It’s the future! Plastic-eating fungus—what’s next, jet packs?

• Newly discovered fungus eats plastic – Grist. I believed The World Without Us when it said this would happen eventually, I just didn’t think it would be so soon.
• Coop D’Etat: Farmers, Humane Society Partner On Chicken-Cage Revolution – NPR. United Egg Producers and the Humane Society helped draft a law that will phase out cages by 2015. Contact your representatives to tell them you support it, too. (Thanks, Liala!)
• What’s in your orange juice? – Boston Globe. Because my Tropicana uses oranges from Brazil, like most major orange juice brands, I’ve probably been drinking fungicide…
• The Thermostat Wars – Slate. It turns out Honeywell patented and then sat on many of the features of the popular Nest thermostat.
• What’s the Best Way To Get Users To Embrace Mass Transit? – Slate. I think Boston might be considered “low system/high empathy”.
• State of Maine Bans Use Of LEED In State Construction – Treehugger. Is there anyone in Maine who doesn’t think that LePage is completely nuts?
• Cotton’s Hidden Costs – Boston Green Drinks. Conventional cotton is one of the most water-, fertilizer-, and pesticide-intensive crops.
• Dirty Money – Slate. Would removing fossil fuel subsidies level the playing field and reduce carbon emissions?
• Why fixing up old homes is greener than building new ones – Grist. New energy efficient buildings take decades to catch up to the energy savings of retrofits.
• Farmer Groupies and Chicken Coddlers – Slate. Isn’t there a middle ground between well-off suburban dilettante and the poor Appalachians that the Foxfire books emulate?
• Orion Kriegman on Backyard Chickens & Community Resilience – JP Patch. Kriegman and his wife turned a vacant lot into a community orchard. (Thanks, Lesley!)
• Compost for Brooklyn – Locavore in the City. Suzanne’s a Berklee professor, with a book based on her blog coming out next year. Here she talks about how finding a place to compost helped her make connections in her new home.
• Recipes for the Semi-Vegan – New York Times. I missed you, Mark Bittman!
• The habit of pie – Harvard Press. Okay, so this doesn’t have much do with the environment directly, but Jonathan made the best pie I’ve ever had in my life using local honey, so it kind of fits…
• Sustainable – xkcd. Doing my part: sustainable, sustainable, sustainable, sustainable, sustainable, sustainable.

That’s all for now. As always, if you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way .