Illustration 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
MoreKitchen Confidential by Emily Kovach Is there such a thing as Chef Supported Agriculture? A new program at High Street on Market started with a couple of farmers and chefs flipping through a seed catalog. Jack Goldenberg of Urban Roots Farm in Philadelphia and Teddy Moynihan of Plowshare Farms of Upper Bucks County sat down
MoreBeyond the Brown Box by Emily Kovach If you’re a seasoned CSA buyer, you probably already have a favorite farm that does heirloom tomatoes just right, or you know a farmer who will surprise you with a crazy new item you’ve never seen. This season, try a new kind of CSA. Here are some options
MoreIllustration by James Heimer Backyard Biogas by Marilyn Anthony Thirteen-year-old Clayton Young, a home-schooled Berks County teen, is working to design a solution that would enable small-scale biodigesters to provide year-round cooking gas in Syrian refugee camps. But when he first brought the lofty idea to his mother, Jennifer, she was adamantly opposed. “We’re not
MoreIllustration by Kathleen White 1. Clean up Planter Beds, Pots and GardensRemove weeds and fallen leaves, and get started on composting the remnants. (The best time to spread compost on your garden is in the fall.) 2. Store Your Winter GearGet hold of a storage bin to put away the bulkiest of your winter clothes, and
MoreReport Shows Oil Trains are an Environmental Justice Issue Marginalized communities bear a disproportionate risk in the operations of oil train rails in Philadelphia, according to the report “Environmental Justice and Oil Trains in Pennsylvania.” Released in February by ForestEthics, ACTION United and PennEnvironment, the reportstates that people of color and historically poor communities in
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Big changes to federal policy are cascading into local programs and breaking down barriers to healthier lives for some of our most vulnerable residents
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