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The Food Web

Economists like to say that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. It’s starting to look like that global immune system includes more that just Economics. This NY Times article, about a drought in Australia, underscores just how interconnected the world’s food supply has become.

Going Green: Everything Old is New Again

While reading the how-to go green issue of one of our favorite design magazines recently, we noted the list of “150 easy ways to green your home.”  As it turns out, the list equates “easy” with “spend” and while we are staunch advocates of certain forms of retail therapy,  we found that a major oversight of the article was in not mentioning that original green buzzword, recycle. 

Nowadays, recycling usually means sorting the trash in the hope that our plastic bottle will be re-born as a fleece jacket. Let’s take a moment to imagine a time before blue plastic bins, when recyling meant wearing your older brother’s winter jacket because, as Mom pointed out, “it’s still a lovely jacket.” And at Out of the Closet and Community Thrift, you can see that perfectly lovely jacket recycled and see to it that a worthwhile charity benefits in the process.

And if you absolutely must make a green purchase – and sometimes, we simply must – how about purchasing a nifty, re-usable shopping tote? Now on SALE! 

Hope

livehopelove.com is a beautiful website focussed on HIV in Jamaica, check it out when you have a moment

Solar Power (on a truly massive scale)

PG & E has announced plans to build a massive solar power generation facility in the Mojave Desert. The technology is a bit different than what you might put on your home, rather that collecting sunlight through panels, the system concentrates the sun’s heat with mirrors. The heat produced is then used to convert a liquid to steam, the steam can then be used to power a turbine. The energy created from the Mojave installation will power 335,000 homes. You can read about it, here.