One Step At a Time

What a sustainability leader learned walking from Boston to San Diego

Considering a green career? You might research the field by hiking it. In 1978, I crossed the U.S. entirely on foot through forests and desert, along a maze of quiet dirt and gravel roads, by day and at night, in rain, hail and blasting sunshine.

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2 mins read

Watered Down

A closed-loop system springs a leak

In 2010, my husband Ben and I had been bit by the small-farm bug. I had just swapped a career in managing concert venues and nightclubs to start working with farm and food businesses. He was a paramedic who had lived on a Kibbutz in Israel for four years milking

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3 mins read

The Family Stone

Illustration by James Heimer
A two-century-old stone mill gets a second life generations later
My grandfather, Henry Fischer, was a master miller in Bavaria when he decided at age 20 to immigrate to the U.S. A classic American immigrant story of hard work and new beginnings, he eventually owned his own moving and storage company in Doylestown,

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3 mins read

Rebels With a Cause

Illustration by Chris Hall
Entrepreneurial middle schoolers evolve into focused jerky makers
1998. Downingtown Middle School Cafeteria. Fifth period lunch. I had just finished my brown-bagged salami, mustard and Cooler Ranch Doritos sandwich, and scrounged through my backpack for the $5 bill my mom gave me each morning for drinks and snacks. I got the same thing

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3 mins read

Earning Her Chops

illustration by Alexander Ciambriello

I have no interest in slaughtering animals. I have borne witness and it’s intense, hot, primal and best left to the people who are skilled at doing it quickly and humanely. But as a meat-eater, I wanted to “get to know” a whole animal in a visceral way, not just frozen packages

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3 mins read

Chards of Conversation

It all started after overhearing a conversation in Nepali. The Bhutanese couple behind me on the bus was talking about their first days in America. I had learned bits of the language years ago when I worked on organic farms in Nepal after high school, so I turned around and said, “Namaste.” Almost immediately they

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2 mins read

Return to Power: Why we need a new Benjamin Franklin

At the peak of February’s ice storm, 715,000 households in the Philadelphia region were without power. But is being “without power” the same as being powerless? I live in a Montgomery County neighborhood that has managed to escape weather extremes: no tornadoes, hurricanes or drought-induced wild fires. But icy rain and bitter cold overwhelmed us.

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2 mins read

An injured rider finds support from the bicycle community

illustration by Andrew RobertsI could be the safest bicyclist i know. I teach people how to ride bikes in the city as part of my job at two nonprofits—the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and Gearing Up. Off the clock, I’m a bicycle evangelist who encourages everyone to give two-wheeled transportation a try. But my

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2 mins read

Connecting the Dots: Civil rights protests, Woodstock, a Commodore 64 computer and my inevitable path to Greenbuild

It is the night before greenbuild, the U.S. Green Building Council’s international conference and expo, and tens of thousands are flocking to Philadelphia to celebrate and promote sustainability as a genuine worldwide movement. As an architect and professor of sustainable design, it’s more than an amazing moment in our city’s history; it’s a validation of

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2 mins read

Cashed Out: My weekend without shopping

story by Suzanne LevySometimes, I’m just astonished. I look at the credit card bill and think—how did we spend that much? The evidence is on the page—a latte, a run to the office supply store, a visit to the hardware store. It’s not exactly an extravagant lifestyle, yet cumulatively these small purchases seem to gang

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2 mins read
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