This month features Anna Lappé writing about identifying the pillars of good food in the age of greenwashing.  Have you been to your grocery store lately and seen the faux-wood signage? The green labels proclaiming things are “natural?” These are marketing ploys to help sell specific products as premium, without necessarily engaging in responsible practices. Sometimes at the grocery I think to myself “do people fall for this?” then realize I am just as gullible, too, with the pretty brown wrappers in my basket and realize I have to get back to work on making sure my choices are the best choices.

Lappé asserts there are three “pillars” to the food revolution that we can easily think about in order to evaluate our choices.

1- ECOLOGY – Focusing on the relationship of living things, natural systems, and resource allocation, an ecological-focus reminds us that each choice we make has a consequence to the natural world. Food choices that are truly sustainable allow nature to work as it is designed, instead of squeezing every last ounce of life out of seed, soil, and water resources.

2- COMMUNITY – Food production is essentially a community endeavor when you really think about it. Communities rely on the common land to produce enough sustenance to keep the population alive. As our food system has been corporatized, we have increased the distance between seed and stomach, increasing the number of factors influencing our food security, and increasing the likelihood that something may go wrong. Oh yeah, like the OVER HALF A BILLION EGGS RECALLED THIS WEEK. Woof again, y’all.

3- FAIRNESS – this one is about making sure everyone at all levels of the food system, producers, workers, etc. get treated fairly and that all folks have access to healthy food. Currently there are urban food deserts where folks don’t have access to fresh food outside of convenience stores. And while progress is being made, like the example of NYC’s fresh food carts last summer, many still lack adequate access.

What would you add to these three?

It’s easy to get started using these criteria when evaluating food purchases. Occasionally you may need to do a little research and you won’t get it right every time (I still don’t, either), but it’s important to keep moving toward making the right choices for yourself, your health, our communities, and our earth. Knowing you’re making good choices tastes really good. Promise.

Sunshine and compost, friends!

Happy Tuesday that feels like a Monday until you realize that Friday is closer than you think. I hope you are filled up from a holiday of delicious eating with delicious people.

This week I’m going to try and focus a little bit on the cost of food– both directly in the store and market as well as the big picture costs affiliated. We’ll see how this goes.

A couple links to help you consider your body’s fuel with as much mindfulness as you do the fuel in your home or your car:

1- The Environmental Working Group has issued a guide to pesticides for shoppers to help make it easier to determine what produce needs to be an organic purchase and where you may be able to buy conventional. It can even be downloaded to your iphone.

Check it out here:
http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php

2- Tom Philpott (who has the best name for someone writing about food issues– i could make “Philpott” jokes all day in regards to food in the recession!) wrote a great article for Grist.com that deserves a read. . He illuminates the similarities between the financial collapse and vulnerabilities in the world’s food system. All the more reason to think about how our investments in our sustenance need to have as much thoughtful consideration as the type of socks we invest in to put under our mattresses.  (I prefer a sensible organic wool.)

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-05-22-financial-collapse-food

Happy eating!

This post is coming a little late on Wednesday, (and is two or three weeks late since my last “Simple Ways Wednesdays” post).  I think you’ll be excited for a few weeks, though, because Simple Ways Wednesdays is starting a series-within-a-series…  for the next several weeks, Simple Ways Wednesdays will be helping you with meaningful holiday gift planning:

Make your own Holiday Gifts with Natural Ingredients!

The first recipe you get is: Avacado/Almond Neck Moisturizer

Ingredients:
1 Teaspoon Dried Chamomile (click link to buy it online – use the search field at the top right of the screen)
1 1/8 cup water
3 Tablespoons Avocado Oil (click link to buy it online – use the search field at the top right of the screen)
3 Tablespoons Almond Oil (click link to buy it online – use the search field at the top right of the screen)
2 Teaspoons Jojoba Oil (click link to buy it online – use the search field at the top right of the screen)
1 ounce beeswax beads (click link to buy it online – use the search field at the top right of the screen)
2 teaspoons glycerin
20 drops Organic Lemon Essential Oil (click link to buy it online)
2 large ceramic cups
Strainer
Double-boiler
Sterilized 6-oz glass or ceramic jar with tight-fitting lid

Directions:
1: Boil the water
2: Place the chamomile in a large, ceramic cup
3: Pour the water into the cup with the chamomile and let steep for 15 minutes
4: Strain the liquid into another cup
5: In the top of the double boiler (set over simmering water), warm the jojoba, avocado, and almond oils
6: Add the beeswax beads and stir until melted
7: Remove from heat, and stir in 2 tablespoons of the chamomile liquid drop by drop until the mixture thickens and cools
8: Mix in the glycerin and lemon essential oil thoroughly
9: Spoon the mixture into the sterilized glass or ceramic jar
10: Store in a cool, dark place

This recipe will make, for only a few dollars, what you might pay $15-$25 (or more!) at a beauty shop.  Additionally, you know exactly what is going into a recipe that you are making yourself.  Can’t beat that!

This mixture should be massaged into the neck from the neckline all the way to the chin.  The oils will keep skin soft and supple.

Get cracking on this recipe… only a handful of weeks until it is gift-giving time!

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

Ever burned yourself on a light bulb? Ever think about where that heat comes from?

All that heat is energy that is used, but does not create light.  There is waste in just that realization.  But if you also think about how much energy you use (read: “money you spend”) to cool your home, you realize that you can save even more.  If your light bulbs don’t create so much waste heat, your cooling system will not have to work as hard, either.

So replace those incandescent bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs).  If each household in the US changed just ONE incandescent bulb to compact fluorescent, the US would save enough energy to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island combined. And because of that, CFLs save money that can be spent on other things.  The money saved could be spent on necessities (right now, with the credit crisis, this might be the most important point), or on other things that will increase your quality of life.

Congress agrees that this is important, as in December of last year they passed an energy bill which included a phase out of incandescent light bulbs.  In actuality, what the bill said is that all light bulbs sold after a time period phasing in between 2012 and 2014 must use 25% to 30% less energy than today’s products.  By 2020, all bulbs must use 70% less energy.  CFLs already meet the 70% requirement.

Between 2012 to 2030, consumers will save $40 billion in energy costs.  14 coal-fired power plants will avoid construction.  And 51 tons of carbon emissions will be avoided annually, according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.

But what about CFL’s mercury content?  Well – this is a concern; however, bear in mind that a compact fluorescent light bulb holds an amount of mercury about the size of the tip of a ball-point pen.  If you are considering avoiding CFLs based on this, take a look around at your mercury thermometer.  It holds MUCH more mercury than a houseful of CFLs.

But if this is a huge concern for you, there is another option: Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Bulbs!

Read a comparison of Incandescent Bulbs, versus CFLs, versus LED bulbs.

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

The paperless world promised by computers sure does use a lot of paper.  If your office is anything like mine, you have people printing emails – often many emails – and then just leaving the paper on the printer, forgetting all about it.  Even though we have a digital copy of nearly every document ever sent to us, businesses and individuals just don’t feel quite right unless there is also a hard copy filed away somewhere.

And then there are magazines.  There are trade magazines which are often offered for free to anyone who works in a specific industry.  These magazines are very easy to subscribe to (and often hard to STOP subscribing to), which means that businesses generally receive many copies of the same issue, when only a couple would suffice.  We also all have our own personal subscriptions.  Trade magazines have begun to offer electronic versions, which, if used, cuts down significantly in trash generated by businesses, as well as virgin paper used to print the hard copy version of the magazine.

But what can be done about the personal magazine subscriptions that come to your home?  Enter Zinio.  Zinio offers a pretty substantial number of popular magazines in a digital format.  When you subscribe to a magazine, you have two options:

1. You can view the magazines through the Zinio website – instantly.  No waiting for the issue to be mailed to your house or to pick it up on the newsstand.  You will need to be connected to the internet to use this option.
2. Download and install the Zinio Reader – this option allows you to download the issues of the magazine onto your computer. They will be available anytime even if you are not connected to the Internet.

Zinio actually does have some trade magazines available as well: http://www.mercurymagazines.com/pr1/105/10501

Here are a few of the environmental magazines available through Zinio:

• Ode
• Good
• Yoga Journal
• Green Source

Additionally, here is a post on Sustainablog that includes a review of someone who sampled Zinio’s service and what she thought about it.

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

While a few lawmakers push for more oil drilling off America’s protected coastlands, Congress is about to let tax credits for wind, solar and other alternative energies expire.

It’s a seriously bad move. If the credits are not renewed, wind and solar manufacturing will move overseas. We’ll lose thousands of good jobs – and reinforce our dependence on oil.

Take a moment to send a letter to Congress on this issue! Just go to:
http://ga0.org/campaign/energybill0908?rk=T7AyJ8s11Vf2W

Tell them that they should help jumpstart our flagging economy by committing to clean energy and good jobs.

Tax credits for wind, solar, and other energy innovation could create or save more than 100,000 jobs in the United States and also could position the US to become and sustain itself as the world leader in green energy technology.

Tell Congress you want a clean energy future including clean energy tax credits.

Wind and solar energy are already helping turn our economy around, but these industries are crumbling because Congress hasn’t extended the Production and Investment tax credits that built them.

116,000 good, high-paying jobs in the wind, solar, geothermal and biomass industries will be in jeopardy if these tax credits are allowed to expire.  A decade’s worth of progress could go to waste.

Tell Congress to extend the tax credits for wind and solar energy!

Tax credits certainly aren’t the whole answer – turning our country’s economy around will take a bold new plan, a “New Apollo Program” to invest in green technologies and the new jobs they’ll produce. But this legislation could give us a head start.

Once you’ve sent your letter, please be sure to tell your friends about this critical vote and ask them to help!

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

We’ve all heard how plastic bags are bad for the environment – they are ingested by wildlife (specifically sea-life), and animals get entangled in them and are unable to protect themselves or hunt or even move.

But what do we do with the plastic bags we already have?  Reuse them, if they are reusable.  I use them over and over until they have holes in them and I can’t trust them to carry much weight anymore.  I then either use them as a trash bag for my smaller trashcans (one last use for the bag), or I recycle them when I go to the grocery next.

I also use reusable bags – canvas, mostly.  My wife got the below bag as a gift from my brother for X-Mas when we visited him in Hong Kong last year.

Okay, you say, but plastic bags are free, and I don’t want to pay for canvas bags – they can be expensive!

You’re absolutely right.  Here’s a solution:  make your own!  You can make reuseable bags with nothing but an old tee shirt, some thread, and a needle!  There are great directions at Not the Jet Set.

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

This week, we’ll talk specifically about your telephone bill.  If any of you still have a land-line, like me, your choices may be limited for your local service (what’s a land-line, daddy?).  When I was growing up, our only local option was Sprint (I can hear the gasping and rending of clothing.  We didn’t like it either, believe me).

What you may not know is that you have the ability to use any long-distance provider, regardless of who you have as a local provider.  I KNOW, RIGHT?  How cool is that?

So for this week’s Simple Ways episode:

Patronize companies that share your values.

Speaking specifically of long-distance telephone service, take a look at these two options:

• Earth Tones:  Wholly owned and operated by non-profit environmental organizations, 100% of the profits of this company fund environmental advocacy and organizing.  All their materials are printed on recycled paper, they inform you about pressing environmental campaigns, and they also allow you toll-free calls to decision makers so you can tell them what you think!  Oh yeah – they also offer wireless phone service, internet access, and business long-distance!
• Working Assets: Donates 1% of all charges (not 1% of PROFITS, 1% of CHARGES) from their CREDO mobile or CREDO long-distance service to non-profit organizations working for peace, equality, human rights and the environment.  The cool thing about Working Assets is that you get to tell them where you would like the money to go!  They take input from all customers and divvy-up the donations based on their input.  They also have a credit card that will donate $.10 (that’s a dime) each time a charge is made.

I’ve been a Working Assets Long-Distance customer, and they were great.  I’d strongly suggest them if you are in the market for a long-distance carrier.

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

1. You are interested in living a more “green” lifestyle, each for your own reasons.
2. You are tech savvy enough to subscribe to, read, or even write your own blog.

Knowing these two things makes it easy to suggest the next Simple Way to improve your environmental footprint:

Use paperless billing for your monthly expenses wherever possible

Take a look at your bills the next time they come in, or go to the website for the companies whose bills you receive each month.  Somewhere on the invoice, in the envelope (with all the wasteful flyers and inserts), or on the website, there will most likely be instructions on how to sign up for “paperless billing.”

Pay attention to how much paper you receive with each bill as they come in.  Multiply that amount of paper by the number of bills you receive, then multiply THAT by 12 months per year.  Now think about what you actually do with all that paper.  Me?  I throw it away (recycle it, actually, but it’s still a waste).

So you can see how much of a difference signing up for paperless billing can make!  Sign up today!

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley