Organic
Kanon Organic Vodka
A hot new introduction from a 400 year old distillery, Kanon Organic Vodka originates from the Gripsholm Distillery in Sweden. Dating back to 1580, this old world distillery with royal history was the largest distillery in Sweden supplying its foundry workers with high quality spirits from locally grown organic wheat. High quality organic vodka offerings from Europe are ever increasing with very little competition from state-side distilleries.
It is not just history which sets Kanon Organic Vodka apart from other organic liquor, it is also the unique organic process avoiding an ‘over-distilled’ vodka, providing a clean distinctive natural flavor without the typical vodka burn. I found it quite appealing on the rocks as well as paired with a mixer.
Going beyond just organic, the Gripsholm Distillery is run on wind and hydro power with all by-products being renewed. Even the Kanon bottle is made from 60% recycled glass giving it another bump on the eco-friendly scale. Locally produced organic wheat cuts down on transportation costs, and supports the local farmers.
What Foods to Buy Organic
I’m preparing to get married in September, and I’ve been working super hard to keep my diet healthy, while still saving money for the wedding. Even if you’re not getting married soon, you’re still probably on a budget with the way the economy is right now, and buying organic food can start to add up when your budget is tight. While it is always a better idea to eat organic food, I realize that sometimes it’s not always an option. After consulting the Environmental Working Group’s lists, and other environmental groups, I’ve compiled a list of fruits and veggies to go organic with, or to bypass if the budget won’t allow. A good rule of thumb is to consider the thickness of the skin. Melons of any type have thick skins and so pesticides have a harder time getting in. Peaches, berries, and other soft skinned fruit however eat the pesticides up like water, and tend to be highest on the pesticide scale.
Don’t forget meats, dairy, and eggs too. While they are sometimes hard to find in organic depending on where you live, they are very important to buy organic, sometimes more important than fruits and vegetables. There are so many pesticides and toxins in what animals are eating, let alone the products themselves.
Foods aren’t the only things that you should be seeking the natural approach for either. If you suffer from allergies or other health issues, environmental toxins may be to blame. It’s a good idea to buy almost anything in your bedroom, organically. You spend (hopefully) 8 hours out of every 24, sleeping in your bedroom. That’s a third of your day, and that doesn’t include other activities that you might do in your bedroom, such as work, or reading! Switching to an organic mattress or pillows might make all the difference in the world.
Fair Trade Tea Tasting: Zhena’s Gypsy Tea
I wake up in the morning pretty groggy, and the shower’s enough to keep me awake for a few minutes after I step out but like much of America, I need something more than water to keep me going through the day. I’d like to think it’s not true, but I probably am a caffeine-addict with my own alternative to a five dollar cup of coffee every morning – I kick start my day with tea.
I like to think though that I’m not a simple addict, but instead, a tea-connoisseur (ah, the semantics of denial) and have always gone out of my way to drink teas that appeal to me instead of simply getting a regular morning caffeine fix. Generally, this comes in the form of a single-estate tea I’ve either randomly picked up doing groceries – or when I’m particularly feeling curious, over the Internet.
Courtesy of Zhena's Gypsy Tea
I’ve also, less occasionally, dabbled my hand in flavored teas, where the interest isn’t so much in preserving the unique taste of tea from a particular estate but instead in the actual additional flavoring. Although it would be a break from routine, a sampler tin of 16 tea-bags (of four different flavors) caught my eye when I had to pick up a few groceries last week. What particularly perked my attention wasn’t the variety of flavors, or the colorful nature of the stacked tins, but the catchwords with which this tea were labeled: “fair trade” and “organic”. As I turned it over to the other-side, I also found that the tea was kosher. I couldn’t really place my finger on the relevance of the ‘kosher’ tag though as I always thought that such a label would only be applicable to products in some way derived from animals and they haven’t started putting bacon in tea just yet. “Meh”, I thought, “I’ll give em a try.”
Food as an Environmental Issue
http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxypar4/ / CC BY 2.0
While thinking about and writing my posts on natural groceries and organic delivery services, it came to my attention that the concept of food is not inherently an environmental issue in the minds of many people. I’ve got to admit that this kind of blew me away. To me, food is so essentially an environmental issue that to not think of it that way is to ignore huge aspects and linkages within environmentalism. Think of the vegetarian and vegan movements. Think of organics. Think of sustainable agriculture and waste reduction and prevention. The environment and all its issues are like a giant spider web, and right there in the middle, where all the threads intersect, is food.
When people think of being green, of acting environmentally responsible, they think of recycling, of using reusable shopping bags and water bottles. They might even go so far as to think of using public transit or even riding a bike to work. Let’s be honest, a lot of people just think politics and then tune out. When people think about food, they think of what they like to eat, what their family likes to eat, the price of the food, and maybe even what’s healthy.
But there is so much more to it than that. Let’s break it down. › Continue reading
Natural Groceries Part 2: Spud! Organic Delivery Service
I had the chance to try out and review Spud! Local and Organic Delivery this past week. After reviewing Whole Foods in order to have something to compare Spud with, I had high hopes for the delivery service, but mixed results in the end. But more on that later.
Spud (short for Small Potatoes Urban Delivery) was dreamed up in 1995 by a sustainability business consultant determined to correct the imbalance between large scale and independent farming through alternative retail methods, i.e. direct home delivery. This method generates 80% less food waste, creating direct connections between food suppliers and customers, and reduces grocery store car trips saving people time and reducing carbon emissions. Spud claims to be North America’s greenest grocer, through buying local, buying organic, and being completely, 100% carbon neutral.
The site itself is kind of amazing. It calculates how far away every item you order comes from. You have the choice to order only locally sourced items, meaning they are grown or made within 500 miles of your zip code. › Continue reading
Natural Groceries Part 1: Whole Foods
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilovemypit/ / CC BY 2.0
This past week I was lucky enough to get the chance to try out Spud’s organic delivery service. But in order to properly review the site and the service, I felt the need to compare it with another organic grocery chain, in order to provide a more valuable sense of perspective. So I decided to swing by my local Whole Foods Market to get a little scope.
The first thing I noticed, as I pulled into the parking stall, was the shiny new jaguar I was parked across from. Compared with my well loved, if slightly beat up, old Saturn, I felt a little out of place. Whole Foods has developed a bit of a reputation, particularly among the younger demographics of grocery shoppers, as a yuppie environmentalist market.
I must admit that I feel there is a grain of truth to this judgment. The selection is vast, the quality is impeccable, everything is natural and organic, and as such the prices are, understandably, high. Whole Foods has very much earned its nickname of “Whole Paycheck”. It made sense that at least one shopper had a nice car. If I made enough money to buy all my food at Whole Foods, I would probably drive something much nicer as well. › Continue reading
PeopleTowels: No they’re not made out of people…
I still remember what I initially thought when I first heard about PeopleTowels. I’m rather ashamed to admit it was something along the lines of “What, are they made of people?” Thankfully, no. They’re made for people, to empower people to cut back on the over consumption of paper towels. As co-founder Linda Lannon puts it, “It is the opposite of a paper towel, it is a PeopleTowel.”
Don’t pretend you haven’t walked into a public bathroom, either at a movie theater or at work, and cringed at the sight of the trash can literally overflowing with crumpled up paper towels. Even the air only blow driers use up a ton of energy and don’t get your hands properly dry anyway. Every once in a while you’ll see the waste-conscious, roller hand towels. But even then, I’ll always wonder whose germs I’m spreading over my freshly soaped and scrubbed hands.
The solution? PeopleTowels: the smart, personal, reusable hand towels. They’re conveniently small, roughly nine by nine inches. They’re well designed and brightly colored. They’re certified organic, fair trade cotton, made with 100% natural and nontoxic eco-friendly dyes. Absorbent, light weight and fast-drying, they come in a number of bright, fun, eco-chic designs. My personal favorite is the “this is not a tree” design, which really brings the point home. By using a PeopleTowel for one year, your actions alone are saving an entire quarter of a tree, conserving 250 gallons of water, and reducing landfill waste by 23 pounds. Those kinds of numbers add up pretty fast. › Continue reading
Biosolids and Compost
Last week, the Organic Consumers Association took a stand outside the mayor’s office in San Francisco to protest the city’s recent free composting program. (Read the article from their site here). It might sound like an odd thing to protest, especially with all the amazing benefits of composting. The national group chose San Francisco to demonstrate against since it is one of the most “green” cities in the U.S. and they felt that it would reach the best audience.
This group claims that the compost that was handed out “usually includes a number of heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pharmaceuticals, steroids, flame-retardants, bacteria (including antibiotic-resistant bacteria), fungi, parasites and viruses.” They cite an EPA survey that found heavy metals, steroids, anions, and pharmaceuticals in the biosolids from around the country
Many local governments have adopted the practice of turning biosolids into fertilizer to be sold or handed out for free. A biosolid is made from treated and processed sewage. The EPA claims that these biosolids contain “nutrient-rich organic materials”. Be careful to realize that when they say organic here, they do not mean certified organic, but organic as in organic chemistry. Read more about biosolids on the EPA’s website.
The reasoning for taking sewage and turning it into biosolids for farms and gardens sounds compelling at first glance. In the past, this sewage was dumped straight into lakes, streams, and other natural water sources. › Continue reading
Eco Labels and Logos
Eco Labeling can be confusing, and with so many different green logos out there, who do you trust? Luckily, many of the statements, such as Organic and Fair Trade, are regulated to some degree, so you can feel safe knowing that it isn’t ambiguous. With all that greenwashing out there, others can be a bit tricky, such as ‘Natural’ and ‘Eco-friendly’. Here is a quick guide covering the basics when it comes to organic, fair trade, humane, cruelty free, animal testing and more. These are the logos and labels you want to look for and trust.
Is Organic Food Really Better For The Environment?
Flikr User: Dano
I eat a lot of organic food. In fact, about 80% of the food that goes into my body is organic. I cannot tell you how many times I get teased about eating “dirt” from many of my friends, and even my family. A friend recently quizzed me about my reasons for eating organic. I claimed that one of the reasons I opt for organic food is for environmental reasons and my friend gave me the most flabbergasted look on the planet. He flat out refused to believe that organic food is more environmentally sound than “normal” food. This set me on a quest to defend my position that organic food is better for the environment. So here are the top three environmentally based reasons I choose to eat organic food:
1) Organic farming practices can help decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. According to The Rodale Institute, each acre devoted to organic farming can remove and store around 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year. That means if we were to convert all 434 million acres of farmland in the U.S. to organic farmlands, it would be the equivalent to getting rid of 217 million cars, which is about 1/3 of the automobiles in the world, according to the Organic Trade Association .
2) Organic farming uses less energy. According to the same study, organic farming practices use 30% less energy, less water, and obviously no pesticides. Think of all the energy that goes into the production and transportation of pesticides and › Continue reading
Container Gardening
Chart pulled from the Seattle Food System Enhancement Project: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Study conducted by the University of Washington. (http://tinyurl.com/y9m5rs9)
I’ve always admired gardeners for a hobby that produces food that’s not only delicious, but also eco-friendly and sustainable. I mean, what’s more local than your own backyard? The University of Washington and the City of Seattle did a study on greenhouse gas emissions from locally sourced food versus food sourced out of state or internationally. (Find it here) They found that the fuel used to transportation non-local fruits and vegetables produced almost six times as much CO2 as local alternatives. That’s a lot of CO2 we can cut out of our daily lives by simply eating locally sourced and homegrown food.
Growing up, I hated gardening. However now that I’ve matured a bit, as my mother would say, I’ve found a type of gardening that’s right up my alley. Container gardening. Container gardening is great because even those with apartments, can do it. And these days there are so many recycled, or compostable options for containers, that’s there’s really no excuse to not give it a try.
The best way to start is to pick something to plant that you’ll actually eat. There’s no point growing something that you won’t eat or store for later. For me, I chose zucchini and strawberries. I eat them raw, as well as making them into zucchini bread and strawberry jam. It’s fantastic to eat the fruits of my labors year round. It’s also important to pick something that does well in your climate and that you’ll actually be able to devote the time to upkeep. Also make sure you know when to plant, and what to expect from your plants. Try the Farmer’s Almanac for a list of last expected frost dates as a start. So do your research and if all else fails, hit your local garden store, there’s always someone there waiting to convert another person to gardening.
