Weddings are expensive – for the happy couple, their parents, and the earth. It’s a $70 billion a year market. Fortunately, it’s becoming more and more common for brides and grooms to make their happy day a green day. Check out the Green Bride Guide. The owner says, “The goal of my business is to show couples and their guests that there are hundreds of ways to decrease the impact of an event and save money at the same time – without sacrificing style. In fact, I have found that across the board, couples can save up to 40 percent off the cost of their weddings by going green!”
Much of Americans’ obesity issues are blamed on the junk food that Americans consume. Researchers, recently suggested taxing these food items to help fight obesity. This could help prevent people for purchasing things such as pizza and soda in order to encourage eating more Earth-Friendly foods. To read the full article click here.
Since plants and animals evolve to adapt to their environment, vast doses of herbicides, pesticides, and antibiotics are useful only temporarily – the creatures we call “pests” simply outcompete the chemicals before long. Now there’s evidence that biotech crops engineered to withstand herbicides simply give rise to the use of MORE herbicides. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “the use of weed killers (herbicides) in the United States has increased dramatically—by 383 million pounds—over the first 13 years of commercial production of GE crops.” Gee, we knew someone would be happy with this news… maybe it’s the chemical companies.
Some state legislatures are stepping up to the plate to decrease the amount of pointless suffering caused in factory farms (CAFOs). According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “California outlawed the amputation of dairy cows’ tails, and Michigan passed a law phasing out restrictive crates for veal calves and pregnant sows, and tiny “battery” cages for egg-laying chickens, used to pack many animals together in a small space. Arizona, California, Florida, Maine, Colorado, and Oregon had previously acted to ban crates and battery cages, which, along with tail docking, are unnecessary practices that serve only to make large, polluting CAFOs viable.”
Ok, we’ve all seen the carbon footprint calculators that measure the damage our lifestyles do to the planet. Here’s a more cheerful calculator, one that lets you count how much you’ve helped if you choose organic dairy products. Check it out!
According to the website, “The numbers are derived from a calculation of USDA conventional agriculture data compared with twenty years of parallel data from Organic Valley member-farms…..Organic Valley farmers and consumers collectively kept 89.5 million pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and 1.25 million pounds of synthetic pesticides and herbicides from America’s soil and water from 1988 to 2008. To reduce that down to a personal level, a shopper who purchased two blocks of Organic Valley cheese, two containers of cream and a gallon of milk, for example, would prevent an entire pound of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer from being applied to soil and leaching into our drinking water.”
Check out this article found in Men’s Health by David Zinczenko with Matt Goulding (the authors of “Eat This, Not That!) They share the nutritional info on America’s worst french fries and provide a bit healthier alternatives if you must eat there.
America’s Worst French Fries (and What You Should Eat Instead!)