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Ideas We Should Steal: Mayor’s Youth Climate Action Council
In 2015, when Angeleno Caden Kang was 10 years old, natural gas began leaking from a well beneath Aliso Canyon. “I distinctly remember the awful headaches and the nosebleeds that came with the sulfuric...
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Guest Commentary: How To Keep Our Drinking Water Safe
The water quality of the Delaware River is the best it has been in decades. Thanks to the efforts of local advocates to secure regulatory safeguards and industry to reduce negative environmental...
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City Council Election 2023: John B. Kelly III Wants Philly to Own Green Energy
The last time anyone in city government had a big idea for Philadelphia Gas Works — one of the last utilities owned by a city in the country — was in 2014, when then-Mayor Michael Nutter negotiated a...
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Sustainability
When Devi Ramkissoon, executive director of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, was growing up in Brooklyn, in a family of Guyanese immigrants, her parents used every bit of their...
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Do Philadelphia’s Mayoral Candidates Care About the Environment?
Last week, Philly released its Climate Resilience Research Agenda, a master climate crisis impact report for the city of Philadelphia. The outlook shows a city, in just the next 25 years, overwhelmed...
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The New Normal is Scary
After two days of being afraid to breathe Philadelphia’s air, I finally saw a decent air quality ranking on my iPhone weather app. With a feeling of deep gratitude, I opened all the windows. Breathing...
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The Citizen Recommends: Placemaking and Economic Growth
In the early aughts, the lot at 6134 Lancaster Avenue did not look like the future home of, well, anything at all. Overbrook’s former quarry-turned-brownfield, it most resembled a dump, strewn with 20...
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The I-95 Wake-Up Call
If there ever were a warning uniquely designed for Philadelphia about its opioid-like addiction to oil and gas, this week’s catastrophic I-95 bridge collapse caused by an off-ramping tanker truck was...
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Guest Commentary: The Next Mayor Must Prioritize Sustainable Businesses
Values-driven small businesses are pillars of our communities. Research shows that locally-owned small business communities can offer higher incomes, reduced economic inequality, stronger community...
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Listen: Ali Velshi on the Climate Crisis
Ninety years ago, says Ali Velshi, the Dust Bowl helped launch some of the first-ever official conservation efforts in the United States. The federal government took action only after dust physically...
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Ideas We Should Steal: Sustainability Education for All Students
Megan Garner’s first acts as sustainability manager for the School District of Philadelphia were to help the district update buildings to be more energy efficient, including shifts to compostable lunch...
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Memo to Madam Mayor: Hire a Kick-Ass Trash Czar
Remember back in 2015, when Jim Kenney was first running for mayor and promised to reinstate citywide street cleaning? That … didn’t happen. Eight years later — after a second promise during his 2020...
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Clean Water? We’ve Got a Mussel for That
Looking through a microscope, Lane Butler, senior scientist with the Philadelphia Water Department, observes a cluster of juvenile mussels. The bivalves, no bigger than a grain of sand, open and close...
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Memo To Madam Mayor: Clean and Green. For Real.
Climate change disasters and responses to them are in the news everywhere in the world this year — that is, almost everywhere, since they are conspicuously absent from discussion in the Philadelphia...
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Resistance is a Garden
What if resistance were a garden? What if growing your own vegetables/herbs, or cultivating your own garden were a revolutionary act? For the Painted Bride’s Resistance Garden project, these are not...
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Business for Good: Solar States
Growing up in a communal household in West Philly, Micah Gold-Markel remembers how handy and helpful many of his neighbors were. If you needed a window repaired or your house painted, there were plenty...
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The New Urban Order: Do We Really Need More Moveable Chairs?
I was recently in New York, walking from Penn Station to Union Square along Broadway. This stretch of Broadway has undergone a major transformation over the past decade: Once a traditional swath of...
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The New Urban Order: Towards a Quieter City
Like many of us, I’m looking forward to the end of winter, when I can open my windows again to the warmer temperatures outside. But like many urban residents, there’s a downside I’m less excited about:...
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How to Clean and Green Philly, For Real
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch once said, “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.” That has been my guiding...
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Ideas We Should Steal: Manufacturers Paying for Recyclable Waste
Recycling in the U.S. is broken. Seventy-four percent of Americans have access to recycling programs, yet just 43 percent of U.S. households recycle. Cities and states struggle to implement programs...
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