Loved to Death The large, flat shells of living abalone once carpeted the rocky waters along California’s coastline from Mexico to Oregon. Prior to European settlement, Native Americans feasted on the mollusk’s muscular foot and employed its shell as a colorful decoration. More recently, Californians have established a multi-million dollar industry harvesting abalone and delivering […]
November 28-29, 1999. Our delegation of journalists, winners of the annual Population Institute reporting awards, arrives in New Delhi in the middle of the night and drives through nearly deserted streets to our hotel. The 4 a.m. calm is deceptive: at first light, the streets fill with belching diesel taxis and two-stroke motorcycle-based rickshaws, colorfully […]
Microcredit Benefits Small Businesses, the Environment, And Your Bank Account, Too Socially responsible investing has traditionally meant keeping your money away from negative investments, like tobacco companies and large polluters. But what if your money could turn a profit while actually having a positive impact? What if you lent part of your nest-egg to a […]
Salvaged Building Materials are Catching On In 1976, Dr. Dan Knapp quit his teaching job and started hanging around the dump in Lane County, Oregon. On a mission to rescue reusable items, he rooted through tons of trash, undaunted by the landfill's “No Salvage” signs. “I thought that [prohibition] was kind of silly,” he says, […]
Are Medicated Baby Powders Doing More Harm Than Good? Lead has been identified by the federal government as the foremost environmental health threat to American children. Nearly one million children still have elevated blood lead levels, over four percent of the population. Now, according to San Francisco's Center for Environmental Health (CEH), infants may be […]
Organic Cereals Start the Day Off Right Gradually over the last century, the American idea of a healthy breakfast evolved from eggs and sausage to Cheerios. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, American consumption of breakfast cereal increased dramatically between 1980 and 1997—by over 40 percent to 17 pounds per person, per […]
When Mary and Howard Maynard were building a new home in Connecticut, the design included an 18-foot high wall of glass that spanned nearly the entire east side of the structure. Wood framing would not have been effective. “That vast space had a number of tricky structural implications,” says Howard Maynard, adding that the engineer […]
The Family Behind Hip Clothier The Gap Logs the Redwoods Founded in ultra-hip 1969 San Francisco and named for the generational split that was then ravaging America, The Gap Inc. clothing empire has made billions selling once-egalitarian blue jeans as fashion items. Now some charge that The Gap’s founder/owners, the Fisher family, are selling out […]
A Helping Hand for the Green Investor The socially-conscious investor with $5,000 to put at risk can choose from a variety of specially tailored mutual funds and financial planning services. But suppose the green investor has $5 million in family money and needs some specialized attention in deciding where it should go? The San Francisco-based […]
Learning About the Planet at the Reborn Biosphere 2 While most college students were hanging out in the Student Union or cramming for exams, environmental science major Shannon Glynn was taking coral reef samples at the bottom of a 900,000-gallon ocean. A junior at Notre Dame in Indiana, Glynn was one of 50 college students […]
