The Royte Stuff
Today is National Bike to Work Day, which may help explain why you saw more bicycles on the road this morning than you normally do. It's a good opportunity for evangelization by urban cycling advocates, who often make the case that the addition of more bicycle lanes and other bike-friendly infrastructure cuts air pollution by getting commuters and other residents out of their cars.
I’ve often wondered how this could be accurately measured. I’m a long-time New York City bike rider, and I would certainly love to see more bike-friendly infrastructure, but not one of my bike trips has ever replaced a car trip. (I’m guilty of...
Last week the Susquehanna River Basin Commission announced that it was temporarily suspending 19 separate water withdrawal permits due to reduced stream flow levels throughout the Susquehanna basin (which covers land in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland). Most of these withdrawals were linked with natural gas extraction: drilling and fracking can consume up to 7 million gallons of water per well, and wells can be fracked multiple times.
Two weeks ago the US Geological Survey pronounced 61 percent of the lower 48 “abnormally dry.” In the East,...
Rumblings of progress on the single-use packaging front: Time magazine recently ran an article about a Danish burger chain called Max Burgers that -- poof! -- eliminated cardboard packaging from its kids’ meals at the request of a customer who “only wanted the fries and toys … and was annoyed at having to throw the boxes straight into the recycling bin.” Who among us hasn’t felt exactly the same way?
In the U.S., we’re barely at the stage of recycling that packaging, let alone handing burgers to customers without disposable hygienic wrap. Did...
Check out this new (very short) video by the Plastic Pollution Coalition, about you-know-what in our oceans. It's short, sweet, intoxicating -- and effective.
In honor of World Water Day, let's celebrate an action recently taken by a national park that should properly be interpreted as a boon to environmentally friendly water consumption.
Proponents of the right to buy whatever single-serve packaged beverage they damn well please have long argued that eliminating bottled water from vending machines will force the public to instead buy high-calorie drinks, which have a bigger environmental footprint than does bottled water. (This shift in buying behavior hasn’t yet been proven; but yes, for the record...
Nancy Stoner, formerly of NRDC and now the Acting Assistant Administrator for the EPA’s Office of Water, blogged recently about drinking-water fountains. Lamenting the disappearance of fountains in public places over the last several decades, she notes that when we lose fountains, we also lose “public knowledge about the importance of investing in drinking water systems, which provide dependable, affordable and clean water.”
In cities with tasty, healthful water, I’m all for more fountains. Drinking from a fountain is cheaper...
The question has dogged social movements that go by names like The Compact, Buy Nothing, and Small Is Beautiful: will reducing consumption cripple the economy? Bill McKibben, in his 2007 book Deep Economy, argues that less growth has its virtues, and that there are plenty of cleaner,...
Much ink has been spilled on the deplorable state of the nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure -- and the terrifying sums ($390 billion according to the sometimes-hyperbolic American Society of Civil Engineers) it will take to remedy the situation. The EPA estimates $188 billion is necessary to manage stormwater and preserve water quality nationwide.
Yes, it's a lot of money, but there are some positives attached to that pricetag: it's not only going to bring us cleaner, safer drinking water, says a new...
Just before the holidays, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson went on the Dr. Oz show to talk about drinking-water safety. She concluded with her one wish for a cleaner, greener earth. To my surprise, she wished for more recycling.
Not that again! I groaned. Does anyone really listen to pro-recycling arguments these days? The subject is so 20th...
After finishing my coffee at a New York City Pret a Manger restaurant yesterday morning, I lingered near the trash bin, which was divided into separate sections with uniquely shaped openings -- not unlike a toddler’s shape-sorting block toy. In my hands: a napkin, a paperboard coffee cup, a cardboard sleeve, a plastic lid. It took me, something of a garbage geek, nearly a minute to figure out what I was supposed to do with each discard.
Did the napkin go with the paper, or did the napkin go with the...
