Climate Culture

How are you greening your suburban life?

Are you a green-living suburbanite? Do you want to tell your story to a major news organization? Even majorer than Grist?

Tell us about your creative green approaches to living in the suburbs. Have you replaced your lawn with switchgrass? Offered to install solar power for everyone in your cul-de-sac? Organized a carpool to a commuter-transit junction? Share your adventures below in comments.

Joel Stein of Time takes a poke at the locavores

The contrarian in me grinned when I read the concept. Time columnist Joel Stein pulls an anti-Pollan: He will cook dinner using only ingredients that traveled at least 3,000 miles from his home in L.A. And — deliciously — he will do his shopping at Whole Foods, which he declares “the local-food movement’s most treasured […]

Romance novelist accused of plagiarizing green group’s magazine

Bloggers at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books have accused popular romance writer Cassie Edwards of plagiarism in a number of her tomes, including Savage Longings, Savage Moon, and Savage Beloved. Among the accusations of Edwards — who, it may surprise you to know, often writes about the lustful dalliances of Native American characters — […]

From Scoring to Score

What can beige do for you? This poor albino penguin has no luck with the birds; but he’s got brothas in the Beige Brigade, a Kiwi cricket club whose tastes lie beyond the pale. Aw, the li’l fluffball finally found some mates. Photo: The Beige Brigade The kids on the bus go melt, melt, melt […]

Knitters seek out eco-friendly yarn

Photo: iStockphoto Knitting is a hot hobby these days — raise your hand if you received a hand-knit scarf as a holiday gift — and stitch ‘n’ bitch regulars are eager to break out from toxic-dyed, pesticide-sprayed cotton yarn. The next time you’re in the yarn store, keep an eye out for a to-be-sweater of […]

A food writer looks back at 2007, from supermarket monstrosities to organic-garden epiphanies

While I peeled the apples for Apple Brown Betty recently (see recipe below), I had time to think about the food-related highs and lows of the past year. What was my most disconcerting food experience of 2007? Three interactions with the industrial food system vie for first place. We’re holding out for grape-sized apples. Photo: […]

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke on carbon-heavy touring

Wired this month features an interesting conversation between Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and musician David Byrne. In it, Yorke, a longtime vegan whose 2006 solo effort focused on global warming, mentions his carbon-related guilt about touring. Here’s the relevant clip: Yorke: … [At] the moment we make money principally from touring. Which is hard for […]

British supermarket expands bike-trailer program

Bike to store. Pick up free bike trailer. Fill trailer with groceries. Hitch it up and ride home. Return trailer within three days. That’s the dreamy concept at the Waitrose supermarket chain in Jolly Olde Englande, where the free-trailer scheme is being tried out at a handful of stores. Says a department manager, “There are […]

A review of six hand and body lotions

January, 1993. I am a college freshman returning to school after the holiday break. Rushing upstairs to see my friends, I burst gleefully into a dorm room, only to have one of them greet me with horror. “Dude, what’s wrong with your face?” Love the skin you’re in. Until that moment, I hadn’t known anything […]

EPA launches cell-phone recycling campaign

As many as 150 million cell phones are taken out of service in the U.S. each year, and some 80 percent end up in the landfill, where they leach toxins into the air and water. In an attempt to address the problem, the U.S. EPA today launched a campaign to boost cell-phone reuse and recycling. […]