After ten years as Product Policy Institute we changed our organization’s name to UPSTREAM at the end of 2013. We changed our name to emphasize that critical environmental solutions to reducing environmental impacts of products – manufactured goods and...
After the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture cracked down on a community seed library, hundreds of seed libraries in the U.S. are suddenly wondering if they are breaking the law. According to PA regulators, in order to give out member-donated seeds, the Simpson...
“Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.” — Archimedes The systemic challenge we’re facing—in a nutshell—is that our human family’s seemingly boundless wants are overtaxing our planet’s limited means. The...
Last year when I visited the US, Peter Lipman (Chair of Transition Network) and myself had supper with representatives from 3 large philanthropic organisations there. At one point, Peter asked “so do you invest in coal?” There was some...
Download on iTunes In this episode of The Good Stuff, Annie sits down with sharing champion and legal rebel Janelle Orsi. Their conversation reminds us all what’s so great about sharing – whether it’s new friends, a smaller environmental...
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost Our contemporary world is host to two coexisting but fundamentally different—and, in at least one...
This is a response to the article The End of Sustainability. William E. Rees is the co-creator of the Eco-Footprint concept and a Post Carbon Fellow. He authored the The Human Nature of Unsustainability, and Thinking Resilience chapters of...
The Roaring Fork River, a headwater tributary in the Colorado Basin, adds to the beauty and economic vitality of Aspen, Colorado. Photo credit: Grand River Consulting for the Colorado Water Trust. When residents in Denver, Colorado Springs and other...
With rivers in the American Southwest dammed, diverted, drought-stricken and running dry, their fate is increasingly in human hands. Now, in the southern portion of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, a unique partnership of irrigators, government agencies and...
Those of us who have some grasp of the urgent dilemmas posed by climate change and peak oil face a terrible conundrum. The whole system of industrial civilization is moving toward collapse. How can we reverse course to avert...