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Each Sunday, BlueDot Living will share sustainable recipes and tips, stories about local heroes, and Islanders' homes and yards, along with our favorite reading and podcasts, and advice from Dear Dot. Not interested? No problem—click here to be removed from BlueDot Living emails.
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
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Hasoni Pratts takes her little electric car for a spin around the Island.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. On it everyone you love, everyone you know ... every human being who ever was ... on a mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam. — Carl Sagan
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Buckle up, Bluedotters!
It’s been a wild week, what with that nor’easter-turned-bomb-cyclone that walloped the Vineyard last week, and the head-spinning we’ve been doing to keep up with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Islander and presidential climate envoy John Kerry described COP26 as a “mix of energy, hope, frustration, expectation, and uncertainty.” Though it is heartening to know that we have moved into the “how” of the climate crisis — as in, we all agree there’s a problem, so let’s figure out how we’re going to solve it.
Whatever happens on the world stage, we founded Bluedot Living to tell the “how” stories of regular people who are creating powerful change right here — the Mazars, who created a beautiful, sustainable home and also preserved a precious sandplain, Lauren Morgan, who built a better raincoat, and the Martino brothers, who farm kelp that not only tastes delicious (try the crab cakes), but holds a powerful key to carbon sequestration.
Got a great sustainable living tip? Write us here: editor@bluedotliving.com.
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Climate Quick Tip
Opt for "clean" and "zero waste" beauty products whenever possible. Or do without. Room for Change writer Mollie Doyle concluded: "As I was sorting and sampling, the final and maybe best beauty philosophy emerged: Use less."
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‘Nitrogen in the right quantities, in the right proportions with other nutrients, is absolutely essential to life,’ says Emma Green-Beach, a shellfish biologist and the executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group. The problem, she says, isn’t nitrogen, it’s excess nitrogen.
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“I’ll just say this: It’s really quite
a rabbit hole when you start reading up on perfluorochemicals,” Morgan said. “But the articles and facts I found about what these chemicals do, and the fact that we are putting chemically coated fabrics on our skin, really bothered me. So I wanted to see if I could find a way to make a jacket that was nontoxic, American-grown and -made, flattering, and effectively waterproof.”
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I’ve been reading about the volume of microplastics in our oceans and
waterways, and am concerned about what can be done to reduce my own. I’m new to the Vineyard, and am building a house, which includes a new septic system. Do microplastics affect septic systems? Is there anything I can do to stem the tide of microplastics in the ocean?
–Wash-Ashore, Vineyard Haven
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BUILDING
A Passion for the Land
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RECIPE
Easy Kelp Crab Cakes
The Martino Brothers are taking a gamble that there’s an appetite for the sugar kelp they’re harvesting right off our shores — both as a climate change fighter and tasty addition to what’s on our plates. Catherine Walthers shares how to cook with kelp.
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ROOM FOR CHANGE:
The Price of Fast Fashion
According to a study
by Quantis, more than 8 percent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions are from the clothing industry.
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QUIZ QUESTION:
Yard & Garden
What commonly found shrub feeds more organisms than any other group of plants in North America? To find the answer,
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Get the electricity you need from renewable resources
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Bluedot Living magazine and bluedotliving.com are published quarterly by The Martha’s Vineyard Times, publishers of MVTimes.com, VineyardVisitor.com, and MVArtsandIdeas.com.
To opt out of all Bluedot newsletters, please click here.
The Martha's Vineyard Times, 30 Beach Road, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568, United States
To unsubscribe from all Martha's Vineyard Times communications, click here.
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