At Home On Earth

SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES

Kannan Thiruvengadam (front, center) is a founding member and executive director of Eastie Farm, a community-driven non-profit with seven growing sites and a geothermal greenhouse in East Boston, Massachusetts. “It’s not so much that we want to maximize every square inch of farming,” he told Bluedot’s Britt Bowker. “We’re not into that — it’s not even a good idea in an urban space. We serve more as a conduit: a connection for people with people. Where growing food is the vehicle for our connection and communication.”

Give your home a fresh dose of green this festive season with our Homegrown for the Holidays Giveaway! We've partnered with Modern Sprout to offer one lucky winner over $600 in beautiful, sustainable indoor gardening tools and accessories — perfect for cozy winter days and year-round plant joy. Whether you're a seasoned plant parent or just getting started, this is your chance to grow something good.

“I feel very passionately about individual action as a way of empowering ourselves, to decouple our lives from a broken system. And to remind the world of that every single day. It saves you money and makes your life better. It sends signals. It’s like doing political activism every day, but with your pocketbook and your everyday actions. … It is within your power to change the world.”

– Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown in conversation with Cleo Carney, Annabelle Brothers, and Dorje Dixey from Bluedot Institute’s Emerging Leaders program

What can I do? we sometimes ask ourselves, as we hear about another wind farm project being shut down, or another pipeline being constructed. And the answer is, resoundingly, at least from Jonathan Foley, plenty! Indeed, we create change with every choice we make, every action taken, every climate conversation undertaken. It’s a wonderful thing that this conversation, between three of our incredible emerging leaders from Bluedot Institute and Dr. Foley, whose Project Drawdown works tirelessly to analyze and rate the impact of climate action, notes the value of individual action, as well as of systemic change. Each has an important role to play in changing the world. 

• Climate Quick Tip: Repair Your Electronics

• Food and Kindness in Asheville, N.C.

• A Community-Centered Farm in East Boston

• A Lifeline for Idaho’s Elk

• Sustainable, Solar-Powered Holiday Decor 

• How Do You Measure Eco-Guilt?

• Dear Dot: How Can I Get Others on the Eco-Bandwagon?

• Want to Learn More About Regenerative Ag? And Eat Good Food? Take a Bluedot Trip!

• Motivate Climate Voters

• Mix-and-Match Multigrain Breakfast Porridges

Make sustainable living simple with the Bluedot Living’s Green Home Deluxe Kit — a $170+ value collection of our editors’ favorite Earth-friendly products, free with your membership. You’ll also enjoy exclusive member savings, inspiring community connections, and more planet-positive perks.

FEATURED STORIES

BIG IDEAS AND LOCAL CHANGEMAKERS

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It Ain’t Easy Being Green

In this gem of an essay from our archives, Nancy Aronie writes about the eco-guilt she suffers when she compares herself to her husband: “Among many other embarrassing actions he incorporates into our everyday life, the one that I want him to stop is when he sees the hostess or the caterer after a dinner party washing dishes and letting the hot water run down the drain, he actually rushes to their side and says ‘Please, at least let the hot water work for you. Let it rinse the other dishes and can’t you use less?’ The invitations are dwindling.”

Dear Dot: How Do I Get Others on the Eco-Bandwagon?

Dear Dot, 

I am feeling hopeful. I've dispensed with plastic baggies to preserve food and upped my game on recycling. I buy organic, and I try to get out of the market without too much plastic, certainly no bags for the fruit and vegetables. All this has been manageable. But the other people in my house don't share my determination to make changes. I don't want to be a nag. Any tips? 

–Ann

Dear Ann,

Many years ago, I hosted an Earth Day potluck, to which I invited about a dozen friends and neighbors. I served a meal focused on local meat and veggies and invited each guest to bring a contribution. One baked bread. Another brought me early spring flowers from her garden. Another picked up a dozen cupcakes from a local bakery. One shared his homemade wine. But over the meal, as the wine flowed, the bread baker confessed how stressed she’d felt to get her contribution “right.” Others nodded in agreement. My heart sank. I had wanted this to be fun, I told my guests, a joy-filled celebration of our planet’s bounty. Stressed and shamed was the opposite of how I wanted my guests to feel. 

My point is that demanding that others green up their acts and hew to our idea of “right” doesn’t inspire change so much as resentment...

So what does work? Dot has tried-and-tested ideas. Read on.

Be among the first to experience a Bluedot Living–curated travel experience, where you’ll connect with local environmental change-makers and enjoy carefully designed all-inclusive itineraries and farm-to-table dining, all in exquisite locales. With five trips scheduled for 2026, ranging from Hollywood, California, to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, there’s a destination to suit every traveler.

BUY LESS/BUY BETTER: Sustainable Holiday Decor

If you make a purchase through our links, including from Amazon, we may earn a small commission.

From palms to pines and sunflowers to spooky skeletons, Northern Forge’s gorgeous solar tubes will add charm to your garden for years to come. 

Order now and enjoy free shipping on all Northern Forge items.

The Environmental Voter Project is a nonpartisan nonprofit aimed at accurately identifying non-voting environmentalists and converting them into a critical mass too big for politicians to ignore. You can help by phone-banking. (It’s easy and fun — we’ve done it!) Get involved.

The Keep-This Handbook

Doing an autumn deep clean? Let Bluedot help you find homes (or responsible disposal) for all your no-longer-wanted stuff. Check out our Guide to Getting Rid of (Almost) Anything.

Taking Action

I wrote my first book, SuperKids: Young Heroes in Action, to profile ordinary kids who had done something extraordinary, whether saving their family from a house fire or taking the wheel behind a runaway bus. One boy I profiled had been sold by his family into bonded labor, escaped, and then fought for an end to child slavery, something I, and perhaps you, thought had been abolished a long time ago. 

When I became a parent and, thus, a consumer (babies always seem to need something), I thought of this brave boy and wanted to ensure I wasn’t purchasing products made by children’s hands. And so I began researching, with the idea that I would create a column, The Virtuous Consumer, to help all of us shop with our values intact. I learned pretty quickly that companies cavalier about human rights were equally unconcerned with our planet. My column grew into a book (published in 2007), and I’ve been writing on climate and social justice issues ever since. 

The one principle guiding my work is this: We have the power to create the change we want. Or, as Hannah Arendt put it, “We are free to change the world and to start something new in it.” Yes, we are up against some strong headwinds. But I’ve been doing this long enough to remember when reusable bags were a heavy lift, when we were debating whether climate change was “real,” when solar panels were big and expensive and rare. 

Though I would love progress to be a straight rocketship to utopia, that’s not how this works. Which is where we all come in. The action we take individually matters. But collective action matters more. It’s brought us to where we are. Let’s keep joining together and inviting others to come along. We know that the vast majority of us want to see action on climate change. But we also know that many aren’t acting like it. Let’s activate them. (Bluedot’s Guide to Citizen Action offers ways to get involved.) 

Rebecca Solnit offers us both a warning and a call to action: “It is late. We are deep in an emergency. But it is not too late, because the emergency is not over. The outcome is not decided. We are deciding it now.” 

What are you or others doing in your lives? Tell us about it. 

– Leslie Garrett (and Emily Cain, Robin Jones, and Jamie Kageleiry)

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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