We have some good and some bad news. Good news is that we are turning our blog into a book! The bad news is that we will be posting Sustainability Reads of the Week every other week until our manuscript is due June 2016. We plan to return to weekly Reads after that. We are excited about the opportunity and appreciate your understanding. No news will be missed as Reads will include updates from the past two weeks!
Other good news in sustainability is that Fiji became the world’s first country to ratify the climate change agreement from December’s COP 21 and in France supermarkets are now required to have contracts with non-profits and food banks to donate their unsold food. We hope other countries follow suite in addressing both these big issues, climate change and food waste.
There is No Such Thing as a Green Product
This article finally brings up what us environmentalists have been thinking for a long time: “The environmental benefits of green products are not that they somehow fix the environment or have zero impact, but rather that their environmental impacts are less than those of similar products.” A new, alternative approach to lifecycle assessment (LCA) is called “net green” and is more comprehensive right off the bat by my moving away from the idea of benchmarking a green product to the traditional version. By Trevor Zink and Roland Geyer on Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Leaking Natural Gas Well In California Is Permanently Sealed
Last Thursday the leaking natural gas storage well on the outskirts of Los Angeles has been permanently sealed and shut down. The leak at Aliso Canyon, which had been leaking since October, emitted more than 5 billion cubic feet of natural gas into the atmosphere. Natural gas is composed primarily of methane, which is a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide. By Camila Domonoske at NPR.
The Sustainability Co-Op 
Can’t wait to read the book!