Grid Magazine, Philadelphia, PA (2026)

01/08/2026

📖 The streetlights lining Baltimore Avenue have been aglow for nearly two hours when Books Through Bars begins to bustle. Volunteers, stepping in from the stony November cold, come to support an often overlooked cause: providing reading material to people in prison.

Incarcerated individuals often have little to read, and the range of books provided to them tends to be narrow, due to under-funded prison libraries and censorship. The aim of Books Through Bars is to counteract the status quo of prison libraries by making reading more accessible to those incarcerated across Pennsylvania and beyond.

“Unfortunately, prison libraries and school systems always have their budgets cut, so they have less services to offer people that are incarcerated — this is where we come in and fill the gap,” says Tom Haney, who has spent a lifetime working with incarcerated people as a counselor and now as the president of Books Through Bars.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/01/01/west-philly-nonprofit-combats-recidivism-rates-with-literature/

✍️ + 📸 Adam Litchkofski

01/07/2026

♻️ In an email to customers on Dec. 12, Bennett Compost announced its acquisition of Circle Compost.

The merger came after David Bloovman, founder of Circle Compost, approached Tim Bennett with the idea to join forces. Continuing to grow Circle’s commercial business in a meaningful way, Bloovman said, would have been very challenging to do with Bennett as a competitor.

Bloovman says he was never interested in selling Circle to a third-party company. “If we did that, you’d still have two different companies going down that same block for those different buckets. I was not interested in that. So I didn’t talk to any other potential buyer,” says Bloovman.

“For us, it’s incredibly important that we try to keep the composting scene here local,” says Tim Bennett, founder of Bennett Compost.

So what changes can current Circle Compost customers expect?

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/12/12/bennett-compost-and-circle-compost-announce-merger/

✍️ Julia Lowe
📸 Chris Baker Evens

01/06/2026

♻️ When Philadelphia filed a lawsuit in September 2025 alleging two prominent companies were engaged in a “coordinated campaign of deception” regarding the recyclability of their plastic film products, the City joined a growing group of state and local governments hoping litigation can help stem a rising tide of plastic waste.

Public officials in New York, Minnesota, Connecticut, California, Baltimore and Los Angeles have over the last three years lodged complaints against several companies that act as powerful links in the chain of plastic production, including ExxonMobil, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Walmart and Reynolds Consumer Products.

The lawsuits are each distinct, but they all allege the defendants misled the public about the efficacy of recycling in order to continue profiting off the production and sale of plastic. California accused ExxonMobil of encouraging the excessive use of plastic, contributing to the state’s billion-dollar annual cost for plastic waste management. New York, meanwhile, alleged that PepsiCo’s single-use plastics pollute the Buffalo River, contaminating drinking water and harming wildlife.

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/01/01/philadelphia-takes-on-companies-over-alleged-deceptive-plastic-recycling-claims/

✍️ Ben Seal
📸 Chris Baker Evens

01/05/2026

💧 Delaware Riverkeeper Maya K. van Rossum always knew 45 feet was a stopping point on the way down to 50. As head of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, she led a three-decade battle against the Port of Philadelphia’s plan to deepen the Delaware River’s main shipping channel. Despite environmental concerns and a lengthy lawsuit, the project went ahead. The river’s new 45-foot depth was cemented in 2021 when the final few inches of bedrock were gouged away.

But not even bedrock is set in stone. In October 2024, the port signaled its intent to deepen the river by another five feet.

“I said throughout that as soon as they got permission to go to 45, they would very quickly pivot to try to get to 50,” says van Rossum.

The “announcement,” appearing on page 46 of the port’s 60-page strategic plan, activated van Rossum’s alarm bells. Now, she is preparing the Riverkeeper Network for another fight. The same concerns about drinking water contamination and species preservation that plagued the 45-foot project remain just as relevant today, and the new project has broached an old question: How should we shape the future of the Delaware River?

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/01/01/how-deep-is-too-deep-for-the-delaware-river/

✍️ Sarah Ruiz
📸 Chris Baker Evens

01/02/2026

📝 Publisher’s Notes: Aspiring to Inspire 📝

Welcome to issue #200!

I spent a lot of time over the past few weeks flipping through the pages of our debut issue. It may sound somewhat self-aggrandizing, but the first Grid was released as a prototype — not an actual issue — because the concept for a sustainable city magazine had no precedent. (Come to think of it, I haven’t seen copycat magazines in our wake, either. Maybe there’s a reason for that!)

At the time, it felt easier to create a prototype than to explain that this new magazine would have environmentalism at its core, but it would also include local food champions, small business owners, clean energy advocates, environmental justice leaders, green architects, gardeners, cyclists and all of the makers and fixers of the region. We would foster a coalition — no, a movement! — that would bring together all of these aligned people on a local level and wrest the power that corporations had snatched from us. On an individual level, our quests to learn to cook, sew and make simple repairs — skills common just a few generations ago — would also make us happier.

➡️ Read the full note from our publisher at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2026/01/01/publishers-notes-aspiring-to-inspire/

✍️ Alex Mulcahy

01/01/2026

NEW ISSUE ANNOUNCEMENT

Happy January! We welcome you to join us in celebrating something significant — after 18 years of Grid, we are proud to bring you our 200th issue 🎉

About the Issue
••••••••••••••••
“Nothing’s quite as sure as change,” goes an old song by The Mamas & the Papas. Change, though certain, is hard to predict. Things sometimes go the way you want them to, other times the opposite direction, and often somewhere in between.

Here in our 200th issue, we look back at some of the stories we published in our initial issue, and reflect on the progress the sustainability movement has made and the ground that’s been lost.

While it can be illuminating to review the past, it’s important to remember that the future remains unwritten. It’s up to us to imagine the world that will exist, heaven help us, over the next 200 issues of Grid.

➡️ Read the full 200th issue now at gridphilly.com!

📸 Cover photo by Chris Baker Evens

12/31/2025

As we put another 365 days and 12 issues of Grid behind us, we’d like to take the opportunity to express our gratitude for your endless support. Thank you for tuning in to local independent journalism and, most of all, thank you for advocating for sustainability and community right here in the city we call home — it’s because of you we’re able to continue sharing the stories that inform our effort to move toward a more sustainable Philadelphia.

From everyone at Grid, we wish you a very healthy and happy new year! We’ll see you in 2026 🌱

12/30/2025

📝 Editor’s Notes: The IRL Issue 📝

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Comcast Technology Center. It was my first time inside that gleaming skyscraper, designed to knock your socks off with escalators rising above “Exploding Paradigms,” a sculpture of mirrored triangles that the company describes as “a steel vortex heading into the sky.” Just past the top of the escalators, I stepped inside the 39-foot white Universal Sphere. It looks like a UFO, but it’s actually a 360-degree theater in which Peter Coyote narrates a montage of inspiring video clips with a theme of how much can be achieved by working together.

That sounds like a nice message, though I can’t help but be suspicious of a corporate messenger whose business model relies on people staying on their butts with their eyes glued to screens. I also take issue with the emphasis on achievement, which reduces togetherness to a means rather than an end in itself.

I’d rather focus on the togetherness.

➡️ Read the full note from our editor at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/12/01/living-sustainably-and-meaningfully/

✍️ Bernard Brown

12/29/2025

🌿 On my way out of the Cobbs Creek Environmental Education Center in October, I stopped to pick through the leaves around the American persimmon trees at the top of the driveway. It was a little early in the season, with plenty of fruit still on the tree, but I found a few little blobs of luscious orange goo to eat.

A ripe persimmon looks rotten by any other fruit’s standards, a ball of mush thinly contained by a weak skin. The force of hitting the ground usually breaks that skin, so that you could be fooled into thinking someone stepped on the fruit — and why would you want to eat something that looks rotten and stepped on?

Because it’s delicious, that’s why. And because if you eat it any earlier, it will be miserably astringent, its tannins coating the inside of your mouth with an unpleasant, scowl-inducing film. An early English colonist in Virginia wrote that the fruit are “not good until they be rotten.”

➡️ Read the full story at https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2025/12/01/how-to-forage-wild-persimmons/

✍️ Bernard Brown
📸 Chris Baker Evens

12/28/2025

For the first time in Philadelphia Gas Works’ history, the utility has agreed to hold community engagement meetings to discuss decarbonization.

After PGW proposed a rate hike that would have raised an average monthly bill to over $104, a coalition of environmental justice groups intervened in their ratemaking case, arguing that customers shouldn’t have to pay more for energy that contributes to climate change, among other concerns. In a settlement approved on Oct. 9 by the Public Utility Commission, PGW agreed to a lowered rate hike that brings the average bill up to $98.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

12/27/2025

The U.S. Justice Department alleges that the School District of Philadelphia violated the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act, which requires schools to monitor their buildings for asbestos and to quickly remediate them. Instead of going to trial, they entered an agreement that placed the school district under judicial oversight as it inspects schools and removes or seals up remaining asbestos.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

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