Current Stories
Editor's Top Picks
Bottled water sucks
The Nation
11/19/2009
With style, verve and righteous anger, a new documentary exposes the bottled water industry's role in suckering the public, harming our health, accelerating climate change, and contributing to overall pollution.
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Waste Not Baskets ready for Winter Olympics
Vancouver Sun
11/20/2009
Rooms in the Vancouver and Whistler athletes' villages will feature recycling containers -- called Waste Not Baskets -- made from recycled plastic.
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California rejects energy-hungry TVs
Los Angeles Times
11/18/2009
California moved to crack down on the sale of energy-gobbling big-screen television sets that now account for about 10 percent of a typical household's monthly power bill.
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Vancouver endorses plan light on parks
Vancouver Sun
11/18/2009
Vancouver's city council has unanimously endorsed a plan to create a high-density neighbourhood with a civic plaza, residential and office space on the final undeveloped section of the former Expo lands. What it doesn't include is the 2.75 acres of park space per 1,000 people that city council holds as a goal.
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Paying more for flights eases guilt, not emissions
New York Times
11/17/2009
One of the first travel companies to offer airline customers the option of buying so-called carbon offsets to counter theit planet-warming emissions has canceled the program. While it might help travelers feel virtuous, the offsets were not helping to reduce global emissions and might even encourage people to travel more.
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EPA has new 'green homes' Web site
Oregonian
11/17/2009
The US Environmental Protection Agency has a new "Green Homes" Web site that aims to guide homeowners and renters toward environmentally friendly home improvement and yard care.
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Green Wave Energy may turn wind power on its axis
Los Angeles Times
11/17/2009
The company and investors are banking on the unconventional design of its microturbines that can generate energy by capturing breezes from any direction.
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Innovator and writer looks ahead
San Francisco Chronicle
11/15/2009
The founder of the Whole Earth Catalog lives on a tugboat with shrubbery on top and solar panels in front of the steering wheel. And yet he makes no apologies to the cow he just washed down with a frosty cup of ice cream. Stewart Brand's new book, "Whole Earth Discipline," thrusts him in the middle of the global climate debate, and not in an easily digestible way.
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Portland project forages for urban edibles
Oregonian
11/15/2009
For many Portlanders, and increasingly others across the nation, fruit picking parties are a way to incorporate the bounty of our city into their diets. The idea behind this type of urban foraging is to use food that's all around us but often overlooked.
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Views: Bellying up to environmental change
Washington Post
11/15/2009
We know more than we've ever known about the innards of the global food system - that food can both nourish and kill, that is production can both destroy and enhance our environment. So it's hard to avoid concluding that eating cannot be purely personal. What I eat influences you. What you eat influences me. Our diets are deeply, intimately and necessarily political.
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Paint it green: the house that soy built
CBC BC
11/12/2009
A house with furnishings and fixtures fashioned from soy products is showing off the versatility of the bean, billed as a green alternative to petroleum.
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UBC floats sustainable-building sciences program
Georgia Straight
11/12/2009
Professors and students at the University of British Columbia are hoping the federal government will fund a sustainable-building-sciences program to help solve urban problems.
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Poll: Vancouver is Canada's most liveable city
Vancouver Sun
11/11/2009
A new poll ranked Vancouver as Canada's most liveable city, with sixty-five per cent of residents agreeing that their city is on the path toward long-term livability. But the poll did not address housing affordability or property taxes, and 69 percent of Vancouverites said transportation is a major challenge facing the region.
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Canadians worried about 'livability' of cities
Vancouver Sun
11/10/2009
A large number of people living in Canada's biggest cities are anxious about the future "livability" of urban spaces and are stressed about traffic and public transit, according to a new poll. Nearly 1/3 of urbanites disagreed with the statement: "My city is currently on a path of livability."
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A house made of straw and mud in Boise
Boise Idaho Statesman
11/09/2009
On a small lot tucked between conventional homes on Boise Avenue, Mark Lung is hard at work stacking bales of straw and mixing mud.
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WA firm diverts landfill waste to compost
Kitsap Sun
11/09/2009
North Mason Fiber turns nearly a dozen types of solid waste, from fish waste and brush to recycled wood and land clearing debris, into 18 products, ranging from organic compost and bark to hog fuel.
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LEED for weeds
New West
11/08/2009
A coalition of landscape architects and botanists has created the nation's first rating system for green landscapes. As LEED has done for buildings, the Sustainable Sites Initiative will do for outside spaces that sequester carbon, clean the air and water, increase energy efficiency and restore habitat.
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Can Montana's local food system be saved?
Billings Gazette
11/08/2009
There was a time when 70 percent of what Montanans ate was produced in state. They grew watermelons in Whitehall, green peas in Bozeman, beans in Glendive. Now there's a push to return to those days, but it's been so long since Montana fed itself, the burning question is whether it still can.
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Views: A 100-mile dieter dishes
Portland Oregonian
11/09/2009
Asked to accept a two-week challenge to eat only foods grown within 100 miles of my house, I thought "How hard could that be?" Never have I eaten more healthfully. Never have I craved white flour and sugar more. Never have I spent so much on groceries. Never will I do it again.
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Ready to jump off the grid?
Oregonian
11/05/2009
Researchers believe the day is coming when the electricity you use will be your own. Instead of relying on large central generating stations - hydroelectric dams, coal plants and the like - scientists say we're moving toward an era of "personalized solar energy."
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Takeout, eco-style
Ashland Daily Tidings
11/05/2009
An Ashland High School graduate has created a reusable takeout container that is being used at 200 workplaces and universities nationwide - including Southern Oregon University. Audrey Copeland, 24, created the Eco-Takeout clamshell container after she was inspired by a college environmental studies project.
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Sustainable meat hits its hot spot
Willamette Week
11/04/2009
Portlander Berlin Reed used to be a militant vegan, until a series of off-restaurant jobs left him working behind a sustainably run butchery counter. "There was pretty much no argument against it. I knew exactly where the animals came from and how they lived. So I took a nice bite of rib eye at work and was like, 'I'm sold.'"
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Views: Smart, green and humane
Vancouver Sun
11/04/2009
According to the latest UN population projections, the next 40 years will see an almost doubling of urban populations. This growth will offer both unprecedented challenges and great opportunities to cities around the world.
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Views: The cool factor matters
Toronto Globe and Mail
11/03/2009
Auto companies big and small are so focused on the technology of green cars – the hybrid drive systems, the batteries, the electric motors, the controllers and software that are the “brains” of the things – they seem to have lost sight of something very important: electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids need to grab buyers with their looks.
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Northwest energy efficiency better in 2008
Coos Bay World
11/02/2009
Improved energy efficiency reduced power demand by an amount equal to about 148,000 homes across the Northwest last year.
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