The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia recently released a report on the viability of bike sharing in Philadelphia. The result of a year of research, the “Philadelphia Bike Share Concept Study” found that a market exists in Philadelphia and recommended a system of 2,500 to 4,500 bicycles. I recently spent some time in Paris and,

LFFC is the most prominent organic co-op in the region. Serving all of Eastern Pennsylvania and New York City, the co-op is made up of over 75 small-scale family farms committed to organic growing practices and humanely raised animals. The Co-op’s annual CSA features 28 weeks of delivered shares and runs from late

Help save the Appalachian Mountains! The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) office in Philadelphia is currently reviewing 23 mountaintop removal mining permits. This Monday, March 1, The Energy Justice Network is sponsoring a protest to speak out against mountaintop removal and to get the attention of the EPA administrators making these permit decisions. March 1, 11:00

For the past ten years, the West Philly Hybrid X Team of West Philadelphia High School’s Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering has been building alternative fuel vehicles and competing in national competitions. Their latest mission: to win the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. On Thursday, March 4, David Akers and Quintin Mikell

The New York Times has a story up on their website about a new phenomenon sprouting up in North Carolina: Crop Mobs. Like flash mobs, but with an actual purpose, these coordinated gatherings of manpower help small sustainable farms rip through labor intensive projects in a jiff. They also give the landless an opportunity to

The Marcellus Shale formation is a 7,500 feet-deep mass covering 50 percent of Pennsylvania and the neighboring states of West Virginia, Maryland, and New York. With the use of newly developed methods of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, scientists estimate that nearly 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be extracted from the formation. Such a

Growing Power’s Will Allen, keynote speakerOne of the many unintended consequences of Snowmageddon 2010 was the cancellation of the hotly anticipated (at least in the Grid offices) Pennsylvania Horticulture Society Compost Matters Conference. The one-day conference will examine the current state of composting in the Delaware Valley with a focus on new developments in food-waste composting

Can the Jewish Deli survive the sustainable food movement? It's an interesting question, and one addressed by a recent story on haaretz.com. In early February, the Jewish community center in Berkeley hosted a panel discussion on the fate of delis in a world where local, seasonal eating has started to really matter to people. Michael Pollan

According to the New York Times, Philadelphia-based architecture firm Kieran Timberlake has defeated the competition to land the contract for the new U.S. Embassy in London. The building is being described as "the greenest and one of the most expensive U.S. diplomatic buildings in the world."
A light-filled cube, the 12-story building will be surrounded by

Birchrun Hills Farm's Birchrun BlueOn Sunday, after a lovely long bike ride along the Schuylkill, I checked out the brand new Garces Trading Company at 11th and Locust.
It's a beautiful, clean space and our table was immediately greeted with a basket of warm sourdough bread, baked in-house. The bread was perfect for dipping in a