Eating Local With the Click of a Mouse

Want to eat happy apples? Farmigo is one of the few sites on the web that brings tech and locavores together. All you do is log on, find your local farmers on the site, and order your favorite fruits and veggies.

Last summer I interviewed the co-founder of the site, who said that one of the goals of his company is to disrupt the current food industry and its environmentally destructive ways. "Agriculture is the number one climate hazard that we have. The healthcare costs associated with food-related diseases in the U.S. is more than $150 billion a year. That includes obesity and diabetes. Some estimate it will double over the next 10 years. These are real issues," he said. Read it here.

-- Brian Foley

FDA Fails to Examine Gulf Seafood Safety

The life of a consumer is a series of transactions. We go to stores and purchase items made by producers. The underlying assumption or prerequisite of the transaction is that the consumer has complete information. When we are at clothing stores we judge the product visually, and if the shirt has a tear or is too wide, we don't buy it. When consumers don't have the ability to acquire complete information, the government steps up -- ushering in the services of agencies such as the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assure the products safety and validity. This gives credence and fluidity to the markets and lets consumers sleep at night knowing the apple they bit into and the pill they swallowed are safe. Supposedly. 

 A new report conducted by the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), discussed in OnEarth, reveals that the FDA has been cutting corners in examining the safety of Gulf seafood, despite loudly proclaiming its safety in the spring. The report finds that the FDA used poor standards and science, letting up to 10,000 times the safe level of chemical contamination slip by -- endangering pregnant women and young children and those who consume a lot of seafood. NRDC's report, which was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, finds fault with the FDA in three areas.

One Small Thing: Reuse

The amount of atmospheric carbon has skyrocketed. And world leaders are balking at doing anything about it. What can one person do? Not much -- unless a lot of people take part.

That's why once a week until Earth Day 2012, we'll post one small thing you can do to lessen your carbon footprint. Indicate that you're on board by liking and sharing the small thing. The goal is to get enough people participating that one small thing will turn into be a very big deal. Check out the previous small things here. This week's thing is:

#16. Re-Utensils.

When you eat lunch at work, do you use plastic forks, spoons, and knives? Take some real utensils with you that you can take home, wash, and use the next day at work. Pretty simple.

One Small Thing: Something New

The amount of atmospheric carbon has skyrocketed. And world leaders are balking at doing anything about it. What can one person do? Not much -- unless a lot of people take part.

That's why once a week until Earth Day 2012, we'll post one small thing you can do to lessen your carbon footprint. Indicate that you're on board by liking and sharing the small thing. The goal is to get enough people participating that one small thing will turn into be a very big deal. Check out the previous small things here. This week's thing is:

#15. Something New.

Try cooking a vegetarian meal you've never made before. Need ideas? Google has a new recipe view feature. Some other good sites include Vegweb.com and Food.com.

One Small Thing: Independence from Meat Weekend

The amount of atmospheric carbon has skyrocketed. And world leaders are balking at doing anything about it. What can one person do? Not much -- unless a lot of people take part.

That's why once a week until Earth Day 2012, we'll post one small thing you can do to lessen your carbon footprint. Indicate that you're on board by liking and sharing the small thing. The goal is to get enough people participating that one small thing will turn into be a very big deal. Check out the previous small things here. This week's thing is:

#11. Independence from Meat Weekend.

This weekend, countless Americans will celebrate Independence Day with fireworks, family gatherings, and barbecue. Because livestock is one of the biggest sources of climate-change emissions, few actions are more effective in reducing your footprint than cutting back on your meat intake. Take the challenge of going more veggie for the holiday weekend. For delicious vegetarian barbecue ideas, try these suggestions here, here, and here.

Interview: How Eating Local, Healthy Is as Easy as Amazon.com

Between animal feeding lots, manufactured ingredients, and transportation, the food industry is one of the largest sources of U.S. carbon and methane emissions. That's why some greentech insiders think food is the next frontier for innovators in Silicon Valley. One such person is Benzi Ronen, who co-founded Farmigo in 2009, a Palo Alto-based start-up company that provides an Internet platform for farmers and members of CSAs, community supported agriculture. He took a few minutes to answer questions:

What's the future of food and greentech?

The food industry has lacked innovative software solutions. There's a perfect storm happening right now with people wanting to eat healthier and locally and the maturity of the Internet. There's a growing trend of farmers' markets and CSAs out there. A lot of that is a result of Food Inc. and various books out there. The awareness is already happening. We think we can be a catalyst in making it happen faster. And there will be more start-ups that address the food industry and revolutionize it.

Food is almost a $1-trillion industry. CSAs are at a half of a percent of all households. That's nothing. Small farms don't have the marketing power to really get out there and make a lot of noise. There's plenty of room for start-up companies to come in, disrupt the existing food system, and offer truly alternative choices.

People subscribe to CSAs for fresh, healthy, and local produce, and to support small farms. What does Farmigo add to this relationship?

Farmigo tries to solve two issues. First, consumers who want fresh, tasty food also want convenience. The Internet provides convenience. For example, instead of going to a book store hoping your book is in stock, you can get it online on Amazon. It's becoming the same in the food world. Through Farmigo, you can pay your farmer online. If you go on vacation, you can put a hold on your CSA subscription. You can order add-ons like an extra basket of strawberries. You manage your account, access your history, and make payments.

For farmers, their expertise is to grow the best produce. They didn't become farmers to sort through personal checks and deal with customers who want to make a change or complaints that they didn't get what they wanted. Issues like that pull farmers from the field and lock them in an office.

Farmigo is software that alleviates all those issues that you find with CSAs. It tracks their customers' needs, keeps track of what farmers need to pack, harvest, and load onto trucks, and monitors where and when they need to deliver. It takes care of all of that.

One Small Thing: Meet the People Behind Your Food

The amount of atmospheric carbon has skyrocketed. And world leaders are balking at doing anything about it. What can one person do? Not much -- unless a lot of people take part.

That's why once a week until Earth Day 2012, we'll post one small thing you can do to lessen your carbon footprint. Indicate that you're on board by liking and sharing the small thing. The goal is to get enough people participating that one small thing will turn into be a very big deal. Check out the previous small things here. This week's thing is:

#10. Meet Your Food.

Think about what you had for breakfast today. Do you personally know the people who supplied the food that made up your meal? Probably not. Almost all Americans never meet the people who put their food together. Try changing that by putting a face on your food. Find your local farmers' market. Most vendors are local and hospitable. Visit and meet some vendors. Get to know some of them and ask about their farming practices.

One Small Thing: Reusable

The amount of atmospheric carbon has skyrocketed. And world leaders are balking at doing anything about it. What can one person do? Not much -- unless a lot of people take part.

That's why once a week until Earth Day 2012, we'll post one small thing you can do to lessen your carbon footprint. Indicate that you're on board by liking and sharing the small thing. The goal is to get enough people participating that one small thing will turn into be a very big deal. Check out the previous small things here. This week's thing is:

#9. Feeling Re-Used.

Get a reusable water bottle if you don't have one. Buy and use a ceramic or stainless steel cup for your coffee. Ever notice how many people sitting in a coffee shop are sipping from a paper, to-go cup? There's no reason for that! If you're going to enjoy your beverage in a coffee shop, ask to be served with an in-house, ceramic mug.

Give the Gift, Ditch the Card

Gift cards are all the craze these days. They're fast, easy, and convenient for whomever you're giving them to. But admit it: Plastic is practically a four-letter word.

Don't fret. GiftRocket, a start-up company, takes the card out of gift cards. And the product works for almost all businesses, even those that don't normally offer gift cards. How does it work? Log onto GiftRocket, then choose a dollar amount for a particular place, and name the recipient. Your recipient then gets an email about the gift. With a smartphone in hand, the recipient heads to the store or restaurant, and redeems your generous gesture via the press of a button. After that, your recipient gets a PayPal credit to cover the cost.

Launched in March, the original idea behind GiftRocket was to give the gift-card concept more flexibility and customization. But now that the service is up and running, it's proving to be a green alternative to gift giving: "The way we thought about it was that we all had friends in different cities and when their birthdays or graduations came along, we wanted a convenient way to send them a meaningful gift," said GiftRocket co-founder Kapil Kale. "We didn't like physical gift cards because they get lost or forgotten. I'm pretty sure I have a drawer full of them at home. The eco-friendliness came along with this idea."

One plastic card might not seem like much. One analysis found that cards with PVC translate into a carbon footprint of 21 grams, or the amount of gas needed to drive a Hummer 150 feet.

But considering that a typical plastic gift card lasts up to only three years before getting buried in a landfill -- and the fact that we go through so many of them -- the green rap on these plastic pleasures isn't so good.

The gift-card industry rakes in more than $80 billion a year. GiftRocket estimates that in the U.S., about 1.6 billion plastic gift cards are produced and shipped yearly, using more than 8,500 tons of PVC. Kale's number-crunching found that gift cards add up to more than 33,000 metric tons of atmospheric carbon -- never mind their everlasting lives in landfills.

"Maybe 100 million will be printed for Father's Day," Kale said. "The bigger problem is that people don't even think about the environmental impact of their purchase, since gift cards are so commonplace."

So if a gift card sounds good as a Father's Day gift, but Mother Nature's voice is ringing in your head, consider cutting the plastic out of the picture and going virtual.

-- Brian Foley

American Idle

Traffic cops were required for the opening of a new In-N-Out burger restaurant in Texas this week. The video is pretty incredible. Watching it prompted me to dig out an old column by Mr. Green, Sierra magazine's answer man:

In drive-throughs or anyplace, idling is, to summon the old saying, the devil's workshop. Every hour you idle, you waste up to 0.7 gallons of gas (depending on your engine type) going nowhere. So it pays to turn your engine off if you're going to be still for more than 30 seconds.

In a given year, U.S. cars burn some 1.4 billion gallons of fuel just idling. Not to mention idling trucks, which waste another 1.5 billion gallons. Collectively, we emit about 58 million tons of carbon dioxide while we're essentially doing nothing.

Taking the fast-food industry as an example, and taking into account that the average McDonald's drive-through wait is 159 seconds, we can calculate that the company's consumers burn some 7.25 million gallons of gas each year. The figure for the entire U.S. fast-food industry? Roughly 50 million gallons.

It's safe to say the drivers in this video are waiting a tad more than 159 seconds for their burger and fries.

(video via consumerist.)

-- Brian Foley