Climate Culture

NYT revs up special package on cars

The New York Times published a gazillion-story special section on autos today, with many articles covering the green angle. Read up about General Motors’ electric dreams, the difficulty facing Hummer marketers, waterless car washes, and more.

Umbra on dishwashing and droughts

Dear Umbra, I am trying to be so much more green than I used to be, so your column has helped me with the nagging questions. Now I wonder about living in a drought-stricken state with water restrictions and bulging landfills. Saturday I had a wedding shower for a dear niece and invited many women […]

Less hunters mean less funding for conservation, states find

Many states are lamenting the declining population of a valuable species: the American hunter. Funds from hunting licenses and fees are generally directed to wildlife conservation; while the need to maintain habitat for wild critters isn’t going to go away anytime soon, the number of sportsfolk in the U.S. has declined by some 35 percent […]

Home lead-testing kits unreliable, says study

If you rushed out to buy a home lead-testing kit when all of Junior’s toys were recalled, hope you saved the receipt: a new study says that over-the-counter kits, usually used to test paint, aren’t reliable for playthings. The Consumer Product Safety Commission put 104 kits to the test and found that 56 failed to […]

… or Kansas, for that matter

Here’s what the sign says on the back of the bathroom door in our hotel: Hotel Laws of Iowa Fixing, Limiting, and Determining the Liability of Keepers of Hotels, Inns, Eating-Houses, and Steamboat Owners to Inmates Thereof. Sorry, was that … steamboat owners? Holy crap.

Umbra on Halloween

Dear Umbra, We really enjoy the community aspect of trick-or-treating but we don’t want to give out candy to the little ones, or toxic plastic Chinese toys. Two hundred kids come to our house every Halloween. How do we keep it green, safe, and economical? Jodi McMillian Charleston, W.Va. Dearest Jodi, Two hundred children? How […]

Grist pulls a Huck Finn

Grist is rollin’ (rollin’!) on the river this week, and we’re taking you with us. We’re bound for the Mississippi — the legendary waterway recently deemed an “orphan” of the federal government. Just call us Sarah van Sawyer and Huckleberry Wroth. We’ve ventured here to find out how three cities are reinventing their once-industrial waterfronts, […]

From Playboy to Pilsner

Seeing Redford The Sundance Kid bares all in Playboy this month (hello, Mr. October!), revealing the naked truth about his dirty fetish: racing fast cars, like his low-mpg Porsche. But you knew that already, right? Because you totally read Playboy for the articles. Sims U Been Gone More proof of the far-reaching effects of global […]

Gossip, cool events, and personal vignettes I’ve come across during my travels

1. Japanese press at NYC show commenting on how no eco-fashion label has hit their fancy yet. (Oh, but how far we have come since a few years ago!)
2. People Tree (ironically a very popular brand in Japan) has secured 300,000 Euros to help expand its line.
3. Sofala Investments, the parent company of the African luxury label a.d. schwarz, will plant a tree this October and November at its forest reserve in Mozambique for every registered race participant in The Race against Global Warming, to neutralize each racer's carbon emissions.
4. Posh labels like Bahar Shahpar and Be Carbon Neutral hit the L.A. scene at the Eco Nouveau show.
5. "Nice Toms": The passing compliment I got from a girl on the subway in regards to the Toms shoes I was sporting. (For every pair you buy, Toms will give one pair away to a child who does not have shoes ... and rumor has it that the company is going to be doing a shoe drop soon.)
6. Model before the Ekovaruhuset runway show commenting on how she hopes her nip doesn't slip in her itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny tiny organic cotton bikini.
7. Plugging the plight of the Great Bear Rainforest (the largest contiguous coastal temperate rainforest in the world, just north of Vancouver, whose surrounding trees are often pulped for junk mail and magazines) at a speech in front of Hearst Corporation executives in NYC (the largest magazine publishing house).
8. Galicia, a region in northwestern Spain known for its production of wind and solar energy, is bringing back sound textile manufacturing practices and becoming a breeding ground for more eco-conscious fashion labels.
9. Getting compliments from the boat crew in the Great Bear Rainforest on my stylish (and very functional) recycled PET jacket shell from Nau. It rained every day for eight days straight. That jacket was really working hard for me!
10. Talks of a "Not Made in China" label.

Green un-building catching on in the U.S.

What’s the opposite of green building? Green un-building (aka, deconstruction)! And it’s catching on in the United States in that if-you-have-the-time-and-money-and-inclination kind of way. About 245,000 houses are torn town in the U.S. each year and roughly 1,000 of them are carefully deconstructed with up to 85 percent of their parts going to other projects […]