green living
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Detroit everyman uses DIY moxie to turn his town into a solar mecca
Dave Strenski, resident of Detroit exurb Ypsilanti, got it into his head that he would help the local food co-op reduce its bills by installing solar panels on its roof. And he didn't let his complete lack of experience with solar stand in the way. At this point, he's not only put solar on the […]
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Living off the grid: SUPER FUN
You know that fantasy you have where you move to Maine, go off the grid, and raise your children to know what nature and good old American values are like? Well, one family is living that fantasy, and writing about it for The New York Times.
All summer, Craig and Susannah Hopkins Leisher have been living with their three sons in a cabin in the Maine woods.
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Local dressing is the new local eating
The wool and cotton for all of the clothes in Rebecca Burgess' closet was grown within 150 miles of her home in the Bay Area. The wool was spun there, too; the dyes were grown there; the sweaters were knitted there. In fact, the clothes were entirely locally sourced from what Burgess calls her local "fibershed" — the network of farmers, millers, weavers, designers, dyers, knitters, and seamstresses that it takes to make clothes.
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How DIY and the ‘IKEA effect’ make us green
The "IKEA effect" says that we value things we have built ourselves (even if those things are frankly a little crappy). I'd propose an extension -- call it the "DIY effect," which says we tend to hold onto, repair, and upgrade things we build ourselves, breaking us out of the consumerist cycle of trashing what's old so we can capitalize on the (often-illusory) advantages of the latest and greatest.
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Urban chicken consultant will help you realize your homesteading dreams
We know you think backyard chickens are hot, because we've been rifling through your trash and we found those back issues of Grit. Now there's a shortcut to realizing your dream of owning little tiny feathered dinosaurs that lay unfertilized breakfast bombs for you: Hire a chicken consultant.
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Meet the Greenie Pig
We join our hero as she strives for eco-enlightenment after a lifetime of just going halfway.
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The largest outdoor green wall in North America
Why just have a green roof when you can have a green wall? This 3,000-square-foot wall, which fronts a public library in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada, was installed by green wall company Green Over Grey. It consists of over 10,000 plants in over 120 species.
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Ask Umbra at the tar-sands protests and on the radio
Ask Umbra joins the tar-sands protests and gets interviewed by a radio program called Mrs. Green's World.