Green Your Gastronomy: Differentiate Organics

The days may be long and sweltering, but your meals can still be light on the stomach — and the Earth. This week's tips will help make your summer fare a bit greener.

Tip #3: Investigate!

A popular greenwashing tactic is to manipulate the "organic" label and its language. Companies with earth-friendly images like Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic fall into the category of "industrial organic": farms that still employ many of the same environmentally unsound tactics. To avoid products with labels that sound green but aren't, watch for words like "natural," which mean essentially nothing. Even "made with organic ingredients" means that just 70% of the product's inputs are organic. "Organic" means 95%, and only "100% organic" means what it sounds like. Know, too, that the organic label also allows some pesticides in. For more on this, read Julie Guthman's Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California.

Tell us: Have you fallen for organic-sounding tricks?

Green Your Gastronomy: Cut the Meat

The days may be long and sweltering, but your meals can still be light on the stomach — and the Earth. This week's tips will help make your summer fare a bit greener.

Tip #2: Limit your meat intake.

The clean, packaged piece of meat you buy for the grill likely has a dirty history. From immense carbon emissions to inhumane treatment of animals, factory farming is one of the least sustainable industries. And unfortunately, meat that's labeled organic isn't always better. So consider some meatless items the next time you grill, like DIY quinoa burgers or these expert recommendations. If you can't fully commit to vegetarianism, consider participating in Meatless Mondays — you'll be surprised at how easy the one-day switch is. Alternatively, consider slaughtering your own meat to better understand where your food comes from.

Tell us: What are your favorite meat alternatives?

Food and Water Watch: Eat Your Invasives!

Food and Water Watch’s Smart Seafood Guidelines have long helped fish fans steer clear of unsustainable and unhealthy seafood with their "Dirty Dozen" list. This summer’s guide, however, tells us to go ahead and feast . . . on invasive species.

With high reproductive rates and no natural predators, invasive species often outcompete native ones, reducing diversity, lowering habitat value, and sometimes speeding extinction rates. From the voracious Asian carp overtaking America’s Great Lakes to the poisonous lionfish in the warm waters off Florida's coast, scientists are working to stave off the onslaught. And with globalization, the factors contributing to the spread of invasives are only increasing.

Daily Roundup: July 14, 2011

Old Habits Die Hard: Adidas, Nike, Puma, H&M and Lacoste have been dumping hazardous chemicals and POPs into rivers in China, Greenpeace says. Guardian

Trade-offs: Obama is considering a massive wind energy proposal that will kill endangered whooping cranes, the “rarest of American birds.” Reuters 

What to Grow: Biofuel production could be vastly more efficient, a new study says, if it switched from corn to miscanthus or switchgrass. New York Times

BART FTW: Los Angeles is bracing for the ten-hour shutdown of Interstate 405 and the ensuing traffic apocalypse that locals are calling "Carmageddon." Washington Post

Poachers Fried: A Thai tiger poacher will not escape punishment, thanks to photos of tigers and tusks that he took on his cell phone. New York Times

 --Mimi Dwyer

Good Guys and Gamma Rays

Have you ever seen a truck with a yellow, diamond-shaped “RADIOACTIVE” warning posted on it?  This writer has, and she’s never though much of it.

But last week, some cleverer people (who run a crassly-named blog) got suspicious of the trucks. They equipped themselves with a Geiger counter, passed a RADIOACTIVE truck on the road, flipped the counter on, and created a fine piece of citizen journalism. Their (admittedly quick) measurements showed that the vehicle was emitting Gamma rays at thirty-two times normal levels. 

A Google search for “radioactive trucks” returns very little save for this video—it’s uncharted environmental territory, and a reminder that we often don’t know the half of our impact on the planet.

So watch out for these trucks on the road, and be glad that the Internet can give two people with a premonition a voice.

--Mimi Dwyer

Daily Roundup: July 6th, 2011

Dishonest: Chinese government officials have admitted to hiding a 320-square-mile oil spill for over two weeks. New York Times

On the Other Hand: China has agreed to reform its rare earth metals export quotas. Reuters

Disaster: Massive flooding from snowmelt is hampering cleanup of the Yellowstone Exxon oil spill. Los Angeles Times 

Far Out: The Hubble space telescope looked deep into outer space for the millionth time. TreeHugger

Monkey Business: A curious (and endangered) crested black macaque stole a photographer’s camera and shot some dazzling self-portraits. Guardian 

--Mimi Dwyer 

Tell Costco: Follow the Golden Rule

One gold ring can generate 20 tons of mining waste. And the gold industry is notorious for violating human rights, especially in indigenous communities. The tarnished truth is that, in gold, business as usual is destructive. Costco, for one, doesn't seem to care. 

Earthworks' "No Dirty Gold" campaign strives to improve the gold-mining industry, partially via the "Golden Rules" pact which commits companies to buying only responsibly mined gold. Seventy major retailers have signed, including giants like Tiffany's and JCPenney. But everyone's favorite bulk store isn't being as cooperative.

Movie Review Friday: Sushi: The Global Catch

Escape to the movies with one of our Movie Review Friday selections. Each week we review a film with an environmental theme. Seen a good eco-flick lately? Send us a short review and look for it in the next Movie Review Friday. 

Sushi: The Global Catch (2011)

Limited screenings; available on DVD

"One thing I am sure of: We will run out of tuna sooner than we will run out of oil,” says Mamoru Sugiyama, the chef of Sushiko, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Tokyo.

His statement gets abundantly proven in Sushi: The Global Catch, an earnest documentary that explores the consequences of the rising global demand for the Japanese delicacy. A sequence of voices — including those of fishermen, restaurateurs, market-watchers, and educators — help build a compelling story.

That sushi is now served from Russia to Australia and beyond means that the tuna supply is rapidly plummeting. Barbara Block, a Stanford professor who’s one of the world's leading experts on bluefin tuna, seeks endangered status for the species.

Another voice in the film is that of activist Casson Trenor, a partner in sustainable sushi restaurants in San Francisco whose conservation work earned him the title of being one of Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment.”

“People taking a paycheck from the oceans must be responsible for their actions,” Trenor says in the film, adding, “Corporations follow consumers, and in this case, consumers can choose to learn more and only consume sustainable seafood.”

Green Your Fourth: After the Party...

Independence Day is, from sea to shining sea, a glorious holiday. This year, your festivities can help protect those purple mountain majesties. This week’s tips tell you how.

Tip #4: Clean it up.

After the backyard barbecue or the picnic at the park, it’s best to leave not only your immediate surroundings clean, but the greater planet as well. To do that, it’d help to save leftovers, compost food and paper waste, recycle (or better yet, reuse) glass and plastic, and employ the greenest cleaning products you can find. Once you’ve attended to your own space, look around and consider your willingness to pick up others’ trash — it can take only a few moments of your time, but could prevent wildlife from being seriously damaged.

Tell us: What are your favorite green cleanup methods?

WATCH: Stoveman's Uplifting Video to End Open-Fire Cooking

 

What’s a woodwalk? It’s the first step to making a meal in Kenya, which involves cooking over open fire. It’s also the title of the first episode, launched today, of the Paradigm Project’s web miniseries, Stove Man. The four-week long installments of short, energetic videos capture the experiences of Americans Greg Spencer and Austin Mann as they toil alongside people who live without stoves, including the Gabbra women of the Kenyan desert.

Lower respiratory infections, often caused by exposure to open-fire cooking, account for 6% of world deaths, and are the most common single cause of death in low-income countries. The Paradigm Project hopes to give 5 million families $40 stoves, the idea being to save people, trees, and money.