AlternativesMagazine

By Jim Meyer Finland's capital hopes a 'mobility on demand' system that integrates all forms of shared and public transport in a single payment network could essentially render private cars obsolete.   The Finnish capital has announced plans to transform its existing public transport network into a comprehensive, point-to-point "mobility on demand" system by 2025 – one that, in theory, would be so good nobody would have any reason to own a car. Helsinki aims to transcend conventional public transport by allowing people to purchase mobility in real time, straight from their smartphones. The hope is to furnish riders with an array of options so cheap, flexible and well-coordinated that it becomes competitive with private car ownership not merely on cost, but on convenience and ease of use. Subscribers would specify an origin and a destination, and perhaps a few preferences. The app would then function as both journey planner and universal payment platform, knitt...

By Emily Thomas Huffington Post  According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Ameri can families throw out about 25 percent of their groceries each year , often because they don't maximize the food's full use -- for example, some people throw away broccoli stems and only use the florets -- or they don't know how to store perishable items correctly. What's more, according to the World Resources Institute, about one-third of all food produced worldwide gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems annually. Josh Treuhaft, a recent master's graduate of the Design For Social Innovation program at the School of Visual Arts, first cooked up the supper club idea for his thesis project, "Eat Everything." He then decided to test out the concept on a bigger audience. "There’s all these people in [New York City] who spend extraordinary amounts on food, spend hours talking about their food and taking pictures of their food,"...

From: Why Don't You Try This? No-one will believe the idea that something so cheap and simple such as Baking Soda can exceed the effectiveness of even the most expensive pharmaceutical drugs. At one stage it was common knowledge that baking soda could easily cure a common cold, as well as support a number of other ailments. I have heard stories of people who have sworn it to have rid their cancer.  There are 1000s of reasons to use baking soda but one overall reason is that sodium bicarbonate is a natural substance that will not harm us, our children or the environment because is it not a chemical compound that effects nature in any kind of negative way.  Baking soda is a compound that is found throughout nature, in the ocean, in the soil, in our foods and in our bodies. Baking soda is a neutralizer of many other compounds, this makes it exceptionally effective as a medicine in the age of toxicity.  Baking Soda (Sodium bicarbonate) is already in wide use and ...

The Man Who Lives Without Money Read More: http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/10/the-man-who-lives-without-money.html The Man Who Lives Without Money Read More: http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/10/the-man-who-lives-without-money.htm "If we had to clean our own drinking water, we probably wouldn't shit in it." Irishman Mark Boyle tried to live life with no income, no bank balance and no spending. Here's how he finds it. The man who lives without money. If someone told me seven years ago, in my final year of a business and economics degree, that I'd now be living without money, I'd have probably choked on my microwaved ready meal. The plan back then was to get a ‘good' job, make as much money as possible, and buy the stuff that would show society I was successful. For a while I did it – I had a fantastic job managing a big organic food company; had myself a yacht on the harbour. If it hadn't been for the chance purchase of a video called ...

By C-A Moss  In my quest to extend my vegan compassion to other areas of my consumerism, I’ve circled back to minimalism, which for many years, played a prominent role in my belief structure. Researching for this article, I found an abundance of blog entries and youtube videos of people identifying as minimalist in various forms. Ending excessive consumption. Rejecting capitalism. Life editing. Zero-waste lifestyle. Decluttering. Anti-materialism. Living deliberately. Spartanism. Deattachment. Thriving with less. Living within your needs. I’ve experienced many challenges and fails over these first eight months of the Ethical Closet Project [ http://thedreamyidealist.com/theethicalclosetproject /]. I’ve accepted that our culture sets us up to fail but I’m still determined to find a loophole in the system that doesn’t include voluntary poverty. Consuming even less, and only what is essential, may be the path to greatly reducing my participation in the exploitation...

WALKING, WHAT A NOVEL IDEA . . . . A few major cities are making some surprising and unexpected shifts toward walkable urban development. Walkable neighborhoods are defined as those where everyday destinations such as home, work, school, stores and restaurants are concentrated and within walking distance. Planners and residents who once opposed dense urban spaces are shifting gears. Neighborhood groups mobilized around a major new development and demanded higher density "because they wanted great urbanism that their kids could walk to." Who's to blame for all this common sense? Kids! the Millennials … are driving this. And we thought all they did was sit around texting.  The average American household spends over $8,000 per year on owning and driving their cars, that's more than they spend on food. Furthermore traffic congestion wastes nearly 3 billion gallons of gas per year in the U.S. If there is anything that will get the attention of the oil ba...

it's about prevention "Why is "diet and exercise" always part of the rehab procedure AFTER a diagnosis, or recovering from a major illness?"  "Why do most pharmaceutical drugs include the fine print disclaimer:  "if combined with a proper diet and exercise?"  (it usually appears right before the list of it's deadly side effects). ....... I f diet and exercise is so important AFTER being cut, poisoned or burned,  why not go there FIRST and eliminate the middle men? This is the message of BIKE SATURDAYS. Join us on the Whitefish Trail, Saturday June 21 CLOSING NOTE: This how naive we've become about the cause and effect of cancer and how corporate "pink washing" has taken over at the expense of women with breast cancer. KFC Chicken is a major sponsor of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure . Raising money in the name of breast cancer research, while engaged in a partnership with a corporation that ma...