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If you’re any­thing like me your inbox is fre­quently filled with newslet­ters, some impor­tant, many not so much.  (I often won­der what the world would be like if we were only allowed to send 3 emails a day.  Bet­ter make them good!) So while I was clean­ing out my inbox the other day, I came [more…]

Well Howard County, you’ve amazed me again.  The 2012 20 Minute Cleanup had over 2300 par­tic­i­pants!  They are over-used these days, but I think that deserves some extra excla­ma­tion points.  All I can say is wow.  And thank you. Thank you for not being the only crazy one out there pick­ing up other people’s lit­ter.  Thank [more…]

Could you imag­ine if the water sup­plied to your house, or the waste­water leav­ing your house was treated, trans­mit­ted and avail­able for unlim­ited use with­out a charge?  Like­wise, think about the elec­tric­ity that pow­ers all those appli­ances and gad­gets through­out your home.  What if it was pro­vided at no cost?  Fat chance you say — [more…]

Recy­cling has become a cen­ter­piece of the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment, and it should be.  As a pro­fes­sional in this field over the past 15 years, I have had count­less peo­ple approach me about their recy­cling habits – excited to share the lat­est item they have added to the recy­cling stream, or how much they have reduced [more…]

So I, like most of Amer­ica, have spent a fair amount of time think­ing about the Trayvon Mar­tin sit­u­a­tion.  Some of you may be won­der­ing what that could pos­si­bly have to do with a sus­tain­abil­ity blog.  Truth be told, one can eas­ily make the case that safety and equal­ity can and should be top­ics of [more…]

Prior to installing my rain bar­rel, rainy days went unap­pre­ci­ated.  As a kid, rain meant I couldn’t run around in the yard.  As an adult it meant I had to schlep my umbrella, get my shoes wet, and likely spend the day with frizzy hair. Luck­ily for me and my joy of sim­ple plea­sures, I [more…]

Ah, Spring.  After this weird win­ter, who knows how early every­thing is going to start grow­ing and bloom­ing.  I’m itch­ing to start divid­ing some peren­ni­als, mov­ing stuff around and adding new plants.  It’s all good.  Except for my lawn – which I hate.   So this year I’m going to really put some effort into it [more…]

I got a new poster for my office that stares at me each morn­ing when I arrive to work. The mes­sage is short but thought pro­vok­ing. It reads: IRRESPONSIBILITY: No Sin­gle Rain­drop Believes It Is To Blame for the Flood. Think about that for a minute. The mes­sage puts the chal­lenge of stormwa­ter man­age­ment in [more…]

Envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, edu­ca­tion, cam­paign­ing, pro­mo­tion, mar­ket­ing, blah blah blah. Here we are doing all of this work, and Dr. Seuss had it fig­ured out all along! The Lorax is a book I read from time to time to my four-year-old daugh­ter.  What?  You have never read The Lorax?  It is the quin­tes­sen­tial story of char­ac­ter v. nature, [more…]

  Before we get into what green infra­struc­ture is or what it means for you and your back­yard, let me first pro­vide you a lit­tle insight into the painstak­ing process that we went through to pro­duce some­thing fun for you to play around with.  (Trust me; it’s pretty cool — even the County Exec­u­tive is [more…]