A group of cyclists commute along the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes. Kevin Kovaleski used under CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED This is part of a series about micro-mobility. Micro-mobility sharing programs help increase access to bikes and scooters across the U.S. With different funding models, city sizes, and ridership levels, they don’t all look quite the same. While some cities have lost their programs due to funding issues, others are more fully investing in meaningful equity measures and integrating them in communities through public funding and non-profit management. Making micro-mobility more acce ..read more

t’s harvest season! Farmers’ markets are filling up with autumn bounty. Take a stroll and you’ll find colorful pumpkins and gourds, earthy root vegetables, enormous cabbages, and a wide variety of pears. These fall-time favorites are great for making cozy treats as the weather gets cooler. Fill up your (metaphorical) root cellar Root veggies are a culinary group of foods composed of vegetables with edible roots, bulbs, stems, and tubers that grow large under the earth. Commonly found root veggies include sweet potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, and parsnips. Root vegetables are generally starc ..read more

Our current economy relies on the extraction of resources to create cheap products that are used for a short time and then thrown away. The term “circular economy” refers to a model that aims to reorganize this pattern of consumption. A circular economy focuses on the preservation of resources through repair, maintenance, and reuse of objects and their components. Circular approaches to transportation and food are two key areas where we can cut back on resource use and reduce our burden on the planet. Shifting from a linear to a circular economy Currently, only 7.2% of our materials are reuse ..read more

This is the first in a series about micro-mobility. The term “micro-mobility” is new, but the concept of personal transit has been around for a long time. However, in many places, transportation modes like bicycles, kick scooters, and mopeds are increasing in popularity. This is in part due to the increasing availability of relatively affordable electric bikes and scooters, as well as the growth of bike and scooter share services. But a sustainable shift in how we move will require more than just more devices - we’ll need to shift our culture and cities along with it. What is micro-mobility? T ..read more

Cereal rye cover crops on a farm in Carroll County, Iowa. NRCS/SWCS photo by Lynn Betts used under CC BY 2.0 Cover cropping is the use of plants like legumes and cereals to improve your soil when you’re not growing fruit and vegetables. This practice can have huge benefits for your garden by improving soil health, managing pests, and keeping weeds out of your garden. What is cover cropping? Cover cropping is one of the key components of regenerative agriculture, a term coined in the 1980s by the Rodale Institute. Conventional agriculture strips soil of its nutrients, then adds them back with ..read more

Freezers are a safe and easy way to put food away and keep it from going bad. Whether you have a tiny freezer in an apartment or an enormous chest freezer in a basement, you can take advantage of good deals and seasonal produce, batch prep and freeze food, and save your leftovers from the trash. Finding your favorite ways of freezing and organizing food is crucial for making the most out of your space. Take stock, take inventory First and foremost, learn a little bit about what kind of freezer you have. Top, bottom, or side placement on the refrigerator can make a big difference in the best wa ..read more

Better public transit could have huge benefits for communities’ wellbeing, boost economies, and help fight climate change. But if we want these benefits, it’s not enough to just build a couple bus lines. The future state of public transportation needs to be reliable, efficient, and accessible for all. Lofty goals, but luckily, there are plenty of established best practices and exciting new emerging technologies that can help get us there. Embracing new and emerging technology for busing Transit expert Nicholas Bloom says the “humble city bus” is what really stands to revolutionize U.S. public ..read more

Healthy eating can be tough. Food labeling is confusing, and sometimes outright misleading, and many people in the U.S. don’t have much background knowledge on good nutrition practices. Food guides—from the quintessential USDA food pyramid to Tufts University’s algorithm-driven food compass—aim to support people to make healthy decisions about food day-to-day. Increasingly, food guides are also seen as an opportunity to encourage more sustainable food choices. Visual food guides over the years Visual food guides produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have taken many forms over t ..read more

While the U.S. certainly faces a lot of challenges in public transportation, there are still parts of the country where public transit gets large portions of the population from point A to B using sustainable, accessible approaches at a reasonable cost and convenience.. New York and Chicago came into the world’s top 10 in a McKinsey & Company analysis of the world’s best cities for public transit. While this analysis looked specifically at the world’s largest cities, there are great transportation practices in mid-sized and smaller towns, too. Big cities, best infrastructure With a populat ..read more

The long hot days of summer are here, and gardens and farms are in full swing. Markets are filled with a colorful array of summer foods. Summer squash, stone fruit, corn, string beans, and berries are all delicious for fresh eating and can be preserved so you can keep the taste of summer in your pantry and freezer all year long. Summer squash My family always used the term “summer squash” to refer to yellow straightneck squash sold alongside zucchini in the summer. However, as a more technical term, summer squash actually refers to all the varieties eaten in summer while still soft-skinned, fr ..read more