later, I dated a woman who lived in a building where the heaters were stuck on […]
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‘The Story of Broke,’ Annie Leonard’s new video
Annie Leonard made a splash with her viral video about our consumerist society, “The Story of Stuff,” which inspired a book, an in-depth website, and a series of spinoffs. Her latest installment in the series is “The Story of Broke” — watch it here: The video in a nutshell: The Story of Broke: Why there’s […]
