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January 29, 2020	Getting Off Gas: Using a Heat Pump to Warm Your Home by Bethany Kwoka “We have many options for heating our homes,” says Greg Cunningham, Director of CLF’s Clean Energy and Climate Change program. “Alternatives like heat pumps avoid the use of oil and natural gas furnaces, which pollute our environment and damage our climate.”
January 28, 2020	Curbside Recycling is Failing Us, But There Are Alternatives that Work by Kevin Budris Despite many good intentions, curbside recycling has turned out to be a disaster. But that doesn’t mean recycling is dead. We have solutions. One of the best systems for recycling our plastic, glass, and aluminum containers is the bottle return program, also known as the “bottle bill” or deposit-return.
January 28, 2020	Infographic: Comparing New England’s Bottle Return Programs by Olivia Synoracki Although some New England states pioneered the bottle return system, they have since fallen behind. But New England can improve its recycling by updating or adopting bottle return systems in each state. This would help reduce litter in our neighborhoods, parks, and waterways; it would keep recyclable material out of landfills and incinerators; and it would lift some recycling costs off of communities.
January 27, 2020	Why (and How) We Must Update Our Electricity Grid by Bethany Kwoka Our electricity grid was designed over 100 years ago. But times have changed. Today, clean, renewable energy can be harnessed right where we live, so electricity doesn’t have to come from polluting power plants miles away. But we have to update our electricity grid to take advantage of it.
January 24, 2020	Driving an Electric Car in New England by Bethany Kwoka CLF’ers Elena Mihaly and Tom Irwin show that you don’t have to live in a major city, or even on a paved road, to benefit from driving an electric car.
January 22, 2020	Looking Back: One Year After the Newport Gas Outage by Amy Moses Exactly a year ago, as families prepared for a brutal winter night, National Grid cut gas service to more than 7,000 customers on Aquidneck Island. With another New England winter upon us, it’s also worth noting that Rhode Island could avoid these types of emergencies entirely by switching from fossil fuels like gas to clean alternatives powered by solar and wind.
January 13, 2020	Organizing for Healthy Housing by Andrew Seeder A shared understanding of the challenges created by gentrification help Lynn residents come together and fight for healthy housing.
January 13, 2020	Vermont Needs Strong Laws to Fight Climate Catastrophe by Sandy Levine While Vermont has made strides advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy, we are falling behind in reducing toxic climate pollution from burning fossil fuels in our cars and homes. Passing the Vermont Global Warming Solutions Act will change that, putting us back on track to cutting our emissions and securing a brighter future.
January 9, 2020	Stricter Lead Standards Needed to Protect New Hampshire Children by Tom Irwin It’s a troubling reality that in many schools and childcare facilities – places where we send our kids to learn and be safe – our children can be exposed to lead in their drinking water. And it’s especially troubling that in New Hampshire, like most states, we don’t have health-based standards to protect our kids from that harmful lead exposure. This legislative session, we’ll be working to correct that problem.
January 8, 2020	Maine Needs to Act Now to Protect Us from Toxic “Forever” Chemicals by Phelps Turner The Maine PFAS Task Force recently released a draft of its recommendations for how to protect residents from these dangerous chemicals, but they fall well short of the bold action that is needed. But there are still opportunities for legislators and regulators to make a difference.