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  • Our addiction to cheap stuff has become very expensive, new book argues

    American retail is riddled with cheap, fall-apart merchandise. We know this. Sales are a ploy to get a shopper to spend, as opposed to a boon for penny pinchers. Right. And how much mileage do we get from that old, overused adage, “You get what you pay for”? More than we’d like to admit. So […]

  • Tips for flying to the Copenhagen climate conference

    Cop a ride to COP-15…Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristSo you’re going to Copenhagen to help save the planet. Splendid! This December the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where international delegates will negotiate a post-Kyoto Protocol global climate plan. That’s the hope, anyway. Earlier we posted some tips and ideas […]

  • First commercial ship sails through Northwest Passage

    CBC News reports: The Canadian Coast Guard has confirmed that in a major first, a commercial ship travelled through the Northwest Passage this fall to deliver supplies to communities in western Nunavut. The MV Camilla Desgagnés, owned by Desgagnés Transarctik Inc., transported cargo from Montreal to the hamlets of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Gjoa Haven and […]

  • UPS to deliver by b-i-k-e?

    The president of the Salem (Ore.) Bicycle Club got an e-mail from someone purportedly at UPS looking to hire seasonal drivers to make deliveries by bike — and thus to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Wowie! If this is for real, it means that all those with admiring eyes for the buff men and women in brown […]

  • There are simple ways to reduce cargo ship CO2 emissions right now

    The International Maritime Organization’s recent decision to adopt tighter emission rules for the global shipping fleet is a step in the right direction for an industry whose emissions have been practically unregulated. Ship emissions are blamed for 60,000 deaths worldwide each year — a serious public health threat. The new rules, however, only address sulfur […]

  • Companies that green their supply chains can find savings galore

    How many light bulbs does it take to change a supply chain? In the case of Baxter Healthcare Corp., just three. When Jenni Cawein, manager of corporate environmental health and safety engineering at the Illinois-based $9.8 billion health-care giant, arrived six years ago, she saw that the company was losing ground on waste. “I asked […]

  • How a business can pick the best packaging

    You’ve created the World’s Greenest Product, and you’re shipping it off to your first big customer. You’ve made it from the most environmentally sensitive materials, using only renewable energy. It’s the pinnacle of eco-friendly everything. Special delivery. Photo: iStockphoto. So what are you going to pack it in, cardboard or plastic? And how are you […]

  • How companies are driving down the impacts of shipping

    We all know that planes, trains, and automobiles use gobs of fuel and spew mega-gobs of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere — and that makes freight transport a particularly dirty business. Your new iPod is in there somewhere. Photo: iStockphoto. The environmental impacts of shipping goods hither and yon are significant but […]

  • Catalogs of Ills

    In what appears to be an uncoordinated campaign, three friends have brought me three different mail-order catalogs, asking me to condemn them publicly. At first I resisted, because I prefer to dump on catalogs as a class, rather than singling some out, which might leave the mistaken impression that others are okay. However, three requests […]