Posts Tagged ‘environment’
This Week’s Stories: Textile and Coffee Waste, Sustainable Beer and Taking Action
Here is some of my work published this week:
Coffee Waste or Product Potential? – This story was featured in the print edition of Fresh Cup but is also up online. “Wast is simply resources in the wrong place,” says Daniel Crockett of Bio-Bean. I love that sentiment, because it challenges us to rethink what we assume is, or isn’t, something with potential.
10 Fashion Brands Innovating with Textile Waste – Speaking of waste, I also wrote a piece on textile waste. Did you know that in just 20 years, our textile waste has doubled? Today the average American discards around 70 pounds of textiles per year, the majority of it ending up in landfills. Fortunately, there are some innovators out there attempting to do something with it.
Patagonia is Making a Sustainable Kernza Beer – Patagonia, long known for its apparel, is moving into the food space. I love their efforts in working to build a better food system, and the new Long Ale beer is just another example.
Food, Agriculture and Environmental Organizations and Independent Media Outlets You Can Give To – If you’re looking for places to support this holiday season (and places whose work is very needed in the current political climate), I put together a roundup of some food and environment related organizations and media outlets over on Foodie Underground. There’s also an essay about caring (which includes a recipe for pumpkin oatmeal pudding) if you’re interested.
And finally, these weren’t written by me, but I was happy to have Hello, Bicycle mentioned in this list of presents for women cycling fans, as well as this mention of Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break in Condeé Nast Traveller.
Image: Domestic Stencilworks
2,592 Reasons to Hate Coffee Pods
Well, actually I didn’t write that many. But I did go on an anti coffee pod rant this week.
“If you’d had asked coffee specialists that this was going to happen, they would have told you, ‘That’s ridiculous,’” Mark Pendergrast, author of “Uncommon Grounds,” told the Seattle Times. That’s because coffee pods are ridiculous, but just like with so many other things, we’ve traded convenience for taste. In the process we’ve ended up with a product that’s really bad for the planet. For example, all of the K-cups (the name for the Keurig pods) sold in 2013 could wrap around the Earth 10.5 times.
Coffee pods. Wrapped around the earth 10.5 times. Think about it.
You can read the full rant – which includes all the environmental, economic and quality reasons not to drink single-brew coffee – on Foodie Underground.
Image: Mother Jones
Should We Care About Organic Food?
“I now feel completely vindicated for NOT buying organic foods.”
Well, great.
The internet was abuzz with the recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that found little evidence that organic foods are more nutritious than conventional grown food, and I found myself getting severely agitated by comments like the above posted in social media circles. Granted, I spend a lot of time thinking about food, but simple statements like the aforementioned prove to me that we are entirely removed from the food process and what we are eating. We are oversimplifying a complex issue.
The Beauty of Eating Outdoors
Mediocre wine is excellent if you have a view, coffee is exponentially more delicious when brewed after a night in a tent, and trail mix can compete with the fanciest hors d’oeuvre when you’re in the middle of a hike. It’s simple: food always tastes better outdoors.
I was thinking of this in the process of drinking a mug of wine, overlooking a horizon of red rock formations last week. Dirtbags, sunsets and merlot do go hand in hand after all.
Lessons from SXSW Eco: Communication
I’d never been to Texas, and it turns out, all those people that kept saying, “You’ve never been to Austin?? You’d love it!” were, in fact, quite right.
There was two stepping and fried food and cowboy boots. Lots of cowboy boots. But the main takeaway from one week in Austin was something different, and it’s all thanks to the new South By Southwest Eco conference. Three days of listening to the best and brightest on green issues and the main takeaway is that it’s all about communication; how we interact with people and engage.
If we don’t want missed opportunities, we must start with communication. Facts and figures don’t work; relationships are everything.
Well, that and cowboy boots are game changers on the dance floor. Seriously.
In Honor of Celebrating Earth Every Day
A good PSA by Greenpeace… which should remind us that we need to think about our impact every day.
Save Wild Salmon, Nature and Our Future
Courtesy of Save Our Wild Salmon
Excited for my article that was posted this week on Planet Green. Here’s an excerpt:
When was the last time you thought about salmon? Sure, it’s a common food, but this one fish is a key link in the chain between environment, recreation, jobs and the economy. In the Pacific Northwest salmon fishing brings tens of millions of dollars into the regional economy each year, representing thousands of jobs.
But salmon runs are in decline, and that hurts the economy and the environment. In fact, this decline is severely affecting the local environment; including another endangered species — Puget Sound Southern Resident orca whales. Scientists say that these fish are the largest single change to the whale’s food supplies and are directly linked to their decline in recent decades. Endangered salmon runs mean that everything that these fish are linked to or have an impact on, from other species to our own economy, is threatened as well. Still think of salmon as just a dinner dish?
In a recent L.A. Times Opinion piece, scientist and author Carl Safina outlined the importance of salmon to the environment and to human beings in general. Safina, the author of Songs for the Blue Ocean and Eye of the Albatross, as well as a well-respected scientist, conservationist and the president of the Blue Ocean Institute, holds that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to protect these fish, saying that the administration “should embrace salmon abundance as the beating heart of the Pacific Northwest — the flow of energy that connects and sustains people, fishing towns, bears, wolves, orcas, forests and the rivers and seas we all love and use.”
You can read the whole article here, as well as check out 5 simple ways you can take action to save wild salmon.
