Erika Howsare

Why, you ask? Because, A), passive is the new active, and B), it’s free, not to mention C), it won’t last forever, plus D) all the carbon-neutral kids will be there. GreenMatters is the free green-your-home workshop series hosted by the Habitat Store, itself an essential resource for the reuse/recycle set, and it’s been chugging along for well over a year now. Anyone who’s gone to all the workshops since they began in May 2007 is, at this point, pretty well-versed in the basics of making one’s household a less impactful place.

So, as you may have heard, there’s this ginormous new power line that’s been proposed for Northern Virginia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. This issue has an unusual personal resonance for me, since the Pennsylvania portion of the 500-volt line was slated to pass directly over my dad’s house.

Looky here: Another ranked list of American cities. This one’s all about who’s greenest among our fair nation’s 50 largest towns. It’s published by SustainLane.com, and I spotted it on the New York Times blog Dot Earth. If you want to get a quick taste of how complex a task it actually is to rank major urban areas on their so-called sustainability, read the comments on that post as well as SustainLane’s explanations of their methods. We’re talking some serious visual aids and some serious statistical angst, people.

No, I do not refer to cap-and-trade systems for controlling industrial emissions. I speak of an ad I spotted last week for the eco-fabulous Richmond grocer Ellwood Thompson’s, which is offering customers 25 cents off their bills if they walk, bike or take the bus to the store. It’s called the EnviroCredit, and the company’s website hints at more such initiatives to come.