At 86, Chestnut Hill resident Sandra Folzer regularly smashes running world records, but her pursuit of physical excellence is secondary to her environmental goal: to remove single-use plastics from racing. In 2024, Folzer, a breast cancer survivor, shaved an astonishing 30 minutes off the 12K record in the women’s masters 85-89 age category. The next
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Across the nation, more and more youth are reaching for a bicycle for recreation and as a means of transportation. In fact, the advocacy group PeopleforBikes found in a 2024 survey that ridership for children ages 3 to 17 increased from 46% to 56%, reversing a decline. And on March 14 and 15 at the
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In June at the Hunting Park Recreation Center, Ilianny Rodriguez, a senior at Esperanza Academy Charter School, was playing volleyball in the gym with her friends. She says that when it’s very hot, they cope by lying in front of the fan because the gym is not air-conditioned. Rodriguez has noticed that people try to
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On March 14, a seven-year-old tree, which had arrived grafted with 15 varieties of stone fruits, was planted alongside a natural dye garden before a crowd of about 50 community members at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Sam Van Aken grafted 15 additional varieties onto the tree the next day and will
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The handmade dresses of red lace and black silk displayed in the tall, arched windows of Dafina Co. in Old City (47 N. 3rd Street) prompt passersby to pause and imagine slipping into such elegance. Inside the boutique, restrained electronic music and French artwork set the stage for the runway-ready clothing that designer Gerta Hebeja
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A search for real estate under $200,000 in Philadelphia yields mostly fixer-uppers and condominiums. Marc Rowell’s mission with Deep Green Retrofit, launched in 2021, is to develop energy efficient, move-in ready housing for working-class families, putting affordability and sustainability ahead of personal profit. Growing up in public housing in North Philadelphia, Rowell came to believe
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By Dawn Kane and Bernard Brown It has been nearly 380 years since blueback herring have been able to swim up Cobbs Creek beyond what is now Woodland Avenue. Back in 1645, New Sweden’s governor, Johan Björnsson Printz, built a gristmill on the waterway the Lenape call Karakung. Water-powered mills generally rely on a dam
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As a kid, Wyatt Piazza connected with the natural world by helping his dad out in the family vegetable garden. He holds dear the memories of foraging with him in the woods of Vermont during summer vacations. In his work as a chef today, Piazza creates vegetable-forward recipes for Kiddo, the restaurant he and his
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Imagine in the span of a year being badly injured in a car accident, suffering the loss of family members and discovering you are pregnant. After this happened to one Philadelphia woman, she was told she had been accepted into a study of how guaranteed income impacts quality of life. The gift of $500 a
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Large landscaping projects, especially with increased local rainfall caused by climate change, require erosion-control planning. A search for products yields an array of mesh options designed to hold soil in place until plant roots can take over, but many can present an entanglement hazard to wildlife. The Philadelphia Metro Wildlife Center handles dozens of such
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