Tag: environmentalism

I’m Going Solar, So Should You

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When this publishes I’ll be on my first real vacation in years. Sure I’ve taken a long weekend here and there to go to Maine or down to the beach, but this time I’m actually getting on a plane (which I hate doing) and going to a place where it’s warmer to swim with Manatees and get a wand at Olivander’s. On the Monday after I return a team of guys will show up at my house between 7 and 9 a.m. to start installing solar panels on my roof. I may be more excited for the panels then I am for the vacation. (HYPERBOLE!)

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I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time, but I was paralyzed by the choices. Over the past year I’ve watched as panels appeared on houses all over my neighborhood. Each house seemed to have a different company on the job. Which was best? I couldn’t decide. Then, a couple of months ago, my boyfriend and I were leaving Home Depot which has had salesmen from Solar City stationed by the door for what seems like years. I figure Home Depot probably did its homework on the company, and since Solar City is now part of Tesla, it had to be a reputable company. Still, I usually avoid eye contact and sneak by, not wanting to get the hard sell, but on this day I was feeling it… So I stopped.  Continue reading →

5 Reasons to Keep Shopping at L.L.Bean

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My boyfriend is hard to buy gifts for. Not because he “has everything”–in fact, it’s just the opposite. He makes an effort to shop ethically, which, mostly means not supporting brands that use sweatshop labor. For the first year or so of our relationship this meant he mostly shopped at second-hand stores or bought things made in America. That’s not easy these days. But over the past few years a handful of brands have made their way onto his “approved” list, and–for whatever reason–they are mostly outdoorsy brands, like Patagonia, that have a commitment to the environment and the workers in their factories.

L.L.Bean is one of those brands. There’s a store not far from my home, and at first, he was skeptical. He knew the company makes their Bean boots in Maine, but couldn’t quite wrap his mind around how the company keeps prices reasonable without exploitative labor practices. Then he had the chance to ask an actual employee, who explained that because Bean doesn’t sell merchandise through third parties and goes direct to consumers it can keep its prices down. Meanwhile, it stays committed to making some of its most popular products in the U.S.  Continue reading →

There’s Plenty of Anger to Go Around: From Samuel DuBose to Cecil the Lion

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When I first started dating my boyfriend he asked me what I thought was the most important issue facing the world. I said, unequivocally, the environment. Without a healthy environment, the rest of it doesn’t matter. We won’t be here to worry about the economy, or politics, or terrorism, or inequality. So when news broke about the illegal killing of Cecil the Lion, my blood boiled.

For me, this is just more evidence of the kind of human arrogance–and sometimes ignorance–that is responsible for everything from climate change to habitat destruction to plain old littering. Scientists warn that were are headed for a mass extinction: “While the extinction of a species is normal and occurs at a natural ‘background’ rate of around 1-5 per year, species loss is currently occurring at over 1,000 times the background rate.”  Continue reading →