Step it Up Tomorrow!

Want to help change the world tomorrow? November 3rd, 2007, is Step It Up's second national day of action. The organization's goal is to "empower the grassroots climate movement to take action locally by calling for national change." Step it Up has helped to organize rallies throughout the country to raise awareness about global warming and to initiate policy changes at both a local and national level. Visit their website to find an event near you.

Of the 18 presidential candidates invited to events tomorrow, 8 will be attending along with 78 members of Congress. The presidential candidates attending are Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson.

Step it Up was founded by Bill McKibben, author of Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community, but most of the team members are in their twenties. Step it Up is working with the 1 Sky Initiative, which has come up with a clear plan for "avoiding the worst effects of global warming and creating a clean energy economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty." The three priorities of the plan are:


GREEN JOBS NOW
5 MILLION GREEN JOBS CONSERVING 20% OF OUR
ENERGY BY 2015

CUT CARBON 80% BY 2050
FREEZE CLIMATE POLLUTION LEVELS NOW AND CUT AT
LEAST 80% BY 2050 AND 30% BY 2020

NO NEW COAL
A MORATORIUM ON NEW COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS

Saturday's events will encourage our legislators to make these priorities their priorities too. They will also be great places to network with other like-minded individuals, and to send a message to Congress that we are concerned about climate change. Your attendance will also demonstrate your commitment to taking action both on Tuesday at the ballot box, and on presidential election day a year from now.

Ten Ways is also a friend and ally of Step it Up. For the complete list of friends and allies, click here.

Nature + 21st Century = We Have the Technology

Technology has been getting a bad rap these days. People are becoming disconnected from each other, kids are being raised on television and learning bad "IM-ing" grammar, and humans are creating pollution of all sorts at alarming rates. Oh yes, and we are running out of potable water. It seems that while a return to nature might be necessary to heal many of these woes, this solution by itself is not altogether practical. Instead, it is clear that it is time to look to the wisdom of nature and the innovation of technology for answers to pressing environmental problems.

The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in Rhinebeck, New York has done just that. The Institute broke ground earlier this month on the Omega Center for Sustainable Living. The Center, which will include a constructed wetland, classroom, greenhouse, water garden, and laboratory, will get all of its water from collected rain, employ a roof garden and geothermal technology to help regulate the temperature of the building, and generate electricity through the use of photovoltaic panels. According to Executive Director Skip Backus, "For thirty years Omega has been a leader in holistic, sustainable living. As an environmental steward, Omega is launching the center to address a growing concern – the lack of fresh, clean water.”

Everyone's Digging the New Center!
(Photo by, Andy Milford, courtesy of Omega Institute)

One of the most impressive features of the new building is the Eco Machine, a state-of-the-art water filtration/recycling system. It will have the capability to recycle 35,000-40,000 gallons of wastewater into clean water each day using plants, bacteria, algae, snails, and fungi. According to John Todd, the initial developer of the technology used to construct the Eco Machine, "The Omega Center for Sustainable Living will be the first education center of its kind in the United States to combine the latest in green building and wastewater treatment technologies under one roof. It will be built with the most cutting edge technology currently available and will demonstrate how we can live in harmony with nature rather than destroying it."

Sounds like a good plan to me.

For more information on how the Eco Machines work and for other innovative water planning ideas, visit John Todd Ecological Design.

And The Bride Wore Green

Well actually, she wore white...
but consider the fact that the average wedding costs almost $27,000 according to cnn.com. As I start to plan my own wedding, I have found myself accidentally watching shows like "Bridezillas" and "Platinum Weddings," and they certainly do set a unique standard for what weddings should look like. But since I try not to over-consume in any other area of my life, planning a wedding feels like an overwhelming prospect for this environmental activist on a budget. Fortunately, there are plenty of options for a "green" wedding, and the recent wedding I attended in the Pacific Northwest was a wonderful example of what a wedding should be - not only was it environmentally and socially responsible, it was also fabulous and filled with love.

Lesley and Joe, my dear friends in Seattle were married this July. Their wedding felt both lavish and local at the same time. Many friends and family gathered days (and weeks! - guilty as charged! - but who can say no to a month in Seattle in the summer?) before the event to help prepare for the nuptials. According to Lesley (pictured right), "Our wedding planning was guided by our core values about community, place, family and friends. Our goal was to have our choices fit with who we are and what we believed in (as opposed to pre-existing traditions about what a wedding should and shouldn't be). When you start to plan a wedding, the first logical step is to tap into the ever-growing wedding industrial complex of websites, magazines, books, and conventions. Weddings Inc. is a huge industry, and we realized that we did not want to be a consumer at our own wedding. We wanted to actually be the creators of our own wedding."

To that end, Lesley and Joe used local sources for most of the food, wine, and decor. Even the photographer was local. They held their ceremony at a local park that overlooked the Puget Sound, and their reception was in their backyard. In lieu of a gift registry, they asked people to contribute to a travel fund, which they will use at a later date to go on a "family heritage tour." Their gifts to the guests were trees planted in their honor through treesforlife.

Friends and family helped to prepare for the big day using their particular brands of talent. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the prep, but I will try to describe the scene in a few words - The bride's twin, Alexis, spent months organizing the event - really she should start her own business. She also mowed the lawn a few days before the ceremony using an electric lawnmower, which is much more efficient than a standard gas mower. Steve (my husband), Lesley, and Joe spent many hours on home improvement projects as the reception was going to be held in their backyard, and I had an unsuccessful attempt at caulking windows, followed up by more capable help on the cleaning, cooking, and organizing front. Steve, aka DJ Sleepy, also made sure the dance floor was full on the wedding night. Lesley and Joe's families were both on hand several days before to help with all of the last minute details. Our friend Robin made the cake, helped to level the garden (where the tables and chairs would be), and cooked many a feast for the housemates using the delicious beets and greens from the garden. Lesley, in her infinite wisdom, had not wanted to have a fallow garden due to the festivities, so she planted crops that would be ready to eat by late July. The long planting season in Seattle allowed her to replant in August. She also planted flowers all around the house that added to the overall natural beauty of the reception.

1. The former and future garden 2. DJ Sleepy getting warmed up! 3. Happy and sated wedding guests (in case you couldn't tell from their big smiles) --> 4. Wedding planner extraordinaire Alexis, minus the electric lawnmower, plus one proud Aunt Joni

As for the food, it was incredible! Some of the highlights of the food from The Savory Gourmet included fresh shucked local oysters, bruschetta with Mediterranean toppings, grilled wild Lummi Island reef net caught salmon with Asian marinade and Javanese sauce, many shades of green salad with lemon vinaigrette, and grilled Tall Grass Bakery hominy bread with sweet butter. The Savory Gourmet's owner, Marcia Newlands says, "The Savory Gourmet focuses on food that is healthy and good for your body. To me, this means food made from what is local and fresh that day, not what is growing in Argentina or Australia and shipped thousands of miles to a grocer in Seattle. By shifting the focus to the ingredients, I have found that the flavors are enhanced as is the enjoyment of my food by its recipients." Of course, the wine and beer were also all from Washington State.

<--- This guy got a workout! Grilled Northwest Marinated Beef with Horseradish
and Salpicon Sauces and French Potato Salad

As for dessert, no wedding would be complete without the cake! This sweet masterpiece was created by our dear friend Robin Posey, the new executive chef at The Hi-Life in Seattle, and it was the creamiest, moistest, tastiest, fruitiest, most deserving of many more superlatives, cake I've ever eaten (and I'm not just saying that because I want her to make our wedding cake too!) The cake was officially a six layer lemongrass-ginger scented white cake with seasonal stone fruit and mascarpone buttercream frosting. As for her ingredients, Robin says, "The cake was about 72% organic -- most of the butter and heavy cream were, and all of the fruits were." Robin also used as many local ingredients as possible including Black Raven Plums, which are as scrumptious as they sound.




The newlyweds, Robin, Marcia, and a special guest appearance from the cake!

This wedding was amazing because it reflected the values of the bride and groom; it was a day (and night!) about love, community, and the responsible and respectful use of local resources. Any party can be thrown in this manner without compromising the celebration of special events. In fact, hosting an environmentally responsible bash can be even more meaningful, because you are gathering your friends and family together and leading by example.

I'll leave you with a story from Lesley, which I think encapsulates the entire spirit of the affair:

Here's a story. It's about flowers. While our wedding ceremony and reception settings (local park and our backyard) had quite a lot of natural beauty, we wanted flowers to decorate tables and add the special romantic touches that flowers do. Our first idea was to grow our own! We chose dahlias for their late and long summer bloom, their love of the Pacific NW climate, and the nooks and crannies and colors that make them beautiful and unique. No wonder they are Seattle's city flower. After carefully planting and caring for our 25 pots of dahlias, only two small buds had opened a week before the wedding. Our large plants of dahlias were blooming magically, but they weren't nearly enough to use for the wedding. Plus, we couldn't bear to cut these living beasts and the new burst of color they added to the south side of the house, and end all the buds and life they had to give for the rest of the summer (they are still blooming as I write).

So...we turned to our next local source...The Pike Place Market. The day before the wedding, we purchased dahlias and a few other varieties from several Hmong families that have been growing and selling flowers in the market for decades. We had friends and family throughout the day and night help arrange flowers into various jars that had been recycled over the past months. It was supporting and building community that guided these decisions, helping local growers continue their family tradition, and having our friends and family contribute to growing our wedding--we had everyone from Joe's Aunt Bobbie with many years of flower arranging to Matty and Stephane, buzzed at 2 a.m. and psyched to be arranging flowers for the first time in their lives. It was beautiful, and the tables reflected all the delicious personalities of the people that shared in the wedding day.

The next day, Barndi spontaneously put out cut flowers on the street with a "Free" sign. As we headed off for our trip to Vancouver Island, we were delighted to see someone stop by and pick a few up.


Was this the most enviro-friendly method? Probably not...at one point we had considered using living herbs and young vegetables, so people could plant them after the wedding, as opposed to the cut flowers that inevitably die within a few weeks. Likewise, our choice to not use a traditional registry was because we really wanted the wedding to be about experiences, not products. While our family heritage tour to Eastern Europe to visit old towns of our ancestors will be made possible through the generosity of our guests, we'll also be stamping our carbon footprint with our several thousand mile airline flight.

What's the moral here? Planning a wedding is complex, just as changing the world is. You have to feed people, get people to one place, figure out where they are going to stay, entertain, etc. It became clear fairly quickly that this wedding was going to cost money, whatever it looked like. We also soon realized that the answers to what we wanted our wedding to look like, a tribute to family and friends and place, were not to be found in the wedding resources available to us. What worked for us was to be the socially-conscious consumers that we are in our day-to-day life. Some of these are environmentally friendly and low impact, and some are not. Some can be created from the ground up, others cost money. We learned that whenever we hit a point where we didn't know what to do or where to go, going back to our core values always worked. Almost two months after the wedding, we are still buzzing with the love energy created by having everyone we loved in the backyard.

Are We A Disposable Society?

Knowledge is power, right? After all, it gave us all of this useful technology like plastic wrap, Tupperware, drinking bottles, and bags of just about every size. However, when I started to do a little research about all of this plastic -and what happens to it once I am done using it- I found that it was time to take a hard look at our society's plastic consumption. Here are a few facts about plastic:

• According to the Container Recycling Institute, less than 30% of plastic bottles were recycled in 2006.
• Plastic does not biodegrade.
• Instead, it photodegrades from exposure to sunlight (not much of that in landfills) and becomes smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, which remain in the ecosystem.
• Disturbing amounts of plastic are now being found in the ocean. There is a section of the Pacific known as "Eastern Garbage Patch" because it contains so much plastic.
• The manufacturing and transportation process of one bottle of water uses ¼ gallon of fossil fuel and emits 1.2 pounds of greenhouse gases.
  
• Nearly seven times the amount of water that goes into a bottled product will be required to produce its plastic container.
  

Okay, I'm convinced. Plastic may be necessary, but certainly the less I consume each day, the better off we'll all be. In order to curb my plastic consumption, I decided to start with something easy - my bottled water and plastic bag use. Both of these products are consumed in the United States in the millions (bottled water) and billions (plastic bags) every year.

Fortunately, the solution to the bag quandary is easy:

Bring your own!

Reusablebags.com and envirosax.com both make bags that are fashionable and compact. Reusablebags even makes produce bags, which really come in handy when you are tempted to take a bag to hold that wet head of lettuce or four round (and rolling!) tomatoes.

Now on to plastic water bottles. In order to help illustrate my point about how our individual actions can make a difference (cliche but true), I will digress with a short (but true) story:

I was recently playing basketball with a bunch of my basketball buddies, and one of them brought out several bottles of designer bottled water - you know the type - square bottle, expensive, comes from a land far far away. I pointed out to him that the water he was drinking had to go a long way in order to wet his whistle in Bedford, NY. In an earnest effort to cut down on the travel time of his bottle of water, he showed up to the next game with a bottle of water from his home state. I pointed out that while he had dealt with the travel issue of the last bottle, he was still drinking water from a receptacle that took precious resources to produce - electricity, petroleum, water - and that he could have easily brought water from home (for free!). It turns out that the third time was the charm. At the third water/basketball summit meeting, my friend showed up with a big reusable bottle of water. His big complaint about his water from home was the taste, and I recommended that he purchase a filter. I also pointed out that many brands of bottled water are tap water. For more on the bottled water fiasco, check out this month's National Resources Defense Council online article, "The Future of Drinking Water."

So please, by all means, hydrate. For water on the go, buy a reusable water bottle or two and use that instead. If you live in a place with safe drinking water, and I bet most of you do, fill it with tap water (filtered as necessary) and enjoy.

So why this sudden obsession with plastic? Well, the bottom line is that we are running out of room and resources on this planet. The products we consume and then turn into garbage do not really just go away, but rather they continue to reside with us in this limited space we all share. Many of them will still reside here long after we are gone. In order to reduce our waste, we have to take a critical and honest look at our consumption.

Once you see how easy it is to curb your plastic bottle and bag consumption, you will probably want to figure out ways to put even less in the landfill. Check out this list from Coop America of the "21 Things You Didn't Know You Can Recycle."

Go ahead, consume less, reuse and recycle more, and dispose of as little as possible.

Ode to Seattle and the Triple Bottom Line

I just had the good fortune of spending three glorious weeks in the Pacific Northwest. We were based in Seattle, as we had two weddings bookending our trip. One of these weddings was an incredible example of what can be done when a community of friends and family comes together to produce a sustainable, affordable, mostly organic, and delicious affair. In fact, this wedding was such a good example of a way to "party with a purpose" (yes, shameless plug for one of the chapters in my book), that it really deserves its own blog entry, and next week's blog will be all about it.

However, before I get too far ahead of myself, I want to extol the virtues of spending time in the Pacific Northwest in the summer, and especially the opportunities that we found to eat locally, even while on vacation. Not only were we able to eat local and organically grown foods when we did the cooking, we also found several restaurants and a chocolatier that use these same values when creating their culinary delights.

The first restaurant is aptly named The Stumbling Goat. I'll leave you to puzzle out why I say aptly, but I'll give you a hint and tell you that the night we dined there happened to be half price bottle night for many of their wines. The wine list was superb, the sommelier and waiter were knowledgeable and friendly, and the food was so delicious that I asked to take home a menu in order to remember every scrumptious morsel. The menu changes on a seasonal basis, and the restaurant uses mainly local, wild, and organic ingredients. In fact, they print a list of local farmers and purveyors that they work with on the back of their menu. One of my favorite taste sensations of the night was a cheese from the Estrella Family Creamery and bread from The Essential Baking Company.

The second restaurant is called Tilth, and while we did not have the good fortune of eating there on our trip, our close friends and bona fide foodies have dined there several times and highly recommend it. According to Tilth's website, it is "one out of two restaurants in the country to receive Oregon Tilth organic certification; (it) explores the experience of eating well and eating local through sourcing its produce, meats, eggs and cheeses from local and organic suppliers." Tilth is a food experience we will certainly enjoy next time we are in Seattle.

And for dessert, we discovered Theo Chocolate thanks to our friend Barndi, who happens to have a serious sweet tooth, or is it a chocolate tooth in her case? In any case, Theo Chocolate runs their business according to what they call the "triple bottom line" - People, The Planet, and Profit. They have been making chocolate (and a profit) with a business model that we can certainly encourage more businesses to follow. All of their specialty chocolates are organic and fair trade, and the real bottom line is that their truffles are some of the best I have ever tasted.

These were some of the many options we found for eating locally produced food during our travels. In order to find restaurants such as these on your next trip, you can simply do a search on Google with the name of the town you are visiting and the words "organic, natural foods, or vegetarian restaurants." As demand for this type of food spreads, so will its availability. Another great new resource for this type of product is a website, which is about to launch called Evolvist.com. It is designed to be a directory of organizations and businesses that are committed to environmental and social responsibility. Stay tuned to Weekly Way to find out when their website launches. In the meantime, visit their website to read their blog and to sign up for updates about their directory.

Until then, feel free to post your recommendations on this blog about organic restaurants and organic food purveyors that you patronize. After all, it is always great to discover where the locals eat, wherever your travels take you.

Chimp Greetings, The Wave, and An Inconvenient Truth: Remixed

Back Row Seats. Who could say no?

On July 7th, my husband Steve and I headed out to the Meadowlands to see the New York (or more accurately New Jersey, which many of the performers and presenters -most notably Bon Jovi and Zach Braff, writer and director of Garden State- pointed out) Live Earth concert at Giants Stadium. An estimated 65,000 people showed up along with us on the second Saturday in July. The purpose of the concerts was to launch a movement to address the global climate crisis. More than 10 million people watched the concerts live or on television. Eight concerts took place in New York, London, Johannesburg, Rio De Janeiro, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, and Hamburg. While the concerts served as a giant launch party for the cause, this is just the beginning of a global movement to help repair and sustain a climate in crisis. The Live Earth website offers many tangible ideas for both reducing one's personal footprint and encouraging others to do the same.

While my husband and I were pretty much as far back as you could get while still being in Giants Stadium, we were grateful to be able to see all of the performances and speeches in person. Our seats also gave us a good vantage point for checking out the rest of the crowd from around the world.

Knew the words to every Kelly Clarkson Song...Best fan ever

Some of the highlights included performances by Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys, Roger Waters, and John Mayer. My four favorite moments were Melissa Etheridge's performance of music and words (here is the link to the first part - be sure to check out the second part on youtube as well), Jane Goodall's speech complete with two chimp greeting calls, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s speech about what we can do to promote effective and sustainable environmental policys, and the audience-generated wave.

While many of the other moments mentioned above were broadcast internationally, the wave was one of the most moving moments of the night. It began as a spontaneous rumble somewhere on one of the lower tiers of the stadium and turned into a musical movement of its own, as each section waited like an instrument in an orchestra to stand up and cheer at the appropriate time. The wave traveled through the stadium several times, picking up volume and synchronicity with each pass. It was a profound representation of what can happen when thousands of people make a collective decision to work together. While the moment passed as soon as Cameron Diaz came out to introduce The Police, we were all left with the knowledge that no matter what differences exist between 65,000 people, we all have the power to work together to shape the future of the home we all share.

The Bounty of Local Harvests: Part Two

Please pardon the length of time it has taken me to follow up with you about my farmer's market findings. It turns out that the New York City area is even more of a cornucopia than even I anticipated. My journey to find local bounty began at Stone Barns, located in Pocantico Hills, NY. stonebarnscenter

Here, I was greeted with the scents and sounds of a working farm. The scents were surprisingly fresh and crisp considering that I grew up next door to a working farm, and the scents coming from that farm were definitely more odoriferous in the most unpleasant sense of the word. I have a feeling this has to do with the fact that the farm's beneficial symbiotic practices extend to all of the flora and fauna that have the privilege of living at this location.

I entered the herb gardens where the market is held and was greeted with the smell of an herbal medley and tables loaded high with different varieties of salad and Asian greens, garlic scapes (yes, I found them!), herbs, several varieties of meat, and, of course, the vegetable that started this all - bunches and bunches of tasty, "I was just in the desert and happened on this oasis of taste," CARROTS! No time to rejoice though; I had more markets to visit, and these carrots would give me the energy I needed with their ample helping of vitamins A, K, C, and B. I found out the nutritional information about carrots incidentally from a very useful website called The World's Healthiest Food. The purpose of this site is "to provide consumers with unbiased scientific information about how nutrient-rich foods can promote vibrant health and energy and fit personal needs and busy lifestyles." The website includes recipes and nutritional information and health benefits of different foods.

Finally, some real carrots!

My tasty bounty

On Saturday morning, I visited the farmer's market in Pleasantville, NY. It is one of 19 markets run in the NYC area by Community Markets. Their three driving ideas are "to make fresh produce available to all people, to support local agriculture, and to strengthen local communities." A visit to a market with these values ensures that one can have the opportunity to speak to the person who is growing the food, which is in fact just what I did.

In fact, I met an entire family from Claverack, NY who farms using "local, humane, sustainable farming and use organic/biodynamic methods." The Cowberry Crossing Farm sells a variety of vegetables and also raise a variety of free-range, organically-fed farm animals including bees, horses, chickens, and rabbits. Their farm was clearly a family affair, and each member was helping out at the market. I found more organic produce including radishes, salad greens, onions, and garlic at the Butternut Valley Organics farm stand.


The Cowberry Crossing Farm Crew:
Richard, Cecile, Grace, and Reese

In addition to produce and eggs, I also found two purveyors of organic bread and cheese. The Bobolink Dairy and Bakeyard sells grass-fed raw milk cheeses, wood-fired rustic bread, and pasture-raised meats. A highlight of their website is cheesemaker Jonathan White's "bookshelf" with a listing of recently read books on topics not just about food, but also about the entire ecosystem including Oxford zoology professor Richard Dawkins' book The Ancestor's Tale and On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Jonathan's Bookshelf

My second bread supplier, Bread Alone, makes European style organic artisan breads and pastries. I tend to offset my Saturday morning yoga class with a healthy dose of organic sugar and carbs at their stand, where I often indulge in a croissant or fruit muffin. Their wide selection provides sweet and savory tastes for every palate, and they also have cafes in Woodstock and Rhinebeck, NY. Looking for someone to make your organic wedding cake? They do that too.

There's nothing better than fresh bread

I rounded out my food for the week with fruit from the Mead Orchard stand. Because it is July, I was able to get two different kinds of cherries and a quart of blueberries. Mead Orchard is located in Red Hook, NY and depending on the season, also offers strawberries, cherries, blueberries, peaches, apples, and pumpkins. Mead Orchard

We feasted for several days on our farmer's market food, and we even drew on some of the seasonal recipes from the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle website. When Wednesday rolled around, I got a call from one of my friends reminding me about a dinner we had planned for that evening. Since we did not have much left from my previous farmer's market trip, and I wanted to remain true to the project, I decided to check out the Greenmarket in Union Square in New York City. The markets are run by The Council on the Environment of New York City and take place all over the city. The Union Square market is open on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. There are vendors selling produce, plants, meats, dairy products, pickled products, jams, breads, and desserts. You can easily find all you need for full meals here, especially during the summer months.

I bought everything I needed for the evening at the stands operated by Tello's Green Farm, Hydro Garden Farm, Evolutionary Organic, Hawthorne Valley Farm, and Keith's Farm, which is where I found this enormous head of organic lettuce.


State Fair, here we come!

I am spending the next few weeks in the Pacific Northwest, and I certainly plan on eating locally while there. When I return at the beginning of August, there will be many new fruits and vegetables to enjoy, including one of my favorites, heirloom tomatoes. Stay tuned, this report on the joys of eating locally and sustainably produced food may turn into a trilogy.