Green Daily

Apparently, First Lady Michelle Obama is listening to all the people practically begging for an organic garden at the White House. She spoke to Oprah for the April edition of O Magazine about the project and ABC News is also reporting that a garden is coming. The New York Times has also written it up.

The First Lady hopes that the White House garden will encourage Americans to eat more healthy, fresh foods:

"We want to use it as a point of education, to talk about health and how delicious it is to eat fresh food, and how you can take that food and make it part of a healthy diet. You know, the tomato that's from your garden tastes very different from one that isn't. And peas - what is it like to eat peas in season? So we want the White House to be a place of education and awareness. And hopefully kids will be interested because there are kids living here." From O Magazine

I'm sure it will provide lots of good photo ops for the Obamas', but I also hope it will encourage other Americans to plant their own gardens. It worked for Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943!

[Via Sustainablog]

Gardener's Supply's Kitchen Garden Planner is a free tool on their retail website that allows you to plan your very own 3' x 6' raised garden. There are several pre-planned gardens to get your started or you can design your own if you are feeling adventurous.

Pre-planned choices include the All American, High Yield, Salsa and Tomato Sauce, and my favorite, the Plant It and Forget It. Once you select your plot, Gardener's does all the work by listing the number of vegetables you'll need, planting dates and a number of tools that will make your life easier (all of which can be found for sale on their website, of course).

Designing your own garden is easy as well. Simplly click and drag your desired choices into the grid and once again the Kitchen Garden Planner will offer hints on growing and harvesting.

The Kitchen Planner is a great place for beginners to learn about vegetable placement and also offers seasoned growers a few tips on raised bed gardening if they are looking to try something new.

Pomme bébé is a line of organic baby food that is so swank and groovy, I almost want to call it organique baby food.

The dishes are made fresh by a team of chefs, supervised by Executive Chef Laurent Brazier, in a kitchen in Newport Beach, CA. If you are local, you can place your order online and swing by to pick it up. They also offer mail orders, which are packed in ice and shipped out overnight. You keep them in your freezer until you're ready to heat and serve!

The menu includes choices for babies 6 - 12 months. It would be nice to have more finger food for toddlers, but with fresh, seasonal choices (the menu change every week) like chicken provencal, gluten-free brown rice mac and cheese, and veggie korma, you'll be tempted to snack on them yourself!

Each serving comes in a perfect portion size, in a BPA-free, microwave safe plastic container. Also, it's easy to pop the serving out if you're a mom who prefers to heat up baby food in a glass or ceramic container.

Most importantly, babies love the flavors. It just goes to show, baby food can be tasty, creative and convenient!

A group called Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. this week sent letters to the governors of every state asking that land grant universities get out of the meat industry.

The group, who sell a bumper sticker proclaiming "They're sentient beings, not food choices" says that the entire meat industry is environmentally destructive.

The letter criticizes the academic course of study frequently called "animal science" which, according to RPA, teaches students to slaughter animals and make ice cream, among other things. The founder of the group, Eric Cantor, says that animal science "rejects scientific knowledge that humans are herbivores."

My only experience with animal science courses were those taken by friends preparing to be veterinarians (most of which are distinctly not planning on slaughtering animals for a living), but I know that there is also money in the livestock industry, as well as education in that arena. I'm not sure how successful this campaign will be, though. What do you think?

You've gotta love the minor holidays. They help us to get through the party drought that begins after Mardi Gras and lingers on into the summer. And, even though it's really just an excuse to get wasted on exotically colered beer, or maybe because it's really nothing but an excuse to drink exotically colored beer, St. Patrick's Day can really help to get your ya-yas out.

It's also an opportunity to get a horrible hangover on beer that's chock full of our dirty old, petroleum-derived friend: Green No. 3. While green food dye may not be the main reason why those St. Patty's Day brewhahas are especially hard on you the next day (I'm guessing that's the Guinness), Green No. 3 has been linked to an increased risk of bladder cancer. In fact, the state of Maryland is considering a ban on the stuff. If you want to party with some green brews, you might want to try Chefmaster's all natural green food coloring instead.

[via Treehugger]

Scientists at the NASA-sponsored Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment recently discovered a miracle gas that has approximately 4,800 times the planet warming potential of CO2. Argh! I know what you might be thinking ... but this new climate killing greenhouse gas isn't emitted by the manufacture of Crocs. Quite unsurprisingly, this miracle substance comes from the pest control industry. They really have a knack for creating incredibly destructive chemicals don't they?

Sulfuryl Fluoride, originally developed by the Dow Chemical Company to keep those dirty little insects off crops like grains, fruits, and nuts, is produced by three manufacturers and sold under the brand names: Vikane, ProFume, Zythor, and Master Fume. Because that the gas' effects have been discovered at a pretty early stage in the adoption process, phasing out the pesticide isn't expected to be a huge problem. The trick is to find a suitable alternative that doesn't threat existence as we know it. The kinda ironic part of this story is that Sulfuryl Fluoride was developed to replace Methyl Bromide -- which had been identified as a harmful greenhouse and phased out in 2005.

[via Treehugger]

With growing concerns about our nation's food safety, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has taken steps to clean up the meat supply. Cattle that are non-ambulatory when entering a slaughterhouse (known as "downer" cows) are now to be humanely euthanized and removed from the food chain.

Previously, downer cows were allowed to enter the slaughterhouse if they previously passed USDA inspection. If they were injured or fell ill during the time following their last check-up, they were still allowed to be butchered and sold as food. These types of animals are more susceptible to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or "made cow disease").

Due to massive beef recalls by Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing plant in California after video revealed injured and sick cows being abused and forced to stand to pass inspection, the USDA suggested closing this loophole in May of 2008. Vilsack has has now acted on the recommendation and has hopes that it will encourage consumer confidence in the beef industry.

Are you looking for some sustainable beer choices for this, the greenest holiday? Look no further. Below is a gallery of tasty brews to enhance your celebrations wherever they may be. Of course, if you want to be especially kind to the environment you can always brew your own.

Don't forget that just how green your beverage ends up being has a lot to do with you. There's the obvious, like making an attempt to recycle your cans and bottles but people often overlook the fact that their compost piles would benefit from any excess beer lying around before or after its been filtered through their kidneys. Give the neighbors a show this St. Patty's Day they will not soon get over.

According to a recent article in Marie Claire, selectively breeding hens to produce large eggs due to consumer demand is animal cruelty. Think ten pound baby versus six pound baby.

The British Free Range Producers' Association (BFREPA) asks that shoppers opt for medium size eggs and the laying of larger eggs causes undue stress on the chickens and lead to osteoporosis, bone breakage and prolapse. Tom Vesey, the chairman of BFREPA, keeps chickens himself and has noticed that the laying of larger eggs causes pain to his chickens.

St. Patrick's Day is coming up, this Tuesday, March 17th. This holiday usually produces a crop of green foods, and when I say green, I mean literally green, like soaked in green food dye. Instead, take some time to try out some authentic Irish foods.

One nice, easy recipe to try is Irish Brown Bread. If you've never baked bread before, this is a great way to get started and to possibly kindle your interest in bread making for the future. Making Irish Brown Bread is super easy, as it uses baking soda for the leavening agent, eliminating yeast and all of that pesky rising time.

You can make your own from scratch quite simply. But if you want to go even easier, try a pre-made whole-grain mix like Odlums which requires only the addition of water. It's even tastier when made with some buttermilk.

This is a great way to commemorate the day and get in some healthy whole grains. And of course, if you add on other traditional dishes, such as colcannon and salmon, you'll really be on your way to an authentic Irish feast. Just skip the green food dye! And definitely skip the green beer.

When Pilgrim's Pride chicken processing plant announced its closing in Louisiana, PETA sprung to action. The animal activist organization wrote a letter to the state's governor, Bobby Jindal, imploring him to use state funds to turn the factory into a "Chicken Empathy Museum."

When PETA learned that the state was offering $20 million to help a new company take over the building, PETA jumped into the fray with plans to create a public educational space. PETA would like to devote the proposed museum to the intellect of the chicken claiming that they have brains comparable to cats, dogs and even primates.

Most fans know Sting as a socially conscious rock star with no last name and a huge soft spot for the Amazonian rain forest. What they don't know is that he's really a straw hat wearing, tobacco chewing farmer. OK, I made up the hat and tobacco part. But for the last 15 years, Sting and his wife Trudie Styler have been spending much of their time kicking it at their 300 hectare farm in Tuscany, growing all sorts of organic produce, livestock and even wine.

Imagine a world where nobody steals used cooking oil, because there's no grease trap. Instead, every fast food place in town reuses their grease to heat and power their restaurant with a VegaWatt cogeneration system. About the size of a washer/dryer combo, the VegaWatt disposes of used fry oil by running it through a 4-stage cleaning process and burning it in an EPA Tier 4 diesel generator to supplement 10-25% of a restaurant's power, and it's fully automated.

The VegaWatt has the capacity to guzzle the grease of restaurants equipped with 3-5 fryers -- and if you've got more than 5 fryers ... wow, you really must like deep fried food. Unlike putting up a wind turbine, solar panels, etc. the VegaWatt not only provides you with clean power, but it also saves you money in other areas. The VegaWatt's coling system pumps water throught the contraption and then back out to your water heater, lightening the load on your water heater. Even better, you don't have to pay a service to come pump your grease trap. In a lot of ways, it's similar to that trash gobbling dumpster.

[via Inhabitat]

Today, I came across a new candidate for the title of 'world's least eco-friendly toilet.' The St. Thomas Creations toilet doesn't stand out for its massive water usage (1.6 gpf). Instead, it stands out as the weird toilet that practically challenges people to test its awesome flushing power by shoving perfectly good food and other household items into the bowl.

Certainly, the commercial itself ranks as one of the most unnecessarily wasteful -- and strangely unsettling -- marketing videos I've probably ever watched. Who wants to watch three and a half pounds of dog food getting flushed down a toilet with cheesy techno music playing in the background? It just doesn't conjure up any positive mental images. Sure, a super flush is a nice feature, but you don't have to flush half the supermarket down it to prove that to me. Raunchy potty jokes are much more efficient and have the same effect.

[via BoingBoing]

Here's an interesting quote I came across over at Nature Mom's Blog:

Growing food is one of the most dangerous occupations on this earth because you are in danger of becoming free. - Jules Dervaes

Of course it's sarcasm because we all want to be free. We don't even really realize how dependent we are (some would call us slaves, although I'm not quite that dramatic) on the government and business and the food industry to keep us all alive and healthy and happy. What if we really were able to, and did, grow all of our own food? It would be outrageously freeing, wouldn't it?

I can't help but think it would also be an enormous amount of work, but then nobody ever said freedom comes easy.