AlternativesMagazine

INSANITY Why more cities need to embrace bike lanes, bike parking and other bicycle infrastructure in their urban cores. The Value of Bicycle Lanes and Thoroughfares There is a growing connection in the relationship between amenity- or service-oriented businesses and the proximity to bicycle thoroughfares. These kinds of businesses would include restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, boutiques, and the like.  Michael Andersen, who writes for BikePortland and People for Bikes, has written numerous articles that detail this trend. “Bikes, it turns out, seem to be a perfect way to get people to the few retail categories that are thriving in the age of mail-order everything: bars, restaurants and personal services. And in Portland, where an early investment in basic bikeways has made bikes a popular way to run errands, retailers are responding by snapping up storefronts with good bike exposure.” READ >>

Small home leaks waste more than 1 trillion gallons of water annually nationwide, which is enough to provide water all year to 11 million homes. The average single household alone wastes more than 10 thousand gallons of water a year just from leaks that go unseen or unfixed. This amount of annual water waste is why ten years ago, the EPA introduced Fix a Leak Week to help educate Americans on finding and fixing leaks in their home. Go >>

Every dumb thing you own required some ghastly combination of fossil fuels, water, and marketing misanthropy to find its way into your home. Sure, you’re not about to fashion  an iPhone out of foraged twigs, but you  can  put an end to impulse shopping. Impulse purchases rarely have to do with actual needs — they’re often just an emotional coping mechanism. Who among us has not tried to push away thoughts of inevitable demise with a pair of wedge moccasins that you’ve never worn in five years, not once? Quitting that nonsense is better for your emotional health, credit card bill, the KonMari balance of your closet,  and  the war against the capitalist machine. Fun habits die hard, even expensive ones! But, like us, they do have to die, so I got on the phone with a psychologist — not my own! — to get some advice.  April Lane Benson  specializes in the treatment of shopping addiction. Understand  why  most impulse purchases happen:  Avoidi

Sreven Nguyen, PH.D. Within the past several decades, an alarming trend has developed, one that goes far beyond just “keeping up with the Joneses.” You see, no longer is it enough to simply “keep up.” It seems that in today’s microwave mentality, we have to have things, and we have to have them right now. Everything becomes a necessity. We no longer eat to live. We live to eat. We no longer shop to survive. We survive to shop. Or as I heard it on the radio – shop til you drop, then crawl! We have, in fact, become a society of conspicuous consumption [spending lavishly on goods and services for the sole purpose of showing off] and consumerism [equating happiness with buying and consuming goods]. There is a name/description/label to this madness. It’s called  AFFLUENZA , formed from the words  affluence  (wealth) and  influenza  (also known as the flu). Affluenza  is defined as (1) The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with t

John and Halee Wepking have come a long way from their lives in New York City. They draw their excitement now from the 60 acres of land they work in western Wisconsin. The livestock, the grain and the beauty of the place are elements that fuel a youthful trend on the farm these days. The Department of Agriculture has found that for only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers under 35 years of age is increasing. The Wepkings live and work on Paul Bickford's 700-acre spread, blending entrepreneurship with environmental awareness in a deal to one day take over the Bickford Farm. Read CBS NEWS January 23, 2018

Living in cities designed for cars rather than pedestrians or cyclists is one of the reasons given for the drop in life expectancy. "We are seeing an alarming increase in deaths from substance abuse and despair," said Steven Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University, a co-author of the latest report. The idea of the "American Dream" is increasingly out of reach as social mobility declines and fewer children face a better future than their parents, he said. The report found Americans have poorer health than other nations in many areas, including birth outcomes, injuries, homicides, adolescent pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Americans also engage in unhealthy or risky behaviors — such as high calorie intake, drug abuse and firearm ownership — live in cities designed for cars rather than pedestrians or cyclists, have weaker social welfare supports and lack universal health insurance.  Read complete article HERE USATODAY 2-08-1

Your brain needs a significant supply of oxygen to function properly, which helps explain why what is good for your heart and cardiovascular system is also good for your brain. The increased blood flow that results from exercise allows your brain to almost immediately function better. As a result, you tend to feel more focused after a workout, which can improve your productivity at work and at home. By Dr. Mercola Researchers have suggested that exercise is "the best preventive drug" for many common ailments, from psychiatric disorders to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Even your risk for age-related hearing loss is reduced through exercise. Physical fitness has also been linked to brain health, and is an important adjunct strategy to prevent dementia. In fact, compelling evidence shows that physical exercise helps build a brain that not only resists shrinkage, but increases cognitive abilities and creativity. Researchers at Stanford University found that walking can in

There is more proof about the harmful effects of soda than any other food or drink, but statistics shows that Americans drink more of it than ever before. They account for more than 25 percent of all drinks consumed in the United States. More than 15 billion gallons were sold in 2000 — about one 12-ounce can per day for every man, woman, and child.  It's simply liquid sugar.   But here’s some information on the effects of soda on the body that may keep you away from opening the can:  Read >>

This is an excellent article by  Sara Burrows . It describes exactly what our  Break Away, Live Small  website is all about and why, if left unchecked, depression can destroy your life. It also provides ideas for a cure through exercise, social connections and  self-sustaining communal living.  “We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, socially isolated, fast-food-laden, sleep-deprived frenzied pace of modern life.” I hope you read the entire article and follow the links to similar articles. Then read it again. By:  Sara Burrows Depression is a global epidemic. It is the main driver behind suicide, which now claims more than a million lives per year worldwide. One in four Americans will suffer from clinical depression within their lifetimes, and the rate is increasing with every generation. It robs people of sleep, energy, focus, memory, sex drive and their basic ability to experience the pleasures of life, says author of  The Depression Cure  Stephen Ildari. It can

— things said or done; things left unsaid or undone. Paths that weren’t followed; opportunities missed due to fear or insecurity. The list is long, but one of the biggest regrets in life reported by a large number of people is not being there for someone at the end of life.  In other words, being too busy with “life” to tend to those near death.  Interestingly, while a regret can be phrased either as an action or as an inaction (“I wish I had not quit high school,” versus “I wish I had stayed in high school”), regrets framed as actions tend to be more emotionally intense than regrets about inactions, but inactions tend to be longer lasting Emma Freud, a columnist for  The Guardian , recently explored themes of regret on social media, covering everything from relationships, work-life balance and personal passions, to addiction, illness and death.  Top Five Regrets of the Dying According to Bronnie Ware, a former palliative care nurse who ended up writing a book,  “The Top Five Reg

By Andrea Donsky What happens when you have a product that gets a lot of bad press, and is associated with significant health issues? You change its name so people are “fooled” into thinking the old product is gone. That is what happened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It should be avoided at all costs because it can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, and heart disease. In fact, a recent report from an international team of experts noted that “fructose-containing added sugars, such as sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, have been experimentally, epidemiologically, and clinically shown to be involved in the current epidemics of obesity and diabetes.” So what I’m about to tell you makes HFCS a bit scarier. The Food and Drug Administration is allowing food makers to change the name of HFCS to something that sounds safe: “natural sweetener.” So now when you read a food label and no longer see "high-fructose corn syrup" listed in the ingredients, you mi

Every city has this issue, but Austin’s is certainly among the top among surveys that measure congestion and related issues. They’re among the worst. Not only do they have a problem; they knew their problem was growing faster than they could keep up with. With an estimated 450,000 people using city roads daily, transit is an enormous challenge. Austin officials, understandably, have been working on solutions.  Things started coming together when Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colo.-based think tank on energy and transportation, began looking for a place to put its vision for transformational mobility change into practice. After a search that began in 2014 with 1,000 potential cities, RMI choose Austin as its proving ground. RMI’s legion of out-of-the-box thinkers are at the helm of a mobility revolution in a city where individual vehicles have ruled the road. By shifting from transportation based on fossil-fueled personal vehicles to a system with options — shared, electrified a

The cross-country road trip is as American as apple pie. Which is why it’s so ironic that the latest motorhome innovation comes from overseas in Germany, where a new, electric motorhome has been unveiled by RV company Dethleffs . This motorhome is built for the open road, with a sleek design and head-to-toe solar panels so you never have to worry about finding the next charging station. That's right: The open road is officially calling. Where we’re going, we don’t need charging stations. The transportation industry is being flipped on its head by taking two of the most basic essentials—the driving experience and fuel—out of the equation entirely. Self-driving vehicles and rechargeable technology is changing the landscape of driving. That market has been expanding beyond everyday vehicles with advances in things like electric-powered semi trucks . And we’ve seen the rise ( and possible peak ) of the tiny home market, where solar panels and other green technology is often