AMSTERDAM — An unemployed man, a retired pharmacist and an upholsterer took their stations, behind tables covered in red gingham. Screwdrivers and sewing machines stood at the ready. Coffee, tea and cookies circulated. Hilij Held, a neighbor, wheeled in a zebra-striped suitcase and extracted a well-used iron. “It doesn’t work anymore,” she said. “No steam”… [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Money, Technology on May 9th, 2012 | No Comments »
Free Everything http://www.shareable.net/blog/free-everything#comments It is Saturday morning at 10:07 am and I find myself following a young man I have only just met down a narrow sidewalk between buildings, past a tall spruce tree to a humble but exceedingly well-kept little carriage house hidden in the middle of a block in North-East Portland. The slab [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Money, Technology on April 23rd, 2012 | No Comments »
…With these “tiny houses,” Kittel says, you can cut your footprint down to 120 square feet, you cut your utility bill down to maybe $150 a year, you cut your taxes down, you cut your insurance down, your maintanence is nearly nothing. Kittel is also planning to build houses in “village” groupings. ”I believe in [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Money, Technology on February 27th, 2012 | No Comments »
The R.E.I. storefront in Mountain View, California. Yes, R.E.I. is a coop. Think you know what big business looks like? Think again. According to Charles Gould, Director-General of the International Cooperative Alliance, cooperatives are poised to be the fastest growing business model by 2020. Values-based, community-supported and member-controlled, modern cooperatives have grown steadily since their inception [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Money on February 24th, 2012 | No Comments »
http://www.nationofchange.org/2012-year-cooperative-1328196076 Jessica Reeder, News Analysis: What do coffee growers in Ethiopia, hardware store owners in America, and Basque entrepreneurs have in common? For one thing, many of them belong to cooperatives. By pooling their money and resources, and voting democratically on how those resources will be used, they can compete in business and reinvest the [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Food & Diet, Gardening, Money, Technology on February 2nd, 2012 | No Comments »
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/patagonia-becomes-california-benefit-corporation.html On the first day that California-based companies could change their corporate status to become a Benefit Corporation, TreeHugger Person of the Year 2011-nominated Patagonia further put its principles into practice, reregistering yesterday morning with a new, greener, socially-aware corporate status. Though a number of other corps (the full list is below) took advantage of the new corporate [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Money on January 7th, 2012 | No Comments »
http://www.grist.org/smart-cities/2011-12-28-green-cities-on-the-cheap-low-cost-solutions-sustainable-world Jaime Lerner was elected mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, in 1971, and reelected two more times before serving as governor of the Brazilian state of Paran�. As mayor, Lerner devised a number of low-cost solutions and innovative partnerships with the public and private companies that turned Curitiba into a model green community. He has won [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Money, Technology on January 7th, 2012 | No Comments »
http://www.jgpress.com/archives/_free/002409.html BioCycle August 2011, Vol. 52, No. 8, p. 37 Wildpoldsried produces 321 percent more energy than it needs and is generating $5.7 million in annual revenue — a remarkable accomplishment for a modest farming community that has been able to invest in new municipal infrastructure without going into debt. … everyone agreed that its [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Health, Money, Technology on December 19th, 2011 | No Comments »
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_new_story_of_stuff_can_we_consume_less/2468/ Will rich societies start consuming less? Could wealth go green? Might parsimony become the new luxury? Heresy, surely, you would say. But it might just be possible. Take Britain. A new study finds that the country that invented the industrial revolution two centuries ago reached “peak stuff” between 2001 and 2003. In the [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Money on November 30th, 2011 | No Comments »
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/07/alternative-markets-barter-systems-and.html Interview with Brandon Smith, founder of Alt-Market.com Eric Blair Activist Post …people tend to feel as Howard Beale did in Network when he said, “first, you’ve got to get mad…and scream, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” But once that anger at being lied to for so long subsides, then we [...]
Filed under: Ecology, Environment, Food & Diet, Gardening, Money on October 25th, 2011 | 1 Comment »