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William Reilly, who served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush, first moved to Washington D.C. in the late 1960sbefore the EPA was established. He remembers a contest in which dogs were to retrieve items by swimming into the Potomac River. After the first two dogs got out and vomited, it was closed down, he says. At the time, the river was intensely polluted, full of raw sewage and industrial waste. Then came the EPA, which President Nixon established in 1970, and then it’s 1972 Clean Water Act. Now, Reilly notes, theres a campaign to allow swimming in the Potomac, and every summer people flock to the river to kayak, canoe, paddleboard, and more. Reilly was speaking on a press call, along with two other former EPA administrators, in response to the Trump administration’s decision to roll back nearly three dozen environmental regulations. Illegal dumping in New Jersey, 1973. [Photo: Gary Millar/US National Archives] Christine Whitman, who served as EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, remembers how, when visiting the beach as a child, you had to be very careful of the tar balls, she says. Wed go down to the beach and wed get tar all over our feet. Floating balls of sticky tar were common in the ocean in the 60s and 70s, because of offshore oil tanker operations or even oil spills. Nobody wanted to go in the water, she says. Though sometimes tar balls still appear on beaches today, the frequency has dropped drastically, thanks to efforts by the EPA. Huntington Beach, 1975 [Photo: Charles O’Rear] This is what were in danger of returning to amid the Trump administrations efforts to gut the EPA and roll back regulations. Lee Zeldin, the current EPA administrator, said such regulations have unfairly burdened industry. But experts say removing those regulations would be a catastrophic move that endangers all of our lives. Pollution in the Schuykill River, Philadelphia, 1973. [Photo: Dick Swanson/US National Archives] Before the EPA was established, environmental regulations were left up to the states, many of which were plagued by dirty air and polluted waters. After the Trump administration announced its plans to roll back crucial environmental protections, people began sharing images on social media of pre-EPA America, showing cities shrouded in dense smog, mountains of waste, and even Ohio’s Cuyahoga River on fire. A fire on the Cuyahoga River, 1952. [Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images] One reason I think there is less immediate understanding of the environment is people don’t remember how bad it was, and it truly was, Reilly says. Thats not to say the country is perfect; there is still air pollution, water pollution, and risk from chemicals like PFAS. But there have also been major improvements. Between 1980 and 2017, weve reduced the emissions of six common air pollutants by 67%even as the countrys population, energy use, and even GDP grew. We cannot have a healthy, thriving economy if we dont have a clean environment, Whitman says. And if the United States steps back from environmental regulation, it could have reverberations around the world, because weve historically been seen as a leader. If we withdraw from our involvement in trying to clean up the air, it sends a message to the rest of the world, dont bother. The Tacoma Smelter stack emits arsenic and lead residue. Ruston, 1972. [Photo: Gene Daniels/US National Archives/Wiki Commons] Under Trump, Zeldin has made it the EPAs mission to unleash American energy, a contrast to the agencys long-standing mission to protect the health and environment, says Gina McCarthy, who served as the EPA administrator under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. That, in combination with the moves to rollback regulations and fire workers, is a not so subtle way of ushering in a global age of pollution, she adds, at the expense of our ability to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and to continue to protect and preserve our national resources. Smog over Louisville, 1972. [Photo: William Strode/US National Archives] Though the courts may stop some of the Trump administrations efforts, these previous EPA administrators worry that the government firings will still leave the agency without the ability to actually carry out any laws if they are reestablished. And if the laws are rolled back, that leaves Americans with far fewer crucial protections, particularly from polluting businesses. Were almost going to have an honor system where were going to trust corporations and businesses to behave in a way that they have been behaving when there were laws, but all of a sudden there are no laws, Reilly says. And so I honestly wonder if the malefactors are going to give us more burning rivers.
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At a remote elementary school in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, until recently, access to safe drinking water was a daily challenge. The school tried to use groundwater, but there wasnt enough supply; the water was also contaminated with salt and metal. In the dry season, from December to April, droughts made the challenge worse. But last month, the school installed a new system that harvests rainwater, filters it, and then automatically supplies it to drinking fountains, the kitchen, and bathrooms. Its one of more than 270 schools, from rural Nepal to urban Taiwan, to work with a fast-growing nonprofit called Gravity Water to install the nonprofits tech over the last 12 months. What we’re really trying to do is modernize rainwater harvestingto take this ancient technology to solve a modern-day problem, says founder Danny Wright. Later this year, the organization plans to also begin adding the technology to buildings in a city in Massachusetts. [Photo: Gravity Water] Wright first started thinking about the potential for rainwater harvesting on a trip to Central America in college. He realized that access to clean drinking water was a challenge even in areas with abundant rain. One night, in a tent in the rainforest, he sketched a concept for a simple system that could filter rainwater in a rooftop tank and flow through a filter using gravity, without the need for electricity. [Photo: Gravity Water] Later, after finishing grad school in 2015, he was still considering the idea when he took a job at a school in Nepal. Like other communities in the country, the area struggled with water contamination because of the lack of modern sewage infrastructure. Children often got sick from drinking the water. Wright proposed building the rainwater system, and created the first simple prototype. We were pretty much building gigantic Brita filters, he says. When it worked, the project grew into a nonprofit. Over time, the system became more advanced. While the organization still builds the basic models in areas that dont have electricity, most projects are now more complex, using sensors to run automatically and switch between a utility water sourcesuch as a pipe running to a village welland stored rainwater. The installation process, which takes around 24 hours, involves adding downspouts to the roof, downspouts that direct rain into tanks, and a fridge-sized “rain box” next to the building that connects the tanks to the school’s existing plumbing. In some cases, schools now get most of their water from rain. Were working in places like Indonesia now, and Taiwan, where we have projects that get such consistent rainfall that were seeing our rainwater systems being utilized 80% of the year, Wright says. Urban Taipei obviously has different water infrastructure than rural Nepal or Vietnam. But in Taipei, in heavy storms, the local water supply often quickly becomes polluted. Other large cities, like Jakarta, are dealing with saltwater intrusion in their water supplies, both because so much groundwater has already been extracted and because sea levels are rising. In urban areas, too, rainwater often can’t filter back into the ground because most of the ground is covered in buildings or pavement. Gravity Water’s system can make use of that water, while also helping reduce flooding. [Photo: Gravity Water] In some cases, rather than storing rainwater long-term, the systems are designed simply to make use of rain on rainy days. “Rainwater doesn’t have to be a year-round solution,” says Wright. “But we could have a profound impact on resilience for water in these regions if we just use rain on the days there’s rain. We don’t even need to have storage.” The work, to date, has been primarily funded through donations; Apple gave the organization a grant to build the systems at 131 schools in northern Vietnam, for example. The organization also covers the cost of replacing the filters for schools who can’t afford it (maintenance costs roughly 25 cents a student per year at a typical school). But the nonprofit is also now working with UNICEF to build rainwater harvesting systems for community use. It’s also working on new models that don’t rely on philanthropy, in order to reach more people. It recently spun off a startup called Cloudwell that uses the same technology. “Households are our end goal, but it’s really hard to sell a product to households in communities that on average make less than $10 a day, let alone maybe $4 or $2 a day,” Wright says. Now, the organization is starting to talk with some utilities about providing them with the technology and infrastructure to collect rainwater; households would get the tech for free, and then get a rebate on their rainwater use. A current study, with Santa Clara University, is evaluating the economics using rainwater in this way, as well as looking at where the local climate and other factors make it most viable. There’s global interest. “I was just in Nairobi last week and every single community was so eager to start implementing the solution,” says Wright. The tech can also be helpful in places like the U.S., he says. Upcoming pilot projects this summer in Massachusetts (the nonprofit hasn’t yet announced the city) will add the tech to city and university buildings to help both with water resiliencethe state is currently in droughtand to help reduce serious flooding in heavyrain.
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Remote work is here to stay, and late-stage startups offer a nice mix of financial backing, stability, and potential for success that might be lacking in your current job. If you’re looking for a chance to join a company on the move while working from the comfort of your own home, this is the list for you. From AI to health to cybersecurity and more, these remote-friendly companies have plenty of openings. Grafana Labs: 50 Grafana Labs provides a suite of toolsincluding Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, and Tempothat help organizations monitor, analyze, and understand their applications and infrastructure. Grafana Labs is hiring for a variety of remote roles, including positions in engineering (software, backend, security), product management, customer success (technical account management), sales (account executives, solutions engineers), marketing (community, product, partner), support, and people operations. Vercel: 37 Vercel is a cloud platform for building and deploying fast, modern, web applications, best known for its focus on developer experience and non-server functions. Vercel is hiring for a range of remote positions in engineering (front-end, back-end, site-reliability engineering), product management, sales, marketing, finance, legal, and people operations. Headway: 36 Headway is a platform that connects patients with therapists who accept insurance, aiming to make mental health care more accessible and affordable. Headway is hiring for various remote roles in engineering (front-end, back-end, full-stack), product, data, and operations, focused on building and scaling its platform and network within the U.S. Apollo.io: 35 Apollo.io is a sales intelligence and engagement platform designed to help sales teams find, connect with, and close more deals by providing a comprehensive database of business contacts and integrated sales tools. Apollo.io is hiring for a wide range of remote roles primarily across sales (account executives, solutions engineers, sales-development representatives), engineering (various specializations), product management, marketing, customer success, and operations. Halcyon: 26 Halcyon provides a platform for cybersecurity, focusing on end-point protection and threat intelligence to help organizations defend against advanced cyberattacks and ransomware. Halcyon is hiring for remote roles primarily in engineering (software, security), sales (account executives, sales engineers), marketing, and customer success. Phantom: 26 Phantom is a cryptocurrency wallet offering a user-friendly interface for managing digital assets, staking, and interacting with decentralized applications. Phantom is hiring for a variety of remote roles including engineering (mobile, back-end, security), product, design, marketing, and customer support. Hightouch: 26 Hightouch is a platform that syncs data from data warehouses directly to business tools to arm marketing, sales, and customer-success teams with accurate data in real time. Hightouch is hiring across a variety of remote roles including engineering (back-end, front-end, DevOps), product management, sales, marketing, customer success, and operations. Cyera: 21 Cyera provides a cloud data-security platform that helps organizations discover, classify, and manage data-security risks across their cloud environments, enabling businesses to comply with regulations and prevent data breaches. Cyera is hiring for remote positions primarily in engineering (back-end, front-end, data science, security), product management, sales, customer success, marketing, and operations. Arize: 20 Arize provides a machine learning observability platform that helps organizations monitor, debug, and improve the performance of their machine learning models to ensure the models are accurate and reliable. Arize is hiring remotely across various departments, including engineering (back-end, front-end, machine learning ops), product, customer success, sales, and marketing. 1Password: 19 1Password is a password manager that helps individuals, teams, and businesses securely store and manage passwords, credit cards, and other sensitive information. The company is hiring for various remote roles across the U.S. and Canada, with a focus on engineering (software, security), product management, design, marketing, sales, customer support, and operations. Runway: 15 Runway builds creativity-based AI tools and infrastructure to generate images, videos, and other media using machine learning models. Runway is hiring for a variety of remote roles, primarily in engineering (machine learning, software), product, design, and research. Fingerprint: 13 Fingerprint provides a device intelligence platform that enables businesses to accurately identify website visitors, prevent fraud, and improve user experiences. Fingerprint is hiring remotely across a variety of departments, including engineering (front-end, back-end, security), product, sales, marketing, customer success, and operations.
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