Every year, growing numbers of us are unhappy with the shopping frenzy that surrounds the holidays but most of us don’t know how to get off the treadmill. What if we worked together to find another way to celebrate?  This holiday season join us in finding more of what matters.

During the two-weeks of the historic UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (December 7th-18th), we’re bringing people together to talk about the impact of holiday spending on their lives and the environment.  Join the No Impact Project and Center for a New American Dream for nationwide pre-DVD release community screenings of the documentary, No Impact Man, and a post-screening discussion about how to simplify our holidays this year.

Find a screening near…

This weekend I saw a very heartening example of community. On Halloween I was in New York City in the company of a two year old fairy princess (a friend’s goddaughter). We went to a party at Stuyvesant Town, a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings on the East Side.

As someone who grew up in a suburban environment, I’ve often marveled at the differences in city kids’ childhoods. On the plus side, New York infants can sleep serenely on a subway or ambulance-filled street. On the minus side, growing up in a huge city tends to mean living under a rightfully-watchful parent’s gaze. Millions of people mean exponentially more things can happen to your child, and in a place where people…

Thrift shopping has been a way of life for me for a long time. I’ve grown to value a garment or household item with a few imperfections more highly than I would a new one. Imagining what unknown recipes a wooden spoon was used for prior to arriving in my kitchen adds something to my life. My love for old things goes back as far as I can remember…one of my first favorite books was a story about a little girl who had been given a new, starchy china doll but preferred an old one made out of wood and straw. I know that for others, however, used stuff carries a different connotation.

Someone told me once that only a middle-class…

Source: U.S. Department of Energy

“The growth of clean energy can lead to the growth of our economy.” - President Obama

As part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act President Obama has allocated $3.4 billion stimulus grant money for 100 smart grid projects throughout the United States to modernize our power grid (locations can be found on the chart above).  Once smart grids are installed  “meters can report in, appliances can control how much energy they use, and electricity stored in batteries can supply quick jolts of energy where needed, replacing the expensive power plants now used to meet peak power needs.”  The project is expected to increase job opportunities, reduce…

As mentioned in an earlier post, there is a common vocabulary related to food, and it doesn’t always relay qualities that are intrinsic to foodstuffs: think “crazy” fruit flavors and “sinful” chocolate. Another issue seems to preoccupy us, or at least food advertising: wanting “more”–whether more volume (super sizes) or more flavor. “Mega” “super” and “ultra” are such common descriptors in our products that I wonder if this tendency to hyperbole is an essentially American trait. I remember a college professor once remarking that the Thanksgiving story–a formative tale of American identity–centered on the cornucopia, a vessel overflowing with, as he described it, “not just enough, but more than enough.” Maybe our yawning appetites can be traced to the endless…

Photographer and New Dream friend Chris Jordan has a talent for catching civilization enacting its values. From his photos of post-Katrina New Orleans to his to-scale models of the plastic bottles that end up in the landfill at an alarming rate, he highlights uncomfortable truths. This has never been more true than his recent work documenting the plastic diet of birds in the Midway Atoll of the North Pacific. Take a look at the remains of baby birds fed plastic by their parents and see if you don’t get a gut reaction of your own.

Over the next months (and even years) folks will be increasingly hearing about what is becoming known as the “New Economy.” At this point most are probably saying: Oh no, another term to be confused by.  But this is an important one to grasp.  The new economy is defined differently by different people but it has at its heart a change from business as usual (BAU) and an understanding that all people matter just as much or more than profits and that the environment needs to be considered in the business equation.  Another core concept is that this economic model tends to be more regenerative in that it seeks to rebuild communities and local networks, restore quality of…

Yesterday I was listening to the radio and two seemingly-unrelated things struck me. The first was the news that the US Consumer Confidence Index has fallen. The second was a song by the great Tom Waits. This index has always struck me funny because it seems to measure the little hamster-wheels of consumption which by some measure drive the economy. Now more than ever since the recession began, consumers and economists alike are poised before the holiday season, unsure of whether the engines of spending will kick in as they should. That’s where Tom Waits comes in.

Mr. Waits is a master at fusing unexpected language with uniquely rhythmic arrangements. But his song “Step Right Up” that came on the radio…

Apples are everywhere in stores and farmer’s markets this time of year, but bobbing for apples isn’t the only fun thing you can do with this versatile fruit. Making homemade applesauce is easier than you might think, and offers a chance to showcase the sweet and tart flavors of different varieties.

Applesauce is a kid-friendly way to have an apple a day while offering protection against cancer–a Cornell researcher found that apples contain a phytonutrient called quercetin, which is more effective in blocking tumors than vitamin C.  In fact, one apple “packs more cancer-fighting antioxidant capability than a 1,500-milligram megadose of vitamin C.”

Start with apples from your local farmers market and follow these recipes(1, 2)…

My wife took me out to dinner the other night and while we were walking back to the Metro in DC, we decided to do some grocery shopping.  And then the panic hit us.  We did not have our canvas grocery bags.  So what should we do?  Should we hop onto the Metro and risk getting back to the market after it closed?  Should we just throw caution to the wind and use a couple of store bags?  Should we not shop and not have cereal in the morning?  In truth, it really did not matter what we decided.  The more important fact was that we were thinking about the concequences of…