Diet for a Cooler Earth

There is really so much we can do to lessen our personal carbon foot print and many of us have already got the ‘reuse, recycle and reduce waste’ concept. Trying to minimize our use of cars, upgrading to hybrids or more energy efficient models of appliances, switching to fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent and using [...]

Aggra-Heat How Agriculture is Heating up our Globe

The heating up of our globe and the resulting destructive changes in our climate is a complex issue, but definitely a result of mankind’s activities. Surprisingly, the dramatically successful development of wide scale agriculture has contributed up to 50% of the increased levels of carbon dioxide that is wreaking havoc with our climate. By clearing [...]

More Reasons To Support Organic Agriculture

I never cease to be amazed at how many people honestly don’t think there is any difference between food grown organically/naturally, and monocrops produced with petroleum based chemicals. The other day, an otherwise intelligent person argued with me that organic labeling was just an elaborate hoax to trick consumers into paying more for their groceries. [...]

Plastics in our Food

Do you remember that scene in The Graduate where Dustin was informed that “the future is in plastics?” It turns out that person was right. From the 60’s to now, plastics have taken over our lives in every sphere, from the home to space exploration to medical equipment and more. The plastic industry has become [...]

Make Your Own Babywipes

As a new mother I remember being overwhelmed by all the products that I was told I couldn’t live without. Considering that I was fervently committed to not using any thing that wasn’t entirely natural, I discovered that my choices were actually quite limited. But, since most of the ‘natural’ baby wipes had ingredients in [...]

The Real Chemical Policy in America

In 1976, the U.S. Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which granted our government the authority to evaluate and regulate industrial chemicals. Their stated mission was to limit the use of those chemicals proved to have a high hazard risk to human health or the environment. It was regarded as a great public [...]

Why Does Organic Cost More?

By now most Americans have some appreciation that food grown organically is better for our health and better for our environment. But it’s often hard to measure quantifiably, how much more valuable it is when it comes to the cash register and a fixed budget for spending on food. I have often balked at prices [...]

A Global Crisis of Food Wastage

One year ago, a report was released by the United Nations Environment Program that over half of the food produced globally is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain. This is a staggering fact that is substantiated by data from countries all around the world. It seems the [...]

Genetically Modified Food – A Growing Concern

Like most people, I’m concerned about the quality of the food that my family consumes. I’m well educated about the nutritional value of one food over another, but I was astonishingly ignorant of the fact that my family has been consuming foods that are genetically modified on a daily basis. As I began to research [...]

My 10 Favorite Green Blogs

There are so many great, green oriented blogs out there that it’s really impossible to chose just ten, but having said that, here’s my top ten list. Each of the following blogs presents something unique, either in the voice, the scope of their articles or the consistent relevant help they provide for those of us [...]

Sticky Issues with Cookware

American households have been using non stick cookware for nearly 50 years. These ‘teflon’ products were heralded in the early 1960’s as a great scientific advance to save housewives from hours of scrubbing to remove burnt on food from more conventional pots and pans. Americans happily replaced their cast iron and stainless steel cookware with [...]

Make Your Own Household Cleansers

When I first read about how you can clean your house without any of the harsh chemical products that line the supermarket shelves, I was really surprised. How could something so simple work? The more I researched, the more I realized that these recipes are ones that have been used for hundreds of years. Your [...]

Contaminated Drinking Water – in America?

On Dec 17th, the New York Times published an article that was seriously alarming. It seems that American tap water can not be trusted to be free from cancer and disease causing chemicals – even though it complies with current regulations. The problem is that the 35-year-old federal law regulating tap water is so out [...]

Walmart’s “Green” Card

Now, the low carbon emission leader!
Walmart, the world’s largest corporation, is about to set a new standard for sustainable manufacturing, that could change the world. It’s hard to grasp just how big Walmart is. By some estimates the total value of all goods and services sold by Walmart accounts for one third of our [...]

Less in Your Landfill

The average American throws away about four and a half pounds of trash each day. Plastic packaging alone makes up 64 million tons by weight or 33% of all our garbage. Newspapers add another 14% and paper products in general, up to 40% of our landfill. Each person also discards about 2 to 3 pounds [...]

Health Risks of PVC Plastic

Four prominent groups – the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology Program, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer – agree that PVC is one of 52 chemicals that are confirmed to cause cancer in humans.
PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, is just one of the plastics that [...]

10 Ways to Go Green Today

For many of us, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was a wake up call that was loud and clear. Even more compelling (and scary) is Leonardo DiCaprio’s film “The Eleventh Hour”.  As the news keeps coming in, my guess is we’re actually in the last ten minutes if we’re going to stop the runaway devastation [...]