environment

Photo credit: Matthew Nash

To show passersby how plastic threatens leatherback turtles’ survival, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation is getting ready for the Revere Beach National Sand Sculpting Festival next week by making a wire sculpture of a leatherback turtle.[read more]

   This is going to be one of the easiest posts I have ever written, because all I need to do is quote my cyber-friend and fellow writer Ben Brown, and then send you to his own clever and illuminating essay.  Ben, who is a principal in the town planning and consultng firm PlaceMakers, thinks cities have evolved like one of...[read more]

This factory has been open since before World War II. A local business directory estimates that it employs 5,500 people. A Boston Globe story reports a lower number and comments that the company sought state aid recently to prevent layoffs. What’s wrong with this industrial picture?[read more]

How is a white liberal to assuage her guilt when she lives in Portland—one of the whitest cities in the country? And how is a white liberal to raise white children in a white city?[read more]

Urban farming has grown to be a subculture of sustainability that has received a fair amount of theoretical interest and study, but not a great deal of realization. For all of the interesting possibilities that urban farming is thought to enable, there have been enough hurdles to slow down any meaningful manifestations in U.S. cities....[read more]

Our country’s effort to support renewable energy is still in its early stages of development and ripe for adjustment. The maturing of the renewable industry can positively affect job growth, technological innovation and increased efficiency, but there are a number of ways we can be doing those things, even within the umbrella of...[read more]

On the Northern side of Wales, the small town of Portmeirion rises from the hills beside the water into a quaint collection of brightly colored buildings each bearing a percentage of inherently sustainable components. Nearly every building in the coastal spot has been built with pieces of older buildings reclaimed and integrated for a...[read more]

The first decade of the new millennium ushered in new versions of just about everything. Long ago the software industry established a simple versioning protocol to mark the progress and development of its products. These are expressed as versions 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, etc. Over the past decade, the world...[read more]

I’ve been on vacation this week in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state…biking, relaxing, reading, eating well. On our bike rides, we’ve seen cows, horses, sheep, an alpaca, fields of wildflowers, historic sites (check out the Pig War), a vineyard, snow-capped mountains, harbor views and an old limestone factory. As I...[read more]

You can't help live in a place like Sheffield and not be aware of the natural environment. Sheffield prides itself on being Britain's greenest city, which has more to do with the number of trees and parks than anything else, but it's a start.It has large swathes of ancient woodland, the Peak District on its doorstep, numerous parks,...[read more]

At Social Media Today, we've been focused on the issues surrounding urban sustainability for a long time. It was that interest that drove us to create The Energy Collective more than a year ago.Among the many things we've learned from being part of the electric dialogue at The Energy Collective, two stand out. First, the technology and...[read more]