Photo Credit: Time

Will Allen grew up as a farmer and promised himself he would never farm again after he left home. He became a professional basketball player but could not repress his passion for farming. So breaking his promise, Allen bought a small farm with the intentions of growing and selling produce. What he didn’t expect, was to become founder and director of the nonprofit organization Growing Power, that does a whole lot more than grow and sell produce.

Growing Power educates local communities about how to maintain their own local, healthy food supply. By providing necessary tools and educational demonstrations, communities are able to grow, process, market and distribute their food at Community Food Centers (CFC’s). Not only does this offer job opportunities for lower income residents, it also cuts down the cost of food by eliminating the cost and pollution of transportation since everything is local. The CFC’s are all modeled after the Growing Power Facility in Milwaukee. At this two-acre farm in a space no larger than a small supermarket, live thousands of fish, 20,000 plants, vegetables, and herbs, chickens, goats, rabbits, and even bees! The small farm is partially solar powered and the greenhouses are heated by compost allowing the vegetables to be grown year round. Will Allen has always believed that space should not be a constraint and not having a yard is not an excuse, that “two feet of compost is enough to turn asphalt into a cornfield”.

Allen wants to be sure that anyone can have access to healthy, fresh, good food, regardless of income. With plans of building a five-story vertical farm and continued education of local community members, Growing Power is truly doing their part in creating a cleaner, greener, healthier world.

To read more click here!

Welcome to Windowfarming.org, the best place to go if you want the skinny on growing food in your, well, window. More precisely, it’s the best place to go if you want to learn how to grow functional, space saving, creative works of art in your living room. The fact that Window Farms are suspended means that they are incredibly high yielding, and they fact that they’re hydroponic means they’re incredibly efficient. And wonderfully enough, because these gardens are made from mostly recycled or low-impact products, the cost so little to make and maintain you can afford to have a garden in every window you want.

Perhaps even more interesting is the Windowfarms.org community that has developed over the years. Their RD-I-Y tactic (Research and Develop It Yourself) has created a “network of individuals sharing information can implement a wide variety of designs that accommodate specific local needs and implement them locally.” This means that although it has only been online for about 2 years, the site has already sprung 12 new, innovative ideas for window farming that are changing the face of urban gardening.

With step-by-step guides for all levels, there has never been an easier way to grow your own food where you never previously imagined you could. Check it out: www.windowfarms.org!

Photo Credit: Juan ValldeRuten

There probably isn’t one person in North America who doesn’t own a piece of furniture they’ve had to put together with a million screws, bolts and sketchy instructions.  While the end result can often be pretty impressive, for the sustainable shopper there’s some green news about a number of eco-friendly and sustainable furnishings for your eco-pad, office or college dorm.

Whether your trying to furnish a new place or just looking something to spruce up a room, the search for furniture can be a long road paved with space saving coffee tables and picture frame coasters.  The constant acquisition and disposal of furniture can have some serious repercussions throughout our natural world.  When you think about it, the materials harvested, chemicals used in production, finishing, packaging, shipping and disposal can add up to serious carbon footprints and environmental pollutants.  Thankfully, companies are now looking for ways to design their furniture from both a practical and sustainable point of view.

For instance, if your looking for new furniture for your office Eco Work offers a wide range of products for the home, office or vacation spot.  Ecowork’s product line is designed and developed to be functional, high-quality, sustainable and uses 95% recycled core materials. For the home or college dorm, an organization called the Sustainable Furnishings Council offers a vast amount of information on various green furnishings, manufacturers, designers and retailers.

So if your looking for a new addition to the collection of furniture pieces you can’t quite pronounce and want to be sustainable at the same time, check out the organizations listed above or to read more about this green news please click HERE.

Photo Credit: Lisa Miyake

For many families, decorating their house with lights is a fun way to start off the holiday season.  Unfortunately, it is also costly to keep them on throughout the cold winter nights.  So follow fellow writers in the spirit of a green holiday season, here are some tips about holiday lights!  

HouseLogic recently published a study of households which decorated with lights, telling readers the costliness of this holiday cheer and some less-costly and eco-friendly alternatives that should be considered.  In order to calculate the price of these extravagantly decorated houses, average price per kWh was calculated.  The energy bill for a house that used LED lights was also measured.

For one house in Delaware using up to 1,000,000 lights, the estimated cost was $82,320 to sustain the lights for the holiday season, around $686 per hour the lights are on.  HouseLogic also estimated savings of around $597 per hour using alternatives.

What are the alternatives?  LED Lights are probably the most accessible alternative.  They may be more expensive, but they last longer and save more money.  Other alternatives that HouseLogic suggests are Christmas light timers, which will shut the lights off automatically at any time and solar christmas lights, which will absorb energy from the sun during the daytime and automatically turn on when the sun disappears.

If we can make small changes like these, we can celebrate the holidays without guilt about our carbon footprint!

Read more about the cost of holiday lights here.

Photo Credit: C.P Storm

With Christmas quickly approaching, most of us will be scrambling to get our last minute shopping done.  Between electronics, clothes and new ties for dad, there are more than enough options for gifts; but which options are the most sustainable?

In the good old days, bikes, a clearly sustainable gift, were on every child’s wishlist and letter that got mailed to Santa.  Times have changed, and now most kids are looking for the latest game system or gadget.  With so many I this and pod’s that, this may be an especially challenging time to find the perfect environmentally friendly gift.  So where do you start?  Whether your shopping for a foodie, a techie or a health nut, there are more than enough sustainable options for you to choose from.

For the green cook, Cuisinart offers Greenware cooking pans, which are made of aluminum and come with a ceramic-based surface.  An outdoors person? The Jam daypack from GoLite is constructed from recycled nylon and offers a high level of durability needed for long treks.  Finally, what about the music lovers?  From the buses for the bands and transportation for the audience to branded products and pyrotechnics, the carbon footprint of the music industry can be quite significant. You can satisfy your music lover’s appetite for live concerts with tickets to shows approved by the Green Music Group, which helps musicians and groups make eco-friendly choices for their shows.

If your looking for the perfect eco-friendly gift your loved one this year, click HERE for a list of green ideas and products to aid you in your shopping quest.  Give a green gift this year and ensure the gift of sustainability for our future generations!

Photo Credit: Fields To Families

Katie’s dreams of feeding the hungry began at age 11, when the third grader turned a donated cabbage seed into a 40-pound vegetable that helped to feed 275 homeless people in her hometown of Summerville, South Carolina. “I knew I wanted to do more to help all of those people who were struggling to eat so I started vegetable gardens,” she said.  “I now have 5 gardens and the harvest is donated to people in need in my community. This fall I should be able to donate over a thousand pounds of healthy food to people in need.”

The story began when Katie Stagliano realized she had more than just a green thumb: she also has a huge heart and deep desire to help others. After donating a 40 pound cabbage to the local soup kitchen, and reaching the mouths and bellies of those in need, her determination sprouted into Katie’s Krops, a nonprofit vegetable garden (she now has six), including one the length of a football field at her school, that has provided local soup kitchens with over 2,000 pounds of lettuce, tomatoes and other vegetables.

Katie appears to be an environmentalist at heart. Concerned about a local drought in Summerville, the third grader felt it was the duty of her school to do more in order to conserve water.  After offering her suggestions to the headmaster and the high school’s environmental studies teacher, Katie’s suggestions for rain barrels to catch water and other ideas, such as a community garden to feed the students, were soon implemented throughout the school.

Katie serves as inspiration to not only her local community, who are becoming involved in her garden program, but to others across the country as she achieves media recognition for her charitable and environmental efforts. She says, “I want more people to get involved, more people to help in the fight against hunger.  Growing vegetables is fun and it is so great to help people.  If I can do it anyone can.”

For more, visit Katie’s Krops.

Photo credit: Sean Rogers

With some of the largest consumer holidays just around the corner, many eco-conscious shoppers will be looking for environmentally friendly or sustainable choices for their purchases.  While most of us will have good intentions when we choose to buy products claiming to be “eco-friendly” or “green”, many of us don’t truly realize or understand what these terms and labels actually mean.

Until recently, most companies could get away with labeling a product as eco-friendly with little proof or justification for awarding such a title.  In many cases, this type of green marketing is referred to as “greenwashing”.  Greenwashing essentially involves a company claiming that their product or service has a little to no negative impact on the environment and in some cases may actually be beneficial to the environment.  The largest concern with greenwashing is that consumers believe they are making sustainable choices, when in reality many of these labels and claims have no outlined regulations or rules for being awarded.  Greenwashing has become a way for companies to appeal to the increasing market share of environmentally conscious consumers, while at the same time acquiring brand loyalty.  Not only has greenwashing led to confusion and mistrust among consumers, it has also had a detrimental effect by discrediting verified green labels.  In the midst of this sea of false advertising, there is good news to help consumers navigate their way to sustainable choices.

With the eruption of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oilrig earlier this year, the so-called greenest company in the petroleum industry suddenly became public enemy number one.  This unfortunate event in many ways marked the end of the unregulated days of green marketing when a company could claim their product was green with little consequence or actual proof for such claims.  Green transparency has become the new focus of various environmental groups and watchdogs; meaning that companies can no longer make green marketing claims alone, they must also clearly demonstrate it in their operations.  As well, green transparency is finally being required in the corporate world.  In a move toward clearer definitions of green claims, “after about 15 years without revision, the Federal Trade Commission is updating its guidelines for green claims, creating verifiable definitions for buzzwords such as “sustainable” and “biodegradable.””  While the FTC is working towards creating verifiable and reliable green labeling, there are ways for consumers to truly make green choices.  A number of labels currently exist that use third-party verification systems to establish their products as environmentally friendly.  Many green labels for your everyday products can be found via a Google search or on websites such as www.ecolabelindex.com or www.ecologo.org.  By taking the time to learn the real green labels for your favorite products, you will be ensuring that your well-intentioned purchases are by definition sustainable.

Learn more about greenwashing here and here.

Image Via ChickenCrib.com

If you like pets and you like omelets then the time has come to buy a chicken. Yes, I said it, a chicken. I know this sounds ridiculous and for most people unrealistic but with this new hip easily assembled compact but comfortable ‘Chicken Crib’ (not coop) the potential for small backyard placement is limitless!

What better way to guarantee that the eggs sizzling in your pan every morning are coming from organic, free range (for the most part), and happy chickens, then to raise them yourself. Not only will your eggs be fresh, you will now be able to enjoy the company of a new fluffy companion. Contrary to common belief, chickens actually make great pets. Hens (not roosters) are quiet and friendly animals. If you raise them from birth, they tend to believe that you are their mother and will follow you around until the cows come home. They take only 21 days to hatch and when full grown and healthy will lay about an egg a day.  They don’t take much to feed and will eat virtually anything left over from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Their poop makes excellent fertilizer and is quite pricy when bought at a nursery.  All in all chickens are pretty great.

If you have a backyard, even just a small one, check out the Chicken Crib website. The Chicken Crib can be assembled in 45 minutes with just a screwdriver.  Just think, you could be collecting fresh eggs in no time at all…

Photo Via compostcab.com

Do you compost? If you live in a city or even a tightly packed neighborhood our guess is probably not. Lets face it. Without a large back yard where compost can be disposed of properly so as to not stink up the entire house and attract all kinds of unwanted critters, composting is just too much of a hassel for many. Even with the cool and techie compost bins found at Costco and elsewhere, composting in urban settings is more of an “ideal than a reality”.

Welcome the Compost Cab, a new eco start-up business set to launch this spring in Washington D.C. For just $8 a week, you are supplied a compost bin to fill with all of your kitchen scraps. Every week it’s picked up and trucked to a farm where your orange peels, rotten tomatoes, and old coffee rinds are turned into rich and fertile soil. Then after it’s all said and done, you even have the option of using some of that soil for say some nice houseplants or if you choose, it can be donated to other non-profit community gardens.

The entrepreneur behind the business, Jeremy Brosowsky, realized that community gardens and urban farms in his area were having trouble finding good soil to grow large quantities of crops and he was tired of tossing his biodegradable scraps into the rubbish. Now this business may seem like a long shot but just think about all the private recycling businesses that have sprung up across the country. Green business opportunities are everywhere these days and what could be better than making money by helping the planet?

Visit the Compost Cab website

Photo credit: T. Howard

Many people are trying to make changes to their lifestyle to start living more environmentally friendly. However, these changes are sometimes hard to keep up with since sacrificing comfort and convenience is sometimes a necessity while “going green”. The Wattbox on the other hand, is a simple device that can make any house become an energy saving home.

The Wattbox is a new innovation that works with your home to help cut your energy bills.  This simple system can be used by anyone and is designed to be quick and easy to use. It controls the heat in your house by setting it’s own schedule based on the habits of the homeowner. It does this by knowing how many times the homeowner changes the heat and uses the appliances in the house. When setting the temperature, the Wattbox takes into account the outside temperature and the homeowners needs. It designed with the needs of people in mind. Since many people don’t realize that little changes really do make a difference, the Wattbox displays how much energy you are using in the entire house and how much you are saving with the Wattbox. This way the consumer can even set goals to how much energy they’d like to save and really know how they are doing throughout the process.

The Wattbox is able to influence people’s behavior in a new way. You can be told to change your habits and you can even say you’d like to change, but let’s face it, changing our lifestyle is more difficult than we may realize. The Wattbox makes it easy for homeowners to make this change without knowing the science behind it all. You essentially learn as you go and see which habits really save the most energy. You don’t need to be a scientist to make a difference.

Check out the full article at ScienceDaily