By Kaylee Shen I guess you could call me the Olympia High School dumpster diver. Well, I don’t dive in the dumpster for food to eat, but I do “dive” through our school’s compost, trash and recycling in order to sort items into their correct bins. Every Tuesday and Thursday at lunch (when we still…

By Bahar Bouzarjomehri In this Netflix original series, Zac Efron and health and wellness expert Darin Olien traveled the world searching for communities that have been leading the sustainability movement. Each place Efron and Olien visited demonstrates how locals are working with their natural resources in order to make the world a healthier place to…

As the question of how to stop climate change is becoming a more common topic of debate, why is making cities more walkable and bikeable important? By Louisa Sevier Climate change. It’s a scary thing, right? And while it’s true that one person cannot solve this problem, we can each do something. The first way…

By Thad Curtz | | July, 2020 If you’re getting a new vehicle, buying a more efficient one is one of the few things you can do that reduces your carbon footprint substantially and will also save you money in the long run. Almost everywhere in the world, as you go from a conventional…

By Jeff Johnston | July, 2020 Introduction We drove our 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric from Olympia to the San Francisco Bay Area and back last December and along the way we learned a lot about how to succeed at long distance travel in an EV.   It does take a bit of planning and some…

The Tenino Grid Modernization initiative for the City of Tenino, is a partnership with the Washington State Department of Commerce, and Puget Sound Energy. The initiative is focused on “designing, installing, and testing the first utility-scale microgrid in PSE’s service area… to enhance services for the Tenino community and pave the way for a cleaner, better energy future for…

We are living in unprecedented times. 2020 began with raging forest fires in Australia, blood red skies, thousands of homes and businesses destroyed, and over a billion dead animals. For many of us, this horror was quickly overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was then eclipsed by worldwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality. There is no…

We are unable to move forward with climate action, if we don’t recognize and challenge the systems which de-humanize Black Americans and resist the climate actions necessary for our survival. TCAT believes that racial justice is directly connected to the fight for climate justice. In our theory of change, TCAT recognizes that to create change, we must…

TCAT Completes Update to Greenhouse Gas Inventory In 2018, Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater and Thurston County adopted strong, science-based regional, community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets:  45% reduction below 2015 levels by 2030, and  85% below 2015 levels by 2050.  To meet these targets, it is essential that we have a way to track emissions…

By Pat Rasmusssen, Senior Hemp Tiny Homes, Since the 2018 Farm Bill legalized the growing of industrial hemp, US-grown hemp building materials have come on the market, offering zero carbon, carbon negative, and embedded carbon building options, perfect for home builders using Passive House, Living Building Challenge or even for traditional stick frame construction.…