Organic Banana Project

“Are you down with O.B.P.?  Yeah – you know me.  Who’s down with O.B.P.”  Ahh – what a classic song that brings me back to the early 90′s.  Its time to talk bananas (no, I’m not just happy to see you – get your mind out of the gutter!).  Lets start off the OBP – or Dole’s organic bananas, to be more specific.  If you’ve never bought them, they have this sticker on them where you can lookup where they’re farmed.  You go to DoleOrganic.com and find your farm number from the sticker (mine is 060 today).  Then you can learn different facts about the farm, who certified it organic, and see pictures (although – would I really know if they’re really pictures of the actual farm?  I’m taking their word this time).  The farm my specific banana came from is called “Esmeralda.”  It’s in Hondoras and has been certified organic since 1996.  Needless to say, I’m not on a locavore diet by eating bananas.  My worms do love the pesticide-free peels, though

If you’re not aware, the standard banana in the grocery store is choc-full-o-pesticides.  The pesticides are sprayed via crop dusters.  The workers harvesting the bananas often aren’t even told that the planes are coming and they have to duck-and-cover to avoid what they can.  The pesticides then wash into the soil and into rivers, etc.  It’s a lovely industry.  But wait – that’s not all – call now and you get…. “New pesticides are applied to the bunches after they are placed on a conveyer belt. The new pesticides, either thiabendazole or imazalil, are applied to prevent “crown rot,” a fungus that attacks the extremities of the banana bunch. ” 

Organic bananas aren’t that much more expensive and they’re worth it with all of those pesticides.  “But I don’t eat the peel?” you say.  Do you really think that porous peel keeps all of the toxins out of the fruit you’re eating?  Think again.  Sure they’re better than peaches or strawberries or apples, but vote with your dollars and buy organic when you can…and local…but there aren’t many banana trees in Chicago for me to choose from.

Source: Mindfully.org, my banana peel

New Organic Vegetable Testing

Spanish scientists have found a way to determine if veggies are truely organic (i.e. not a GMO or grown with synthetic fertilizer or pesticides).  The short of it is that they can test the vegetable with nitrogen isotopic discrimination – or rather they examine the nitrogen in the produce.  They performed the test on sweet peppers and were able to identify which peppers were grown with and without synthetic processes.  Organic fertilizers are generally derived from maneur which is a different type of nitrogen than a synthetic.  You can read the entire article from the Journal of Environmental Quality to see if you can fully understand what the heck they are saying.  From what I gather, the process is expensive and wouldn’t be used for large-scale.  It would be used for suspected fraud.  It also doesn’t take into account any of the farm processes that USDA Organic checks on. 

 The Daily Green also has a nice blurb about it.  I think that it sounds very interesting, but I can’t seem to articulate very well this morning.

Source: Journal of Environmental Quality

Green Drinks Virgin No More

I can proudly proclaim that I am no longer a Green Drinks virgin.  I’ve officially attended my first outing.  Maybe I should explain what Green Drinks is in the first place?  Well – since you asked…  Green Drinks was founded in the UK in 1989 by a green designer. It was originally founded as an informal gathering where people with interest in the environment and all things green can get together and share ideas and drinks. There are currently events regularly in 312 cities worldwide.  So check your local listings…or Google…or just start your own.

Green Drinks in Chicago began in February 2003.  Yes – for five long years, green drinks has been going strong here in the Windy City.  The events average around 75+ people and are now semi-monthly.  One meeting per month is a general focus while the other is aimed towards green business. 

Once I decided to finally bite the bullet and go – with the encouragement of my wife – I had to decide what mode of transportation I was going to take (although I knew immediately what I really had to do).  I live about 40 miles from the city of Chicago, yet I work downtown.  Luckily I had a couple things going for me.  One was that I already have a train pass paid for since I do go to the city via train every weekday.  The second is that the Green Drinks event is only about a 10-15min walk from the train.  The downside is that the train only runs hourly after a certain time and it makes every single stop.  I could easily drive to work and park.  Then driving home would potentially be very quick since it was way after rush hour.  Finally, I opted for the train for a couple reasons.  One is that  I’m cheap and the train is already paid for.  The second is that it seems a little hypocritical of me to drive to Green Drinks when I can easily take mass transit.  The third is that this is Green Drinks for crying out loud – maybe I could get a nice buzz on and learn about the environment and sober up on the train. 

So – I know what you’re thinking now – you want me to set the scene of me losing my Green Drinks virginity.  Break it down, yo.  First off, it begins at 5:30pm and your asked to donate $5 to the cause.  Not a problem.  5:30-6:45pm is for networking and getting your initial buzz going – which gives you the liquid courage to talk to even more strangers.  At 6:45pm the festivities begin.  There is usually a speaker on one or two topics.  Tonight was a little different.  The allotted time was one hour and there were 7 speakers to get through.  Each were given 7min to speak.  That left a little time for introductions and the initial MC by Peter who runs Foresight Design and Green Drinks Chicago.  During the speakers you can order some eats and drinks and sit back and relax…or take notes like me.  Then when the speakers are done, you can continue networking until 8:30pm or whenever everyone decides to leave.  Pretty simple.  There is also a table full of all kinds of good materials brought by the participants.  So you can find green businesses and all kinds of different initiatives going on in the area.  I have a nice stack of things…and no doubt I’ll be writing about them in a blog post soon.

Tonight’s episode of Green Drinks focused on the State of Sustainable Chicago with seven different organizations presenting.  The organizations involved this time were: Illinois League of Conservation Voters, U.S. Green Building Council – Chicago Chapter, Illinois Environmental Council, Openlands, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, Access Living and Jobs With Justice.

I look forward to attending more meetings (I sound like I’m in a 12-step program) and seeing one that isn’t so schizophrenic.  Don’t get me wrong, I did have a good time and it was totally worth it.  It always feels good to go to those things and they’re not just filled with a stereotypical hippie treehugger, but people from all walks of life.  It makes you feel normal – like you’re not the odd-man-out.

Whole Foods Ditches Plastic Bags

Whole Foods is phasing out plastic bags in all of their stores – US, Canada and the UK.  It’s not just a quick phase-out, either.  They want to be plastic bag-free by Earth Day, April 22 (hey – isn’t it Earth Day everyday?).  This comes on the heels of decisions like China’s “free” plastic bag ban and last years San Francisco citywide ban.  Ikea also started charging $0.05 per plastic bag last year as well.  New York City recently announced that they are forcing stores to take back their plastic bags for recycling – and the store has to figure out how to get them recycled.

Its great that a “major” chain grocery store is taking this initiative and it only makes sense that it’s Whole Foods.  Although, I can’t say that Trader Joe’s ever had plastic bags that I can remember.  Whole Foods will still offer paper bags for free – but they are made from 100% recycled paper.  Kudos to WF.  They did do some consumer testing by eliminating plastic bags in several markets and saw positive customer response.  They also give you $0.10 off for each reusable bag you use.

Now – if only Wal-Mart would either ban or start charging for plastic bags.  Baby steps.  They recently had each employee sign a Personal Sustainability Promise.  I guess that they’re starting with educating their employees first.  I’ll accept that.  A company like Wal-Mart who’s demographic certainly is not always thinking green, can make a huge impact.  If they charged for plastic bags and sold reusable bags, people would still shop there for their deep discounts.  While I don’t really like Wal-Mart, they are trying.

Source: CNN Money via tip from Steve

Consumerism: Ben Folds Style

Musically, I have been going to the well a bit lately.  Ben Folds wrote a bunch of EPs after Rockin The Suburbs came out and released those instead of making a full disc.  Eventually a bunch of those tracks got reworked into Songs for Silverman.  One of them that didn’t make the full disc is a tune called All You Can Eat.  I’ve listened to it a million times, but just not recently.  It happened to come on while I was shuffling all my tunes and I thought, “I should post this song because it is so true about America.”  A quick search of YouTube and I found a video from Australia that uses the song as the background.

Ben married an Aussie and has lived there with his kids for a long time, so he’s probably been awakened much as I was when I went to Canada.  ”Awakened,” you say?  Yes – awakened to our “me” society.  Me want big cars.  Me wants to have 300 choices of cereal in the grocery store.  Me want my MTV.  Me want 30 colors of the same shirt in every different size even if it was made by workers who aren’t fairly paid, but I have to look good and I don’t want to pay the real cost of the garment, so please make it quick and dirty and I don’t care if its made with all kinds of toxic dyes and was probably made in a factory that is polluting like crazy and then ship the friggin thing all the way from China and then put in on the store shelves so I can get in my Tahoe (Hybrid, of course, because “I’m green” and I changed a light bulb b/c Oprah said to) that I leave idling until its the ideal temperature so my lazy fat ass can be comfortable while I go through the McDonald’s drive-thru to pickup some cheap-ass plastic toys (made with the finest Chinese lead) in a Happy Meal for my screaming kids who are drinking their 20oz Mountain Dews in plastic bottles which I will never recycle and then I’ll wonder why my 5yr old weighs 100lbs and then finally I can get to the store to find the garment I want in the big pile of shit and look in the mirror and feel good about myself because I look fantastic, damnit!…but I digress.

Two summers ago, we took a family vacation to Toronto.  I’ve always had this odd fascination with all things related to the Great White North.  I’m not sure if it has to do with my love of hockey or the fact that I watched Strange Brew starring Bob & Doug McKenzie like a million times as a kid or the fact that my brother listened to Rush on a constant loop. Anyway, we spent several days in Toronto.  It’s a beautiful city with a lot of similarities to Chicago.  I could live there in a second (except that I’d be poor because the US dollar is so weak right now).  I felt like it had everything that I could get here, but the people were thinner and there were more Prius’s and people were more socially conscious.  So after spending several days in Toronto we headed around the lake to Niagra Falls.  We could easily tell that we were nearing the States when the people got larger and the cars got larger.  We could count on one-hand the times we saw a Suburban or another truck of that size in Canada until the Falls.   When I listened to All You Can Eat today, it made me reminice of our trip there and the feelings we had.

I should make a note here that I really am not Anti-American, although it may sound like it from this post.  The more you read about large “green” movements that are accepted by the culture and governments – it’s almost always in a different country.  I’m just hoping that more people become aware and start to make changes for the good of the world and not just their own immediate carcass.

So anyway – without further ado, watch and listen to Ben Folds – All You Can Eat – and oh yeah – there are some f-bombs…

Bonus vid from Triple-J Radio 
(more…)

The Great Milk Debate

Which milk is best?  The stuff in the plastic gallon jugs?  Milk from cows raised without growth hormones?  Maybe standard organic milk?  How about soy “milk?”  What about raw milk?  If you’re lactose intolerant, how about milk from grass-fed cows?  Do most consumers even know there are choices?  All milk is not the same.   I can’t answer which milk is best for you…you have to figure that one out for yourself.   

I guess I should start off by telling you what my family consumes.  Less than a year ago, we switched to Oberweis Dairy milk.  You can find it in any grocery store in Chicagoland and in the stand-alone stores.  We were regularly buying plain old homogenized skim milk from Costco in the standard plastic gallon jug for $1.99/gal.  It is very economical, but I never felt good about it for several reasons.  First off I had heard about how milk had rBGH in it which is bovine growth hormone.  It’s rumored to be one of the reasons our children are “developing” younger than generations past.  I’ve never researched the truth in that, but I don’t doubt it.  The other reason that I switched was that I liked the idea of reusing glass bottles.  I am paying $6/gal now.  Yes, that is three times as much, but I feel that extra money is well spent.  Now Oberweis is not certified organic, but it is without rBGH.  It’s give-and-take.  I am taking the glass bottle over the alternatives at the moment.  I’m sure if I really investigated Oberweis, I might switch again.

I’ve already stated why I don’t buy the standard milk anymore.  I don’t need to fill myself up with any more artificial hormones and antibiotics than I get from everything else I eat.  This is also why I buy Tall Grass Beef - all grass-fed beef from Kansas.  Luckily for me, I can find it at my local grocery store.  I’d probably buy grass-fed milk, if I could find it easily and it wasn’t too outrageous in cost. 

I have a source for raw milk where I live.  “Why do you say ‘source’ for raw milk?,”  you ask.  Well, raw milk is illegal to sell.  Some places skirt the issue buy entering into a “cow sharing” program.  So you are buying part of the cow, not the milk, yet you get the milk and not the cow.  Follow?  Now, I don’t buy raw milk, however.  The raw milk that I can buy would cost me $8/half-gal.  Yes – that is $16 for one gallon of milk.  Raw milk is unpasteurized and is not homogenized.   Many health experts believe that it is the healthiest milk you can get.  Some people even claim that it cures various illness.  They even drink straight collostrum, too.  I get an email from my “source” each Thursday and I can put in an order.  Then I have to show up at someone’s house in a certain time window to make the transaction.  All this shady behavior for milk. Well – they also sell raw milk cheese and other organic products.  Should raw milk be legal?  Read more on the NYT website.

Maybe it’s time for me to come clean.  Here I go on one of my “farm boy” stories again.  When I was little and growing up in rural Western Pennsylvania, I lived on a farm. It was small farm – nothing we used for income.  We had some cows, pigs, horses, dog, barn cats, and so on.  Well, we also had a Nubian goat aptly named “Nubie.”  I guess my dad just figured that since goats produce milk, why not just milk the goat we had, right?  So we did.  I really don’t know for how long, but when I was growing up, I drank raw goats milk regularly.  We’d strain it through some gauze and put it in the fridge.  Luckily for me, I was just a tad too young to milk old Nubie, so my brother had the pleasure.

If I wasn’t buying Oberweis milk, I’d probably be buying organic milk.  Just not from Target or Wal-Mart.  Who knew there was so much research into something so simple like milk?  Well – look no further than the Cornucopia Institute to do the research for you on organic milk.  They have an annual organic dairy report card.  The scores are broken down into a point scale of 0-1200.  Then it’s rated with little graphics – 5 cows being the best.  A five rating suggests that the dairy knows their cows.  They know what they eat, when they were born, and the farm gets the profits from the milk.  A four-cow rating is still great.  They typically buy their milk wholesale from a number of dairies, but they are still responsible.  You can read more about the survey, the ratings, and the results at the Cornucopia Institute .

If after all of this, you just can’t drink milk, then go with soy.  I don’t have much to say about soy milk.  Just check the sugar content.  All milk has natural sugars, though. 

Enjoy!

Cornfed America

As you can probably tell if you’ve been a SCREAM follower is that I like videos.   I generally find them compelling to get the point across.  I was watching Current TV about a month or so ago and saw a short video..err…”pod”…on our dependence on corn.  You heard me right.  Corn. 

The video will tell most of the story.  If you want to read more about GMO’s (genetically modified organism) and corn, go to this site.

You may notice that this video is Canadian.  So enjoy the PROcess.  I love a girl who says “aboot.”

Easy Green: No Plastic Baggies

This one is easy…but not as easy as it should be.  I use wax paper baggies for my sandwiches when I brown bag it.  They may seem odd to some, but it’s kind of a throwback to the Leave It To Beaver era.  I like them because they’re bigger than a standard baggie – so they fit my fatty sandwich in there easily.  The other benefits are obvious.  You’re not using disposable plastic and the paper is recyclable. 

Now comes the part about how it’s not as easy as it should be.  I’ve checked two of my regular grocery stores with no luck finding these.  The only place that I’ve seen them is at Whole Foods and I don’t live anywhere close to one.  I’m not sure if Trader Joe’s sells them or not.  So I walked down the entire aisle – twice – looking for these.  All I saw was a wall of plastic baggies.  It was evidence of our disposable society.  Maybe if they were made from corn-based plastic – but they’re not – just a bunch of oil.

Before I get flamed for bashing disposable products and then telling people to use disposable wax paper bags, I must say that I am not perfect (yes, I am admitting it - shhh – don’t tell anyone).  I am still using a disposable product.  At least I can recycle this one or compost it.  Sure they’re better, but wax baggies aren’t perfect.

If you’re better than I – like my daughter – you can buy a Wrap-N-Mat.  These are great for kids – great for anyone, really.  They’re exactly what they sound like – a sandwich wrap that when you open it becomes a placemat.  We bought ours at Reusablebags.com and I recommend you do the same.  I really like them and their customer service.  I know you all like videos – so don’t fret – here’s Wrap-N-Mat being showcased on NBC.

Now if you’re like my friend Amy and Karen, then you’ll want to go with the Wonder Bread case.  Yeah – its plastic, but it’s retro.  I’m not sure where to buy one, though. 

How about a bento box?  These are cool Japanese lunchboxes.  All with separate little cases for each little lunch portion.  The popular ones are Laptop Lunches.  There is a new one that I’d love to try called Lunchopolis from ironically enough Lunchopolis.com.  They’re made from a polycarbonate.  The tagline reads “help eliminate 3.5 billion pounds of lunchbox garbage generated each year.”  Think about that.  3.5billion pounds.  Think about that next time you’re at a fast-food joint and you’re throwing away your garbage. 

Who Owns Your Favorite Organic Company?

I recently wrote about Clorox’s pending aquisition of Burt’s Bee’s.  Most of those organic food products you’re buying aren’t from some little farm in Wisconsin.  Dr Phil Howard, assistant professor at Michigan State University, has created a series of infographics related to the organic food industry.  It’s a “who owns who?” of organic foods.  For instance, Kraft Foods owns Back To Nature.  In the drink business, Coca-Cola owns Odwalla and Pepsi owns Naked Juice.  Kashi is independent, right?  Nope.  It’s owned by Kellogg’s. 

At least there a few independents still out there like Newman’s Own.  Amy’s Kitchen is prime for a buy out.  Same with Clif Bar (who also makes Luna bars).  I was actually surprised that Nature’s Path was an independent.  They make Envirokidz cereal and granola bars among other things.

Anyway – checkout the graphics and see for yourself who owns your favorite organic food company.

Easy Green: Use REAL Napkins

I’d have to say that is was early summer when we made the switch to using real cloth napkins at home.  We still had our reserve supply of disposable on-hand for emergencies and/or laziness.  When we first started out, we got a small batch from my wife’s grandmother.  We began to get hooked, so we sought out more.  My friend Joy hooked me up with another stack that she got at a local thrift store (thanks Joy!).  Now whenever we have to use disposable napkins at home because we haven’t washed the others yet it just feels very weird.  Feeling weird is good, though.  I’m trained – as much as I can be, I guess.

The first benefit is easy – you’re not throwing away the waste.  The counter argument is that you’re using water to wash the napkins in the laundry.  Yes, you are using water in the washing machine, but it is far less than the water that is needed to produce the paper napkin that you use once and toss.  Many napkins are made from virgin wood and contain minimal recycled paper.  Even if you buy 100% recycled paper napkins, you’re far better off using cloth.  The recycling process uses lots of water and lots of energy.  I don’t want to hear about it being gross, either.  Its a napkin and a modern washing machine. 

We were at the in-law’s tonight where they use disposable napkins like most people do.  My four year old son says to his grandmother something to the effect of “you should use real napkins because those ones are wasteful.”  It was pretty funny to all of us, but I guess he does pay attention to us.  Maybe it’s because I just bought another 6 napkins for a whopping $0.82 today.

So I had planned on writing this post today when I happened to check a great blog, The Green Daily.  Ironically, they also wrote on this topic today.  They link out to a site that teaches you to make your own napkins, as well.  Check it.