Illustration by Kathleen White Leftovers by Justin Klugh On a cold night in Philadelphia, Jane grabs her box cutter and flashlight, a fistful of plastic bags and a container of baby wipes. “I take a step ladder for if I fall and can’t get out once I get in,” she says. “I usually don’t ever
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Second Harvest by Marilyn Anthony Monika Crosby, a “true blue farmer’s daughter,” does not grow vegetables. Employing what she calls “picking with a cause,” Crosby runs Philabundance’s gleaning program, coordinating volunteer vegetable harvests at three commercial farms in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Since 2014, Philabundance has redirected 760,000 pounds of produce to low-income families. Dating
MorePhoto by Mark Likosky The Crucible by Thomas Parry It’s below freezing and the wind blasts across a lot in Northeast Philadelphia, but Chris Little doesn’t shiver. He’s big. Defensive-tackle big. And fast. In a moment he’s around the back of his battle-worn Ford pickup, sorting through a pile of metal set against the wall
MoreSpring Alliums by Peggy Paul Casella These adolescent stalks are the first signs of green at the market—culled from farmers’ fields to make room for bulbs from remaining garlic and onion plants to swell underground. They are less pungent than their mature counterparts, with zingy, front-of-the-mouth flavors. And their svelte bulbs and leaves add just
MoreIllustration by Corey Brickley Lost and Found by Christina P. Day The day we came across a fake breast in a pink box, we thought it was funny at first—until further digging revealed the owner had endured breast cancer. A refrigerator arrived with a rock-hard frozen turkey still intact in its yellow netting. The day
MoreThrowing It All Away by Heather Shayne Blakeslee American women do 10 more hours of housework per week than their male partners—more than a full workday. Marketers, smartly, continue to target women with messages about convenience and saving time. My sister, a chemical engineer and mother of three, is fully aware of this dynamic. She
MoreIllustration by Chelsea Manheim Let’s Trash the Idea of Garbage by Jerry Silberman Question: How much of my household waste can I recycle, and does it decrease energy and materials use? The Right Question: Why do I have waste, anyway? If you are my age or older, you probably remember when beer and soda came
MoreIllustration by Kathleen White Time to Waste interview by Heather Shayne Blakeslee Modern products—from store-bought soap to paper plates—are a reflection of the shift from a time when handwork ruled to our age of mass manufacturing. That change in the kind of work we do in our daily lives has also ushered in a time
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Illustration by Laura Weiszer A Plague of Plastic Bags by Phil Bresee Throughout much of 2015, negative stories and shortsighted opinion pieces on recycling dotted national and local media. The stories, including a particularly exasperating editorial by John Tierney in The New York Times, mostly stemmed from reports on the historic low-market values for
MoreThe Road to Better Food by Emily Kovach One Saturday per month, retired mother Nancy Price and her adult daughter Candice Price drive their pickup truck from Germantown to Lancaster and back again. On the way there the truck is empty, but on the return trip, it’s loaded with meats, dairy and produce from small
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