I first thought about the environmental impact of death while standing in a conventional cemetery five years ago, watching as my aunt’s casket—a gleaming hardwood box with brass fittings that…
I had a proper meltdown in a department store changing room last summer. Not my finest moment, I’ll admit. There I was, half-dressed, suddenly frozen with a pair of jeans…
The first time I tried virtual reality, I screamed and accidentally slapped my friend Jun in the face. In my defense, the program was some horror game that he thought…
The first time I truly understood concrete’s climate impact, I was crouched inside a half-finished building in Morocco, my hand pressed against a wall that wasn’t made of concrete at…
The moment I realized my relationship with smart home technology had fundamentally changed happened at 3AM on a Tuesday. I was dead asleep when my phone pinged with an alert:…
My first attempt at solar cooking was a complete disaster. I’d cobbled together what I thought was a perfectly serviceable solar oven using an old cardboard box, some aluminum foil,…
There’s a small burn mark on my kitchen table that my friends love to mock. “Exhibit A in why Eliza shouldn’t be allowed near science experiments,” my housemate Ruth likes…
I had what my friends now call “The Jeans Meltdown” in the middle of a department store changing room four years ago. I’d been researching an article on textile production…
I have a drawer in my bathroom that I call the “eco-guilt drawer.” It’s where well-intentioned sustainable swaps go to die—bamboo toothbrushes with bristles too stiff for my sensitive gums,…
My obsession with rainwater harvesting began innocently enough – a single water butt connected to the downspout outside my kitchen window, installed primarily to water my collection of increasingly thirsty…
I was having my morning coffee last Tuesday when my phone pinged with a text from my friend Jun: “Help!! My cloud storage is full and keeps asking me to…
I’ve got a confession to make that might get my sustainability card revoked: I bought Bitcoin in 2017. Not because I’m some tech visionary who saw the future of…
I have a confession that would probably get my environmental writer card revoked if my colleagues ever found out: there’s a cardboard box in my closet filled with unworn clothes…
My relationship with food waste became personal the summer I worked on an organic vegetable farm outside Bristol. I’d signed up thinking it would be all Instagram-worthy harvest baskets and…
I was up to my elbows in mud when I had my first proper revelation about natural building. This wasn’t garden mud or even the carefully mixed compost that usually…