Echo

Celebrate Valentine’s Day on a frigid Great Lakes beach

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By Mallory McKnight

How is a modern Great Lakes girl – jaded by chocolates, roses and candlelight — to celebrate Valentine’s Day in a thoroughly original way? Old stand-by getaways include the ski lodge, urban hotel room or rustic bed and breakfast. But one destination that usually gets left off the list is a no-brainer for Great Lakes residents any other time of the year. There are 10,368 miles of shoreline along the entire Great Lakes basin, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment. There’s no reason that entire beautiful coastline should be a vacation destination only four months out of the year.

Echo

Five great ideas for dining sustainably on Valentine’s Day

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By Allison Jarrell

Go Meatless:  This Valentine’s Day falls on a Monday so go meatless! The Meatless Monday non-profit initiative hopes to improve personal health (and the health of the planet) by reducing participant’s meat consumption by 15 percent. Not only will skipping meat once a week reduce your carbon footprint, it’s a great way to try new vegetarian recipes, like Black Bean Sesame Veggie Hash or Green Tea Tofu Soba Salad! Buy Local: Supporting your local economy is a great way to live sustainably while helping others in your community. Instead of buying an expensive bottle of imported Port to share with your romantic veggie dinner, buy wine from a local winery.

Echo

Quizzes

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With help from readers, the Great Lakes Echo staff has developed several fun, yet informative environmental Facebook quizzes. Click on the Show All tab in the lower right hand corner of the quiz to display all of the questions or click the next question link. Which Great Lake are you? If you’re quick to judge are you shallow like Lake Erie? Is someone given to stormy outbursts more like Lake Superior?

Echo

VIDEO: Raptor rehab

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A team of Michigan State University veterinary students, guided by veterinarian Dr. James Sikarskie, rehabilitates birds of prey in hopes they can return to the wild.

By learning about wildlife medical care techniques, the students have helped hundreds of birds.

Echo

Cleaning up the Michigan oil spill will take hard work, time and money

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Recent oil spills in Michigan, Illinois and the Gulf of Mexico have led to the release of approximately 208 million gallons of oil into the environment. That’s more than 346 Olympic-sized swimming pools of toxic sludge.

Wildlife centers are one way to minimize the environmental effects of oil spills. Federal and state agencies, oil companies and contractors use variety of specialized methods. But cleaning up an oil spill is messy business. It’s a labor-, capital- and time-intensive process that can take years to complete.

Land

City Recycling

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Great Lakes cities recycle brownfields into urban hope
Abandoned urban lots are community eyesores that increasingly represent economic opportunity.These so-called brownfields carry social ills, but finding a way to reuse them is more important than ever. Local officials tap jobs programs, private investment, bond sales, tax incentives, cultural history and other measures for what might be the ultimate city recycling projects. Buffalo’s industrial past linked to economic future
The Lake Erie shore is scarred here with remnants of another time. But amidst the eyesores is evidence of Buffalo’s exciting future. Eight wind turbines hint at a broader redevelopment.