April 8th, 2009

How To Make Your Easter Green

by Bridgette Meinhold

A green Easter seems like it would be a natural fit - a spring holiday, celebrating the rebirth of nature while reducing your environmental impact. Greening your Christmas was an intense process full of looking for greener gifts, wrapping, candy and organic food. In comparison, Easter will be much simpler to make eco-friendly - there’s the eggs, candy, food and Easter egg hunt. Here are some great suggestions for how to reduce your environmental impact for this spring celebration.

First off are the Easter eggs, which are traditionally colored with unnatural, toxic dyes. Even though you’re not eating them, start off with organic, local eggs. It’s still important to buy organic to encourage more environmentally friendly farms and produce. To avoid the traditional dye, look to your cabinets, pantry and leftover food to dye your eggs. Natural dyes are healthier to handle and use. Strong coffee will turn your eggs brown, grape juice can be used to make lavender, beets or raspberries will turn them pink, and boiled spinach makes green. You can boil the eggs and dye them at the same time in separate pots with various foods. For a great list of natural ingredients and how to dye your eggs, click here.

Instead of cheap plastic baskets, invest in some quality wicker baskets that will last you many years and will eventually naturally biodegrade. Thrift stores are great sources for baskets.  Check with your local recycler to see if they will take your old plastic Easter baskets, plastic grass fill and eggs.  Shredded paper and newspaper makes great natural basket fill. Another great idea for natural fill is to grow your own grass inside a basket. It may be a little too late to do, but it’s a great springtime decoration, looks fabulous and is really easy.

Eliminate the sugar-laden and highly processed candy for more natural sweets. Fair trade, organic chocolate is a must. Look for candy with natural cane sugar, alternative sweeteners like honey or agave nectar, organic ingredients, and local products. Another nice alternative to candy is dried fruit and nuts. While your plastic Easter eggs are your go-to container for the candy, supplement your dwindling supply with reused mint tins. Altoid tins can easily be painted or wrapped in paper to make more decorative and festive.

The Easter Egg Hunt is a time honored tradition for the little ones - a race to gather as many eggs and candy as possible. Look for local egg hunts in your neighborhood or hold one yourself. While this is a great outdoor activity for kids, another idea is to turn the egg hunt into a trash hunt. Gather together with your neighbors to pick up trash in a local park, school, or beach. Obviously a busy street is not a safe place for children, but the competitive spirit of the Easter Egg Hunt could be channeled into cleaning up your local neighborhood. Another great activity would be to plant a garden or a tree.

And lastly, turn your Easter feast into a celebration of in season spring produce, local farms and natural ingredients. Check out Local Harvest to find a local farmers market near your and review NRDC’s local foods database to find out what is in season in your state right now. While lamb and ham are both very popular choices for the main entree, consider cutting out the meat and having a vegetarian feast (like here or here), which is an even better celebration of the environment.

Above all, Easter is wonderful reminder and celebration of regrowth, renewal and life. What better time to reduce your environmental impact. Channel that spring energy you have into growing new plants, cleaning up your neighborhood, using more natural ingredients, eating more fruits and veggies, and enjoying nature.

Popularity: 2% [?]

April 6th, 2009

Why Going Vegetarian For One Day Will Help Stop Global Warming

by GreenOptions.com

Written by Brian Liloia, courtesy of Planetsave.com

Americans eat lots of meat. So much so that livestock is now one of the leading contributors to global warming, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions as measured in a carbon dioxide equivalent.

A recent United Nations report concluded that the meat industry causes almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s transportation systems — that means all of the globe’s cars, trucks, planes and ships combined.

Kathy Preston poses an important question for meat-eating Americans concerned about the effects of global warming: what are the effects of going vegetarian for just one day? Here are her astounding statistics about how going vegetarian for a single day can help prevent global warming:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

• 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
• 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
• 70 million gallons of gas — enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
• 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
• 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

• Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
• 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
• 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
• Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

It is undoubtedly clear that human activity causes increased global warming, and America’s dangerous over-consumption of meat is a major contributor to climate change. Adopting a vegetarian diet is an important step towards preventing global warming. And as these alarming statistics suggest, simply decreasing the amount of meat in your diet can have a major impact.

For more information about how going vegetarian can help prevent global warming, check out the original article.

Popularity: 3% [?]

March 10th, 2009

Green Home Contest Winners: Serious Low Impact Livers!

by Jessica Jensen

As you may recall, we launched a Green Home Contest a while back, which comes with a truly outstanding prize provided by Joie de Vivre Hotels, the leading green hotel chain.  Well we have our winners!  We are inspired and awed by Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne, who truly embrace the Low Impact Living lifestyle in their home.  We all have a ton to learn from them.  Erik and Kelly win a fabulous 3-night stay at the very environmentally-friendly Hotel Carlton in San Francisco– and boy do they deserve it!

Erik and Kelly own a small bungalow in Los Angeles.  Not only do they live in a very sustainable home, the also do their own farming and raise chickens at home!  The two of them live in a 1,000 square foot house, which they have outfitted with numerous green features.  Here’s their impressive list:
 

• Low-flow showerheads, toilets and sink aerators
• 95+% CFLs indoors
• Drip irrigation and no grass
• Rain shutoff on irrigation system AND smart irrigation controller
• Shade trees planted
• Compost vegetable wastes at home
• Rain barrels & rain gardens to capture runoff
• Programmable thermostat
• Graywater system(shhh…don’t ask to see the permits)
• Purchase green power from their utility

In addition to these very efficient green-home features, Erik and Kelly also keep their carbon footprint low by driving and flying very little.  Erik is a committed biker. He bike commutes and rarely uses a car.  His wife, Kelly, owns an older Acura but only drives it 4,000 miles per year (which is much lower than the 10-12K miles/year American average!).  They also only make one airplane flight each year– don’t forget that the emissions from air travel are a major contributor to global warming.  So Erik and Kelly really have low non-home carbon footprints, which is excellent.

What is even better is that this amazing green duo also publishes an outstanding blog– the cleverly titled Homegrown Evolution.  They write about such engaging topics as urban gardening, raising chickens, making beer, and much more.  Definitely spend some time on their blog– it’s a great read.  And I’m also excited to check out their book– The Urban Homestead, which is “your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city.”  They say they are now working on a second book. This is one productive pair!

We respectfully tip our hats to Kelly and Erik, and we hope they have a wonderful time in San Francisco.  Thank you to all who entered the contest– we’re very moved by the work you are doing to live more sustainable lives.  The planet needs you!

Popularity: 7% [?]

February 25th, 2009

Is Starbucks Finally Becoming a Green Bean?

by Jason Pelletier, Low Impact Living

There are few companies on earth that have a better-known consumer brand than Starbucks. We’ve always hoped that they would use this brand power to take a strong leadership role in promoting sustainability. After all, Starbucks literally depends on the health of the earth for the quality of its products! Starbucks has embraced green practices in some ways, but in others they’ve been lacking. We’ve written about some of their inconsistent waste management practices in the past, and behind the scenes we’ve wondered about the carbon footprint of all that coffee and bottled water.

Well, there are more signs that they are making progress towards becoming a much greener company. Last week they announced the opening of a LEED-certified roasting plant in South Carolina. And they’ve promised that all new company-operated stores will be LEED certified by the end of 2010.

Some of the green elements of the new roasting plant include the following:

• Overall, building materials were comprised of 20% recycled content;
• Seventy-five percent of construction waste was recycled;
• Energy efficient lighting systems were installed;
• High efficiency water fixtures and drought-tolerant landscaping were used;
• Some electricity is provided by wind power, although it doesn’t say whether Starbucks actually operates wind turbines or has just bought renewable energy credits, or RECS. There’s a big difference between the two, and we’d prefer the former!

Now, having done some sustainability consulting in the coffee industry, we noticed one major component of a coffee roasting plant NOT mentioned: improvements to the roasting process itself, which is far and away the most energy-intensive aspect of a roasting plant. If you look at coffee as a product BEFORE it gets to retail (i.e., excluding Starbucks stores), the primary source of carbon emissions comes from the roasting process. In 2003, the last year for which Starbucks reported greenhouse gas emissions, roasting counted for about 53,000 tons of carbon dioxide. All other emissions associated with the roasting plant (office energy use, heating/cooling, etc) are minor in comparison. There are ways to cut down on roasting emissions, and we hope that Starbucks is using them. One is to recirculate waste roasting gases to conserve energy (and reduce air pollution). If they were truly on the green cutting edge, Starbucks could also use this same waste gas to power space heating and cooling equipment for their entire plant.

Outside of the plant, we’d also like to see Starbucks focus on other greening initiatives that they haven’t fully addressed yet:

• Shipping. From our analysis, shipping can comprise 25% or more of coffee’s non-retail carbon footprint. That includes the whole chain from farm to store and all associated packaging materials. These emissions can be hard to cut, but quantifying and reporting them is a first step. We hope that Starbucks’ 2008 CSR report will include this information.
• Packaging. The airtight plastic/metallic bags that coffee is often packaged in are very carbon-intensive. The plastic comes from petrochemicals, and the metallic components are often aluminum, one of the most energy intensive metals. There are major opportunities here to develop more sustainable packaging. Especially if you are an industry leader like Starbucks.
• Bottled Water. Just stop selling it. Please. Sell filtered, augmented or carbonated water made in-store instead. If consumers really want to buy water, allow them to bring in a thermos or water bottle and buy special Starbucks/Ethos water. That is, if there really is something worth paying for aside from convenience in the bottled water that Starbucks sells. We happily buy water made from the Natura system at many of the restaurants we frequent. No shipping impacts, and no waste associated with plastic bottles.

One last point. As mentioned above, Starbucks hopes to attain LEED certification for all new company-owned stores. It’s pretty clear if you read Starbuck’s latest sustainability report that the bulk of their overall impacts come from the operation, not construction, of their stores. The LEED standards associated with construction (LEED for New Construction, Commercial Interiors, etc) help with these operational impacts somewhat. But we’d really be excited to shop at Starbucks if they instead decided to certify existing stores with the USGBC’s LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance standard. That would require Starbucks to not only operate energy- and water-efficient stores, but to also put in place comprehensive recycling, sustainable sourcing and green cleaning practices among other things. Now that will turn Starbucks coffee into some really green beans!

Popularity: 5% [?]

February 10th, 2009

Will You Be My Eco-Chocolate Valentine?

by Alan Shannon

For fans of chocolate, this approaching Valentine’s Day offers an ideal excuse to purchase a seasonal box of chocolates or to savor something special made with chocolate, that magical elixir the Aztecs prized as much as gold.

But chocolate might prompt heartburn if a person knew the damage it can do to the environment and how workers—including children—are often exploited in its production. In addition to promoting deforestation, commercial chocolate production often involves the use of pesticides, this in one of the world’s most life-abundant and diverse regions. Of course, using pesticides harms much of that life, causing considerable damage.

Maybe we don’t get warm and fuzzy feelings about saving all the creeping, flying and crawling bugs that abound in warm places, but if we thought about all the animals that rely on them for food, such as neon colored birds, monkeys, or even the aardvark, we might opt for organic or sustainably-grown chocolate.

Thankfully, as with so many food products these days, there are plenty of small-scale and artisan producers creating culinary works of art that offer a tantalizing array of flavors and combinations, while ensuring that workers and the earth aren’t exploited.

Herewith a sampling of earth-friendly edible gems that will warm your, er, heart:

Perhaps the greenest chocolate company in the States, haute chocolate creator Vosges, with boutiques in Chicago, New York and Las Vegas, uses 100% renewable energy—and that’s just for starters. From earth-friendly packaging to green shipping, the company takes seriously its commitment to the environment—and that’s even before it’s fired up the stove and begun crafting its prized confections.

It’s not everywhere a chocolate-hound can find organic peanut butter bonbons or Italian-inspired chocolates mixed with taleggio cheese or fennel pollen. To view the Vosges green policy, click here.   Better yet, whether whimsical, hyper-creative creations for the new millennium or more traditional fare, click here to actually order the delectable stuff.

North of the Second City, Madison, Wisconsin, surrounded by scads of organic farms, boasts exalted chocolatier Gail Ambrosius and her luscious creations, including a dark chocolate salted caramel, raspberry truffle, and rose truffle, all featured at Chicago’s Eno, a wine, cheese and chocolate bar.

Ambrosius just returned from a trip to Costa Rica where she visited a 100% organic, fair trade chocolate farm. After tasting the chocolate, which possessed a fetching fruitiness, the confectioner brought back as much of the stuff as she could carry. And talk about your fresh: her latest batch was literally on the tree a week before she brought it home.

Acclaimed Terry’s Toffee protects the environment by offering Valentine’s toffee in beautiful, eminently reusable lacquer and fetching, sturdy hat-boxes. Handcrafted using traditional methods and quality ingredients, this delectable, buttery treat has been a favorite at the Academy Awards.

For those preferring their chocolate in liquid form, BREADBAR in Los Angeles offers a bowl of steamed hot organic chocolate, made using Master Chocolatier Patricia Tsai’s organic, single-estate cocoa beans. A second, seasonal enticement offers several slices of Cocoa Goji Berry Bread, Organic Hot Chocolate and a Chocolate spread.

A bit further north, San Luis Obispo’s Sweet Earth Chocolates views the environment and chocolate-making in much the same way as Vosges. The company provides ammunition for would-be cupids by offering a Vegan Heart Box containing chocolate hearts with peanut butter, vanilla caramel and chocolate caramel centers. Traditional heart-shaped boxes and a variety of other Valentine creations fly out of the fragrant kitchens of this über Earth-friendly company. 

Finally, for those fortunate enough to live in New York City, Spoon’s decadent chocolate cake can be personalized and delivered to your Valentine’s Gotham City lair. Click here to see Spoon’s chocolate cake.

Popularity: 2% [?]