KeepGreenGoing

 Another highlight from Vanity Fair’s Green Issue: Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear.

Not having come from a farming background, I’d never heard of Monsanto. So, though this is old news for many, I only took notice last week when it popped up literally side-by-side in my reading material. On one side, Vanity Fair. On the other, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Monsanto appeared in both.

Why the fuss? Monsanto wants to own the entire world’s food supply. Does that sound almost cartoonishly evil? Well. Does it sound overly reductive? I’m afraid it’s not.

If you saw last year’s Clooney heavy-hitter Michael Clayton, you’ll remember the fictional bad-guy agri-giant U-North, accused in the film of selling GM seeds that cause cancer. Do a quick Google search for “Michael Clayton Monsanto” to see just how many immediately recognized the thinly-veiled connection.

Kingsolver discusses the dangers of a company like Monsanto eliminating seed variety and choice from an evolutionary standpoint — the less varied our crops are genetically, the more we endanger ourselves. She references the Irish potato famine. I’ve got a better example that’s a bit closer to home: our current, much-publicized World Food Crisis. Monsanto, and a few others like them, have supplied GM seeds to struggling farmers in developing countries in order to induce dependency and cut out any notion of sustainability. Now that the addicts are going into withdrawal, Monsanto steps in like a street corner dealer with the fix. But the solution is the problem.

Monsanto has helped create a crisis. Does it seem silly that anyone would celebrate Monsanto as the savior of a disaster it set up in the first place? No matter. It seems to have paid off.

What do DUMBO, Wal-Mart, and Park Road Baptist Church have in common?

They have all tapped into the potential of RENEWAL, the new documentary on the religious-environmental movement, to effectively organize and motivate groups and individuals around the increasingly important issue of environmental stewardship. You can see our previous articles on THE RENEWAL PROJECT here and here.

DUMBO, a neighborhood improvement district in Brooklyn, NY, is screening RENEWAL to promote five environmental initiates in the community: public recycling, alternative modes of transportation, consumption reduction, greater energy efficiency and environmental education. Wal-Mart is using segments of RENEWAL in training sessions with store managers to help them develop Personal Sustainability Programs that they will then share with their colleagues. I know, I can’t believe I’m actually posting something positive about Wal-Mart. And Park Road Baptist church developed a four-week-long, intergenerational Sunday school class using two segments of RENEWAL each week.

These are just a few of the exciting stories emerging from the RENEWAL Circle, a group of early users and adapters of the film. You can read more about them and many others at www.renewalproject.net/members. If you haven’t already, you can purchase the film there as well. Hopefully, the stories from the RENEWAL Circle will inspire you to conduct similar events or to create new ones of your own. Either way, please log in at www.renewalproject.ning.com to share your own stories and to connect with RENEWAL audiences around the world.

Via Ryan Parker
RENEWAL Project Coordinator

Expressing your green love towards friends and family can sometimes be a daunting task. But becoming an ambassador for living green is as easy as playing host for the night and planning accordingly. Here are three ideas to try out the next time you’re planning for the weekend.

1. Green Swap Party

We all have stuff we don’t use right? We’ll if you haven’t had the chance to sign up for an account on Gigoit.org (see article here), then this solution is for you. Ask your friends to bring over clothes, dishes, CDs, books, movies - anything really. When everyone arrives, set all the items out and let your friends pick what they want to take home. It’s simple, effective and guaranteed to be remembered as a unique night.

2. Keepin’ It Local Potluck

Inspired by the Locavores at www.locavores.com, we’re encouraging our readers to host a “locavore” potluck. The locavores are a group of people that make an effort to eat only foods grown or harvested within a 100-mile radius of San Francisco. Explain this concept to your friends, invite them over for the potluck and enjoying learning about the multitude of places people went to gather their dishes. If the potluck is a success, make it a monthly gathering to encourage people to keep things local.

3. Movie With a Message

If you’re like me, bars and clubs just don’t do the trick. My fiancée and I simple enjoy watching movies and hanging out with friends at coffee shops. So the next time you plan to watch a movie with another couple, make it a movie with meaning. Rent “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Who Killed the Electric Car,” “Blue Vinyl,” “Renewal,” or “Erin Brockovich.” If your friends aren’t down with documentaries… just pop it in and hit play - it’s bound to make them think in more ways than one. Plus, it’s always a good idea to switch up your normal movie watching routine.

Thanks to KGG contributor Alex Dow for an open, honest account of his meat-free week. My open, honest admission? I love meat, and that love is fiercely loyal.

For now, I’m sticking to my bone-gnawin’ guns. Even so, Alex’s food diary encourages me to do as he did and think about the consequences of consumption.

This builds on the lessons I’ve been gleaning from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle — a remarkably clear-eyed treatise on food ably disguised as a winsome family memoir.

So far, I’ve learned to shudder at the thought of ever again buying fruit and vegetables off-season. I’m cultivating a farmers’ appreciation of the ominous Dark Storm Cloud. And I’m finding a whole bunch of ways to connect with my food by buying locally.

LINK IT UP! (from animalvegetablemineral.com)

• LocalHarvest: “The best organic food is what’s grown closest to you. Use our website to find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area…”
• New Farm’s Farm Locator: “Consumer Search links you to farms selling directly to consumers…”
• Farmers’ Market: “Farmers markets allow consumers to have access to locally grown, farm fresh produce, enables farmers the opportunity to develop a personal relationship with their customers, and cultivate consumer loyalty with the farmers who grows the produce…”

This final installment has been tough to write. What more is there to say? Outside of a couple brief moments of burger cravings the final days went really well. I stuck with my basic vegetarian diet and in the end it wasn’t too difficult. The toughest part for me wasn’t pulling myself away from a steak, but simply remembering that I was committed to a vegetarian diet.

Has the experiment changed me? The experiment has certainly changed me for the better. My eyes have been opened up to the health and enjoyment of a vegetarian diet. There is a freedom and creativity present in a vegetarian diet that I never experienced as an omnivore. I also feel that I had a little bit more energy as a vegetarian and that I more easily avoided the feelings of lethargy associated with overeating. On top of all of this there is the benefit to the planet.

Has the experiment changed me into a champion of vegetarianism? Yes and no. I’ve definitely reached the conclusion that vegetarianism is an excellent way of life; a much more symbiotic relationship between the planet and the people on the planet. The less we rely on the factory farmed production of animals, the more harmonious the planet becomes. That harmony comes back to us. However I’m still not convinced that all meat is created equal or that it is all bad.

Certainly we need to strike a better balance with our consumption of meat, beef in particular, and our consumption of vegetarian diet. I’m at a point now where I think it is okay to eat a little bit of responsibly farmed meat every now and then. I’m considering buying a butchered bison from a local organic farmer with my good friend Sonny.

I suppose that in the end my perspective towards diet have changed through the experiment. I think my outlook correlates best with what Michael Pollan said in his book In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Say you’ve been spending time with this girl. Casually, you know? Not purposefully; almost by accident. Maybe you work together. Maybe you know the same people. You trade quips at parties, standing near the punch. You bump into her at the library browsing young adult fiction.

At any rate, if her name came up in conversation, you’d have something nice to say. A little story to tell, or just a brief nod of recognition. Yeah, I know her. Seems cool.

Until.

Until one day, it hits you. When it does, it hits hard. A look. A glance. For no reason at all. You know what I mean? Love can be a funny thing.

Read on»

From Vanity Fair’s annual green issue, a fascinating look at a designer influencing the influencers — his high-profile projects include a green roof covered in native grasses for The GAP in San Bruno, Nike’s energy-effective European headquarters, and a new project with Google that’s looking big.

Mr. McDonough co-authored the groundbreaking manifesto “Cradle-to-Cradle” with a German chemist, Michael Braungart. Mr. McDonough relates an “a-ha!” moment he had one of the first times he discussed some of his ideas with Mr. Braungart amidst a flurry of diagramming and chart-drawing. Thank goodness one of Mr. McDonough’s gifts is a knack for taking the technical and showing it to us in a way that helps us say “a-ha!” ourselves.

“Being less bad is not being good. To be efficient is the same as being less bad.”

Last week, KeepGreenGoing had the opportunity to sit down with publisher and editor-in-chief, Kelly Magill, to discuss her new and upcoming women’s magazine Positively Green.

Kelly, how did the whole idea for Positively Green come about?
Well, one of my sales people called me this fall. She told me “Kelly, You’ve got to do something this fall. We’ve got to think of another magazine to put together. Why don’t you do a green magazine – That’s your thing… You’re so into it.” So the more I thought about it I really started to consider a regional publication on green topics for women. When I called my distributor they liked the idea so much about a women’s magazine focused specifically on green issues they told me I really need to do this on a national level, not regionally. And.. That was it. That’s how it all got started.

More and more we’re seeing green magazines pop up. What would you say makes your magazine different?
First of all, most environmental magazines are written for men and women both. There’s nothing out there written specifically for women. Also 90% of women describe themselves as the primary household buyer. So as a gender we’ve got so much ability, even in grocery shopping, to decide what companies we’ll support with our money and what companies we won’t support. And I’ve noticed, with this enormous ability, no one is talking to these women. Another thing I think that’s happening is the fact that there’s a huge group of mainstream women who are interested in doing things a little more green. But when they pick up magazines and read articles there’s nothing that really addresses what the solutions are. So if you have a peanut butter container and you want to recycle it, but don’t know how it should be properly cleaned out - What do you do to clean it? Ya know – It’s about what are the simple solutions you can do everyday to change your thinking and your buying habits. How do you change so you can buy more green… in fashion, in travel, with sending your kids back to school. And I just don’t think that’s happening to that degree yet, where it’s really focused on women’s daily lives and how we live, how we accomplish the tasks we have to do everyday in a simplified way.

That’s great. Here at KeepGreenGoing, we try to focus on simple solutions as well. What else have you noticed lately in regards to green publications?

Another thing that’s been happening lately is there’s been several articles in the past few months about bottled water and how the greener option is to filter your tap water. Those are all great articles… But as a very busy women the thing that those articles failed to do was to direct me the products that would solve the problem. Most women are too busy to go research which filer is the best. If someone can give them the article where they can make the decision and say “Okay, I really want to eliminate bottled water” - They got the article on one page and on the very next page there are the products you can buy, here is where you get them, this is how much they cost. Now, these women no longer have a barrier to this decision in there life to eliminate bottled water. And I don’t think that’s something a lot of people are doing yet – is giving women very specific details and tools to make the necessary change.

The staff at KeepGreenGoing would like to thank Kelly for her time in this interview. Even though we’re not women, we’re really stoked for this magazine to hit newsstands. Please take some time and check out the Positively Green Website. You can even download a sample of the first issue.

Other useful information regarding Positively Green:

Website

www.PositivelyGreen.com

Launch
First issue – August (All major bookstores, Whole-Foods and Wal-Mart)

Pre-Subscribe

Get the magazine even before it hits newsstands. A subscription (4 issues total) cost is $14 for the year. Of that $14 Positively Green will give $2 to the eco-charity of your choice.

Sounds a bit goofy, doesn’t it? But Mr. H. Lee Scott, Jr., the oft-maligned president and CEO of Wal-Mart, said about as much during an interesting Q&A session last month at an economics conference in California devoted to discussing “environmental capital.” (As a bonus, click the embedded video for a confusing conversation circling the topic of bottled water).

As part of his talks, Mr. Scott proclaimed that reducing waste (in the form of excess cardboard and plastic packaging) is not only an environmental issue, but an economic one. In his wrap-up remarks, Mr. Scott pointed to the current economic downturn as proof that this is the perfect time for Wal-Mart to cut costs. “When is a better time?” he asked.

Let’s ask the people at IKEA, who have used this common-sense dictum as a base for their business model since day-one. Take this snippet from a longer interview (that’s well-worth the read) with Mr. Thomas Bergmark, IKEA’s head of social and environmental responsibility.

“One of the cornerstones since IKEA was founded more than 60 years ago is to care about resources — we are clever with resources. For the first 20 years, this was only about turning and twisting the materials to utilize them in the best possible way, to save on material and thereby save on costs. But today we know it’s a perfect win-win also for the environment. You save on the resources, you save on the environment.”

This isn’t intended to be Wal-Mart vs. IKEA. It’s more a question of “Why now?” Did it really take Wal-Mart this long to figure out they can save money by cutting waste? Am I missing something here?

Day Three

Today I decided will be an elaboration on my experiment. Rather than having the standard meals that I’ve been going with, I’ll try my luck eating out. So after my protein shake for breakfast I head in to work with intentions of dining out for lunch and dinner.

Lunch rolls around and I find myself nervous of what dining experience awaits me at a restaurant where I’m not in control of the menu. I wimp out and go to Tokyo Joe’s where I know that they are going to have some vegetarian options. I pick up the boulder veggie bowl with teriyaki and brown rice. The boulder veggie bowl gets its name, as you may have guessed, from Denver’s neighbor hippie village; Boulder Colorado where tofu is king and the streets are ripe with the smell of incense and other herbs… The bowl is delicious and to my later delight I realize that I feel satisfied with what I have ate rather than the typical gorged/bloated that I get from eating out.

For dinner I ask my wife Nicole to go on a little date to a restaurant that we both enjoy, The Watercourse. The Watercourse is a restaurant with the vegetarian/vegan in mind. Their menu consists of zero meat, their bakery is 100% vegan, and not to mention that the food is incredible. I have a wrap with seitan and veggies topped with vegan ranch and a side of steamed chard. My wife has their portabella sandwich and we are both stuffed. We ask for a to go box which is encouragingly biodegradable opposed to the common Styrofoam of death.

All in all I would say that my dining experience was a huge success when taken outside of the comfort of my own culinary practices. There are a tremendous amount of vegetarian options out there regardless of where you go to eat; there are even boutique vegetarian restaurants like The Watercourse.

Day Four and Five

There really isn’t anything to noteworthy to write about here. I feel like I’ve hit my vegetarian stride and it is quite a bit easier than I had previously imagined. My neighbor asked me how I like the vegetarian experiment. “I’m enjoying it” I reply “this could be all placebo, but I think I have a lot more energy. It’s like Sabotage by the Beastie Boys is playing in my head on repeat; and the Beastie Boys never get old.” Check in soon for the final days of the experiment and closing thoughts.

::a