Green Jobs : Featured Stories

The onetime marketing professional made a career u-turn when he discovered how gardening--and cooking and eating healthy produce right from the soil--could change lives. Now his nonprofit startup helps inner-city newcomers to gardening make healthy foods part of their lives.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my enthusiasms and discoveries as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: You've got a chance on Monday to peek into the laboratories of advanced bio-researchers at the University of Minnesota, as guests of the U's union of GLBTQ scientists.

While the concept of the green job is a nice fusion of much-needed employment growth and environmental responsibility, it's been hard to get a handle on the size and even the definition of this part of the job market. But according to Matt Entenza and other experts, the picture in Minnesota is getting clearer as more jobs fit the category. In fact, this small but growing sector may be the IT of the future.

With a new school year approaching, we take a look at three unique programs that show how Minnesota has become a "thought leader" in developing--and funding--positive alternatives for youth.

The debut of a new market in Minneapolis' Linden Hills neighborhood underlines the exciting upsides--and a few lesser-known downsides--of the farmers' market boom.

The teeshirts bearing the brand Forgotten are articles of faith as well as articles of clothing. The fledgling company was created to help the Ugandan farmers and cotton spinners who create the shirts and the inner-city Minneapolis teens who screen-print them. Now a major rock tour is set to take Forgotten gear to a new level.

What do you do when the urban garden you've struggled to create gets sold out from under you? At the recent Community Garden Spring Resource Fair, New York gardening advocate Karen Washington told local growers that if they want their gardens to be really sustainable--i.e., permanent--they'd better get savvy about the political system.

Adapted from Bush Fellow Michelle Vigen's blog, Common Spark: a simple (if not easy) process to help organizations turn the good ideas and information with which we're inundated--why we should recycle, bike, eat better, revive citizenship, you name it--into real changes of habit and life.

The founders of Grow! Twin Cities are building a place where urban farmers can come, plant, share green wisdom, start businesses, and thrive together. And they're telling success stories.

A web site's judgment that Minnesota is "the most hipster state" set me wondering about our homegrown sources of cool. Have we become hip by simply being ourselves?

It's been two years since the green roof on downtown Minneapolis' massive auditorium and sports venue was installed. The Line took a tour to see how things are going and growing.

Inspired by his kids' toy building set, he designed a colorful modular carport that incorporates solar panels--and may soon become nothing but solar panels. Is this how we'll recharge the electric vehicles of the future?

"Environmental justice is the new civil rights movement," says a young woman in this video, created by the organization Green for All. The video, posted last month, highlights a number of green jobs efforts in the Twin Cities that marry sustainability and social justice.

LOHAS means "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability"--people concerned with health, the environment, social justice, and personal growth who buy $290 billion worth of goods and services in support of these ideals. The first regional LOHAS conference kicks off tomorrow at the U of M, for merchants, marketers, and others who want to reach these consumers.

Another local David--who is also connected to the Pacific Northwest--is an advocate for the role of good design in sustainability. David O'Brien Wagner of Minneapolis' SALA Architects speaks up for the subtle, even spiritual side of green building. Systems and certificates are important, he tells Meleah Maynard, but a building isn't green if it isn't carefully designed to connect the human and the natural worlds.