Tagged Waste

sustainable holiday meal planing eco conscious

Waste-Free Kitchen Holiday Tips

With the appropriate planning, you can save money this holiday season without throwing your food ethics out the window.  Forget canned green beans, factory farmed turkey and pre-packaged stuffing.  This year, serve your family a healthy, delicious holiday feast and avoid food waste. The winter holidays are all about abundance—being surrounded by friends and family,…
how to use thanksgiving leftovers

Holiday Leftovers: Vegan Cranberry Quickbread

Like many of us, Jenn Sebestyen, author of the Veggie Inspired Blog, found herself with plenty of holiday leftovers.  So what do you do with your gorgeous home made cranberry sauce?  How about transforming it into a treat you can enjoy for breakfast, with tea or as dessert.  Jenn shares this whole food, vegan recipe…
Compostable straws made of hay plastic alternative

Ending Plastic Pollution: Alternatives to Plastic Straws

Sustainability isn’t just about giving up all your favorite stuff… It used to be going green started with a long list of stuff you had to stop doing, stop using, stop buying. And there wasn’t always a realistic option to replace what you’d given up. But these days there are better options becoming available all…
Reusable Lunch Box Kits
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Waste-Free Lifestyle: Reusable Lunchbox Kit

Who knew that bringing that brown bagged lunch to school or work every day added up, not just in cost but in environmental degradation? Investing in one of these reusable lunchbox sets will save you money over time, and lighten the load on our landfills.

Building Community Through Food Donations

Nugget Markets partners with local food recovery program to feed those in need In Marin County, one of the wealthiest counties in America, one in five residents is food insecure. That’s nearly 50,000 people in Marin, half of them children and elderly, who don’t have a steady supply of nutritious food on which they can depend. Many…
Marv Extra Food Marin Food Waste

Ending Food Waste: Getting Extra Food to Those In Need

Ending food waste, keeping perfectly good food out of landfills and feeding people who need a little help in your own community. It’s easier than you might think. Have you ever wondered where all the leftover food from places like your local supermarket or restaurants ends up? How about the gorgeous produce that remains after…
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Daily Bread: Doing Business and Doing Good

JP and Michelle MacFadyen are dedicated to sustainable practices in their restaurant and to sharing the bounty of their bakery with others through local food donations to feed the hungry. By now we’re all familiar with the locavore ideal: buy food from local producers, family farms and businesses. In the pursuit of this ideal, sometimes…
sustainable restaurants
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How Green is Your Favorite Restaurant?

Sometimes sustainability is equated with upscale restaurants that specifically market their local and sustainable credentials. But what about your favorite pizza joint, or the place where you pick up a quick salad on the way home from work, or the bakery that supplies your daily bread? To really make a difference, sustainability has to take…
reusable straws

Ending Plastic Pollution in Bali: Reusable Bags and Straws

Following a stroll on a lovely, yet plastic-strewn, Balinese beach, Glenn Adams and daughter Gaia Shekhinah set out on a mission. The two formed The Last Straw, a campaign that encourages island businesses to end their use of plastic straws and embrace reusable alternatives.  The two spoke enthusiastically about their efforts, and their next plan…

Compost, Not Packaging

While it’s better to recycle than send rubbish to the landfill, it’s even better to start with whole foods. That way you make compost, not recycled packaging. I enjoyed a refreshing smoothie today and when I went to clean up, I realized a happy fact: all I had was compost.

How to Compost at Home: The Basics

Although there are a plethora of books written on how to compost, before you start at home it is important to understand how composting works and the different methods that you can employ. As a form of waste recycling, composting at home is a great way to decrease the amount of refuse entering our already…

Chef Art Smith Interview: Restaurants Going Green

The colorful eatery is one of a growing network of restaurants around the country to embrace sustainability and become a Certified Green Restaurant. Southern Art and Bourbon Bar took an impressive 49 steps to conserve energy, eliminate waste and offer more fresh, local and organic dishes. In turn, the Green Restaurant Association awarded the popular…
straus dairy convert manure

Turning Manure Into Money

Methane is a problem that some pasture-based farms have started to tackle head-on. One particular method being used to reduce methane emissions is to collect the gas and convert it into electricity.
compostable containers

Compostable Food Containers Gaining Ground for Restaurant Takeout

It used to be that to-go packaging, save Chinese take-out, was made out of Styrofoam which came complete with a set of plastic cutlery. Today restaurants are switching to packaging made from biodegradable plastics or recycled paper products, printed with vegetable-based inks. Whether through a restaurant’s own motivation or a city’s ordinance, the world of to-go packaging is looking increasingly compostable.
restaurants that make zero waste

Low Waste Restaurants

Restaurants are a significant source of pollution—from food waste to spent cooking oil to toxic chemicals. Eden Canon explores the ways in which the restaurant industry is cleaning up its act. From making simple changes, such as setting up recycling programs, to working with the city to turn spent cooking oil into biofuel that run city buses, restaurants are taking up the challenge to go green.
restaurant leftovers in europe

Too Good To Waste: The Doggy Bag In Europe

A long-standing stigma attached to taking leftovers home has hindered British and European diners from tackling waste reduction at the restaurant table. Three new movements have sprung up in the UK, Sweden, and Italy to promote the benefits of taking home leftovers, signaling a shift in opinion towards the doggy bag in Europe.