May 10th, 2013 
Eric Wilson 
As part of a recent business trip, I flew Delta Airlines. Flying is rife with environmental concerns, but it’s not going away. Here’s what Delta has done to green their practices: In-flight recycling: To date, Delta has recycled more than 7 million pounds of aluminum, plastic, and paper products onboard that would have otherwise been [...]
May 8th, 2013 Eric Wilson 
My wife and I recently ended a 5-month long home search. Our parameters were a bit tight. Between budget and location, we automatically discounted a number of homes. We have one car and wanted to keep it that way for sustainability reasons (financial and environmental). We looked for a place close to the bus line [...]
April 21st, 2013 Stephen Wade 
What does it mean to be green? In the modern era, its meaning has evolved from Rachel Carson’s documentation of pollution in Silent Spring, Teddy Roosevelt and and John Muir’s founding of the National Parks, and Henry David Thoreau’s solitary musings in Walden to a more complex, integrated, consumption-based, and urban meaning exhibited by Al [...]
April 15th, 2013 Justin Manger 
From the Ocean Conservation Society, using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), this infographic is full of staggering and somewhat depressing facts like fishing line lasts up to 600 years before it biodegrades. We’ve posted about this before but it is worth remembering. This is especially true as we run around with hectic schedules that leave [...]
Posted in Behavior, Conservation, Justin Manger, News, Oceans, Sustainability 
Tags: Environment, Water Conservation 
No Comments » April 14th, 2013 Eric Wilson 
As a follow up to a recent post about toaster ovens and toasters, I’ve come across another troublesome kitchen appliance, the dishwasher. I love the dishwasher. Well, I love the idea of it; not when it comes to resource consumption (water, detergent, materials to build), but from a pure convenience standpoint. Here’s the problem, it [...]
Posted in Behavior, Conservation, Energy Efficiency, Eric Wilson, Featured Posts, Op-Ed Tags: Tiny Homes, Water, Water Conservation No Comments » March 31st, 2013 Eric Wilson 
I recently read Alan Weisman’s Gaviotas on the bus. Numerous tweets resulted from the first few chapters and now this post. Weisman relates the story of how the 1973 oil embargo and ensuing energy crisis played a crucial role in the attention heaped upon Gaviotas, a settlement in the llanos (savannah) of Colombia. The town [...]
March 18th, 2013 Eric Wilson 
Upon finishing the Overture, the preface essentially, to Alan Weisman’s Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, I was a bit depressed. Here was a book about a town in the desolate reaches of eastern Colombia. A town that strived to be an example of sustainable living amongst the harsh conditions of the llanos, savannas [...]
March 11th, 2013 Sean Connell 
Seattle is abuzz with the pending opening on Earth Day (April 22) of the Bullitt Center, which is considered to be the world’s greenest commercial building. This groundbreaking structure incorporates a diverse range of green energy technologies, sustainable and energy-efficient materials, and creative engineering and designs all intended to make the building’s footprint environmentally neutral. When fully operational, [...]
Posted in Behavior, Business, Clean Technology, Conservation, Education, Energy Efficiency, Green Building, Local Energy/Food, Real Estate, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Sustainable Development Tags: Energy Conservation, Green Technology, LEED, Pacific Northwest, Sean Connell, Seattle No Comments » February 21st, 2013 Sean Connell Following up on two previous posts about the the Adopt-a-Stream Foundation and its role in promoting environmental education and best practices in watershed management, what sets the organization apart from others active in the Pacific Northwest (and beyond) in environmental education and watershed stewardship? How might its experiences offer models to organizations and stakeholders, not only those involved in [...]
February 19th, 2013 Sean Connell Continuing yesterday’s post on the Adopt-a-Stream Foundation and its role in promoting environmental education and best practices in watershed management, I recently had the opportunity to speak with founder and executive director Tom Murdoch and foundation staff members about the organization’s history and activities. (Best practices will be further examined in a third and concluding [...]
