I had the good fortune last week of listening to a father-daughter writing team from Atlanta that has a lot to say about how Americans can live more fulfilling lives and at the same time can help others. Kevin and Hannah Salwen are the authors of The Power of Half — a book that’s generating national [...]

Savannah furniture maker Structured Green gets a nice write-up in Treehugger, the popular environmental webzine. Structured Green, based in Savannah, Georgia, is designing and building a variety of home furnishings from a spectrum of low-impact materials such as bamboo, certified sustainable lumber, and woods salvaged from barns and riverbeds. It’s all held together with water-based glues [...]

Here’s a really neat documentary on community gardening in Atlanta by Public Broadcasting Atlanta. A lot of inspirational projects here — Oakhurst, Grant Park, etc. — and a lot of familiar faces. Also some great tips. h/t to It’s the Simple Things.

Wait at least two weeks before buying that new refrigerator, stove, dishwasher or other appliance. On Feb. 12, Georgia initiates a rebate program for the purchase of EnergyStar-rated appliances. EnergyStar is a federal green certification program that, among other things, rates appliances. Even without the rebate, EnergyStar-rated appliances tend to be a good deal over the long [...]

Four former partners at Atlanta-based Alston & Bird have formed a new firm to represent businesses faced with environmental issues in Atlanta and Washington. Bob Mowry, one of the founders of Mowrey Meezan Coddington Cloud LLP, helped to develop Alston & Bird’s well-known Environmental and Land Practice, which generally represents large companies dealing litigation or regulatory [...]

ellen dunham-jones Organizers of today’s TEDxAtlanta mini-conference at Unboundary in Midtown posed a timely theme for their speakers: “Re-purpose.” It was especially appropriate for the three visionary architects who kicked off the conference. Yeah, I know. “Visionary” is an overused descriptor for architects. But in this case, it’s appropriate. As in how can shipping containers be re-purposed for [...]

Agnes Scott College has become the first educational institution to bar idling vehicles on campus, the private Decatur college for women announced today. Trucks and service vehicles on campus will now be required to turn off their engines while making deliveries. “No Idle Zone” signs will be placed in the three areas where service and delivery [...]

From Susan Kidd, director of sustainability at Agnes Scott College, via inDecatur: David Orr, a pioneer of the campus sustainability movement, returns to Agnes Scott College to speak on “Down to the Wire: Education in a Hotter Time.” His lecture is set for Jan. 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Presser Hall’s Gaines Chapel. Orr, a former faculty [...]

Prominent Atlanta environmental health expert Howard Frumkin was reassigned last week to a position within the CDC “with less authority, a smaller staff and a lower budget,” according to the investigative website ProPublica. A September 2008 congressional commiettee report detailed, which was covered extensively by ProPublica, detailed Frumkin’s role in a controversy over a flawed CDC [...]

Scientists believe they’ve found a key cause for the mysterious decline in honeybees that have hit the American bee colonies particularly hard. It’s weakened immune systems linked to reduced biodiversity of plant life, according to a study by the French National Institute for Agriculture Research. The honeybee decline is a more important issue than most of [...]