As a freelance writer, part-time teacher, part-time speaker, and sustainability activist and volunteer, I often get the question, “So, what do you actually do for a living?” or “How do you pay your bills?” It’s a fair question. After all, I’m always espousing the value of pursuing your passions and making a living doing something that makes a difference.

My New Years resolution this past year was to really focus on the first R in the waste hierarchy of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I had come to realize that I was hearing a lot about recycling in the news, but not about reduction, the first step in thinking green and living mindfully. So in thinking about reducing, I went to the everyday: under the sinks in my kitchen and bathroom. Overflowing with products, it made my resolution clear: to use all the products (in a particular genre) before purchasing another bottle of shampoo or bar of soap. Six months into 2010, I am just now beginning to...

My friend Dean was mostly drunk rowing his raft down the Grand Canyon. He was also naked most of the time, except for a piece of climbing webbing around his waist, ostensibly to help him if the raft flipped. As he headed into the huge rapids of the Inner Gorge, Dean used to cackle and yell out: “I think I can make it!”

He was, of course, quoting Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Exxon Valdez.

A gusty day makes stop signs quiver and leaves flutter. It's these vibrations a Cornell research group is harnessing and transforming into electricity for a new kind of energy storage system.

The Vibro-Wind Research Group, led by Frank Moon, the Joseph Ford Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is working on an efficient, low-cost method of converting vibrations from wind energy to electricity. Much the way solar panels now grace many rooftops, the researchers envision buildings outfitted with vibro-wind panels, which would store the energy they convert from even the gentlest of breezes.

For many working Americans, dry cleaning is a fact of life. Unfortunately, an estimated 85% of the dry cleaner services in the United States use a type of liquid solvent called percholorethylene (perc). Perc is dangerous for both employees and customers of dry cleaning services. Perc exposure is most common through fumes from recently dry cleaned clothes and other fabrics, but exposure can also occur through skin contact or from contaminated drinking water.

When I started writing Ten Ways to Change the World in Your Twenties, the chapter “Ways to Party with a Purpose” was one of the first ones I came up with. After all, it is how we spend a lot of our twenties – celebrating, networking, meeting new people, and gathering information about the issues that matter most to us. It seems like an easy leap to transform some of this time spent socializing into time spent making the world a better place. Parties and fundraisers are also a great way to meet like-minded people, who might have a lead for that perfect world-changing job.

One month into one of the worst ecological disasters ever, all efforts to staunch the leak have failed and the slick stretches from Louisiana to Key West. BP has estimated the leak to be 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day, though other organizations have put the estimate at 4–5 times that amount. More than 20,000 people are working to prevent the slick from reaching land, said Coast Guard Commandant, Adm. Thad Allen, who called the spill “omni-directional and almost indeterminate" in size.