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Food and Beverage
Bring Your Own Shopping Bag
Monday, 23 April 2012
Bring Your Own Shopping Bag Paper bags take up more space in the landfill and remove more trees from the planet, adding to deforestation problems. Plastic bags expend greater energy in their production and are derived from oil, i.e. they are a petroleum product. Biodegradable bags combine the worst of these...

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Grow Your Own Vegetables
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Grow Your Own Vegetables Complaining about being stuck in the office all day? Well, here’s something that you can do to get you outside and reconnect with the outdoor world. Over the last few years many of us have rediscovered our inner desire to not only reconnect with the outdoor world, but reinvest in...

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Community Supported Agriculture
Tuesday, 03 April 2012
Community Supported Agriculture Join a CSA! A community supported agriculture operation (CSA) is a local farm funded by community members. In return for their patronage, members receive a share of the farm's harvest - typically in the form of a weekly produce box. CSAs offer a convenient way to eat local, organic...

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Organic Foods vs Non Organic Foods
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Organic Foods vs. Non-Organic Foods Organic typically refers to foods that are grown with a respect for their surrounding environment. We could spend all day debating the technical differences in organic labeling (and we probably should), but that is for another day. The essence of organic is that plants are grown without...

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Green Cooking
Tuesday, 03 May 2011
Green Cooking Ever hear that you shouldn't scratch your pan? Ever wonder why your grandmother's pan lasted for centuries, and why yours only lasted a few years? When it comes to cooking and baking tools, we have more options than the big-box stores would like us to know about. Let’s talk about Sustainable Cookware and Bakeware—how to properly use and clean your...

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Local Farmers Markets
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Local Farmers Markets A farmers market is often loud, crowded, and filled with an astonishing variety of fruits, veggies, and faces. All of that can intimidate a newbie. And there are a lot of newbies out there—sales by farmers to household consumers rose 49% from 2002 to 2007! Here are some tips on how to make your trip to the farmers market more manageable...

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Green Recipes
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Green Smoothie Green Meals… You don't have to be vegan to eat sustainably! When people think of eating ‘green’ they usually think of eating only vegetables such as broccoli and brussel sprouts, which are not necessarily tasteless, but turn a large majority of the population off from eating healthier and greener. What most people do not realize is that you do not...

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Homemade Baby Food
Thursday, 07 October 2010
Homemade Baby Food Make your own organic baby food at home! Proper nutrition, eating habits, and palate are important at all stages of life. As adults, we have access to fresh food year round, farmers markets, local growers, organic food stores, and so on. However, every year parents in the United States spend up to $3.9 billion on processed baby foods. Many...

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How to Start a Farmers Market
Thursday, 26 August 2010
How to Start a Farmers Market Going to the farmers market is a fun and exciting way to shop for fresh and healthy foods. You get to personally talk to farmers, try a lot more varieties of fruits and vegetables than your typical grocery store carries, and more directly support the local economy. Plus, you lower your carbon footprint by eating locally and reducing your food miles!...

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Can Your Own Food
Thursday, 19 August 2010
Can Your Own Food Canning food at home is a way to preserve nutritious, wholesome food without harmful amounts of preservatives, additives, and chemicals found in commercially canned food. Home canned food can sometimes be even more nutritious than produce bought at the grocery store. That's because fruits and vegetables continually lose nutrients after they...

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Healthy Eating
Friday, 18 December 2009
Healthy Eating Eating seasonally is a simple and delicious way to help the environment and your health. How do you do it? Remember which foods are in season, check the labels to make sure the food you're buying is from a relatively similar region, then buy and enjoy your food. As simple as it is, it's got a lot of benefits: it helps the environment, it's...

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How to Become a Locavore
Monday, 15 June 2009
How to Become a Locavore If you want your diet to reflect your environmentalist ideals, becoming a locavore is one great way to do it! A locavore is a person who tries to eat only locally grown foods. However, there is no strict definition of what “local” means, so you have the opportunity to develop a definition of what you consider to be local for yourself. Many...

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How to Build a Solar Oven
Friday, 31 October 2008
How to Build a Solar Oven If you like the idea of a cob oven, but aren't willing to make such a large commitment to natural cooking, solar ovens are the way to go! Building a solar oven is a simple and cheap way to help save the environment. While many people like to use solar cookers on the road when they don't have access to electricity, you can actually use the...

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Sustainable Seafood Guide
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Sustainable Seafood Guide Eating sustainable seafood is an easy way to help support the environment just by choosing wisely. Sustainable seafood is that which comes from places that do not harm the long-term survival of fish species and their ecosystems. It has benefits for the environment, your health, and the world's poor...

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How to Build a Cob Oven
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
How to Build a Cob Oven Imagine moving your baking projects outdoors. Imagine constructing your own oven out of natural materials in the same way people have for centuries. Imagine increasing your level of self-sufficiency by decreasing your use of fossil fuels in baking. Best of all, imagine a project that your whole family, group of friends, or neighborhood can...

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A Smart Guide to Plastics
Thursday, 10 July 2008
A Smart Guide to Plastics Plastic is everywhere. It is widely used to store our everyday use of foods and beverages. As we may have become accustomed to the convenience, durability, and accessibility of plastic, it is important to use it responsibly. Most plastic products are made from petroleum (a non-renewable resource) and create a large volume of waste in our...

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Green Facts

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.