EcoMyths TeamThanks to Friends of Debra Shore for providing this information. The Big Thirst was here! Charles Fishman, author of this landmark book on water, culture, and scarcity, visited the Chicago area this past weekend. Big thanks to Debra Shore, an EcoMyths Alliance advisory board member and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater … Read more
Dear Nature, you were a great fling, but now that winter is here, I’m thinking I’ll stick to the inside world. —Sincerely, Your Summer Romance When you think about it, nature can really seem like the perfect commitment-free relationship: no matter the season, you can have fun together whenever you want, for as long as … Read more
by Katie Casas, Director of Public Outreach, EcoMyths Alliance We hope you have enjoyed our environmental myth-busting this year as much as we have! As we celebrate the beginning of 2012, here are the highlights of 2011’s EcoMyths: Myth: The Chicago River is Mostly Toilet Water. The Chicago River is famously known for being green…as in … Read more
Getting outdoors is fundamental as well as good fun, as we explored in a recent myth-busting article. But there’s no need to be literally starved for outdoor fun.Starved Rock State Park celebrated both its 100th anniversary and a record number of visitors this year, according to a recent article in the LaSalle News-Tribune. With 2,181,083 … Read more
Was your New Year’s resolution to make the world a better place? Probably not, if a) you’re one of the many people who think that one person can’t make a difference or b) you’re not 12 years old. Yes, sad to say, there are a lot of skeptical grownups out there. And for good reason—the … Read more
Information provided by CZS/Brookfield Zoo, an EcoMyths Alliance Partner. If you’re an animal at CZS/Brookfield Zoo, trees might be what you eat for dinner. More specifically, “browse” is the name for the trimmings taken from about 800,000 to one million trees—and that’s just a small percentage of the approximately 9,000 miles of trees ComEd prunes … Read more
Living in the city, it’s easy to feel like high rises outnumber trees and people are more numerous than plants—but that doesn’t mean we can’t create sustainable communities to reduce our impact on the environment. Four Chicago neighborhoods are trying to prove that with the help of the Field Museum’s Making Climate Change Local initiative. … Read more
Information originally published by Northwestern University Initiative for Sustainability and Energy, an EcoMyths Alliance Partner. The future looks bright to researchers and scientists working with solar energy at the Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern. Imagine being able to save serious money on your energy bill simply by installing shingles painted with photovoltaic paint … Read more
The Bright Stuff: Keeping Your Cool in the Lightbulb Aisle These days, walking into the lightbulb section at a home goods store is like entering an alternate reality, one filled with strange futuristic shapes and a head-reeling supply of options. How do you navigate the extreme selection without mental overload? Allow us to light the … Read more
Hunger Games: Bird Feeding Edition We all know we’re not supposed to feed wild animals (for those who don’t, here’s why)…but do the same rules apply to birds in our backyards? We chatted with a couple of Chicagoland’s foremost ornithologists for their take on using bird feeders, and turns out, they both give them a … Read more
