Though you might be surprised, natural cork wine stoppers are the best choice, primarily because harvesting the real stuff is an age-old practice that keeps the world’s relatively small population of cork oak trees, which can live for hundreds of years, alive.
In this, the year Paul McCartney turns 64, a new wave of senior citizens is upon us. The natural health industry anticipates robust sales, since many aging Boomers are buying herbal hair-loss remedies and organic face creams in their quest for the fountain of youth. The Natural Marketing Institute estimates that 60 million adults now turn to herbal supplements as part of their anti-aging strategy. So where to start with this new, natural approach to aging?
In the wake of corporate scandals at Enron and elsewhere, stock market investors are becoming increasingly aware of the power of voting their "proxies." Anyone who owns a single share of stock in a publicly traded company can weigh in on a variety of resolutions on corporate governance and social and environmental issues. Proxy voting is an increasingly important tool to nudge companies toward cleaner and greener behavior.
Researchers have known for years that exposure to excessively-loud noise can cause changes in blood pressure as well as changes in sleep and digestive patterns—all signs of stress on the human body. The very word “noise” itself derives from the Latin word “noxia,” which means injury or hurt.
Woodbury County, Iowa became the first government in the U.S. to financially support organics when the board of supervisors voted last year to give a property tax rebate to farmers transitioning to organic. Since then, Woodbury officials have also passed a law that requires the county’s food service contractor to purchase organic food grown and processed within 100 miles of the county courthouse whenever available.
After being unable to find an acceptable CD replication service to mass produce his music, Craig Minowa founded Earthology Records in 1997. From the start, Minowa knew that he would build his company with the core value of living lightly on the Earth. The record company boasts a wind-powered recording studio that is also geothermally heated, built with recycled materials and set within an organic farm.
In 1992, Alabama faced a unique situation—a surplus of income from offshore drilling. Voters overwhelmingly backed a plan that would use the money to save the state’s rapidly vanishing landscape. The program was called Forever Wild and since its inception it has purchased more than 100,000 acres of land and wetlands.
Another prenatal precaution has been added to the running list: don’t breathe! A number of studies have concluded exposure to air pollution, such as that found routinely in major American cities, can adversely affect fetal development (see "Womb Pollution?" In Brief, November/December 2004).
Prairie dogs are keystone species that endangered black-footed ferrets depend on for survival. But a century of mismanagement has reduced prairie dogs to five percent of their historic numbers (see "Open Season on "Varmints,"" cover story, July/August 2004). "The political climate for prairie dog conservation remains abysmal," says Erin Robertson of Center for Native Ecosystems.
Record gas prices have prompted heated debate about the root causes, leading some to point their fingers at ethanol, which in the U.S. is usually made from corn (see "Grass to Gas," Currents, May/June 2005). Congress had recently mandated replacement of the groundwater pollutant methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) with ethanol, another additive that decreases pollution when blended with gasoline.
