In a recent VT Digger article, Ben & Jerry’s spokesman Elizabeth Stewart is quoted as saying “We believe everyone has the right to know what’s in their food.” This statement clarified confusion around the involvement of Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, in the effort to block California’s Prop 37 initiative last November. According to …
A proposed three-year moratorium on renewable wind energy development in Vermont was roundly criticized today by some of Vermont’s leading environmental organizations, including the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, Conservation Law Foundation, 350Vermont, Sierra Club Vermont Chapter, Vermont Natural Resources Council, Citizens Awareness Network, National Wildlife Federation’s Northeast Regional Center, and the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance
Health Care | Environmental Health | Clean Energy Democracy | Consumer Protection (Click one of these categories to skip to a specific section.) Health Care Health Care for All, and Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize For years, Vermont has been a leader in making health care accessible and affordable. Our long term goal is a …
Stop Secret Elections Spending Last November’s federal election was the most expensive in our nation’s history. Why? One big reason is the rise of the Super PACs, made possible by recent misguided U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United. Even in Vermont, a Super PAC–funded almost entirely by a single individual–spent over $1 million to …
A Bigger Better Bottle Bill Every year, the Bottle Bill keeps roughly 250 million containers from littering our roadsides or cramming our landfills. So, while the state studies how best to renew its commitment to recycling and zero-waste, one thing’s for sure: we should expand our most successful recycling program, the Bottle Bill. The Bottle …
Protecting Your Right to Know GMOs You have the right to know whether (and where) there’s genetically modified organisms (GMOs) hiding in the food you’re eating or feeding your family. Just like citizens living in any of the 50+ countries around the world with GMO-labeling laws, VPIRG believes that Vermonters should have the right to …
Health Care for All, and Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize For years, Vermont has been a leader in making health care accessible and affordable. Our long term goal is a single payer model that will control costs while providing high quality care for every Vermonter. As a critical first step, this year Vermont will …
Clean Heat is a Win-Win In 2008, Vermont set a goal of weatherizing 80,000 homes by 2020. But having failed to make the investment necessary to reach that goal, our state today is on a path to fall woefully short on weatherization. To make matters worse, the rising price of fossil fuels means the typical …
Updating Vermont’s Bottle Bill recycling program to include water bottles, sports drinks and other non-carbonated beverage containers would have a number of benefits, including: 1) Recycling an additional 96.7 million cans and bottles in Vermont each year, 2) Reducing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking more than 1,200 cars off the road annually, 3) Creating …
Late last week, Vermont’s health benefits exchange plan was approved by the federal government. This means that Vermont with join nineteen other states who have been given the green light to proceed with implementing their insurance exchanges. The state will now move full steam ahead in creating the Vermont Health Connect web portal, where individuals …
