Alice Rogers

Environmental Writer - Washington

Hello! Here is a small sampling of the environmental writing I've done over the years, with topics including sustainable forestry, eco-urbanism, natural resources, climate change, green technology and much more. Questions? Please get in touch!

Environmental Journalism

Partnership with North Carolina Coastal Land Trust Has Protected 6,700 Acres and Counting

Janice Allen, director of land protection at the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust with our Alissa Cale, land asset manager, and Jim Williamson, inventory manager, at our Cool Springs Environmental Education Center. The Trust is the conservation easement holder for Cool Springs.

Along the Cape Fear River on the North Carolina coast, a 265-acre tract of land buzzes with wildlife, including songbirds, ducks, rare bats, federally protected fish species and the threatened wood stork, the only stork

Alberta’s Aseniwuche Winewak Nation Protects Its Cultural Heritage with Weyerhaeuser Support

Former AWN project co-manager Vivian McDonald listens to Tommy Wanyandie tell a story in Cree with AWN Elders Billy Wanyandie and Roland Karakuntie.

In 2017, when Alberta’s Aseniwuche Winewak Nation needed better methods for tracking and documenting cultural heritage sites, our Alberta Timberlands team stepped in to help fund and launch a multi-year project that empowered AWN to better preserve its history, including in the forests we manage in the province.

By the end of last year, AWN had up

State Grant Allows Our Nursery in Turner, Oregon, to Grow Extra Seedlings for Reforestation After Wildfires

Arturo Gracia, maintenance lead, in front of a newly completed greenhouse. Arturo led the construction project at Turner.

January through June is a hectic time for Western Regeneration, with a tight production schedule to first lift and pack seedlings and then sow millions of seeds — all to ensure we’re able to meet seedling commitments to internal and external customers. This year, the team at our nursery in Turner, Oregon, had an additional challenge: building four new greenhouses in the same

Students Discover the Bounty of the Forest at Weeklong Family Forestry Expo in Montana

Weyerhaeuser volunteers get the site ready ahead of the Expo. From left: Brent Richardson, Dani Dorband, Larry Garner, Emily Weck, Julie Gardner, David Browning, Marla Chappell, Patrick Cowan, Rebecca Hamilton, Milo Funk, Sandra Webb, Seth Moffit, Caroline Henzelman, Elise Garner and Dylon Hoff.

Surrounded by a crowd of elementary school students, Sean Reynolds announced, “Today we’re going to talk about boards. Who thinks that sounds boring?”

Hands shot into the air, but Sean wasn’t dishearte

Princeton, BC, Timberlands Team Helps Students Plant 225 Trees and an Early Connection to Forestry

Trenna, Kim and Julia give the kids an overview of the day.

On May 16, our Princeton, British Columbia, Timberlands team headed out to the woods to plant 225 seedlings with 45 eager young volunteers from local schools as part of National Forest Week in Canada.

“Some kids in our area have family members working in forestry, so they get lots of exposure to the outdoors and our industry — but others don’t,” says Trenna MacLeod, a silviculture forester based in Princeton. “Our tree planting event

Lights, Camera, Forestry: Sharing the Science of Sustainability with Students

The STEM explorers film crew included three cameras to record the conversation between Blair, behind table at left, and Riley, the show’s young host.

Do you remember what sparked your interest in the timber industry? For many of us, fascination with the outdoors took root when we were kids.

That youthful curiosity is what Blair Owen and Seth Plank, planning and roads foresters based in our Vanceboro, North Carolina, Timberlands office, hoped to tap into when they stepped in front of cameras th

Millions of Our Trees Start Their Lives With Viviana Olivares and Our Rochester Seed Plant

Viviana with bagged cones awaiting their turn through the seed plant.

On a sunny September afternoon at our nursery in Rochester, Washington, hundreds of burlap bags full of Douglas-fir cones rest on enormous, covered outdoor racks. At this stage, they are nearly ready to start their journey through the drying, sorting, counting and stratification processes necessary to prepare them for planting.

Viviana Olivares, seed plant manager, and her team will be there every step of the way.

“We proce
Treehugger •

What Is Eco-Friendly Technology?

What is eco-friendly technology? Also known as clean tech, green tech and environmental tech, eco-friendly technology can help preserve the environment through energy efficiency and reduction of harmful waste. Green tech innovators use the latest environmental science and green chemistry to reduce the harmful impact of human activity on the earth.

Green technology is still in the earliest stages of development, but many exciting innovations have already been made in areas like renewable energy,
Treehugger •

What Is Carbon Storage?

What is carbon storage, and why is it frequently mentioned as a potential way to mitigate global warming? Also known as carbon sequestration, carbon storage is a complex method of capturing carbon dioxide emissions and storing them in coal seams, aquifers, depleted oil and gas reservoirs and other spaces deep under the surface of the Earth. Theoretically, this would prevent those gases from having an effect on climate.

Carbon dioxide gases are captured either at the source of production, such a
Treehugger •

What Are Carbon Credits?

It seems that in every news story about an environmentally-conscious celebrity who enjoys the pollution-producing services of a private jet, and in every corporate sustainability report attempting to explain away high greenhouse gas emissions, there's a mention of them: carbon credits. Like magic, they seem to erase the effects of carbon-intensive activities. But what are carbon credits, and how do they really work?

Carbon credits are a highly regulated medium of exchange used to offset—or neut
Treehugger •

6 Common Air Pollutants

They spew forth from automobiles and factories, waft up into the air from livestock farms and even come from the ground and other natural sources. Common air pollutants are found all around us, and they can cause severe health effects as well as environmental damage.

Air pollutants are found in the form of solid particles, liquid droplets or gases, and many of them are created by human activity. According to a recent report by the American Lung Association, State of the Air 2011, toxic air poll
Treehugger •

What Is Biomass?

When you think of renewable energy, photovoltaic panels and wind turbines are likely the images that come to mind. But there's more to renewable energy than solar and wind. Biomass is another earth-friendly source of energy that could help replace environmentally harmful fossil fuels like oil and coal. But what is biomass, and how can it change our energy future for the better?

In short, biomass is organic material made by living organisms that contains stored energy from the sun. Plants absorb
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Gillbert the Robot Fish Sucks Up Microplastics in the Water as It Swims

The winner of the inaugural Natural Robotics Contest not only swims through the water like a real fish — it also helps combat pollution in the process. Created by University of Surrey chemistry student Eleanor Mackintosh, “Gillbert” is a 3D printed robot fish that sucks up microplastics through its gaping mouth, which can then act as a sample to determine the health of the waterway. The independently controlled fish features a glow-in-the-dark body and fine mesh covering its gills to sieve out p
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

BIG and Carlo Ratti Complete a Beautiful Biophilic Skyscraper in Singapore

There are a lot of great reasons to incorporate more greenery into urban environments. Trees, shrubs, grass, and other plants help keep cities cooler by mitigating the urban heat island effect that occurs when materials like concrete and asphalt absorb heat and radiate it back into the urban environment. They also boost biodiversity, make cities more beautiful, and improve air quality.

It may seem like heavily developed cities don’t have a lot of room for more greenery, but Singapore is proving
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Discarded Crab and Lobster Shells Fuel a New Biodegradable Battery

Electronic waste has emerged as one of the major environmental crises of the 21st century, and it only gets worse with every new innovation. As we’re encouraged to drop outdated devices and purchase the latest versions, the old ones are often improperly discarded. Batteries corrode and leak contaminants into our groundwater and surface water, harming wildlife and human health. Some, like lithium-ion batteries, can take hundreds or even thousands of years to break down. They also tend to be dange
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

LINA Fosters Sustainable Architecture Solutions by Giving a Voice to Europe’s Youth

We need as many creative solutions as we can get when it comes to fighting the climate crisis. The European Union just made it a lot easier for emerging architects to share their ideas with a platform called LINA, coordinated by the University of Ljubljana’s architecture department. The goal is to help “deliver the European Green Deal” by bringing together young creatives with leading professionals and organizations promoting sustainable architecture. LINA stands for “Learning, Interacting, and
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Bioclimatic House: A Responsible Way to Add Homes to Sensitive Natural Areas

Prior to the pandemic, most companies were reluctant to allow their employees to work remotely, fretting about potential drops in productivity and a loss of workplace camaraderie. But with COVID came sudden, involuntary trials of remote work on a mass scale — a move that’s since proven quite popular among the workers in question.

A recent Pew Research Center poll of Americans with jobs that can be done remotely found that 60 percent of those working from home want to continue doing so when the
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

RICEWAVE: A New Eco-Friendly Furniture Material Made of Inedible Rice

The news about how petroleum-based plastics are affecting the environment and our health just keeps getting worse. Researchers have recently found microplastics embedded in the lungs of living people, and in the bodies of creatures that lurk within deepest, darkest reaches of the oceans. In addition to inventing new ways to clean up the mess we’ve made of our planet, we also need to find alternatives to plastic that eventually biodegrade.

One potential option is a new biomass material made from
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Scientists Accidentally Found a Way to Clean 99% of CO2 Out of the Air

A team of scientists working on environmentally friendly fuel cells accidentally made an even more important discovery. Engineers at the University of Delaware were stymied by the fact that hydrogen exchange membrane (HEM) fuel cells are super sensitive to carbon dioxide in the air, which reduces their fuel performance and efficiency by up to 20 percent. They then realized that while this effect might not be great for the advancement of alternative fuels, it’s a potentially “game-changing” metho
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Solar-Powered Autonomous Robot Roams the Desert Planting Seeds

It may sound counterintuitive, but if you plant greenery in a desert, the rains will come. Researchers have learned that even in arid regions like Oman and Israel, plant life is capable of capturing water vapor and allowing it to condense into rain. Many deserts are also capable of holding moisture beneath the surface of the sand. The trick is figuring out what will actually grow in the area, and selecting planting areas that can support life.

Unsurprisingly, transforming deserts into lush land
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

“Land’s End” Installation Brings the Urgency of Climate Change to SF’s Cliff House

Many of us experience the climate crisis as a sense of existential dread hovering over our daily lives. It’s there in the background of our minds as we go about all of the mundane tasks that keep us too busy to take any real action to stop it. But what if we couldn’t tune it out so easily? What if we could actually hear the glaciers crackling in the warming Arctic and the oceans rising to meet our fragile coastal cities? Land’s End, a new installation by the San Francisco-based FOR-SITE Foundati
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Sunflower House: Carbon-Positive Home’s Round Roof Follows the Sun

We’re entering a new age, and it’s time for architecture to evolve accordingly. The same old static structures made with environmentally harmful materials and processes aren’t going to cut it anymore. We need our built environments to be more accessible, more equitable, and exist in greater harmony with nature. That can look like all sorts of different things, of course, tailored to specific environments, cultures, and uses.

Koichi Takada’s Sunflower House demonstrates a smarter way to build si
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Strange New Hydrogen Goo Could Cleanly Power Small Vehicles Like Scooters

When it comes to clean vehicles, nothing currently beats electric power, which is set to eclipse fossil fuels over the next couple decades. Hydrogen has a lot of potential, but there’s one significant obstacle to its widespread adoption (aside from a general lack of fueling stations): it requires vehicles to have heavy high-pressure tanks, making it hard to use on smaller ones like motorcycles and scooters. A strange new sticky gray paste developed by German scientists might change all that.

De
Dornob | Architecture, Interior and Furniture Desi •

Squid Skin Inspired This Innovative Shape-Shifting 3D-Printed Smart Gel

In a viral video from 2019, an octopus named Heidi clings to the glass walls of her aquarium in the living room of David Scheel, a marine biologist at Alaska Pacific University. Every few seconds, the color of her skin shifts dramatically from white to gray to gold to maroon, the texture seeming to change from smooth to rough. In his narration, Scheel suggests that she’s dreaming, perhaps about chasing a crab.

Scientists aren’t sure whether cephalopods can actually dream, but there’s no tricker
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