Blogs : Green
Green 
Everything sustainable, ecoconscious, organic, and environmentally friendly—from products to restaurants, and kitchen design to responsible food policy and production.
Drink Beer, Save the Planet
You probably don’t need another excuse to be thinking about beer on a Friday afternoon, but over at Salon, friend of CHOW Andrew Leonard reports on the fabulous news that Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has partnered with the inventor of a home-ethanol-making system to turn waste from the beer-making process into ethanol fuel for cars:
“I’ve had a lot to be thankful for in 2009, but the notion that draining a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale could help deliver the United States from its parlous state of foreign oil dependence is a bounteous gift so great that I might have to consider whether, perhaps, just maybe, there is a God.”
Proof of the Almighty? Not quite. For that, we’d need to discover some way for the bacon-producing industry to do the same thing.
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Tagged with: beer, sierra nevada, ethanol, green, wine and drinks, andrew leonard, slate
Burn Dinner, Destroy the Earth
The delightfully named Atmospheric Brown Cloud (or ABC for short) is a dirty, soupy fug of pollution that hangs over South Asia. So it’s cars and power plants that are to blame, right? Not so, according to new research reported in the New York Times. Apparently the main culprits are … cooking and agriculture.
So are charred Pop-Tarts and AstroTurf lawns causing LA’s smog too?
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Tagged with: media, green, atmospheric brown cloud, abc, south asia, pollution, new york times
Many Trickles Make a Stream
Form-and-function blog Yanko Design put together a smart contest a few months ago called “Design for Poverty.” It was hoping to, “address different aspects of poverty” and “collapse the systemic process and give back the dignity every person deserves.” Judging was based on concept, cost to implement, and deployment. The winner, Evan Gant, came up with a system to collect the rainwater off houses in developing countries through a simple tube system that attaches to the gutter. The system is described in more detail, along with those from other finalists (dig the sleeping bag insulated with garbage!), at the Yanko Design site.
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Tagged with: green, media, yanko design, design for poverty, contest, evan gant, water, rainwater
This Is Your Beet on Drugs
It’s bad enough that manure may help spread things like salmonella and E. coli; now it’s adding antibiotics to our diet too?
Environmental Health News reports that vegetables fertilized with livestock manure absorb small amounts of the drugs routinely given to American farm animals to increase growth and reduce infection. Even organic produce isn’t necessarily safe, since there are no regulations in place regarding antibiotics in manure used as fertilizer.
Steve Roach, a public health program director for Food Animal Concerns Trust, told EHN that “‘the clearest public health implication from treating livestock with antibiotics is the development of resistant bacteria that reduces the effectiveness of human medicine.”
Root veggies are probably the most risky, because they absorb the bulk of their nutrients from the soil, and we eat the root—as opposed to the leaves—of the plants. Crops destined for processing, like corn, are pretty safe; and composting manure before spreading it on the fields can help reduce the levels of antibiotics. But if you want to be sure your vegetables are free of antibiotics, you might try buying from a veganic farm.
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Tagged with: green, manure, antibiotics, farming, fertilizer, veganic farming, organic, livestock
MYO Fizzy Water
We all know that drinking water from the tap is better for the environment than buying bottled. But what if you like the bubbly stuff?
Well, now you can make your own carbonated water with the Soda-Club home soda maker. Simply fill one of the supplied bottles from the tap (or a filter jug, if you prefer), place it in the machine, press the button a few times to add CO2, and voilà! Your water now sparkles.
The beauty is that you can add as much effervescence as you like. Granted, it won’t taste quite the same as a fancy frizzante naturale water imported from Italy, but it is cheaper, more convenient, and a lot better for the environment than buying it from the store. You can even add sweet syrups to make sodas.
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Tagged with: pick, green, wine and drinks, soda stream, soda water, fizzy water, soft drinks, bubbly water, soda club, home soda maker, diy, myo, product
Organic Milk to Come from Happier Cows
At long last, we may be a little closer to knowing what an organic moo cow does all day. Recently issued USDA draft rules explicitly state that cows producing organic milk should spend considerable time on pasture, the Associated Press reports. The new rules require cows to be on pasture 120 days a year and to get at least 30 percent of their feed from grazing during the growing season. That’s strict enough to satisfy most organic organizations according to the AP story.
Such rules would eliminate industrial organic milk operations, which feed cows organic grain but keep them inside feedlots. When news broke about these farms several years ago, the USDA heard about it: In a public comment period, the agency received 80,500 comments, and only 28 thought the rules should not be tightened.
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Tagged with: usda, organic milk, milk, cows, regulations, cornucopia institute, horizon organic, aurora organic, organic, associated press, green, agriculture
