Plastics have made much of what we buy, do and use affordable and, alas, expendable. As a consequence, plastic pollution is a huge and growing problem. Our landfills are clogged with Styrofoam™ and particle board. The first uses fossil fuels.…
Until a scholarship sent me to France for a year of graduate study, I thought all cheese was orange and tasted the same. A childhood in southern Idaho did not educate my palate about the complexities of food. In Paris…
The quirky name made me laugh. It also made me curious. What I learned impressed me. Cowpower is a renewable energy company that assists farms to build anaerobic digesters that convert manure and organic waste into energy. The introductory film…
The question is simple and powerful: “What if…we change?” What if instead of telling only the stories about how we are damaging the planet, we told the stories of what we are doing to heal it? That is the premise…
By now nearly everyone is familiar with the term “food desert”. As corner groceries that served a neighborhood gave way to supermarkets that served whole communities, a lot of people lost easy access to fresh food. Convenience stores just aren’t…
We keep a pile of shopping bags in the car and carry others when we walk. We try to cut down on plastic bags, yet somehow we always end up with a supply of them in the basket that holds…
A former colleague of mine still tells the story of a city official who objected to her proposal to plant fruit trees and berry bushes in public spaces. He told her, “But people will eat them.” Oh, yes, indeed they…
In a cupboard in our tiny pantry/furnace room/laundry there is a stack of cloth napkins. The all-cotton ones look a bit wrinkly since ironing them would make them less green. (So, OK, I don’t like to iron, but “green” sounds…
One of the things I love about living in downtown Kelowna, British Columbia, is that I can walk to Urban Harvest. Most Saturdays Robin and I pull on our packs and walk just a smidgen over a kilometre to the…
