Dispatches Archives - Bluedot Living

Making More from Less

Vandana K — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 01:37:31 +0000

On a warm November afternoon, a gentle breeze blows through the vineyard in front of the Jadhavs’ house in Pimpri, a village in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. The vines are heavy with bright green grapes. Farmer Vasudha Jadhav takes off her shoes before entering a white, tunnel-shaped greenhouse. She checks on the sliced […]

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A Kinder Silk

Sugato Mukherjee — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 20:07:01 +0000

Throughout the ages, silk products have been symbols of grace, luxury, and refinement. However, the standard method of raw silk production involves a cruel process. When silkworms begin pupating inside their cocoons, they are boiled or steamed alive to facilitate the extraction of the luxuriant fibers. The process is called stifling, which is undertaken to […]

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Saving Manatees From the Bottom Up

Fred Mays — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 21:55:29 +0000

Over the past three winters, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission estimates that 2,400 manatees — more than a third of the entire population — have died, overwhelmingly by starvation due to the loss of seagrass, their primary food source.

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Making Mardi Gras Greener

Sharon McDonnell — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 17:08:01 +0000

New Orleans nonprofit groups are getting creative to reduce trash and waste at the iconic Mardi Gras festival.

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What’s the Buzz at Hotel Paradox?

Sharon McDonnell — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 17:22:25 +0000

In a California beach town surrounded by redwood forests, I’m staying, aptly enough, in a forest-themed hotel. Rustic benches crafted entirely from teak tree roots — typically considered waste material in the timber industry, but here trimmed, shaped, and hand-finished into one-of-a-kind seating — adorn the lobby of Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz, as do […]

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Championing Cats in the Maldives

Teresa Bergen — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 20:12:24 +0000

You’ve probably heard that rising oceans are threatening the Maldives, but you may not know that the Indian Ocean archipelago of 1,192 islands also has a cat problem. The capital city, Malé, with a population of more than half a million people living in just over eight square kilometers (a bit more than three square […]

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Shining a Light on Snake Bites

Diwash Gahatraj — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 18:20:35 +0000

On the outskirts of Muzaffarpur town in Bihar, adjacent to an under-construction four-lane highway, lies the village of Patahi. This nondescript settlement is home to over 200 residents who live in thatched huts constructed from hay and bamboo. There’s a popular Hindi proverb, says twenty-year-old Patahi resident Sita Devi, “diya tale andhera,” which loosely translates […]

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Thinking Inside the Box

Arundhati Nath — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 15:13:25 +0000

When 33-year-old farmer Kamlesh Birla first heard of the greenhouse-in-a-box, he was skeptical. Birla, who has a chili nursery and also grows tomatoes and cucumbers, is based in Boruth village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. And though his crops require considerable fungicides to address relentless pests and need watering due to a […]

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A Sable Island Safari

Darcy Rhyno — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 01:29:56 +0000

After flying over the North Atlantic for an hour, we finally spot Sable Island. It’s 180 miles (290 kilometers) from the nearest airport — in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia on Canada’s eastern coast. Sable is a narrow, treeless crescent of sand perched in shallow waters at the edge of the continental shelf, a […]

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Malawi’s Queen of the Mountains and Valleys

Charles Pensulo — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 16:13:25 +0000

In 2021, over 60 people, including senior government officials and famed afro-jazz musicians, showed up for a hike at Mulanje Mountain, the highest peak in central Africa. The aim was to promote the massif, which towers to almost 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above sea level and harbors a forest reserve founded in 1927. It covers […]

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