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PMS and Pain
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It’s no
secret that many women suffer through their monthly periods, experiencing
cramps, bloating and lower back pain, to name...
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50 Ways to reduce your carbon footprint
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"Just hop on the (biodiesel) bus, Gus. Make a new (home energy) plan, Stan..."
We know from singer songwriter, Paul Simon, that there are 50 ways to leave your lover, but did you know that there also 50 ways to leave your carbon-wasting ways? The Metro Silicon Valley News has recently published a helpful list of 50 things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint. Remarkably, 10 out of the 50 had a connection to food, drink and gardening. Maybe it's time we all found a new plan.
26. READ LABELS AND BUY LOCAL. Organic from Canada or overseas isn't as easy on the environment as locally produced products. Buying anything imported across an ocean means a container ship transported it. "Just one container ship traveling one mile produces NOx emissions equaling 25,000 cars traveling the same distance," says Anthony Fournier of the Santa Barbara County Pollution Control District. Foreign manufacturers often use carbon-intensive industrial and environmental practices that are illegal here. Many imports are made in sweatshops where people labor in dangerous work environments and aren't paid fairly. Reducing the demand for imports not only reduces our carbon footprint but also sends a message to big business that we want better for everyone.
34. BECOME A LOCAVORE. When you choose out of season organic food that's from journeyed overseas instead of locally grown anything, the pollution caused by the container ships outweighs any benefit you're going to get. Locavores say eating what's available locally is healthier anyway. Cooking dinner? Make a few meals at the same time and stash them in the fridge.
35. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FARMER. Visit www.localharvest .org and find the farmers market nearest you. Even better, find a CSA and get your produce from a sustainable local family farm.
36. MAKE YOUR OWN SALAD. Live Earth Farm's Debbie Palmer says make your own organic salad mixes from scratch and use less bagged and precut produce because they use a lot of resources to produce.
37. DON'T BE A SLAVE TO CONVENIENCE. We'll all be paying later for using convenience foods like packaged mixed salads, because they use a lot of resources to produce.
38. AVOID FAST FOOD. Methane-producing factory farming and long-distance shipping are the heart of its business model and they're clear-cutting rain forests to graze their cows.
39. EAT LESS MEAT. Especially beef. The Worldwatch Institute says growing numbers of intensively farmed livestock are responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and account for 37 percent of emissions of methane, which has more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2, and 65 percent of emissions of nitrous oxide, another powerful greenhouse gas, coming from manure.
41. GREEN COFFEE IS DELICIOUS. Barefoot Coffee Roasters' Andy Newbom says that when you buy fair trade or organic coffee you're supporting sustainable farming practices that don't clear-cut trees or use pesticides or chemical fertilizers and that makes a big difference. "Buying fair trade coffee rewards and supports sustainable farming, reducing developing nations' carbon footprint," he says. "It's easy for the first world to say let's reduce our carbon footprint, but it's harder for farmers in developing countries to do this." Buy fair trade beans whole or ground, get a press or cloth filter and make your own.
42. DISPOSABLE CUPS? Really? Do the math: Buying coffee every day in a disposable cup generates at least 20 pounds of paper a year plus several hundred megaindustrially produced plastic covers. Styrofoam cups are worse. Dr. Theo Colborn, in "Our Stolen Future," says researchers have found traces of polystyrene in 100 percent of human tissue tested, because it migrates from the cup into hot food and beverages. Yuk! Bring your own coffee cup!
47. YOUR GARDEN ISN'T AS GREEN AS YOU THINK. Alrie Middlebrook designs and builds native plant gardens locally. She says take out your water-guzzling lawn and replace it with native plants. They use less water and nourish birds and bees.
Photocredit: Andy
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Before you eat up, read up
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By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, December 6, 2007 in The Washington Post
Christmas shopping may require all the dollars, stamina and good humor you can muster, but it's nothing compared to food shopping. For that you need an advanced degree in educated consumerism. Just last week the mail brought me more lessons in food responsibility than I could possibly digest before lunchtime.
First to arrive was the Utne Reader with a report compiled by the Environmental Working Group that ranked fruits and vegetables by the amount of pesticide residue found on them by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
The "dirty dozen" we'd best avoid are, in order of risk: peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, imported grapes, pears, spinach and potatoes. The safest six are onions, avocados, frozen corn, pineapples, mangoes and frozen peas.
The group's FoodNews Web site gives detailed data (96.6 percent of peach samples were tainted; one bell pepper sample had 11 pesticides on it).
The solution is simple: Buy organic. But here's the tougher question: Why do they allow residue at all? That would require a larger study.
Next came a poster from the Chefs Collaborative, urging us to buy from farms that sustain the environment -- those that give livestock free range; gather mushrooms only from stable populations; preserve native riparian (streamside) plants; guard soil, air and water against pollution; and "value and protect large predators like bears and mountain lions." Most of this is unknowable unless the farm is right down the road.
And now here's Ode magazine with the top 20 organic, sustainable products for 2008. Two of them I already have: a Sun Frost low-energy fridge, which I love, and Prince Charles's Duchy Originals Oaten Biscuits. But how do the 20 stack up against the Chefs Collaborative's admirably complex chart?
I happen to think Prince Charles, long a champion of organic farming, is one of the world's most underestimated public figures, and his biscuits are top drawer. But I can only assume he protects his riparian flora. Do the guys who grow Honest Tea value bears? Who knows?
The only lesson I ever seem to learn from all of this information boils down to a few words: Grow your own, cook your own and check out the farmer down the road. There are a few levels of complexity I could add to that, but you already have so much to read.
Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch. Reprinted with permission.
Photo credit: D'Arcy Norman
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