Culture

Your car and your meat-eating: the biggest causes of climate change

A new study coming out of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that when it comes to the net contribution to climate change on-road transportation, burning biomass for cooking, and raising animals for food are the biggest culprits. Since most of us don’t […]

treehugger.com Culture

From staple to superfood: açaí goes industrial

“The fruit was traditionally collected from wild palms. Now companies have açaí plantations, and collectors are raising more açaí palms on their land, according to Antônio Cordeiro de Santana, an agricultural economist at the Rural Federal University of the Amazon. With cultivation more concentrated, resistance to disease and productivity have decreased, he said, even as […]

Tom Philpott Culture

The time has come to make delicious and easy bread at home

Fifteen minutes wrestling with dough–who kneads it? A little more than two years ago, Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey got together and transformed home bread making for all time. In the kitchen of Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery, they shot a video illustrating Lahey’s simple method for making a top-quality loaf with no special equipment–and no […]

Tom Philpott Culture

Ask Umbra on eating in

Dearest readers, Look, Ma — no takeout!The sharper among you already know from yesterday’s video that HuffPost Green is exhorting us all to board the cooking-at-home train via its Week of Eating In experiment. Not one to ask of others what I myself am not willing to do, I have taken the pledge. That’s right; […]

Ask Umbra® Culture

Hipster puppies hate on cars

Hipupcracy What do you get when an insufferable breed of the two-wheeled species meets a fey brand of urban canines? Hipster puppies: Photo: elizabeth e via hipsterpuppies.tumblr.com lola bean believes “cars suck” and cyclists have a “right to the road” — but has no idea how mean and annoying she is to pedestrians. Furthermore, hipster […]

Ashley Braun Culture

Inspired transit: Portland gets around

Photos: flickr users b and Jason McHuff Portland, Oregon, is consistently ranked as one of the country’s most livable cities (and it was a Fast City in 2007). And it continues to show solid growth despite having the second lowest per capita transit spending of the 28 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. A system of trains, […]

Fast Company Culture

Garden Girl TV: Indoor gardening, part one

I’ve taken over a small section of my house, the sun porch, and dedicated it to my indoor garden project for apartment dwellers as well as for the seedling factory for all my outdoor garden beds. This part of my house is south facing and gets pretty good natural light. I wanted to capitalize on […]

Garden Girl Culture

Seoul reengineers a freeway into a stream [VIDEO]

Photo: Fast Company Most metropolis’ are so busy building the future that they don’t have time to re-think the past. Not so with Seoul, South Korea. In 2003, the city demolished a downtown freeway to restore an ancient stream that once flowed beneath the thoroughfare. More than 75 percent of the scrap material from the […]

Fast Company Culture

Ask Umbra on organic mushrooms, dog toys, and revisiting cloth napkins

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I’m a big fan of organic produce (especially when the local version isn’t at hand or I’m eating it raw), and I’m also one of those folks who is obsessed with mushrooms. When I come across organic mushrooms, though, my curiosity is piqued: What don’t I know […]