$13.7 billion. That’s the “Whole Paycheck” number it took for Amazon.com to buy Whole Foods Market.

After more than thirty years as the leading natural food chain, Whole Foods Market announced earlier today that it would surrender its sovereignty to Amazon, the online retail giant. While the deal isn’t done yet, and some experts speculate the offer could lead to an all-out bidding war over the chain, as of publish time, there were no other offers.

The jokes and Tweets about the sale have been entertaining. (My favorite, from Slade Sohmer, because the struggle is real:  “I, too, spend $13.7 billion at Whole Foods.”)

Wall Street is loving the news – Whole Foods’ stock is up 27 percent, Amazon is up three percent. But the news isn’t so great for other retailers: Target opened down 12 points, Walrmart is down five, Costco down six and Kroger fell 15 percent, making it the worst performing S&P 500 stock of the day.

“If you’re in the grocery business and your name is not Amazon or Whole Foods, today is not a good day for you,” wrote Will Oremus in Slate.

Although Amazon built its empire online, it has been testing other brick and mortar stores recently, including an actual bookstore, with what seems to be a clear intent to merge the two worlds in ways that haven’t happened yet. Amazon also recently tested a store without checkout clerks, but rather, an app that tallies up all your purchases as you exit the store, and your credit card is billed just like through other apps (Uber, Bambino Sitters, TaskRabbit, etc) without ever having to dump food in or out of a wobbly-wheeled cart. No lines. No price checks.

With the merger, we are, in all likelihood, talking about easier and more frequent online ordering and paying, Echos and Alexas in every Prime membership house to assist with the process, better and quicker delivery and access, and, sure, some iterations of drones, robot cashiers, and other Jestonsesque offerings our grandkids won’t believe were preceded by the mundane weekly task of setting aside time for wheeling clunky shopping carts through bright store aisles.

But if you’re everyone on the Internet, you’re less concerned with all of that, and more fixated on the ETA for your Amazon Prime account to kick out your kombucha and quinoa via speedy sci-fi drone delivery. But what’s really most exciting about this merger, even though I recently lamented the probable loss of Whole Foods’ autonomy in a merger like this, is what it means for the plant-based foods category, which is also, as they say, having a moment. In fact, as far as our food system is concerned, in the long-term, it’s immensely more significant than Amazon buying Whole Foods.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, has been called “the smartest guy in business” (and quite possibly the richest, with a net worth of more than $82 billion). If you can remember back when Internet shopping was like a cold and murky pool no one but porn sites wanted to dip a toe in, Bezos set the bar in 1994 when he dove in with the launch of Amazon — then an online bookstore, now it’s the world’s biggest online retailer, and larger than Walmart when it comes to market capitalization. It’s the fourth most valuable public business in the entire world.

And for the future of our food system, even for all its shortcomings, Amazon, at least with Bezos at the helm, is a lot more promising than Whole Foods selling to a traditional this-is-how-it’s-always-been-done supermarket like Kroger or Walmart (although anything is still possible). Traditional supermarkets have long thought too inside-the-box, quite literally. They have deep ties to the processed foods industry, namely the sugar, meat, egg, and dairy industries, even when they’re trying to be more like Whole Foods.

Mackey’s vision pushed to much success the idea that healthy “whole” food can be delicious food, too. That choosing products better for the planet doesn’t mean sacrificing taste or (too much) money. And most critically, it gave mainstream focus to “alternative” food, notably making vegan staples less the scary hippie wheat-germ-and-sprouts stuff of the 1970s and more the delicious and versatile sustenance it is today — it is the diet of choice enjoyed by former presidents and Beyoncé, after all.

The booming plant-based category, which has been called the most important trend in the tech industry, is an area so ripe and juicy that only a merger of this magnitude can accommodate it appropriately.

“Whole Foods has for many years represented the leading edge of plant-based foods, and CEO John Mackey has been a powerful ally for companies producing healthy, humane, and sustainable foods,” says Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute, which supports the growth of the plant-based categories. “It’s wonderful that Mackey will remain at the helm and that Amazon and Whole Foods – both innovators in their respective spaces – can now be partners in creating an improved future of food.”

Mackey is a longtime vegan (he recently penned a book about the diet) and Bezos was an early investor in Impossible Foods, one of the leading startups creating plant-based meats that taste and perform just like animal meat. Impossible Foods is poised to produce one-million pounds of its plant burgers a month in its new northern California facility. At a recent launch event of the Impossible Burger at the Umami Burger chain in Los Angeles, Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown said the company plans to see its burgers in major fast food burger chains in the very near future. The company wants to become half of the meat market in the next few decades. The impact of a shift like that sends ripples throughout the food system, and something only visionaries like Mackey and Bezos can translate into the retail space. It’s inevitable. With meat (and egg and dairy and seafood) production topping the lists of both global greenhouse gas emissions and diet-related illnesses, consumers are desperate for alternatives.

“If I owned stock in innovative vegan food companies (which I don’t) I would be *very* excited by today’s news,” the blog Vegan.com posted on Facebook. “Whole Foods + Amazon is an entity that could disrupt the entire grocery industry, and much of this disruption is likely to come at the expense of the crappiest processed foods and animal products.”

Consumers, namely Millennials, are pushing against the big-ag agendas and driving the plant-based industry growth. Nondairy milk sales are skyrocketing (sales are expected to surpass $21 billion by 2022, taking a 13 percent market share of the dairy category) while conventional milk sales lag (except for organic/grass-fed).

While not quite there yet, the plant-based protein category is poised to see the same trajectory as nondairy products over the next decade, perhaps even more so. According to a recent survey conducted by Lightlife Foods, two-thirds of Americans find plant proteins just as satisfying as animal protein, and they’re proving it by eating plant-based protein at least once a week. Somewhat surprisingly, the top reason consumers in the Lightlife survey cited for eating plant protein isn’t the health benefits, the animal welfare, or the decreased environmental impact – which are all key factors driving category growth — but it’s the ease of preparation of plant-based foods that’s turning so many meat-eaters toward plants. (Plant proteins don’t require the levels of safety or cooking temperatures animal products require.)

With the success of products like Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger, which is strategically (and brilliantly) merchandised in the supermarket meat aisle even though it’s entirely plant-based, and companies like Memphis Meats exciting the category with meat products made without any animals, it’s clear consumers want plant-based products to help them reduce their meat intake. They want to eat healthier and more ethical foods whenever possible. There’s absolutely no reason to think Amazon would veer away from that. It could have purchased any retailer. It chose the one shining a light on a better food system. It’s clearly invested in turning consumers away from not only the processed junk and sugary soda offenders, but the animal products clogging  up our arteries, air, and ethics.

Earlier this week, the Plant Based Foods Association, the trade organization for the plant-based industry, announced the launch of a Research and Education Fund solely focused on supporting the marketing and merchandising efforts for the category. Its goal is to help supermarkets and other retailers better serve the target customer in finding and purchasing plant-based foods. And, at least for the foreseeable future, while consumers are sure to move some purchases online, many are still going to visit supermarkets to buy these things.

There’s a visceral, necessary experience in walking through those market aisles that online shopping can’t replicate (yet). And with a category as robust as plant-based foods, customers want to stand in the aisles and marvel at it all while stocking their carts. It’s an essential part of the process. Amazon, it seems, finally understands the value of this. (It’s $13.7 billion.)

Find Jill on Twitter and Instagram

Related on EcoSalon

Dr. Oz Just Called the Vegan Diet the ‘Single Biggest Movement of 2017’
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UC Berkeley Now Teaches a Course on Plant-Based Meat

The post Amazon’s Whole Foods Market Acquisition Means Big Business for Plant-Based Foods appeared first on EcoSalon.

Amazon will do almost anything to grow its business—and these days, it will also do anything to try to get you to forget about recent allegations that working for the company is a little bit like being in a prison. The latest effort has the company becoming your digital farmers market. 

Called Farmers Market Direct, the program is a partnership with Fresh Nation, and has launched in southern California, with plans to expand to other cities. It promises to bring you farm fresh fruits and vegetables within 36 hours of harvest, much like what’s offered at local farmers markets.

The program works like a CSA box (community-supported agriculture), where for $39 or $59, you can order a basket with an assortment of fresh produce. But unlike a CSA, which typically requires a time-frame commitment, Farmers Market Direct doesn’t require repeat purchases.

“It’s the brainchild of former techie Tony Lee, who took a break from a career in e-commerce to manage a farmers market in his hometown of Danbury, Conn., and then fell in love with the business,” reports the Los Angeles Times:

“The thing that I learned was that oftentimes the vendors weren’t making enough money to keep going,” Lee says. “I became very friendly with a lot of them and I grew to appreciate how passionate they were about their business. They are amazing people.

“But because farmers markets are only open for a few hours a week, there wasn’t enough time for people who want fresh local food to get it.

“Making fresh local food more available to more people on the one hand and on the other bringing more business to these small farmers and food producers — that’s our mission,” he says. “We want to get millions of people eating fresh local food and having access to it every day.”

And that’s certainly not a bad thing, especially since many Angelinos still don’t have supermarkets or farmers markets in their neighborhoods. It’s also filling a gap left behind by the recent Good Eggs implosion earlier this month.

But is it enough to replace trips to local farmers markets? Hopefully not. Even if it is supporting local growers and giving consumers easier access to fresh food, we’re more connected to what we eat when we can roll our fingers around a fresh tomato, tap a melon, or smell a bunch of parsley, before deciding it’s the right food for us. We need these visceral experiences, perhaps now more than ever, to reconnect us with our farmers and our food.

And Farmers Market Direct is certainly not going to make people forget about the issues with Amazon’s work environment. That’s news that will hover for a long time, and certainly ruin a few appetites.

Find Jill on Twitter and Instagram

Related on EcoSalon

Amazon Introduces Frustration Free Packaging

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The Decline of the French Farmers Market

image: SounderBruce

The post Amazon Wants to Replace Your Farmers Market With One Simple Click appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThe Amazon Kindle versus paper books: who wins when it comes to sustainability?

In just a matter of years, e-readers like the Amazon Kindle have fundamentally changed the publishing industry, replacing traditional paper books with digital downloads that can be accessed in a matter of minutes.

For many, the Kindle-versus-“real”-book debate boils down to a sense of nostalgia. For years, I refused to even entertain the idea of purchasing an e-reader, preferring instead the look, feel, and experience of reading a paper book.

But there are environmental implications to each option too. Some claim that e-readers are preferable to books, since they don’t require the plentiful amounts of paper and high costs of transport. However, the environmental cost of mining, energy use, and e-waste in the lifecycle of a Kindle shouldn’t be discounted. Add to that equation Amazon’s notorious secrecy surrounding its manufacturing practices, which makes it difficult to make any real comparisons between the two.

The first-generation Kindle debuted in November 2007 and instantly sold out, remaining out of stock for five months. Currently, the product line includes the classic Kindle ($69), Kindle Paperwhite ($119), Kindle Fire ($159), Kindle Fire HD ($199), and the 8.9” Kindle Fire HD ($269). Though the Kindle is often promoted as the world’s best-selling e-reader, Amazon hasn’t released much in the way of true sales data, preferring vague press release statements like “more than double” or “4x over last year.” TechCrunch’s MG Siegler feels comfortable saying that “sales are somewhere between zero and infinity.”

The Good

Although Amazon doesn’t release much information about the Kindle, analysts and think tanks have stepped in to give their best guesses. The most recent comprehensive study of the Kindle was produced by the Cleantech Group in 2008.

The study estimates that the Kindle generates roughly 168 kg of CO2 over a four-year lifecycle, but that carbon emissions are fully offset after the Kindle’s first year of use, assuming that the reader consumes 22.5 books annually. Using historical carbon emission data and e-reader sales projections, Cleantech estimated that e-readers purchased from 2009 to 2012 would prevent 9.9 billion kg of CO2 from being emitted over the four-year period.

Cleantech compares the emissions of a Kindle to the emissions of traditional books, which were estimated to generate up to 1,074 kg of CO2 over the same four-period. But the environmental impact of a book isn’t limited to carbon emissions. According to the report, the U.S. book and newspaper industries consumed 125 million trees and 153 billion gallons of wastewater in 2008. Waste is prevalent at the end of a book’s life too; approximately 36 percent of hardcover and 25 percent of softcover books are returned to publishers after not selling at bookstores, and they are ultimately recycled, incinerated, or sent to landfills.

The Bad

While the data in the Cleantech report is intriguing, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that they are based on guesses rather than fact. Amazon is notoriously secretive about its business practices, particularly about the production and environmental impact of the Kindle. It has repeatedly declined requests for information from think tanks like Cleantech, publications like the New York Times, and even its own investors.

“When it comes to its own footprint, Amazon is consistently more secretive than the CIA,” said Raz Godelnik in Triple Pundit.

Although Amazon doesn’t provide public information about its manufacturers, one thing we do know is that Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer lambasted for horrible working conditions after an Apple expose last year, is one of Amazon’s main production partners. According to various reports, Foxconn is behind the second-generation Kindle Fire, the new Kindle smart phone, and other e-readers in the collection.

But where Apple was subject to consumer backlash and took immediate steps to improve working conditions along its supply chain, Amazon escaped relatively unscathed. It is not part of any working groups, nor does it provide data to organizations seeking to bring about positive change in the industry, like the Cleantech Group or the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Even a call from shareholders for greater transparency was rejected. During the company’s annual meeting in 2011, Calvert Asset Management, whose investors then held about $62 million worth of Amazon shares, called for a report describing the impact of climate change on Amazon’s business, as well as the impact of its business on climate change. “We own this company and want it to do well, so we wouldn’t want any poor performance to come from the release of a document,” Rebecca Henson, Calvert’s sustainability analyst, told the Seattle Times. “We just think it’s something that would be beneficial and could save money in the long run.”

Amazon’s board urged shareholders to vote against the measure, saying that the report would not be “an efficient use of time and resources.” The measure was ultimately rejected.

The Questionable

It’s difficult to fathom that a multi-billion dollar company like Amazon can’t find the resources to conduct an assessment of its environmental impact, particularly when you look at the efforts of its peers.

After the Foxconn expose, Apple tripled its social responsibility unit, publicly released the names of its suppliers, and joined both the Fair Labor Association and the Sustainable Trade Initiative, according to the New York Times. Other tablet competitors, like Sony and Samsung, have long published extensive social responsibility reports. Amazon, on the other hand, won’t even produce a report for its own investors.

As an environmentalist and avid reader, I want to embrace the Kindle. Surprisingly, I enjoy the feel and ease of my Paperwhite (which, full disclosure, I received from an Amazon-sponsored event). I think it’s perfect for travel and handy on the subway.

But I can’t recommend the Kindle enthusiastically until Amazon follows its peers in promoting transparency and social responsibility in its operations. Hopefully the recent firestorm around electronics transparency will convince Amazon that it’s a worthy use of time and resources.

Images: Amazon, The Cleantech Group

The post Behind The Label: The Sustainability Of The Amazon Kindle appeared first on EcoSalon.

How many offensive ad campaigns could companies create this year? Plenty.

Many businesses are realizing that consumers are looking for brands that care, brands that engage in dialogue, and brands that understand current trends. These companies are adapting to these new sensibilities and their businesses are thriving. Other companies have launched sexist ad campaigns, derided green actions, squelched customer’s comments and complaints, and mounted a merciless attack on local businesses, and consumers have spoken out.

Green is popular. Therefore, shaming green initiatives shows you are not only clueless, but part of the problem.

Despite the rising popularity (and wide media coverage) of bike sharing programs in cities and the number of cities looking to institute more bike lanes and encourage bicycle commuting, GM decided to run an ad campaign designed to make bicyclists feel ashamed of biking. The campaign, run in college magazines and aimed at current students and recent grads, shows a guy riding his bike and covering his face as a girl rides by in her (presumably GM) car. The tag line reads: Stop pedaling…start driving, and shows a picture of a smaller car, and a … truck.

There was an immediate outcry. Bicycling organizations, students and even professors condemned the ad and everything it stood for. GM backpedaled so fast that it immediately yanked the ads and began apologizing via Facebook and through every other type of social media it could find. The company responded to many of the negative comments and apologized.

Why do companies never tire of spitting on women and girls to sell stuff?

Dr. Pepper was tired of selling diet soda only to women. Who really wants to appeal to the demographic that makes over 80 percent of household buying decisions anyway? So they decided the way to appeal to men was to make a point of excluding women. On their Facebook page they even encouraged male-only users (it is off-limits to women) to play games where they shoot high heels, unicorns and rainbows.

Surprising no one but Dr. Pepper, the campaign didn’t appeal to most men (which is somewhat reassuring) and since it went out of its way to alienate women, no one was left to buy it.

Some companies still think it’s a good idea to sell items by sexualizing girls or promoting sexist stereotypes (or both at the same time). Abercrombie and Fitch has been a repeat offender, and this past year, family-oriented retailers Kmart and JCPenney joined the club. JCPenney quickly took this t-shirt out of inventory after being flooded with complaints, and a Kmart located in Australia took these thongs off the shelves for the same reason. The thongs are made by Kmart’s inhouse brand, Girl Xpress and the perception was that they were marketing them toward young girls. Kmart denied it, but wouldn’t state the customer age range Girl Xpress was targeting.

To be honest, it’s hard to tell what the point of this campaign was supposed to be, but whatever it was, everyone quickly lost sight of it. One blogger complained on Chapstick’s Facebook page about the use of this tacky, unattractive picture of a woman’s derriere in tight jeans. The company promptly deleted her comment (an irony many have pointed out considering the company’s invitation to be heard on their page). Ditto the negative comments that came after it. However, comments like, “after looking at this pic i know right where i wanna hide my chapstick,” were not deleted by the company.

Soon it was a battle to see who was faster, the commenters or the censors. Everyone forgot about the ad that sparked the war in the first place and directed their fury at the company who tried to control the conversation. That is something you just don’t do in social media and Chapstick came out of what could have been a minor embarrassment looking like an exceedingly foolish, 800-pound gorilla.

When you are Goliath, recruiting bystanders to pound David into dust makes you look like an even bigger bully.

It’s not enough that Amazon undercuts the prices of most local bookstores, but now they are encouraging consumers to go into local businesses, scan items and compare the price with the same item on Amazon. Since in many instances, Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax, the savings can be significant, causing many shoppers to not buy the item at the local business and buy the item online.

When promoting this new price check app, Amazon offered customers $5 for each item they bought using it (up to a total of $15). Forbes calls it the future of business, but in the face of Small Business Saturday and all the evidence that communities need to patronize and support local businesses to help local economies, Amazon’s campaign is as brazen as it is mercenary and cold-hearted.

Sometimes when you do everything right, it still goes wrong because your consumers can’t be bothered to read the label.

Coca-Cola thought it would be such a terrific holiday-cause marketing campaign to support polar bears, a species in dire need of help as well as animals that have been prominently featured in nostalgic Coke holiday ads in years past. They designed an eye-catching white can and prepared to watch awareness and profits grow. What happened? No one bothered to read the label, so Diet Coke (which is sold in a silver can) drinkers bought the white regular Coke by accident and then screamed about it.

Of course it is serious when diabetics or others with dietary restrictions consume something they shouldn’t due to a purchasing mistake, but many companies have very slight label differences that distinguish their products, but no one goes after them with the viciousness that Coke faced for simply offering the same drink in a special issue white can instead of a red one.

Many see this as a failed campaign by Coke, but did they really do anything wrong? Faced with an ugly public backlash, they have halted the manufacture of the white cans and are introducing a red polar bear can for the rest of the campaign. Now people can go back to not paying attention to what they buy again.

SEE ALSO:

2011 In Review: The 10 Stories That Defined Shelter in 2011

2011 in Review: How Small Spaces Trumped McMansions

images: bitzcelt, BikePortland, YouTube, Huffington Post, lovelyish.com, The Real Time Report, iTunes, the rocketeer (via Flickr cc)

The post The Most Offensive Ad Campaigns of 2011 appeared first on EcoSalon.

Reasons why the Kindle just might make reading (and life) a lot better.

My Kindle makes my life better. I’m not being paid to say it by Amazon, I’m not foisting any kind of sponsored content onto you, I simply adore my Kindle. And why? There are the two most often-heard reasons: It’s a library that fits in your pocket (if you have unusually wide pockets) and because it saves all those trees, it’s the green thing to do (well, maybe).

But I’m besotted with my Kindle for eight wholly different reasons and every one of them improves my life in a meaningful way.

1. Strapped For Cash? Then Don’t Pay A Penny.

Content-wise, the Kindle comes with a double-whammy of bargains. Not only are Kindle books usually cheaper than their papery counterparts (especially if you grab the daily deals on Amazon), you can also get hold of a truly whopping amount of free literature both on Amazon and elsewhere. Check out FeedBooks, ManyBooks and the colossal Project Gutenberg for tens of thousands of books, converted to Kindle format and available to download entirely gratis.

2. A Truly Paperless eTicket

Ever received an e-ticket by e-mail and felt a twinge of regret that you have to waste paper printing it out (somewhat defeating the whole purpose)? The Kindle gets around that by displaying your e-ticket on a screen that can be read in direct sunlight. Now that’s just showing off.

3. Take The Internet Offline

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could read web-pages on your ebook reader? Yes, the Kindle has a built-in web-browser, but it’s, well, shall-we-say highly “experimental.” By far, the better option is to use a natty web application called Klip.me that strips all the text from the page you’re looking at on your computer, bundles it up and automatically sends it to your Kindle as a single document. If you’re doing any kind of online research that requires piles of reading, this is the best way to do it.

4. Get A Classical Education

You know all those free books we mentioned up there? Most of them are the books released because the copyright has expired, and most of those are the classics you’ve always wanted to read but never had the chance. Henry James, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie…on and on. Not only are you reading free things, you’re reading free things that will make you smarter – or will at least furnish you with quotes you can flourish at cocktail parties.

5. Lists, With Added Copy and Paste

If you’re dead set on going completely paper-free, your shopping list is the final thorn in your side. Your Kindle is the mother of list holders and you can build those lists on your computer in text files before you send them over, which allows you, for example, to copy and paste entire recipes from your favourite foodie websites. I’ve built up shopping lists based on world cooking themes, each stored on my Kindle and ready to be used on a whim.

(An alternative is using the amazing Evernote for your other mobile devices).

6. The Dog-Eared Ebook?

When you’ve finished a book, you pass it around to your friends and thanks to Lendle or ebookfling, it’s no different on the Kindle. And if you don’t? You delete it. It’s instantly gone, instead of lurking in cupboards for the next decade. It’s a way to keep a minimalist vibe in your home, even if you’re a fanatical bookworm.

7. Please Open Your Kindles At Page One…

If you’ve been a university student, you’ve developed a healthy hatred of textbooks. The problem isn’t what’s in them (that’s usually quite fun), it’s the way you’re forced to buy a number of expensive, hard-to-track-down tomes that threaten to pull your arms out their sockets when you carry them home. Amazon’s answer is an elegant one: rent those textbooks electronically for anything between 30 and 360 days, with the price reduced from R.R.P. accordingly.

Also check out the learning on offer (ebook, audio and video) at Open Culture, Khan Academy and Academic Earth – all available entirely for free.

8. No Delivery Time = No Delivery Charge

Let’s face it, the real thrill of electronic books is that once you’ve bought them you can have them instantly. It worked for digital music downloads, and it’s working for ebooks, too. In a digital world obsessed with instant gratification, anything less is going to struggle.

Images: Peter Hellberg, uitdragerij, cogdogblog, ManyBooks, tanakawho, rfranklinaz, aaron.bihari and julianlimjl

The post 8 Ways a Kindle Can Improve Your Life appeared first on EcoSalon.

War, science denial and Fox News. It’s what’s going on in the world, but it’s not especially merry, merry. If you’re feeling anxious about the eco conversation turning an ugly shade of green at the family Christmas dinner, rest easy. It’s not all doom and gloom. (Besides, there will be plenty of time post-feast to take on Uncle Ulysses on Wikileaks, your sister Sue on why being green doesn’t actually make you a commie, and cousin Clive on the South Atlantic Gyre.)

So, for your dining pleasure, I submit to you three news items everyone can be happy about:

1. Good for flora…

How is this for a dream headline: “Amazon deforestation in dramatic decline, official figures show.”

This is from the Guardian, which reported this summer that data from satellites shows that large areas of forest destruction was about halved in the period between August 2009 and May 2010, compared with the same period a year earlier (to about 930 square miles from about 1860 square miles). The story notes that the Brazilian environment agency, Ibama, said “the drop was due to the increased use of satellite data to spot the felling of trees and new tactics to deter loggers, including ending their ability to hide under cloud cover.” Along these lines, we recently reported here that Google’s announcement this month of its Earth Engine will allow for even more monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s environment. With its eye in the sky, the system will “function like a watchdog camera, supporting the development of ‘monitor, report and verify’ (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation.” Go, trees!

2. Good for fauna…

Things are looking up for some pretty cool endangered species – you know, the sexy ones that get lots of press and for which even your most “who-cares” relatives have a soft spot. Consider first the mountain gorilla, the number of which in national parks of three African countries has risen by 26 percent in the last seven years, says a recent census. Next, how about those tigers, whose on-the-brink status has led to a recent summit among the 13 nations where the animals still exist in the wild. The takeway was $300 million raised to save the animals (including a cool million from actor Leonardo DiCaprio), as well as agreement to attempt to double their number by 2022. And finally, there’s the canary in our global coalmine – the polar bear – for which The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just designated 87,000 square miles along the north coast of Alaska as protected “critical habitat” as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups (although a lump of coal to the Obama administration for declaring polar bears merely “threatened” today).

3. And good for us…

Hooray for the home team on the emissions front. As a result in an increase in United States fuel economy standards, a new EPA report is showing a 14 percent per mile drop in carbon dioxide emissions over the last six years, and a 16 percent drop in gasoline use, with a rise of 3.1 miles per gallon to 22.5. In fact, “C02 emissions have decreased while fuel economy has increased every year since 2005, reversing the trend of the previous eight years.” This doesn’t mean we’re all to breathe easy and lose our discipline on this issue, but good news is good news.

So there. Eat, drink and be environmentally merry. A little more champagne, please! Go ahead and top off the glass.

Special thanks to the Great News Network (GNN) for reminding me that all’s not dire on the environmental front.

Images: Sara&Joachim, Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel, wwarby, ^riza^

The post 3 Green Holiday Dinner Conversation Starters (That Everyone Will Like) appeared first on EcoSalon.

But that’s the old model of city life. Crocodile Dundee wasn’t too far off the mark when he said cities must be friendly because so many people want to live together. They’re the biggest physical expressions of our social nature on this planet. They’re filled with people, every one of them an individual – and so in these eco-conscious times where everyone can step up and contribute, cities are where things happen.

Here are 10 urban trends that will shape of the cities of tomorrow.

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Keep The City Buzzing

Bees are on the wane, and we have no idea why. Entire populations are dying or disappearing as part of the baffling phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Bad news in itself, but the sting in the tale is that without bees, many of our staple crops are doomed. While scientists search for the answers, the urban backyard remedy is obvious – and here’s how it works. Bee hives only need a little land to thrive – and you’d be following in the footsteps of committed enthusiasts like Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L Jackson. Further incentive needed? One word: honey.

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Urban Growth

Escalating food prices, and all that land out back? Put the two together and turning your place into an edible garden is a no-brainer. But even if you’re squeezed into a concreted corner or you’re halfway up a towerblock, there’s still room for some horticultural creativity. Agricultural skyscrapers are on the rise (as it were) but while city-planners develop a coherently green strategy, it’s all about self-expression. Snake some vines over your balcony or up the wall. Let your potted plants grab onto windows and railings. Make your city come alive!

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Up Where The Air Is Green

But whatever is done in the vertical is being done tenfold in the horizontal. Green roofs have captured the urban imagination like no other eco-craze, and it’s not hard to see why: they’re beautiful, they have a deeply practical element, and…did we say how beautiful? Of course there are new architectural challenges that come with having tons of topsoil and greenery piled on your ceiling – and there’s the usual amount of half-hearted bandwaggoning. (Yes, Astroturf is cheating). But wouldn’t it be nice to have a little less of the “concrete”, a little more of the “jungle”? I bet the local wildlife would think so.

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Seed-Bomb It Back To The Stone Age

If you’re heartsick of seeing drab, neglected patches of municipal land blighting your neighborhood…you could be a guerrilla gardener waiting to join the green revolution. “Fighting the filth with forks and flowers”, these law-skirting folk are on a mission to bring budding life to every corner of our cities by any means possible. They sneak out at night with seeds and trowel, beautifying furiously before daylight exposes their efforts to the cops, or they plant greenery while hidden in full view. Sound like your kind of thing? Sign up here (you rebel, you).

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Cleaning The Streets: Electric Cars and Friendly Rides

It’s been on the horizon for years (far too many of them) but now the electric car is starting to make headway in the place it’s best suited for – the urban grid. Where else is it practical to build recharging stations at the kind of density that suits the electric car’s shorter range? Ah, but that’s changing too – some of the models on our 2009 roundup hold enough juice to compare favorably to their gas-powered counterparts. These admirable advances aside, do you really need your own car? If not, and if braving the public transport isn’t an option, grab a lift with someone else – because urban carpooling is here to stay.

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Commute Yourself Slim

In the convenience-drugged city of tomorrow, the only sweat you’ll break is when you’re deciding which button to push. Utopian dream? We say: urban nightmare. We spend our day in the thrall of convenience technology…and then heads straight to the nearest super-expensive gym to compensate. With modern life in full swing, who needs The Onion? Luckily there are architects who recognise the danger and, like Nintendo, are sneaking gyms into our lives without us realising. Their thinking is: why consume electricity when calories can be burnt instead? So the urban fabric gets a healthy makeover, like the much maligned stairwell. Cars are zoned out of existence and replaced with their human-powered counterparts (saving you cash in all sorts of ways). Parks and paths are expanded, and everywhere can be reached by a sidewalk. Healthy commuter, coming through. For specifics, check out the New York City Department of Design + Construction’s Active Design Guidelines.

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One for Me, One for You…

My mum has a logistics problem. Thanks to some absurdly prolific fruit trees, her freezer is permanently half-full with surplus she has to freeze or it goes to waste. What she needs is a local fruit exchange – a social network (online and offline) that collects and distributes surplus produce for the good of the neighborhood. Take San Francisco’s version, Neighborhood Fruit, working like a foodie’s version of Freecycle – the goods are there for free, you collect them yourself, and first come is first served. If you like free food (ie. if you have a pulse) or want to reclaim your freezer, find your local fruit exchange…and if there’s none at hand, why not start one (pdf)?

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Serving the Needy (With Servings)

Gone are the days that it’s acceptable for shops to chuck unused food away at closing time (and having worked as a barista for a certain worldwide coffee chain, I’ve seen my fair share of that). While up to a third of household groceries still go into the trash, restaurants are acting rather more respectably by offering up their output to local charities and nonprofit organisations, or directly into the hands of the homeless on the street. Check out the National Restaurant Association’s food donation work, and their guide to doing it (PDF).

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It’s Cheaper Online (or, How We Killed The High Street)

Here’s a phrase to fill a shopkeeper with dread: “No, I won’t buy it here, I’ll get it on eBay / Amazon /Craigslist”. Online retailing is gargantuan business, simply because it’s usually the way to pick up the best goods from anywhere in the globe at the best price. Is it green? With minimal packaging and low overheads, you’t think so – except it’s also the quickest method of wiping out profits for urban retailers and for killing small traders. (Even the big ones aren’t safe – take the fate of Borders UK.) However, counter that with the fact that they’re billion-dollar recycling machines that often do a lot of good.

No matter your view, the bottom line is that online retailing is on the rise – and shopping is changing forever.

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Neighbors are a Big Deal

But why spend money at all? Before money there was bartering, and thanks to the people-connecting power of the Internet, it’s firmly back in fashion (although we wouldn’t say “money is dead” – merely looking a bit peaky). If it fits through the post, it’s being swapped: books, DVDs, clothes, gadgets, plant seeds and tons more. Yet cities are where this is taking place in person, exchanging goods and services and reinforcing social bonds. Bartering binds people together.

And for the more intrepid barterer – why not trade homes with a complete stranger?

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. The original post can be found here.

Images: telmo32, NNECAPA, axiepics, bbjee, ubrayj02, frankh, emrank, Alex E. Proimos, eHow and paul(dex) busy @ work

The post Where Cities Are Taking Us: 10 Urban Eco Trends appeared first on EcoSalon.

To create Rain Tees, children in endangered rain forests in Ecuador, Brazil and Costa Rica are given powerful tools (crayons, paint, pencils) to show what is happening all around them.
While some children will come up with scenes depicting logging or oil drilling, others, despite all the negatives, some draw positive masterpieces like beautiful birds and lush trees.

Kids are often the most forgiving.

To add to all the good, the t-shirts are handmade right outside the Peruvian Amazon in Rain Tees family owned and vertically integrated factories, where they print using eco-friendly inks and dyes.

For this giveaway, a toucan drawing from Rene Gillermo of Tena, Ecuador is placed prettily upon an organic cotton t-shirt that you can wear with pride. His name and country are on the illustration because well, he’s the artist and artists should get credit.

The site says “Amazon toucans live in small flocks and are very playful birds that have courtship displays where both male and female birds throw berries at each other or play catch by tossing the berries to each other with their beaks. How’s that for a “˜play date?’ Sadly, these birds are highly endangered and more than 11 million are smuggled illegally from the Amazon every year and sold to collectors in the USA and abroad. More than 70 percent die in the horrible conditions of transit.”

Thanks to Rene, Rain Tees can call attention to the toucan’s plight through an honest and beautiful drawing.

Other amazing points about this company?

Ethical Manufacturing:  Rain Tees staff are paid 25 percent above average wages so health care and education come first for them and their families.

Every Rain Tee Educates: Rain Tees sponsors each child whose artwork is chosen for a Rain Tees design to attend school in their home country.

Every Rain Tee Plants A Tree: For every Rain Tee sold, a child in Costa Rica’s most threatened tropical rain forest receives a tree to plant through the educational non-profit Kids Saving the Rain Forest.

To learn more about what they’re doing and who is involved, go to the Rain Tees site.

Please leave a comment below to enter this meaningful giveaway.

(Legalese: contest rules and FTC compliance.)

The post Rain Tees Featuring Hand Drawn Toucans Giveaway appeared first on EcoSalon.

There’s only so much time in a day, so take your time because time is of the essence.

When it comes to all the hours in a day, we’re obsessed. So to sustainably keep us in time with all that life offers us, why not have a great looking watch?

These stylish pieces from Ecowrist come from the vast regions of the Amazon in South America and are primarily comprised of bamboo, tagua nuts, acai, coconut, various woods and Cañaflecha (reeds).

The company was founded by husband and wife team David Gandy and MarQuerite Hamden in 2008. MarQuerite’s South American roots inspired the duo to reconnect with the various cultures of the vast continent.

“Our company strives for sustainability through recycling, the use of natural materials, and minimal wastes to ensure as little effect on the environment as possible. We follow fair trade practices to make sure everyone is happy from farmer to consumer,” says the site.

At our EcoSalon Shops! event on June 4th, the duo will be there ready to sell you time if you’ve got it. Now, back to that Cyndi Lauper song that’s suddenly in my head, “Time after time, if you fall I will catch you I’ll be waiting”¦”

The post EcoSalon Shops! Presents: Ecowrist appeared first on EcoSalon.

If you want a glimpse of our world in centuries to come, stroll round a city. Dystopian-mongering pessimists will now be holding their heads in their hands and groaning. Can we blame them? Urban areas are too commonly associated with poverty, pollution, neglect and a brutalizing of the environment for the sake of a fast buck. Pretty? Only from high up.

But that’s the old model of city life. Crocodile Dundee wasn’t too far off the mark when he said cities must be friendly because so many people want to live together. They’re the biggest physical expressions of our social nature on this planet. They’re filled with people, every one of them an individual – and so in these eco-conscious times where everyone can step up and contribute, cities are where things happen.

Here are 10 urban trends that will shape of the cities of tomorrow.

Keep The City Buzzing

Bees are on the wane, and we have no idea why. Entire populations are dying or disappearing as part of the baffling phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Bad news in itself, but the sting in the tale is that without bees, many of our staple crops are doomed. While scientists search for the answers, the urban backyard remedy is obvious – and here’s how it works. Bee hives only need a little land to thrive – and you’d be following in the footsteps of committed enthusiasts like Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L Jackson. Further incentive needed? One word: honey.

Urban Growth

Escalating food prices, and all that land out back? Put the two together and turning your place into an edible garden is a no-brainer. But even if you’re squeezed into a concreted corner or you’re halfway up a towerblock, there’s still room for some horticultural creativity. Agricultural skyscrapers are on the rise (as it were) but while city-planners develop a coherently green strategy, it’s all about self-expression. Snake some vines over your balcony or up the wall. Let your potted plants grab onto windows and railings. Make your city come alive!

Up Where The Air Is Green

But whatever is done in the vertical is being done tenfold in the horizontal. Green roofs have captured the urban imagination like no other eco-craze, and it’s not hard to see why: they’re beautiful, they have a deeply practical element, and…did we say how beautiful? Of course there are new architectural challenges that come with having tons of topsoil and greenery piled on your ceiling – and there’s the usual amount of half-hearted bandwaggoning. (Yes, Astroturf is cheating). But wouldn’t it be nice to have a little less of the “concrete”, a little more of the “jungle”? I bet the local wildlife would think so.

Seed-Bomb It Back To The Stone Age

If you’re heartsick of seeing drab, neglected patches of municipal land blighting your neighborhood…you could be a guerrilla gardener waiting to join the green revolution. “Fighting the filth with forks and flowers”, these law-skirting folk are on a mission to bring budding life to every corner of our cities by any means possible. They sneak out at night with seeds and trowel, beautifying furiously before daylight exposes their efforts to the cops, or they plant greenery while hidden in full view. Sound like your kind of thing? Sign up here (you rebel, you).

Cleaning The Streets: Electric Cars and Friendly Rides

It’s been on the horizon for years (far too many of them) but now the electric car is starting to make headway in the place it’s best suited for – the urban grid. Where else is it practical to build recharging stations at the kind of density that suits the electric car’s shorter range? Ah, but that’s changing too – some of the models on our 2009 roundup hold enough juice to compare favorably to their gas-powered counterparts. These admirable advances aside, do you really need your own car? If not, and if braving the public transport isn’t an option, grab a lift with someone else – because urban carpooling is here to stay.

Commute Yourself Slim

In the convenience-drugged city of tomorrow, the only sweat you’ll break is when you’re deciding which button to push. Utopian dream? We say: urban nightmare. We spend our day in the thrall of convenience technology…and then heads straight to the nearest super-expensive gym to compensate. With modern life in full swing, who needs The Onion? Luckily there are architects who recognise the danger and, like Nintendo, are sneaking gyms into our lives without us realising. Their thinking is: why consume electricity when calories can be burnt instead? So the urban fabric gets a healthy makeover, like the much maligned stairwell. Cars are zoned out of existence and replaced with their human-powered counterparts (saving you cash in all sorts of ways). Parks and paths are expanded, and everywhere can be reached by a sidewalk. Healthy commuter, coming through. For specifics, check out the New York City Department of Design + Construction’s Active Design Guidelines.

One for Me, One for You…

My mum has a logistics problem. Thanks to some absurdly prolific fruit trees, her freezer is permanently half-full with surplus she has to freeze or it goes to waste. What she needs is a local fruit exchange – a social network (online and offline) that collects and distributes surplus produce for the good of the neighborhood. Take San Francisco’s version, Neighborhood Fruit, working like a foodie’s version of Freecycle – the goods are there for free, you collect them yourself, and first come is first served. If you like free food (ie. if you have a pulse) or want to reclaim your freezer, find your local fruit exchange…and if there’s none at hand, why not start one (pdf)?

Serving the Needy (With Servings)

Gone are the days that it’s acceptable for shops to chuck unused food away at closing time (and having worked as a barista for a certain worldwide coffee chain, I’ve seen my fair share of that). While up to a third of household groceries still go into the trash, restaurants are acting rather more respectably by offering up their output to local charities and nonprofit organisations, or directly into the hands of the homeless on the street. Check out the National Restaurant Association’s food donation work, and their guide to doing it (PDF).

It’s Cheaper Online (or, How We Killed The High Street)

Here’s a phrase to fill a shopkeeper with dread: “No, I won’t buy it here, I’ll get it on eBay / Amazon /Craigslist”. Online retailing is gargantuan business, simply because it’s usually the way to pick up the best goods from anywhere in the globe at the best price. Is it green? With minimal packaging and low overheads, you’t think so – except it’s also the quickest method of wiping out profits for urban retailers and for killing small traders. (Even the big ones aren’t safe – take the fate of Borders UK.) However, counter that with the fact that they’re billion-dollar recycling machines that often do a lot of good.

No matter your view, the bottom line is that online retailing is on the rise – and shopping is changing forever.

Neighbors are a Big Deal

But why spend money at all? Before money there was bartering, and thanks to the people-connecting power of the Internet, it’s firmly back in fashion (although we wouldn’t say “money is dead” – merely looking a bit peaky). If it fits through the post, it’s being swapped: books, DVDs, clothes, gadgets, plant seeds and tons more. Yet cities are where this is taking place in person, exchanging goods and services and reinforcing social bonds. Bartering binds people together.

And for the more intrepid barterer – why not trade homes with a complete stranger?

Images: telmo32, NNECAPA, axiepics, bbjee, ubrayj02, frankh, emrank, Alex E. Proimos, eHow and paul(dex) busy @ work

The post Where Cities Are Taking Us: 10 Urban Eco Trends appeared first on EcoSalon.