Metropolis Magazine features an article on green roofs.

Set amid the industrial squalor of a Queens neighborhood, Silvercup Studios, New York’s largest film production studio, plays host to New York’s largest green roof. An idea whose time has come, green roofs cool down concrete jungles, productively utilize runoff, and provide a visual respite for those commuting at a bird’s eye view on overpasses surrounding urban sprawl.

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Cool Hunting blogs that Good Magazine launches this month. Ben Goldhirsh, Good’s founder says, “We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let’s call it GOOD. We’re here to push this movement and cover its realization.”

For all the weightiness of the topics, an optimistic point-of-view coupled with elegant layouts, photography and illustration (that often add a dose of humor) keeps the LA-based magazine accessible without losing its intelligent edge.

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Brandchannel has an article featuring Dame Anita Roddick,
the founder of The Body Shop, the now ubiquitous natural body products chain found in airports and on high streets around the world. Roddick speaks to the power of business, moreso than politics or religion to change the way people act.

According to the article, one of Roddick’s biggest accomplishments is establishing 36 purchasing programs with impoverished farmers in 23 countries, including Brazil, Nicaragua, Zambia, Pakistan and India. Through them, the Body Shop buys herbs, nuts, almond oil, sesame seed oil and other ingredients for its moisturizers, creams and shampoos. In total, the company has business relationships with more than 5,000 families, but the economic spin-offs are felt by thousands more with schooling, training, HIV/AIDS awareness, health clinics and fresh water.

Within their own scale, Roddick calls upon businesses to use their power as activism, and to take creativity to the next level. At 64, still an activist, and in command of her choices, Roddick is an inspiration, who with her wealth and power as a creative social tool, continues to manifest real change in the world.

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