Stripping Stain with Corn Cobs and Black Walnut Shells

In the past decade a revolutionary method has surfaced to strip old stain from any exterior wooden structure. This sustainable practice, called “media blasting,” has evolved to include various opt...

Five Products you Should Check Out for Issue 4, 2008

1. Elmwood Reclaimed Timber Elmwood Reclaimed Timber Inc. manufactures and markets the highest-quality reclaimed wood products, which adhere to standards embracing the company’s deep respect for the...

A Living Systems Approach to Design

Sustainability is not a deliverable. Sustainability is not a thing. Sustainability is not simply about efficient technologies and techniques. It is about life — a process by which living things such...

Changing Lives for the Better

Worldwide, an estimated 1.6 million people die each year from health problems brought on by toxic air in their homes as they cook family meals over primitive stoves and open pit fires. Millions more s...

Coastal Erosion and the Threat to Kivalina, Alaska

In 1953 the Bureau of Indian Affairs permanently settled an otherwise nomadic, federally recognized tribe of Inupiat Native Alaskans onto an 8-mile-long barrier reef between the Chukchi Sea and the Ki...

Mining and the Destruction of Baia Mare

More than 100,000 cubic meters of heavily poisoned water, rich in cyanide and other toxic heavy metals, such as copper and zinc, spilled through a tailings dam breach Jan. 31, 2000, in Baia Mare, capi...

Angels of Mercy: The United States Navy

Thirty days after the Kashmir Earthquake hit the isolated, mountainous region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, an injured man hobbled into a U.S. disaster relief hospital near Muzaffarabad, approxima...

Compounding Catastrophe: The Impact of Humans on Natural Disasters

The dual forces of global warming and poor human management choices regarding land and water resources combine to cause ‘natural’ disasters, and poor planning and preparation exacerbate the level ...

Personal Reflections: Katrina, The Corps, and Change

Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock, retired, former U.S. Army Chief of Engineers and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Commander “As a public agency the Corps of Engineers must do the rig...

Katrina and the IPET: Understanding the Truth Behind the Tragedy

Hurricane Katrina will be remembered as an unparalleled national disaster not only because, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ...

Finding Your Purpose In Life

When starting to write this guest column, I was originally focused on sustainability, especially because Kuhns Bros. Log Homes is dedicated to preserving the quality of life for future generations. So...

Bali Global Business Day

Companies from around the world gathered Dec. 10, 2007 for a “business day” at the United Nations’ (UN) Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia, to call upon governments to devise clear pol...

The Political Science of Water Resources

Water issues are constantly in the news – too much in some areas and too little in others – with water quality a critical subject around the world. In all cases the challenge to local, state and n...

Warm Springs, Wasco and Paiute Tribes: Leaving a Legacy for Future Generations

A 19th-century Indian superintendent once remarked that the Warm Springs Indian Reservation was one of the poorest reservations ever established. Located on the rugged eastern slopes of the Cascade M...

Words of Wisdom from Albert Einstein

“I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thi...

Going ‘Green’ at Portland State University

Since 2002 Oregon’s Portland State University (PSU) has focused on designing new buildings as well as on retrofitting and renovating older campus structures with sustainability in mind. PSU’s new ...

Five Products You Should Check Out for Issue 3, 2008

1. EM Quant ® Arsenic Test EMD Chemicals is the North American affiliate of Germany’s Merck. The company has been conscious of its impact on the environment for years and assists customers in the p...

The Magic of a Green Roof

No other architectural style provides such a wide range of positive effects for buildings, inhabitants and the environment. Thus, green roofs meet one of the essential conditions of sustainable develo...

Conservation & Compatible Land Use

It is a scene that is being repeated across the nation. Everywhere pristine tracts of land that have been farmland for centuries — or wilderness for millennia — are increasingly being snapped up b...

The Terrible Truth about Arsenic

“Bangladesh is grappling with the largest mass poisoning of a population in history. . . the scale of this environmental disaster is greater than any seen before,” stated Dr. Allan H. Smith, renow...

Wild Salmon and the Circle of Life

Wild salmon are a gift of nature. One of the world’s healthiest foods, they are a rich source of Omega-3 fatty acids, potassium, Vitamin D, the B vitamins, phosphorus and protein – all of which re...

Inalienable Rights: What About the Land?

When I wrote the book, The Tongass: Alaska’s Vanishing Rain Forest, one of the chapters asked the question “Do trees have standing?” In other words, do they have legal rights – rights perhaps ...

Legislation and the Land: Understanding the Effects Upon Southwest Alaska

For more than 9,000 years the natives of Alaska have been stewards to one of the most incredible ecosystems on the planet. Living harmoniously with the land, they have maintained a subsistence lifesty...

Always Getting Ready: The Yup’ik Eskimos of Southwest Alaska

I set out to document the experience of life in a subsistence culture. Through my work I wanted to see how living close to the environment would shape people in their relationships with each other an...

Forests to Fight Poverty

About 10 years ago Joyce Berry, Ralph Schmidt and I assembled a book titled Forests to Fight Poverty: Creating National Strategies 1. We wrote the book at the request of the United Nations ...

The Price of Detachment

When I was a child, life was so much easier. People were interconnected – not just families, but neighborhoods, schools and churches. People actually liked each other and wished one another well. Ov...

The Importance of Being Native

I was about 13 when I caught my first trout, a native brookie that dashed out from underneath the washed-out roots of an old hemlock stump and took my worm-baited hook. Only the roots of that old stu...

Focusing on Local Needs and Opportunities

I have found, with the benefit of hindsight, that the best way to go global in business is to focus hard on local needs and opportunities. In the late 1990s I became chair and CEO of GrupoNueva (G...

Building a Better World

Corporate America is awash in the green movement. Homebuilders are increasingly incorporating energy-efficient lighting and recycled materials into their structures. Automobile manufacturers are build...

Why Land Trusts Are So Critical

When I was a young child, my grandfather and I would walk my dog in the woods near his home outside New York City. One day everything was all gone. The big trees, the frogs in the pond and the songs o...
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