7gen Bloc

A quick reminder that tomorrow is StepIt Up’s National Day of Climate Action. Find an event near you, and let your voice be heard. The stakes are as high as they get, and it’s up to each of us to do whatever we can and then some to pull this beautiful world back from the brink.

Kaye Evans-Lutterodt/Solar Decathlon Technology fetishists (like me) will recognize the name of David Pogue, technology writer for the New York Times. He can usually be found in the paper’s Circuits section opining on the latest gizmological gadgetry. That’s hardly a green subject, especially given all the crazy materials they put into e-things and iToys these days, but Pogue also has a blog in which the “e” in electronics occaisionally crosses paths with the “e” in environment and Pogue can be found ruminating on what happens when it does.

Met-up with Scott and Madeleine from DoRight Enterprises at the recent Society for Organizational Learning event we had at 7th Gen. Here is a riff on what they are doing. good stuff...WR

We got some good ink in yesterday's edition of USA Today. More to the point, we got a nice photo and the issue of unhealthy chemicals in consumer products got some much needed mainstream media coverage, which I think we can all agree is even better.

A recent news story about a baby who died after crawling into a bucket of bleach left me thinking about the refrain, “our products are safe when used as directed.” We hear this over and over and over again. But we also hear of many cases – most of them accidents – where people fail to use products as directed.

There’s been a quiet controversy simmering for a bunch of years now about whether or not organic food is nutritionally better for us than conventional food. We know it’s healthier than conventional food where contaminants are concerned. There’s no debate, for example, about whether or not people eating organic food have to worry about weird hormones in their cheese or pesticide residues on their peaches. They don’t. But what about what’s inside organic foods? What about the vitamins and minerals and the other things that make food healthy in the first place?