The Green Music Group (GMG), a project of Reverb, has launched a series of earth friendly calls-to-action this summer. Starting tomorrow, Guster is challenging fans to use the Eat Well Guide to find and eat at least one meal using local, organic food. You have until noon on Friday June 18^th to submit your foodie photos and become eligible to win a Live Nation Ultimate Access Pass. You can check out all the details at the GMG challenge page. The “Eat Local” challenge is part of GMG’s mission to encourage concert venues to sell local and organic food.

GMG is a group of musicians, industry leaders and fans working to inspire environmental action. Directed at music fans everywhere, a different challenge will launch each week though mid-August with an exclusive video from a founding artist, including the Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, Linkin Park, The Roots, Barenaked Ladies, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Maroon 5 and, of course, those CO2-saving superheroes, Guster.  Challenge prizes include season passes to concert venues, a specialized mountain bike and a Honda Insight Hybrid – plus that green glow we all get from just doing the right thing.

Join the GMG community and check out the various challenges throughout August, and don’t forget to use the Eat Well Guide to find fabulous locally produced food all summer long.



Here in New York City, spring has arrived in full force; the leaves have returned, the cherry trees have blossomed, the parks are bustling, and legions of pallid hipsters have cautiously reemerged into the sun.  Life is good – and so are conditions for the urban cyclist.  It’s fitting therefore, that May is Bike Month in New York City!

Organized by the NYC Department of Transportation and cyclist/pedestrian advocacy group, Transportation Alternatives, Bike Month NYC is an extended celebration of – wait for it – bicycling in the city.  The goal is to encourage more New Yorkers to ride bicycles since doing so is good for the environment, good for human health and good for fostering development of the sort of livable communities that make cities great.  I’d add from personal experience that urban cycling is also tremendously fun – though to quote the inestimable LeVar Burton, “you don’t have to take my word for it.”

Anyway, as if bike month wasn’t already mind-blowingly awesome enough, Eat Well Guide is hosting the Tour de Farmers’ Markets on May 15!  It’ll be kind of like the Tour de France except without the 2,200 grueling miles of high-speed cycling.

As the cheesy title suggests, our event will involve exploration of several NYC farmers’ markets (Union Square, Fort Greene and Grand Army Plaza) via bicycle.  The goal is to demonstrate the ease with which these hotbeds of sustainable food can be accessed on two wheels.

The event is free, open to anyone comfortable riding a bicycle in the city, and will cover a very modest 6 miles (9.66 km) at a pace best described as extremely leisurely.  I’ll be the guide for the adventure, leading the group from market to market while providing riveting commentary about such topics as heirloom tomatoes, bicycle lanes, and the manure lagoons used by industrial livestock operations.

And if that’s not sufficiently enticing, we’ll also be giving away fancy tote bags, tasty snacks and some exceptionally fashionable Eat Well Guide buttons.  If you’re in/near New York City on the 15^th, join us!

Event Details:

Tour de Farmers’ Markets – Saturday, May 15, 9:00 am

Meet at the northwest corner of the Union Square Greenmarket at 9:00 am (or you can join the ride at either of the Brooklyn markets afterward – see schedule below).  Ride your favorite bicycle, wear your favorite helmet, and bring money to buy fresh food from local farmers.

Itinerary:

9:00 am – Union Square Greenmarket (meet at the northwest corner)

10:40 am – Fort Greene Greenmarket

11:30 am – Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket

Cycling Route:

See our map

I’m not sure exactly how to say this to you, so I guess I’ll just be blunt. I think I might have to break up with you. Recent events have led me to believe that we’re just not going to make it.

Sure we’ve had some great times together, but the last time we spent any time together, I spoke to you about your addiction to bottled water and we talked about some ways for you to kick your habit. Remember when we hung out with Peter Gleick that day? Remember how he told you that he thought drinking bottled water was so detrimental to your health? Both Peter and I really thought you would change after that.

Then, last Friday we hung out together at the New York City Water Summit. We spent a really nice day talking about how America’s water and wastewater treatment is in such bad shape, and how federal and state funding for infrastructure is below 10 percent of total funding when it was as high as 80 percent in the 80’s. We talked about all the options for wise use of water resources with all our new friends at the Summit. We even talked about the tremendous effort that NYC Department of Environmental Protection goes through to treat and deliver some of the best public water in the country, and then you served us all bottled water at the luncheon.

I’m just not sure what to make of your addiction, Columbia University. I mean you’re a good-looking, hunky university and you’re so progressive in your politics and you always say such great things about saving the environment. You’re everything a girl could want in a university and I don’t really want to give all that up. I’m trying to be faithful, Columbia, but lately NYU has been coming around and talking to me about maybe giving up bottled water.

I would be willing to get some counseling with you. I’m sure some of the folks at Food & Water Watch would counsel you on ways to break your addiction. And I’m sure you have plenty of university friends who would be there for you when you’re tempted to go back to bottled water after you quit. If you need to learn more about conserving water you could watch the Aqua Video and check your water footprint at H2OConserve.

You can do this Columbia University, I know you can. And our relationship will be so much stronger for it. Then I can be proud of the commitment you’ve made to your health and the health of the environment. So go ahead, give up that bottled water and Take Back the Tap.

Yours with hope and sincerity,

Robin Madel

Banda’s organization, Freshwater Project, is an indigenous NGO that works at the grassroots level with communities in Malawi to make clean freshwater and sanitation available to community members. Banda says that this, more than anything else, stabilizes a community and allows the community to make gains in health, education, women’s equality, food security and ultimately development (the main topics covered under the Millennium Development Goals).

Hart spent months in Malawi documenting what life is like for those with and without access to water. Once people have access to a well and a toilet their lives improve drastically, especially so for women. In Malawi women and girls are typically responsible for bringing water to the household, a task that can sometimes take an hour per trip, for as many as 10 trips each day. Many women make these trips in the dark and are subject to sexual harassment and rape. They typically spend so much time finding water that many women are unable to spend much time with their families and as they grow older, many girls no longer have time to go to school.

Lack of sanitation is another reason many girls stop going to school. With no toilet facilities, when many girls reach puberty they have no privacy for dealing with personal hygiene, including menstrual needs, and often choose to stop their education altogether. This is unfortunate, according to Banda because, in Malawi uneducated women typically have five times as many children as educated women do. Banda said that educated Malawian women generally feel more of a sense of control over their lives.

I always knew that there was a connection between lack of water and women’s equality, but Hart’s film really solidified my understanding of exactly how it is played out. Banda said that because so many farmers throughout the world are women (in Sub-Saharan Africa it’s as much as 90% whereas in the United States it’s only 30%), access to water is really a gender equity issue. As residents of a country with ready access to taps and toilets, it’s easy to take water for granted and not draw those connections.

Hart and Banda effectively demonstrate how fundamental access to water and sanitation are to the stability and security of a community (as well as a country). Reasons for war can be complex, to be sure, but overlay a map of global areas of conflict with areas of water scarcity and a strong correlation becomes apparent.  Most U.S. foreign aid goes to war efforts. Now, imagine how much more stability and national security we could achieve if we actually gave people water and sanitation instead of guns.

You’re invited to a summit for civic leaders, family farmers, community gardeners, concerned citizens, activists, advocates, parents, food experts, policy makers, environmentalists, nutritionists, educators, urban planners, urban designers, community, business leaders, family farmers, educators, advocates, elected officials and city government leaders. The goal of this Summit is to increase awareness engagement and action around our food system’s role in climate problems and solutions. Featured speakers include Anna Lappé, Marion Nestle and US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

December 12, 2009
8:30a.m.-5:00p.m.

New York University
Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place, NY, NY 10012

For more details and online registration go to
www.nyu.edu/foodandclimatesummit

TICKETS ARE GOING QUICKLY!

Once his family switched to eating only foods produced within a 250-mile radius of New York City, the farmer’s market became a regular ritual. Such American dietary staples as pizza, take-out Chinese–even peanut butter sandwiches–became off-limits, either because they contained non-local ingredients or generated trash.

The No Impact Project week’s in full swing now, and those of us who’ve signed on are taking a closer look at our carbon “foodprint” today. So I asked Colin to tell us a bit more about his year-long adventure in ecological eating:

KT: Did you know when you embarked on the No Impact experiment that our eating habits play such a crucial role when it comes to climate change?

CB: I knew that the centralized, agri-giants that produced food put good nutrition and people’s health very low down on their priority list. After all, they don’t profit from our eating healthily; they profit from our eating more. So the environmental and human degradation caused by centralized food production and distribution came as no real surprise to me.

And the problem is not just climate change. There is a 75 square mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the amount of chemical fertilizer washed off American farmland and down the Mississippi.

I like eating locally because the farmers are not anonymous corporations. I can look them in the eye and become friendly with them. I can choose to trust them to make sure that they care for our land, water and climate. And I trust them to provide food I can trust for my little girl too.

KT: You’ve emphasized in your public appearances–on Good Morning America, for example–that reducing our meat consumption is one of the most significant ways that we can curb our carbon “foodprint.” Were you a vegetarian prior to beginning the project? What inspired you to make the shift to a plant-based diet?

CB: Did you ever see the Humane Society video showing the cruelty to the cows in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO)? I’m talking about the video that sparked the largest beef recall in US history.

Becoming aware of the cruelty and the climate impact of the beef industry has done me in forever. I used to have occasional bacon and pepperoni slips, but no more.

Thinking again of the cruelty I witnessed. I can’t help but believe that somehow the energy of that cruelty and unhappiness enters the animal and that energy might get passed on to whoever eats it. I don’t want my little girl to be the recipient of that energy.

For those who choose not to give up meat though, I know many local farmers who treat their animals kindly. When cattle are raised well in pasture, their manure fertilizes the land, causing more plants to grow and more carbon to be sequestered in the land. This is a way better choice, in my view, than CAFO meat.

KT: You’re also a strong advocate of eating locally and seasonally. Critics of the locavore movement have attempted to dismiss it as a single-minded fixation on “food miles.” But your impetus for eating locally was motivated as much by your desire to stop generating all the garbage that comes with processed convenience foods and take-out. How do you pitch the ecological benefits of a predominantly local diet to skeptics who’ve been swayed by anti-locavore diatribes?

CB: Look at the funding for the research that is used to back up the anti-locavore spin and look where it has been published. Often times, [they are funded and published by] chemical giants. The ones that produce chemicals local farmers don’t use. The ones that have the most to lose if we change our agricultural system.

But the amazing thing about local food is that it is not just good for the environment. It’s better for my family too. The food, itself, is better for us. And Isabella, who sometimes doesn’t eat veggies, will absolutely eat them when she has seen where they have been grown.

Local food allows for trust and community relationships. When I pay a farmer I know for food, my money supports something I care about and people I care for. I can’t say that when I buy from the frozen food section.

KT: You understandably had a craving for various foods that were off-limits for the duration of your project. What did you miss the most? When the year was up, what formerly verboten foods gave you the greatest pleasure?

CB: Pizza and peanut butter.

KT: In your book, you write that the television used to be the center of your life. When your family gave up the big screen TV, the kitchen table took center stage; making meals became the proverbial “quality time” with Michelle and Isabella. And when your project put you in the media’s glare, you found refuge in baking bread.

Now you’re out on book tour and promoting your foundation, which presumably doesn’t leave a lot of time for treks to the farmers’ market, home cooked meals with friends and family, or bread making. As anyone who travels knows, finding fresh, healthy, sustainably grown food on the road can be a challenge (though the Eat Well Guide is working to make it easier all the time!). How are you eating these days, if you don’t mind my asking?

CB: Badly. And this points to an important point. It is not always easy to live and to eat sustainably. That is because our major cultural systems–food production, energy generation, etc.–are not sustainable. We have to find ways to live outside those systems if we want to live sustainably.

This shouldn’t be so. Our systems should be designed to be good for the people and good for the planet. You shouldn’t have to “resist” the temptation to eat from your grocery store when you want to take care of yourself and the planet. Living healthily and sustainably should be as easy as falling off a log.

And that’s why just changing our individual lifestyles is an important part of the equation but not the whole equation. Joining in with others to ask for system change via our city, state and federal governments is also important. To do this, finding community in grassroots environmental organizations is a big help.

And of course, you’re always welcome to join in at NoImpactProject.org, too!

According to UK organization WasteOnline, the world’s annual consumption of plastic has increased from around 5 million tonnes in the 1950s to nearly 100 million tonnes today. That’s an extraordinary increase of 2,000 percent! Consider this, from The Lifecycle of Plastic – “…unless it has been melted or recycled, all the plastic products ever made, are, of course, still in existence, rotting slowly on landfill sites all over the world.”

I thought I was doing well limiting plastics in my life until I read Beth Terry’s blog Fake Plastic Fish. Terry chronicles her efforts to eliminate plastics from her life, charting her monthly plastic waste reduction. Here is her List of Plastic-Free Changes that includes everything from making your own hand lotion to making your own soy milk. And, of course, it includes not using plastic shopping bags. That’s a critical step when you consider that plastic bags were found to be the second most prevalent component of litter at the 2008 International Coastal Cleanup Day sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy. Clearly Terry has a lot of time on her hands, but she makes some excellent points about how choosing sustainability sometimes means forgoing a little convenience.

Inconvenience aside though, it seems as though it’s impossible to live a plastic-free existence. Do you have electronics? Do you use prescription drugs? Do you drive a vehicle? Then you live with plastics. But what about recycling, you ask? What about the biodegradable and compostable plastics? Okay, let’s talk about those.

There are about 50 groups of plastics and all of them can be recycled (if you’ve wondered what all those numbers on plastic packaging mean, check out this information on plastics resins from the American Chemical Society). According to Earth911, since 1990 plastics consumption in the U.S. has steadily increased but the plastics recycling rate has held steady at 24 percent.

This means that three of every four plastic items go somewhere other than recycling when we’re done with them – some go to landfills, others become litter, and a great deal winds up in the world’s oceans. In fact, there is a huge patch of garbage, comprised primarily of plastics and estimated to be twice as large as the state of Texas, stuck in the currents of the Pacific Ocean. This is our legacy: plastic litter is everywhere on the land and in the water. Clearly we aren’t doing well with recycling.

Maybe the solution lies with biodegradable and compostable plastics. They seem like a reasonable solution – but not so fast. Just because something is labeled biodegradable doesn’t mean that it will just go away. Biodegradable and compostable plastics require specific conditions to degrade properly, which home composting systems don’t provide.

In Do Biodegradable Plastics Really Work?, Dave Gilson of Mother Jones Magazine wrote that real biodegradable plastics should be sent to a commercial facility that can provide the proper composting conditions but as of 2007 there were only 42 such facilities throughout the United States. To further complicate things, if biodegradable plastics are mixed with regular plastics, the whole batch is seen as contaminated and generally ends up in a landfill instead of being recycled. Also, biodegradable plastics are more expensive to produce and are made from starches that often come from corn, which adds to the myriad environmental problems associated with growing corn for anything other than food. Unfortunately, biodegradable plastics are quite a ways away from being the solution to the problem of plastics.

Plastics bags that are made to break down in sunlight and oxygen work because they are made with metals that cause rapid degradation of the plastic. What happens to those metals when the plastics degrade? That’s a good question. They end up in landfills or wherever their final resting place is, eventually finding their way into soil and water.

There really is only so much that can be done at a post-consumer level, at least until governments enforce zero waste policies and businesses decide that it makes good business sense to be more sustainable. The City of San Francisco has enacted a Zero Waste policy that is working towards a goal of having no waste sent to the landfill by 2020. From their Web site:

While we are well on our way to our diversion goals, ultimately we will need to look beyond recycling and composting to get to Zero Waste. This includes passing legislation to increase producer and consumer responsibility. In other words, manufacturers, businesses and individuals will need to be accountable for the environmental impact of the products they produce and use.

I hope I’m still alive when the whole country goes to a zero waste policy.

What does this mean for you and me? It means taking a page from Terry’s book and thinking about the environmental impacts of what we purchase before we buy, especially where plastics are concerned. The first step is deciding whether or not we really need something. If the answer is still yes, then consideration should be given to whether non-plastic alternatives are available.

A former geology professor of mine used to say that this period of geologic history would be seen in the future as “The Pampers Layer.” That can’t be the legacy we intend to leave. I believe we can all do better.

Emily Fudakowski is a consultant for Grace.  Photos courtesy of Heather Heagney.

The season for eating outdoors is nearing an end in this neck of the woods. Folks living north of the 42^nd parallel are scrambling to soak up all the warmth, sunlight and outdoor gastronomical indulgences we can get to last through winter. Aside from the common corn roast barbecue, with friends, guitars and garden-fresh veggies galore, I can’t think of a better way to spend a waning summer evening or crisp fall day celebrating the harvest season than at the annual Feast of Fields.

With 25 teams of chefs and farmers from the Ottawa region, Canadian Organic Growers’ 5^th annual Feast of Fields hosted this tremendous gastronomical delight along the Rideau River in Vincent Massey Park.  In two quick hours of meeting farmer and chef teams from the region and sampling their creations, guests tasted some of the best the Ottawa Valley has to offer.

When the delectable temptations passing by became too much to endure, I left my post at the National Farmers Union and Food Secure Canada table and dashed across to The Piggy Market for a sausage. All by itself on my plate it looked delicious but lonely, so I waited in the fast-moving queue to get a grilled papadum filled with white bean mousse from the fantastic chefs from Ballygiblins in Carleton Place. My neighbors at the Whalesbone Oyster House and Catering table saved me a plate of organic chicken chowder that I paired with Mariposa Farms beet salad. For dessert I had a familiar treat: a chili-chocolate cookie, the best cookie known to cookie-lovers in Ottawa from the B Goods Mobile Bakery.  See some of the exquisite dishes and read about extraordinary chef/farmer teams at fellow foodie Heather’s blog After the Harvest.

Lucky foodies in Vancouver got their summer food on last Sunday at  Providence Farm on Vancouver Island’s 12th  annual Feast of Fields organized by Farm Folk/City Folk.  It may be too late to get to a Feast of Fields near you, but there are still harvest festivals aplenty yet to come. In the golden triangle of Southwestern Ontario, the Niagara Food Festival is not to be missed. A must for Maritimers is Prince Edward Island’s Fall Flavours festival. An equally scrumptious alternative is to get inspired with locally grown food and host your own outdoor feast this harvest season.

I climb on the coattails, eager to make a good impression. “Mine, too,” I proudly announce, ceramic vessel proffered; it’s a mug, not so grassrootsy-looking as a jar, nor as capacious. I reassure myself by noting that at least it’s clean.

Colin Beavan, the self-described “guilty liberal who attempted to save the world” with a year-long, high-profile foray into extreme green living, begins to extol the myriad virtues of the screwcap jar – it’s light, it seals tightly and doesn’t leak, it’s more conspicuous than a coffee mug, you can see what’s inside it, it’s attractive in a sort of homegrown way, it can also serve as Tupperware. I begin to regret my lowly mug, and make a mental note that next time, I will bring the gnarliest, most salvaged-looking jar I can find.

Since that fragmented moment in the No Impact journey wedged between blog posts, deadlines and press appearances, Colin and his No Impact family have metamorphosed while the world watched – on the Colbert Report, Good Morning America, in The New York Times (and the Green Fork!). And since his book, titled No Impact Man, debuted on September 1st, their lives have fallen under even greater scrutiny – magnified by this coming Friday’s theatrical release of the No Impact Man documentary. And have they ever risen to the occasion! With nation-wide appearances and book signings on the docket, Colin Beavan and Michelle Conlin (and little Isabella and four-footed Frankie, of course) have carried the mantle of sustainability with enthusiasm, inspiration and grace. Together they create a compelling vision of good green living – and all the quirks and hiccups along the road to getting there.

Want to get a look inside their year of No Impact? Find a screening of the No Impact movie near you (or host one!)! New Yorkers – join Kerry Trueman and me at the Angelika theater on September 15th at 5:00, where we’ll field your questions about sustainable food and how it fits into a low-impact lifestyle.

To keep current with Colin, follow his No Impact blog; to find out how you can change the world and even yourself, check out www.noimpactproject.org, a new nonprofit project aimed at enabling a sustainable way of life that makes us happier, healthier and more balanced citizens of the planet.

And now, I’m off to refill my gnarly pickled herring jar, which previously held lingonberry jam made by my friend’s grandmother in Poland, and which has a fish on the lid. Take that, No Impact Man!

The First Lady caught some heat again a few months ago when she planted an organic garden on the White House Lawn, this time from the Crop Life Association, who thought going organic set a bad example .  But many of us were inspired by her actions.  Thousands of us planted gardens of our own for the first time.  Harkening back to the days of Victory Gardens, it seems that the first lady’s garden has given legs to a movement of garden-fresh food, and those who’ve followed in her footsteps are making an investment in a delicious future.

One of the people who rallied for that garden was IATP Food and Society fellow Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International, whose Eat the View campaign started at OnDayOne.org, where it quickly rose to the top of the list (and subsequently won).  Eventually, the campaign culminated in its own website, eattheview.org.

Now, Roger is at it again, this time with Food Independence Day, a campaign encouraging citizens throughout the US to make local food part of their Fourth of July festivities. Says Doiron of the campaign:

With July 4th and other Independence Day celebrations just around the corner, people will have other options to ponder as they plan their holiday meals. For too many in the US, the “choices” will be Bud or Miller or an industrially-produced hotdog or an industrially-produced hamburger. I don’t know about you, but I think our national holiday deserves better than barbecued mystery-meat and water-flavored beer.

I couldn’t agree more. The 4th is one of my favorite holidays, and as I write this post from Livingston, Montana, having spent the last two weeks crossing the country en route to my own family’s cookout in Long Beach, Washington, (I’m currently moving back to my native Washington from the east coast), I would also say that we have a lot more local food choices than most people might think.

In the two weeks I’ve spent on the road, I’ve tapped into local food resource Eat Well Everywhere, which led me to Madison, Wisconsin’s Willy Street Co-op and to Milwaukee’s Growing Power, whose greenhouses produced the first fresh tomatoes I’ve tasted this year. In Minneapolis, I grabbed snacks at the Linden Hills Co-op. Here in Montana – not exactly a culinary destination – I’ve been practically living on locally-raised buffalo. In spite of some major problems with this country’s food systems, we have a lot to be proud of on the local level.

Roger has also challenged the first families of all 50 states to take part in Food Independence Day by publishing their local food menus. So far, nine governors offices have responded to the FID challenge, including Maine, Idaho, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas, North and South Dakotas and Montana. (Nebraska also responded, but had no menu to report as they will be working the parade circuit all day.) See the red flags on the map at foodindependenceday.org for the juicy details of these gubernatorial local food feasts. While the remaining 41 have only a few days left to join in, over 5,000 people have signed the petition asking them to do so.

It might be a little late for the remaining 41 first families to get with Roger’s program, but it’s worth shooting them a note anyway, because although this particular campaign might focus on the red, white and blue, its ideals are evergreen. According to Roger:

And just as the White House garden campaign was not just about one garden, the Food Independence Day campaign is not just about one day.  It’s about inspiring and teaching people and communities to become more food secure and independent every day.

Local food is not only a tasty alternative to its over-processed, over-traveled industrially-produced counterparts, but it’s also patriotic to support local farmers.  As this recent Washington Post article about the campaign points out, the bulk of garlic sold in the US is now produced in China. Buying locally grown garlic would encourage farmers here to grow more of it, eventually allowing us to wean ourselves off of the foreign stuff.  Perhaps more importantly, buying local supports our local economies and helps to keep American farmers, who’ve dropped by more than half since the 1930s, in business.

And it doesn’t need to be a hardship or an all-or-nothing endeavor.  By sourcing even a few key ingredients locally, you cut back on your “food miles” and therefore your carbon “foodprint,” and just by questioning where your food comes from, what grows in your region and what’s in season, you are reminded of the worth of American soil and the hands that tend to it. Roger says it better:

Moving towards food independence doesn’t mean having to do everything and grow everything on our own. It’s about learning what we, our soils, climate, and local farmers can produce, effortlessly or with some coaxing, and committing to eat more of these things when nature offers them up to us. In doing so, we discover that we have more choices and freedom than we realized.

What could be more All-American?