Full Recovery

There's no need for waste, but waste does lead to need.

Americans throw away tons of food each year, yet many in our country do not have enough to eat. That points to a problem with our current system. However, it also suggests we have what we need to make things better.

The Food Recovery Network helps feed those in need with food that would otherwise be wasted, and now, the organization provides a certification for universities and businesses that participate in the program. Check out a video about the certification below:



By offering the certification, the Food Recovery Network spreads awareness of its program and recognizes the organizations that participate in it. The idea is to promote a system that gets the most out of our food resources. The more recognition participating organizations receive and give to the program, the more popular the program becomes and the more food is recovered for those who need it. For additional information about the Food Recovery Network, click here.

The elimination of food waste isn't just a good idea; we need it.

Unstuff Those Stockings

Having nothing under the tree doesn't necessarily make for a bad Christmas experience.

By making the gift itself an experience, you can give a fulfilling present instead of the same old thing. Experience gifts replace material presents with the chance to do something. This includes concerts, lessons, and even food.

Of course, providing an experience that will be meaningful to someone is just as important as giving a present they would want, so a Web site called Unstuff is providing people with resources to match experiences to interests. The site gives general ideas for experience gifts, and it can also tailor suggestions using Facebook. For more information, click here.

The experience of Christmas is a pretty great thing, but an experience for Christmas is even better.

Trim More Than the Tree

Less is more, but "more is more" is heard more, especially when it comes to the holidays.

Two days ago, I blogged about my present-free Christmas list. It's one of the ways I'm trying to minimize my environmental impact during the holidays. However, a lot more goes into this time of year than presents, and that means we have additional opportunities to decrease our consumption of resources.

In this green spirit of the season, The Nature Conservancy is giving people ways to "REthink the Holidays." These include buying local food, additional alternatives to giving presents, reducing waste, and several more. One is about starting green holiday traditions with a young child. I really like these ideas, and they cover just about everything involved in the holidays. Click here to see the full range of suggestions.

Of course, if you do end up with stuff, it's important to know how to deal with it. For that, the Natural Resources Defense Council has tips on how to reuse and recycle.

Cutting back may be the best gift we'll ever give to the planet.

Save the Date

As Captain Barbossa would say, "They're more like guidelines."

It turns out that the "best by" dates on food are no less arbitrary than the pirate code in a Disney film. Arbitrary is good for a laugh on the silver screen but bad for the amount of food waste we produce. As the Natural Resource Defense Council points out on its Switchboard blog, the expiration dates on food aren't governed by any regulation, so they are relatively meaningless.

The problem is that people are throwing away good food because those dates tell them it has expired. As a result, food is wasted, and so is the energy used to produce it. In addition, unless the food waste is composted, it becomes part of our trash.

Standards are needed to preserve the usefulness of expiration dates, and until we have that, saving good food comes down to our own judgment.

Made in the Shade

The best part of waking up is hearing the morning songs of birds.

That's not exactly what the old Folgers jingle said, but coffee and songbirds are connected. Much of the coffee that is consumed is grown on land that has been logged so the beans can ripen in full sun. Removing the trees eliminates bird habitat.

Alternative means of coffee growing exist though. Shade-grown coffee keeps forests intact, merging agriculture with efforts to protect birds. The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has created a certification program for such practices. To learn more about the program and find shade-grown, organic coffee, click here.

It's time to wake up about the impact coffee consumption has on birds.

It's in the Genes

We learn as children to know what we are putting in our mouths, but with the increase of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), that's becoming difficult.

GMOs are organisms that have been scientifically engineered and include plants and animals. Their growing presence in our food has started to get more attention lately and sparked attempts to have all foods containing them labeled as such, but companies that produce and sell these foods have fought the proposals.

GMO OMG, a documentary being released on Friday, attempts to shed light on GMOs and the industry behind them. Check out the trailer below:

GMO OMG Official Trailer from Compeller Pictures on Vimeo.

Our pursuit of science began with the goal of gaining more knowledge. Science shouldn't leave us further in the dark, especially on an issue as basic and important as what we eat.

It Does a Planet Good

Chances are, if you've got milk, you've got a plastic or paper milk carton that you have to recycle when the milk is gone, but the spirit of the milkman's glass bottles lives on.

Burbach's Countryside Dairy, which is based in Nebraska, has a great program for selling milk to stores around its area. The dairy puts its milk in glass bottles, which the stores then sell. When the customer is done with the milk, the bottle can be taken back to the store, which returns it to the dairy to be used again. For more information about the dairy, click here.

This operation model deserves replication. Selling milk locally decreases the carbon footprint of transporting it, and reusing the bottles is better than even recycling.

If this kind of program were available in more places, I think we'd all have reason to smile with our milk mustaches.

Bittersweet

Most films have to create a buzz to draw an audience, but a recent documentary looks at an issue that people are already buzzing about.

More Than Honey examines the worldwide phenomenon of honeybee die-offs and the major implications they have for humans. To view the trailer and learn more about the film, click here.

The honeybee deaths force us to consider our connection with the environment. Pesticides have been identified as a major factor in the die-offs, and the possible extinction of bees threatens our food sources. In other words, we're deeply entwined at all levels of this issue.

By contributing to the buzz around the bee deaths, More Than Honey helps us explore this vital connection.

This Way to the Garden

With fall starting to make its presence felt, it might seem like an odd time to discuss gardening. However, I want to share a Web site that puts gardening at the center of life regardless of the season.

A Way to Garden is a blog from Margaret Roach, who provides tips on gardening, cooking, canning, and other issues related to home and food.

Lately, she has been talking about how to deal with the onset of fall. She had an interesting take on it, suggesting that this is when she makes her gardening resolutions for next year.

Above all, the site serves a great guide for how to put the power of the garden to work for you. Check it out by clicking here.

This New House

I'm not really much for plugging housing developments. The truth is that each time I see a new one, I get a little sad. I hate seeing natural spaces bulldozed and built and paved over.

With that perspective in mind, I will share some information my sister sent me. It concerns a community called the Garden Atriums. You can visit the community's Web site by clicking here.

From what I can tell, Garden Atriums is a gated community (not my favorite kind). However, it is based on some interesting principles that I think could be good, especially if applied in other areas.

First, Garden Atriums has a community garden, which brings food production close to home and gives the community a central space that will hopefully make for stronger connections between residents. Also, its homes feature less lawn space, decreasing the need for water, fertilizer, and mowing.

Another interesting idea is the use of atriums with plants at the center of the houses. This provides some innovative ways of creating climate control and challenges the barriers that traditionally separate human dwellings from nature. Additionally, the houses generate the power they need with solar energy.

I like that Garden Atriums seems to take sustainability seriously, but I would like to see someone try to incorporate the ideas from this community in one that already exists. If renovation and rejuvenation projects borrow from Garden Atrium's inspiration, the need for brand new developments will hopefully decrease.

The Skinny on Lunch

For the last three months, I have been making and eating packed lunches without the help of plastic sandwich bags.

In January, I started using reusable sandwich bags from LunchSkins. The bags are made from food-safe fabric that contains no lead or BPA (Bisphenol A). They can be washed in the dishwasher and are good for holding many kinds of food in addition to sandwiches. Also, they are made in the United States.

I really like them, especially when I think about all the plastic I'm not using.

One small issue with the bags is that they do not offer the same kind of airtight seal provided by a plastic bag. As a result, the very top part of the sandwich bread tends to dry out a little after a few hours in the LunchSkin. That's a price I'm willing to pay for chemical-free food and using less plastic.

For more information about LunchSkins, click here.

Local Eating in the Palm of Your Hand

Eating foods that are grown and sold locally is an important part of sustainability, and the Natural Resources Defense Council is trying to make local eating easier with a new app called Eat Local, which is available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

The app allows you to determine what foods are in season in your area, find where local farmers' markets are, and discover seasonal recipes. For more information, click here. Eat Local is another tool from the NRDC's collection of resources for Smarter Living.

Plastic: Time to Wrap it Up

Besides doing away with my need for gasoline, cutting down on the use of plastic is one of my biggest environmental goals. The problem is that plastic comes with so many things we use all the time.

It definitely takes a conscious effort to avoid plastic. For example, when I think I want to buy something, I ask myself if it or its packaging contains plastic. If the answer is yes, I often decide against buying it or choose to look for alternatives.

Sometimes, my attempts to keep plastic at a distance need a little help though. I found some in this article about five packaged foods you never need to buy again. It contains information about making things like soup, soup stock, and, my personal favorite, cereal.

Now, I can take my anti-plastic life to the next level.

Love Seafood and the Sea

The ocean certainly provides some tasty treats, and I've enjoyed a lot of them in my life. I'd like to continue enjoying them, and I also want to make sure that I show my appreciation to the ocean by protecting it.

Unfortunately, the oceans are having some trouble now. They are becoming more acidic and more polluted, and many areas have become dead zones. That's not good for the health of the oceans, the well-being of the animals and plants in them, or those of us who love the ocean and what it provides.

Through our seafood choices, we can improve the health of the oceans and ensure we get clean food. The Natural Resources Defense Council has provided tips for how to do that.

I particularly like the suggestions for eating locally and supporting sustainable-harvest practices.

Growing up within an hour of the ocean gave me some great experiences and much wonderful cuisine. I am indebted to the ocean for those things, so it's great to know I can do my part to keep them coming.

Wild About Organics

A new book is generating wild praise for its focus on how to eat organically. Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet--All on $5 a Day or Less takes on the assumption that eating organic foods brings extra expenses.

Written by Linda Watson, the book has been met with many positive reviews, which laud its ability to serve as both a cookbook and a shopping guide for those who would like to eat organically but don't want to spend too much doing it. It's great that the book combines concerns about the environment, human health, and frugality. Just one of these things would make it worth a look, but combining them all with a practical, how-to approach adds a little more to its value.

The book is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. Watson also has a Web site called Cook for Good.

Whad'Ya Know?

For this entry, I'm linking you to a great story.

I saw it (and maybe you did too) on the Natural Resource Defense Council's Switchboard blog link on the right side of this page, but I wanted to make sure that it got a little more attention before the blog link updated to a new story.

This one has some interesting lessons about what people think they know about nature and their place in the environment. Even better, it has a happy ending. I hope you like it.

The Green Guide

National Geographic has put out a wonderful resource that helps people make their daily lives more environmentally friendly.

The Green Guide organizes tips and information by the types of things we frequently do. For instance, perhaps you would like to reduce the carbon footprint of or the number of chemicals in your food. The Green Guide has a whole section on food. It also has a home-and-garden section, which contains subsections for each room in your house. This type of systematic order is what the dreams of a person with an obsessive-compulsive personality are made of. It also makes things a little easier for everybody else.

In addition, the Green Guide has information about buying and recycling products, travel, transportation, energy efficiency, and a number of other green topics.

Check out the Green Guide by clicking here.