It might not be St. Patrick's Day, and you may not be Irish, but lately everyone is going green. Even trucks are going green. Or at least the United Parcel Service is. One of the world's largest package distributers in the world. "As part of a public-private partnership to increase the commercial availability and use of alternative fuel vehicles, UPS announced its first purchases of a little-known technology: the hydraulic hybrid vehicle," according to CSRwire, promising intense fuel savings and environmental benefits.   Read more...

If you ever need a little pick me up, and don't have time for a good book, a nice cup of coffee or a chat with a friend over the phone, maybe cartoons are for you. No seriously. Every day I'm shocked by the amount of appreciation I have for a woman named Natalie Dee (and her husband, Drew).

She might not have a Wikipedia entry, but the sketch cartoonist definitely uses the web to the best of her ability. Her daily cartoons can be seen on her website NatalieDee.com . Some might be crass, while others can make the often hilarious point a good news story just can't. See October 8's posting if you don't believe me.   Read more...

The just-out-of-college crowd has been dubbed the entitlement generation. People like me, 22 years old, equipped with the college degree we were told would grant us a good paying job, armed with the sense of right and wrong when it comes to the environment our baby boomer parents destroyed, and supplied with enough wit to know the right thing to say and when to say it. Yes, perhaps we think that we too should reap the benefits of our world as our parents have, but upon graduation with tens of thousands in debt, there's an unfortunate financial reality that awaits us instead. But, perhaps it's not that unfortunate. Collectively my generation might not make as much money as the generations before us did, but whether that's a choice or just the way of things, the generation now, Ode called this future population in the September issue of Ode, has also an ingrained notion that the we can indeed change the face of things. When everything is as low as it can go, there's no better place to push up from than the bottom, as noted in Ode's story on Failure in the October issue.   Read more...

Before this election and before global warming I can't remember one person talking about building codes, other than perhaps when my friends and I would gather to talk about our bad college landlords. But when global warming became climate change, and solar panels were more than coffee talk conversation tools, that's when I first started hearing about LEED certification on a regular basis, though its been around since 1998. The nonprofit organization, LEED, otherwise known as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has a Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and it provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. LEED awards buildings points for satisfying specified green building criteria, within their six major environmental categories of review: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design.   Read more...

Changing the world is like playing Dominos. Once one thing gets in place, starts to work, there's an all encompassing effect that takes over. That's the premise of Chain Reaction, a two-day event taking place in London, UK, with the purpose of bringing together social leaders, community activists, policy makers, business leaders, and young people from around the globe to share learning and to generate new ideas for social change in a big way.   Read more...

When you think of Nepal, you might think of images of the Himalayas and decorated child goddesses. The Western media often does not focus on what is going on in this small country nestled between China and India. Perhaps they should. Nepal is doing the opposite of the Western media today. While the western media scales back on hiring and funding, media outlets in nepal are hiring new reporters, editors and broadcasters left and right. Newspaper readership and radio participation has taken a huge jump. This more effective flow of communication played a vital role in recent pro-democracy movements.   Read more...

If I had the choice between living in a housing project in one of the United States' most densely populated city, or a typical American Dream home, you can bet I'd pick the dream.

But, that's not how research gets done, so say Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, an economics and political science Ph.D. graduate of MIT and now University of California at Berkeley ethnologist. For nearly a decade Sánchez-Jankowski took the road laced with poverty in the form of living in some of the world's most crime-ridden residences. The Berekely professor lives his life surrounded by violence and poverty. For much of the '90s he lived in housing projects from New York to Los Angeles, documenting what he calls the “subculture of scarcity” for Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods, published by UC Press.   Read more...

Fair-trade, locally grown, healthy, non-violent and organic. That's what consumers want these days. With the little extra spending shoppers can afford, the trend seems to be hitting a sustainable note. And after many wink-winks and nudge-nudges, company owners are finally getting the hint. By implementing stricter codes and actually following health regulations, workers are benefiting left and right. But still the little people behind big corporations need a voice. A clear voice. Clear Voice, a confidential communication hotline for workers, has successfully completed its first year of operations in Latin America and China, both big low-cost producers, and is planning to gain five more Asian countries in partnership with Verité, a leading non-profit organization dedicated to protecting against sweatshop abuses.   Read more...

After decades of flushing toilets, staying sanitary, and celebrating cleanliness, the World Toilet Summit and Expo is in the midst of its eighth annual event. The summit began yesterday with keynote speeches from Guy Hutton, senior economist for the World Bank Water and Sanitation program and a pledge to sanitation, along with Chea Samnang from Cambodia's Department of Rural Health Care and Kamal Kar, expert of Community Led Total Sanitation in Calcutta, India. The summit initiative from WTO serves to bring experts together in order to focus on promoting clean toilets, sanitation issues and hygiene. Right now 2.5 billion, or rather 40 percent, of the world’s population have no access to personal sanitation.   Read more...

The tears in the eyes of Jesse Jackson. That was the most moving moment for me. His face spoke the defining moment in history. Injustice fading into hope. And please watch this once more. Barack Obama lost a grandmother just before the election. He still has another grandmother. It's almost unbelievable that the president of the most powerful nation in the world has a grandmother living in rural Kenya.

For me, more than anything else, that's his promise to the world. Where the world of the White House meets rural Kenya, that's where progress is made and the future is changed.   Read more...