Laura Allen shared her favorite way to use greywater: from the laundry machine. You can reuse its greywater without changing your household plumbing, while also using its pump to place the water where you want it. Presenter: The KEPW program Talk Is Cheap recently interviewed an expert on greywater about the many benefits to fish and trees from reusing water from our homes. Here’s KEPW producer Curtis Blankinship: Curtis Blankinship (KEPW): All right, I’m here with Laura A

Your home and its contents are probably your most valuable assets, and although you might feel it may never happen to you, house break-ins are a reality. Yes, we can always call the police after an incident occurs, but you can also prevent your property becoming an easy target. Consider your home security measures in three layers: Perimeter Exterior Interior At each layer you can take some simple measures to make it harder and riskier for thieves to get in and out of your hom

Becoming a first-time gun owner can be intimidating. Becoming a first-time gun owner as a woman can be next-level intimidating. “If there's a man at the gun counter, will he be helpful or condescending?” “What’s the difference between 9mm and .380?” “Should I just stick with a revolver, or is a semi-automatic the better option?” Questions like these go through the mind of any woman who’s only just picking up a gun for the first time. By the time you finish this article, you’

by Rick Wilson As people across the United States face massive cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other vital programs, many are asking: What happens when the systems we rely on fail us? And what happens when our communities are torn apart by toxic inequality, political fragmentation and declining social trust? The solution may lie in something that humans have been doing throughout our existence: taking care of each other, often without realizing it. Today that’s what some of us cal

by Sarah Henry Heads up, green thumbs struggling to offload excess edibles: Aid is out there. A growing movement, designed to help people eat well, save money, and get to know their neighbors, is planting seeds in communities around the country. Crop swaps – meet ups where people exchange their surplus backyard bounty – are thriving from the San Francisco Bay Area to Boston in city and suburban enclaves and online, too. Of course, there's nothing particularly new about this p

In Buffalo, New York, waiting for the bus just got a little easier. Like many other cities, Buffalo bus stops often lack any kind of seating. It’s a daily struggle for people who rely on public transit, as they’re forced to wait for long periods of time with nowhere to rest. Volunteers with the city’s Local Conversation, Strong Towns Buffalo , witnessed that struggle and decided to do something about it. Late last month, the group installed five bus benches around the city. B

The following comes from the  Institute for Local Self-Reliance  ( www.ilsr.org ), a national nonprofit organization working to strengthen local economies, and redirect waste into local recycling, composting, and reuse industries. It is reprinted here with permission. We’ve developed this Hierarchy to Reduce Waste & Grow Community in order to highlight the importance of locally based composting solutions as a first priority over large-scale regional solutions. Composting can

What is Speed Friending? Speed Friending is similar to Speed Dating. Having the name as “friending” better captures the slow building that happens in relationships. Each person is in charge of the nature of each relationship they have. This takes some of the pressure off and allows people to show up just as they are to the event. This event happens every-other month, usually on the third Friday of the month. What happens at Speed Friending? As people start arriving, folks wil

"The Secret to Making New Friends as an Adult" is licensed under CC by NC-ND 4.0.

Meetup.com is cool, but can be a bit overwhelming. Here is a file with just the group titles, a short description, and links for all of the Meetup Groups in the Eugene and Springfield areas!

by Vicky Osterweil According to a report by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the United States throws away a staggering 40% of the food it produces every year. There are a number of reasons for this: restaurants and bakeries that throw away what’s left uneaten or isn’t sold; people who buy more groceries than they can use; and food distributors who throw out whole pallets when things go bad in transit. But one of the major culprits of food waste is supermarkets

“Free Food Fridge Albany wants to make fresh food and produce accessible to all, especially in marginalized neighborhoods and communities.” They believe, "everyone should have access to food without jumping through hoops or having to prove they are impoverished." "Free Food. In a Fridge. On the Street." is licensed under a Creative Commons 1.0 Universal License .

"This [booklet] provides a step-by-step guide for starting a grass-roots fresh food rescue program in your own community. Depending on the situation of food waste and hunger in your community, you might need to take a slightly different path than is outlined here. However, these steps are meant to be applicable to a wide range of environments and are drawn from our own experiences developing Boulder Food Rescue."

Republished from Dilate Magazine Like a lot of people, when I first heard of permaculture, I had no idea what it was, but I knew that it had something to do with growing your own food. However, once I discovered what amazing things can be done with permaculture, I was an immediate fan. Permaculture is a system, an integrated approach to farming/agriculture and land management design. The goal of permaculture design is to mimic patterns found in nearby natural ecosystems in or

BottleDrop (The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative) is running a campaign to help Oregonians struggling with putting food on the table. They recently dipped into their emergency fund to donate $30k to 12 nonprofits in the state, and have announced a new donation-matching program. If you make donations through your BottleDrop account before November 30th, BottleDrop will match them, with a maximum matched donation amount of $35k. Here are some of the organizations supported

by Olga Lautman, Republished from Dilate Magazine Documents reviewed by 404 Media reveal that ICE is purchasing access to a powerful surveillance tool that harvests billions of pieces of location data daily from hundreds of millions of phones. This move reverses Biden-era curbs and marks a dramatic expansion of ICE’s ability to track people inside the U.S. without a warrant. The contract has been awarded to PenLink, a little-known surveillance company headquartered in Nebras

Excerpt from the book's preface: "My objective is for you to use this book as a guide to preparation for the next earthquake, a far more important goal than just taking the baccalaureate core course. The information in this book should provide the arguments you need to become an advocate for major strengthening of our society against the coming earthquake. The future of the Northwest will depend on a society that has prepared itself to survive the earthquake." " Living With E

“I have witnessed my garden become a tool for the education, the transformation of my neighborhood. To change a community, you need to change the composition of the soil. Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the inner city. I want us all to be ecolutionaries, renegades, gangstas, gangsta gardeners. Get gangsta with your shovel, and let that be your weapon of choice” — Ron Finley, Guerilla Gardening expert, “The Gangsta Gardener   With gr

“We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the American health care system is in such a scandalous state.” — Shirley Chisholm Previously, I wrote about how to take care of your own health as prescriptions become harder to get and doctor appointments are booked out for the year. However, now (in the fall of 2025), the situation has worsened, and access to affordable health insu

Ah, Primary Care Practitioners (PCPs.) When was the last time you saw yours? Was anything solved? Are you on prescription drugs with side effects that are worse than the original problem? Just call in and make an appointment, although the next available may not be for 6 months or a year. Don’t be pissed at the doctor, though. This situation we are in is not the fault of medical practitioners themselves. An economic system in a downward spiral, worldwide pandemics, and a broke