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Welcome to The Weekly, a Bluedot Living newsletter that gathers good news, good food, and good tips for living every day more sustainably. |
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Welcome to The Weekly, a Bluedot Living newsletter that gathers good news, good food, and good tips for living every day more sustainably. |
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If you purchase anything via one of our links, including from Amazon, we may earn a small commission. All Dear Dot illustrations by Elissa Turnbull. |
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES |
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Last summer, in a stretch of ocean dotted by windmills about 40 miles south of Nantucket, a team of scientists from 16 countries drilled into the seafloor to test a hypothesis: that vast reserves of freshwater were trapped in offshore sediments. “What they found,” writes Bluedot editor and reporter Britt Bowker, “matched the team’s predictions: Significant volumes of freshened groundwater were in fact stored within sand and gravel beneath the seafloor.” It was an ancient aquifer; read more about what that means for freshwater supplies from New Jersey to Maine.
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Sustainability isn’t about perfection — it’s about progress. Tell us what’s shifted for you, whether it’s reducing waste, shopping more intentionally, or reusing what you already have. Your input helps shape what Bluedot Living creates next.
As a small thank-you, you’ll get 20% off in our online store after completing the survey.
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DISPATCHES FROM ALL OVER
SUSTAINABLE LIVING ADVICE
ECO-FRIENDLY RECIPES |
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DISPATCHES FROM ALL OVER · SUSTAINABLE LIVING ADVICE · ECO-FRIENDLY RECIPES |
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“This is not the end. It is the beginning of a new global climate democracy.”
– Irene Vélez Torres, the environment minister of Colombia
In late April, delegates from 57 countries — a “coalition of the willing” representing a third of the global economy — met in Santa Marta, Colombia, for the First Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels. Convened outside the U.N. process after the most recent failed climate summit, the conference couldn’t produce a binding agreement, but it brought together governments, businesses, Indigenous peoples, and civil society to discuss how, not whether, to move off fossil fuels. Each country will set its own voluntary plan, with outcomes aimed at accelerating progress at COP31 in November. A follow-up conference is planned for February 2027, hosted by Tuvalu and co-sponsored by Ireland. You can read more about the impact of the conference here.
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QUICK LINKS |
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Skip scrolling! Here's what you'll find in this edition of the Bluedot newsletter: |
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FEATURED STORIES |
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BIG IDEAS AND LOCAL CHANGEMAKERS |
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New technologies combined with old ideas are expanding how we use solar, and major airports are installing solar-panel projects, moving our world toward cleaner energy consumption. But when technological advancements do more harm than good, it’s up to communities to fight back.
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Use fabric scraps left over from this project (or another) as rags to clean countertops and spills.
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A frittata is the perfect dish for a quick breakfast or brunch. It is endlessly riffable, so you can use whatever’s in your kitchen, and it all cooks right in a cast-iron skillet. Start with the freshest eggs you can find, then experiment with seasonal veggies, your favorite spices, and herbs.
Get the recipe. |
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How does a drought come to be, and how does one measure it? It helps to look at one small, contained community and the man charged with keeping track of its groundwater. Award-winning reporter Sam Moore recently wrote about the drought on Nantucket: “Each spring, as the weather warms and the bustle of summer can be heard in the distance, people begin to arrive on Nantucket. All winter, the island has been preparing for them, and not just the hardy year-round residents, bracing themselves for the onrush of another 50,000 people; the land itself has been preparing, hydrologically. In its bones, in its sand, silt, clay, and gravel, the island has been recharging its aquifer. As rain and snow soak the island, the water table rises. If you know what to look for, you can watch it happen.” Read more about the island’s waterkeeper, RJ Turcotte (that's him in the picture), and how he figures out how much water Nantucket can draw from its single-source aquifer.
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For just $5/month, you can become a Bluedot Living member — investing in a healthier planet while unlocking real, everyday benefits for yourself. You'll enjoy 10% off every purchase from Bluedot Living Collection, our editor-curated marketplace of planet-friendly brands and products and you'll receive additional member-only store discounts each month. Many members recoup the cost of membership in just a handful of purchases from our store. From there, the savings continue — making sustainable living more accessible, affordable, and impactful.
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| Join for $5/month |
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Illustration by Elissa Turnbull |
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Data centers are gulping up land across North America. And when those data centers are built, they continue to gulp — consuming massive amounts of water and power and spewing out pollution. Nonetheless, their offers can be tempting, especially to those farmers who are really struggling right now. So when a data center company contacted 86-year-old Mervin Raudabaugh, dangling $15 million in exchange for his 261 acres of Pennsylvania farmland, well … one could forgive him for grabbing it. But that’s not how Mervin Raudabaugh rolls. And Mervin is not alone. Farmers around the country are pushing back and refusing offers for their land. Read more about why Mervin said “no” in Daily Dot.
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If you make a purchase through our links, including from Amazon, we may earn a small commission. |
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In an ever-expanding global economy, “local” can mean different things. It might refer to a farm down the road or to a company that manufactures its products in the United States rather than overseas. This summer, as the U.S. marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the broader definition feels especially relevant.
Goods made closer to home often travel shorter distances, helping reduce transportation emissions, and they tend to come with clearer labor and manufacturing standards. Just as important, buying from American makers helps sustain small businesses, skilled craftspeople, and regional economies.
The Bluedot Living Collection features over 20 brands that make everything in the USA. Explore a few favorites below and visit our store to see them all. Use code USA10 to save 10% on all American-made items.
Just in Time for Summer
Wisconsin-based family business Northern Forge (photos above) creates durable, beautiful decor that elevates outdoor living. We particularly love the solar-capped luminary pillars, which cast cheerful shadows at night, adding atmosphere to patios and gardens. All items ship free. Buy now.
More Top Picks:
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Bluedot recently chatted with activists Annie Leonard and André Carothers about their beautiful and powerful new book, Protest: Respect It, Defend It, Use It. On their book tour, they’re sharing resources on how to get involved. Find out more here.
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Let your hat do the talking! Bluedot Living’s organic baseball cap is embroidered with one of 13 planet-positive phrases — like “energy efficient” and “regenerative” — so you can wear your values out loud. Made from 100% organic cotton with a brass slider, it’s designed for everyday comfort, durability, and better impact all around.
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| Find Your Phrase |
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While you might prefer to avoid thinking about laundry altogether, the mundane chore actually has an outsized environmental impact that demands our attention. By building better habits and making a few simple swaps, you can make laundry lighter on the planet and your wallet. Check out Bluedot’s Guide to Laundry for some of our top laundry tips and a list of our favorite products. |
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Bluedot Living and AI
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While we’re on the subject of technological advances, we thought we’d take the opportunity to tell you about how we use artificial intelligence at Bluedot Living.
We know from our own reporting and research that the impacts of AI use are both smaller — a ChatGPT inquiry demands about as much power as making toast — and vastly, almost inconceivably larger — U.S. data centers used about 5% of the country’s electrical power in 2025 — than what we’ve been imagining.
All of us working on the creative side at Bluedot (that is, making the content you see here, and in our magazines) have been writers, editors, designers, and producers for our entire careers (at least one of us once used a typewriter to work — just briefly! We’ve seen some changes…). So we’re also aware of how this new technology can both help and threaten our workflows and the quality of our content. Because of all this, we’ve been deliberate about deploying AI.
On the workflow side, we use some tools to help automate some systems (so we can avoid things like cutting and pasting) and make us more efficient.
We use AI-enhanced searching to help us prospect stories, as with this story about vintage stores on Route 66: We found a number of stores that had what we were looking for between Chicago and Los Angeles and used the results like a checklist: A colleague reported the details once we got in touch with the stores. We also use Google’s Gemini tool to help us search our own content (thousands of stories) so we can find facts, tips, and advice to present in a new way. Here’s a reading guide Emily Cain created this way.
We’ve played around with some image generation tools that help us enhance maps, such as this one featured in a story about Georgia and South Carolina’s Lowcountry. When we do this, we’ll add that detail to the credit.
What we don’t do is write stories or make up images from whole cloth using AI tools. (Funny, but when someone not on the creative team suggested that writing stories using AI would “save us from having to write,” we found it hard to fathom. We all love to write. We want to do it more, not less.)
We feel like we have a pact with our readers: You give us some of your time and attention, and we promise to work hard to earn that (and hopefully entertain you).
We will keep having lots of questions about AI (like: Why don’t those data centers power up with renewables?), and we’ll continue to assess the best ways to use the tools so we can create simple, smart, sustainable stories while keeping our eye on the impact to the planet, and our impact on that pact we’ve made with you.
Thanks for taking the time. Enjoy the weekend, and we’ll see you next week.
– Jamie Kageleiry (and Leslie Garrett, Emily Cain, and Robin Jones)
Editors
Write us at editor@bluedotliving.com
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Leslie Garrett has been covering climate stories for close to two decades. She makes her home in Canada, west of Toronto. She’s still figuring out her favorite spot but it’s definitely near the water.
Jamie Kageleiry, a longtime magazine and newspaper editor from Martha’s Vineyard, says her favorite spot on earth is out on a kayak there, looking at birds.
Robin Jones is a Southern California native who served as an editor at Westways magazine for more than a decade. She lives in Long Beach and teaches journalism at Cal State Long Beach.
Emily Cain is a recent graduate of Cal State Long Beach, where she wrote and edited for the university’s award-winning magazine, DIG. |
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