If Philadelphia wants to advance its goal of confronting environmental racism, we have to stop sending hundreds of thousands of tons of trash a year to be incinerated and landfilled. Waste incineration is a massive source of greenhouse gases and smog-causing air pollution. Next year, the City of Philadelphia has the option not to renew
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Pennsylvania’s recent entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) made it the first major fossil fuel-producing state to join, but the move had its share of detractors. After much legal and public debate, the agreement has been put into effect. Here’s everything you need to know. What is RGGI? The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
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Transitioning our economy to one that supports well-paying jobs and a healthy planet certainly seems like a concept that most people can get behind. So why has the term “just transition” been so controversial and rejected by many? The principle of just transition is that a healthy economy and clean environment can and should coexist.”
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In 2019, after similar bans had been enacted in other cities, a draft of a bill to end gas hookups in new construction in Philadelphia was put on the desk of Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson, the head of City Council’s Committee on the Environment. Designed to speed the transition from fossil fuels, it seemed like
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The young father made a post on Nextdoor, a virtual neighborhood network, pleading for diapers for his newborn son. Out of work, he had no money to buy them, he wrote, and his partner and baby were due home from the hospital. “Try Cradles to Crayons,” a neighbor wrote back. That advice may have helped
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Bats are small, delicate creatures, and wind turbines can be as large as half a football field long, reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour. It’s not hard to guess the outcome when the two collide. Unfortunately, they collide frequently. Studies of bats killed by wind turbines have found four to seven dead bats
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Let’s say that the toothpaste splattered on the bathroom mirror bothers you. Every time you clean the mirror you are reminded that you’re the only person who does this job and it’s frustrating that no one else cares enough to clean it up. The first step toward peace of mind is finding out if you
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Fourteen years ago, I began stewarding portions of land in the Upper Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia. At the outset, it was a mere 2,400 square feet in the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE) organic community garden plots. I worked shoulder to shoulder with SCEE staff and fellow gardeners to clear invaders from fence lines
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This month Green Building United (GBU), a regional organization that fosters transformative impact in communities through green building education and advocacy, announced Rich Freeh as the organization’s new executive director. Before taking the position, Freeh spent seven and a half years with the Philadelphia Office of Sustainability working on clean energy planning and sustainability reporting.
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It isn’t cheap to make a large commercial building more energy efficient. Even when improvements will eventually pay for themselves, that timeframe can be longer than owners plan to hold onto the building, according to Philadelphia City Councilmember Derek Green. With no prospect to recoup the upfront expenses, building owners often decide not to invest
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