It was in 2000 that Zamir Hassan first realized that there was a huge hunger problem in America — and he soon discovered that he had the tools to solve it with a new play on more traditional soup kitchens.

Nonprofit Feeding America estimates that one in every eight Americans faces hunger, but this is often an invisible problem in many parts of the United States, like the affluent New Jersey neighborhood where Hassan was living with his family.

Living proof of the American dream, Hassan first arrived in the U.S. in 1973 to attend grad school and quickly gained success in the relatively new industry of information technology. In fact, he was doing so well that he was blind to the hunger around him, until the day that he attended a soup kitchen as a chaperone with his son’s school, and his vision of his world changed.

“This is in one of the wealthiest communities in New Jersey,” he recounts. “I was really shocked. We served, like 225 people. And I said, ‘Wow, they live in my backyard, and I had no clue?’”

Hassan refused to stand by idly — he immediately decided to respond to the hunger problem, a decision driven in part by the tenants of his faith.

“I’m not supposed to go bed if my neighbor is hungry,” Hassan says of Muslim doctrine.

It was then that Hassan launched the program that would become Muslims Against Hunger, a grassroots effort that united people interested in giving back to the community in a way that was even more inclusive than traditional soup kitchens.

“A soup kitchen can require 13 years of age or 16 years of age for a volunteer,” he explains, noting that his program welcomes volunteers as young as seven.

Muslims Against Hunger grew quickly, thanks to training packages created by Hassan, reaching 20 different cities in just a few short years. As long as a group had six good volunteers, they could launch their own “franchise” of the idea, meaning that it was relatively simple to start a new branch in a new city.

In 2011, however, Hassan realized that there was a problem with his original plan: certain people were unable to reach the distribution centers. In many areas, Hassan would notice homeless people hanging out in parks or at train stations, far from the nearest soup kitchens and with no means to get there.

“So I came up with this whole idea of a mobile soup kitchen, which I named Hunger Van,” he says.

The principle is simple: volunteers meet somewhere — a church, a home, even a park, in the summer — and assemble healthy vegan meals, to be distributed by van to local hungry populations.

“The people we are feeding, they don’t end up eating good food, healthy food,” Hassan notes of his decision to make the meals vegan. “Also, vegan food is more sustainable, and to create a better world, we need a more sustainable approach to growing food and eating food.”

That said, while food might be the reason that volunteers come together — and, indeed, the impetus of the program as a whole — Hassan says that it is not his central focus.

He notes that while the program now spans about 5,000 volunteers and about five vans nationwide, “The van is really a metaphor.”

The symbol of the program takes a backseat to the feeling of community that Hassan has created with the program. “The number of vans really isn’t that important,” he says. “Just people getting engaged and involved.”

In the past six years, the Hunger Van program has expanded past American borders to Canada, India, Pakistan, Haiti, and Nigeria, with about one event a week in major cities. Hunger Van also works in cooperation with other groups, like the Hare Krishnas, for other regular soup kitchens.

And Hassan shows no sign of stopping – a retiree, Hassan has made Hunger Van his full-time job.

“I work nine days a week now, traveling around and mobilizing people,” he says. “And that’s what kind of keeps me motivated to engage people, get them mobilized. Faith or no faith, it should not be acceptable to anybody to have hunger.”

Related on EcoSalon
A Global Analysis: Is Biotechnology Really the Only Way to Solve Hunger?
Treating Hunger with Surplus Food is a Tactic, Not a Solution
World Hunger: Climate Change, Food Waste, and Elegant Solutions

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As a nation, we are losing our ability to feed ourselves. One in 5 Americans won’t eat dinner tonight and the greatest percentage of them live in rural America. In fact, 15 percent of rural households use food stamps to survive. How could it be that the places that provide most of our food can’t even feed their own?

Michael Olson of Food Chain Radio explored the issue of hunger in rural America.

“The grandparents farm never did make much money, but it did produce the best kind of food imaginable,” he said. “When the children grew up and left the farm, the grandparents sold out to those who wanted to grow government-subsidized sugar beets, and moved into the little farm town down the road.”

Today rural America looks much different than it did when our grandparents farmed the land. Farmers have been replaced by machinery and pesticides and farm houses are collapsing in disrepair. As a result, the small farmers that worked the land and ran the community have no place to work and no food to grow.

“Today there is little left of grandparents’ farm but a collapsed barn midst acres of government-subsidized crops.  Nor is there much left of the little farm town but boarded up storefronts and residents wondering what to do with their time,” Olson said on Food Chain Radio.

It all started with good intentions. During the Dust Bowl, the Great Plains were ravaged by drought in a country already devastated by the Great Depression. Farmers were going hungry so the government stepped in to subsidize their crops. Who knew that those same subsidies would result in huge factory farms.

This coupled with the fact that the next generation didn’t want to stay on the farm and work. Instead, they wanted to move to the glitz of the big city. With no one left to work the farm, many ended up being sold to mega farmers. And even if there was employment on these huge factory farms, corn, sugar beets, and soy aren’t real food, they have to be processed first.

This all left rural poverty like our country had never seen before. Show your distaste for these factory farms by eating local, unprocessed foods from small farmers as much as possible. Support self sustaining communities so they don’t disappear completely.

Related on EcoSalon

Support a Small Farm

Wake Up to the Secret Farm Bill

10 Infographics on Farming and Culture

Image: Don Graham

The post Why Is Rural America’s ‘Farm Country’ Going Hungry? appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnFood is a privilege. Treat it that way.

“Making food makes you happy?”

I was on a walk with two friends and we had somehow arrived on the subject of food- a frequent occurrence in my everyday life. She was a bit surprised that food in general was on my list of things that made me feel good.

“Well, yeah.”

I thought about it for a second. “It’s a way to de-stress… if I have too much going on I feel good being in the kitchen and making something. It’s like a meditation.”

This was probably why I was feeling like I was having the Best. Weekend. Ever. I had discovered a new Mexican restaurant that didn’t have the typical Portland feel on Friday, scored a vial of truffle salt at farmers market on Saturday, and been offered up full access to a friend’s overflowing garden of tomato plants on Sunday. For a food lover, that is a pretty good three-day stretch.

Food does make me happy. Making it, thinking about it, talking about it. It’s true that in stressful moments I have been known to toss out the to-do list and go bake something instead.

I am not alone. Food can even be a way of dealing with larger issues. It can help us escape the mundane and it can help us romanticize our reality. Whether you like to cook it or just eat it, we are all affected by food in one way or another. There is a thrill in finding a new restaurant, thumbing through a new cookbook. Food is love. But that feeling is a luxury.

My mother and I were discussing a phone call she had had with my aunt, who in the course of talking about recipes had said, “isn’t it amazing how many recipes float around and yet we still can’t manage to feed everyone on the planet?”

It’s true. The fact that we even have time to discuss food is a luxury. While most of the world is concerned with putting the next meal on the table, or even just having access to basic nutrition, we’re frustrated because the steak was too salty, the artisan aioli was off the menu for the evening, or the creme brulée was burnt.

There is nothing wrong with the aforementioned behaviors – we do live in a modern society after all, and for those of us that have access to food, we have turned it into an art – but it is important to have perspective.

There were 925 million hungry people in the world in 2010, 19 million of those in developed countries. There are 10.9 million child deaths every year; poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of them.

Even if you are on a budget, when it comes to food, you are part of the 1%, and it’s important not to take our access and ability to talk about food for granted. The ability to appreciate food in the way that many of us do is because food is more than sustenance. We have what we need, and we know when we’re going to get it, which means we can relish in the details, be they locally harvested sea salt or homegrown fennel.

As I wrote last week, “In the modern age, if you are able to comfortably put food on the table, it is inexcusable to not think about what you are eating.” But that means more than just thinking about where your beef came from. It also means celebrating the people that produce your food, reveling in the simple joys of buying a handmade product, and thanking friends when they open up their garden to you. Not because these things are popular or trendy, but because they’re bettering our planet and communities.

I thought about all of this as I picked my way through 12 varieties of heirloom tomatoes on Sunday. To quote John Denver: “Only two things that money can’t buy and that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes.” It’s true. There are few things that are comparable to the smell of a tomato vine basking in the sun. I picked an entire backpack’s worth and carted it home on my bicycle, intent on making sun-dried tomatoes and storing them in olive oil and mason jars. This is not just late summer bliss, this is luxury.

We are privileged to be able to celebrate the moments where we grow our own food, when we produce a meal that is made with all local ingredients, when we make a meal from scratch instead of opting for something processed. Mere decades ago, these things were the norm, but in an agribusiness, monocrop, fast food kind of world,  they have fallen by the wayside, only to be slowly picked back up again.

Food may not be what you’re passionate about, but we could all take more time to think about it.

So this week, take time to be thankful for what you’re eating, appreciate the simple pleasures, and find a friend that grows tomatoes.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

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War funding could pay for wind energy, high-speed rail, Superfund cleanup and an end to hunger in the United States.

Our communities are depressingly polluted, social services are being cut left and right and hunger is very real right here in America. So hearing that the United States government spends $20 billion in Afghanistan each year on air conditioning alone stings just a little. When it comes to war, the U.S. Treasury is hemorrhaging cash, yet Congress demanded that President Obama cut things like high-speed rail, United Nations support and funds for the Environmental Protection Agency from the 2012 fiscal year budget.

Nobody seems to know exactly how much the government is currently spending on the war in Afghanistan, but various estimates place it around $8 billion per month. If we weren’t buying air conditioners, gas, equipment and personnel to wage a seemingly endless war on the other side of the world, what could our elected officials spend this money on instead?

1. Domestic Hunger Relief

The financial crisis has drastically increased the number of households that are unable to routinely put food on the table, which rose to 17.2 million in 2010. That’s the highest figure ever recorded. More than one in five children in America lives in a household with low food security. According to DoSomething.org, it would cost just $10 to $12 billion per year to virtually end hunger in America. We could solve the problem in a month.

2. High Speed Rail
$8 billion could make major headway for high speed rail in America, a highly efficient public transportation system that would relieve traffic congestion, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, eliminate thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions and bolster the economy in depressed areas of the nation. That was the amount originally designated for the project by President Obama in 2009, with chunks of the money going to states like California and Florida, where the first inter-city systems would have been built. Of course, Florida governor Rick Scott returned his $2.4 billion portion in a Tea Party political stunt protesting the president’s $787 billion stimulus bill, and legislators in Ohio and Wisconsin did the same.

3. Public Health Programs

Government-funded health care programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) cost at least $732 billion to run each year, and millions of people across the nation rely on them for basic services like check-ups, tests, procedures and medication. Other programs that have seen drastic cuts in recent years include the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides healthy food and infant formula to new mothers, and community health centers, which serve low-income populations. Contrary to the conservative talking point that these so-called “entitlement services” go to people who don’t really need them, a recent analysis found that more than 90% of the benefit dollars spent on these programs go to people who are elderly, seriously disabled  and/or members of struggling working households. Many conservatives would like to see these programs drastically cut. But if we could expand these services, we could provide life-saving care to people who don’t otherwise have access.

4. Protecting the Environment

The amount of money that pays for a single month of the war in Afghanistan could double the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, enabling it to ramp up crucial initiatives like climate change research, pollution cleanup, air quality improvement and the protection of endangered species. It could also considerably pad the budget of the Department of the Interior, which preserves American wilderness and acquires new federal lands. U.S. budget cuts that have allowed more spending on defense have had a considerable impact on environmental protection efforts. Imagine if just one month of war funding could be put toward these programs instead. The effects on land preservation, including the protection of delicate ecosystems threatened by human encroachment, would be incalculable.

5. Superfund Cleanup

Costs to clean up the hundreds of heavily polluted Superfund sites around the United States outpace the funding that is available, leaving many of these sites to sit for decades before they’re even thoroughly assessed, let alone remediated. In past decades, the EPA has allocated $335 million per year for Superfund cleanup, but new estimates put the costs at $681 million per year. The average cost to clean up a Superfund site is between $25 and $30 million, so $8 billion would eliminate about 300 of the roughly 800 Superfund sites on the waiting list.

Companies are supposed to be responsible for cleaning up the sites, but they’re often bankrupt or out of business, and a tax on petroleum that used to help provide funding was eliminated in 1995. With the EPA hurting for cash, Superfund sites will continue to harm ecosystems and communities. According to the Center for Public Integrity, one in four Americans lives within three miles of a contaminated site that poses serious risks to human  health and the environment.

6. Education

The federal government has allocated $153 billion for education this year, which seems like a lot until you realize that teachers are woefully underpaid, classroom sizes are huge, and many schools are dilapidated to the point of water leakage, mold problems and equipment that is decades out of date. If a year’s worth of war funding were applied to education instead, it would nearly double the total budget, preserving programs like the Americorps-funded Teach for America, a program in which recent college graduates commit two years to teaching before moving on to higher-paying jobs. Or we could take a year’s worth of war funding and award $5500 Pell Grants to over 17.5 million students.

According to the Council of Great City Schools, the nation’s major city public schools have at least $15.3 billion in new construction needs, $46.7 billion in repair, renovation and modernization needs, and $14.4 billion in deferred maintenance needs.

7. Low-Income Housing and Help for the Homeless

The foreclosure crisis, coupled with high unemployment, has led to an ever-increasing number of Americans living on the streets. In addition to unemployment benefits and job creation, affordable housing and counseling for the homeless are absolutely essential to help people get back on their feet. Welfare tends to be a dirty word in American politics, but cutting social safety nets in an era of increasing poverty will only deepen the divide between the haves and the have-nots. And the fact is, because costs for things like uninsured hospitalization, imprisonment and emergency shelters are so high, permanent supportive housing for the homeless would actually reduce the financial burden on taxpayers.

8. Jobs for the Unemployed

If we could get the economy back to a healthy state – a real, viable, sustainable healthy state, not created with the illusions of easy credit and sub-prime mortgages – many of the issues we’re experiencing in America could be alleviated. And what could get us back on track better than millions of new job opportunities for the unemployed? If the government took the roughly $100 billion it costs to fund the Afghanistan war for one year and applied it to President Obama’s American Jobs Act, we could hire more teachers and first responders, get construction workers started on all of those school modernization projects, improve more roads, rehabilitate and repurpose vacant properties and extend the jobs tax credit for the long-term unemployed.

9. Scientific Research

Nearly all scientific research is funded by government grants. But while President Obama promised in a 2009 speech that he would devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development, pumping billions into fields like renewable energy, the federal government has actually cut funding. In an effort to ease the deficit, the 2012 fiscal year budget eliminates $4.4 billion from the $30 billion that it typically spends on ‘basic’ research. And the House cut Obama’s requested $8.5 billion in research for energy down to $5.3. Some experts say that cutting this funding stifles the kind of research that stimulates economic growth.

10. Organic Farming

President Obama allocated $50 million of the $787 billion stimulus package to organic farming in 2009, but with the high costs associated with converting conventional farms to organic farms, that money is a drop in the bucket. This funding provides grants to start organic farms, giving farmers up to $20,000 each per year. So if $8 billion was given over to support for organic farming, 400,000 farmers could transition to chemical-free agricultural methods or start new farms in a single year.

11. Wind Energy

Three million homes could be powered by renewable energy projects on federal lands – if only Congress would approve clean-energy tax credits that support wind power, which is looking unlikely.  Illinois’ once-promising wind industry could fall flat without it, eliminating nearly 2,000 jobs. The cost of the tax credit? $1.4 billion per year. Take a month of war money, extend the tax credit for five years and they’d still have enough cash left over to build a few more of their own wind farms on government-owned property.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

8 Things We Could Buy With Anti-Clean Energy Funding

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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ColumnCould you eat on $4 a day?

There are more people on Food Stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), than ever before in the United States. As of May, 45,753,078 Americans were enrolled in SNAP, an increase of over 60% since the recession began in April 2008 and a jump of 12.1% over May 2010. That’s nearly 15% of the U.S. population, or around 1 in 7 people. Additional program data can be found here.

Though the program was designed to be supplemental, according to data collected by The New York Times, about 6 million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income.

Who relies on food stamps?

• 49 percent of all participants are children (18 or younger), and 61 percent of them live in single-parent households. 33 percent of households with children were headed by a single parent.
• 52 percent of SNAP households include children and 76 percent of benefits go to households with children.
• 9 percent of all participants are elderly (age 60 or over).
• The average gross monthly income per SNAP household is $673.
• 43 percent of participants are white; 33 percent are African-American, non-Hispanic; 19 percent are Hispanic; 2 percent are Asian, 2 percent are Native American, and less than 1 percent are of unknown race or ethnicity.

What’s it like to rely primarily on food stamps to put food on the table?

The average amount food stamp recipients receive is $4 a day per person. In 2009 the amount was raised temporarily from $3 to $4, which makes a big difference. However this temporary increase was instituted as part of the economic recovery program and is due to expire in October 2013. To be eligible to receive any food stamps, gross income for a family of four must not exceed 130 percent or less of the Federal poverty guidelines ($2,389 per month/$28,668 per year for a family of four)

What can you buy for $4 a day?

You can buy a fair amount of cheap, processed, sugar-laden food. What you can’t buy is very much unprocessed, organic, responsibly raised fresh food. And you can forget about extras like coffee, wine, nice cheese, expensive fruit like peaches or berries, and welcome a whole lot of starch into your diet. Also, if you want to fulfill your caloric needs in a somewhat healthy way, you need to know how to cook and you need the time to do it. You’ll also need regular access to a kitchen and some basic kitchen utensils. Not everyone has those things.

For two years in a row I participated in the San Francisco Food Bank Hunger Challenge, which gave me a tiny snapshot of what it’s like to live on food stamps. After just one week, I was hungry, angry, bored, and tired. And that was with the luxury of time to cook, a well-stocked kitchen, and the lucky addition of a few extra items of fresh produce that would have been available to clients of the San Francisco Food Bank during that time.

During the 2009 Hunger Challenge I shopped for one week for 2 people and spent $41.08 out of a budget of $56.

My shopping list:

One Stick Butter  .88
Cooking Oil $2.59
1- Quart Milk $1.39
1 Organic Chicken  $8.85
Peanut Butter $2.99
Long Grain Rice from Bulk .75
1/2 pound Pinto Beans from Bulk .55
3/4 pound Ground Beef $2.47
Dozen Cage Free Eggs $2.85
1 Loaf Wheat Bread $2.49
Oatmeal from Bulk Bin $1.08
Corn Tortillas $2.39
Canned Tomato Sauce .79
Canned Enchilada Sauce $3.89
Monterey Jack Cheese $3.09
1 pound Sweet Potatoes $.54
1 piece fresh ginger .49
1 bunch cilantro $1
1 bunch green onions $1
1 bunch bok choy $1

Budget for Two: $56
Total Spent: $41.08

Cushion: $14.92

If you want to read in detail what I did with these items, read all the posts from my Hunger Challenge week in 2009. Other participating bloggers also blogged about their experiences in detail. Amy of Cooking with Amy made a new friend in oatmeal and learned that purchasing jam without high fructose corn syrup at a price she could afford was nearly impossible. Genie of The Inadvertent Gardener had an anxiety provoking shopping trip that had her choosing value over nutrition. Faith at Blog Appetite got creative with menus to help future challengers and food bank clients. Gayle at Been There Ate That notes that the Hunger Challenge is just a tedious, frustrating, eye-opening activity she does once a year, but for the 150,000 San Franciscans facing hunger every day it’s a way of life.

Find out for yourself what it’s like to live on food stamps in America and sign up for the Hunger Challenge this year. I promise you’ll learn something.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate,  on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Images:Jetheriot,  AJ Mexico, Andrea_44.

The post Hunger Pains: 6 Million Americans Struggle to Eat appeared first on EcoSalon.

I’m a cynic. I trust no one and no thing until, well until I’m good and ready. Especially when facts and figures about green and government, poverty and hunger, and other woes of the world get thrown around. I’m the first to stand back and wait. I don’t jump because I know that hype sells.

What I’m getting at is repeated so often it’s become cliche, but it still holds: the truth is hard to find. And once we do track it down, how true is it on the scale of truthfulness? Sometimes we want so badly to believe the good and have faith in the progress, that we don’t question. We just scoop up and run.

There are some things we were told, that we wholeheartedly took as truths – Come to find out, they told us wrong!

For example, supposedly we’re better fed and have fewer deaths from war and at least slavery is over and done with, right? Wrong. More Americans than ever are on food stamps, more people are dead from the conflict in eastern Congo than any war since WWII, and there are more slaves at work today than at any other time in history. Unbelievable. And real.

Why are we so willing to believe the people or organizations that distribute the erroneous information? Are we so gullible – or just too tired?

In moments where my heart begins to sink at the gravity of this realization, and I am prepared to throw my arms up in disbelief and hopelessness, I’m then inspired by my colleagues, the writers and friends and others I’ve met, online and off, who won’t swallow the information they are given as if it’s a free lunch. They question everything, and oh how I love people who question everything.

Here’s to gratitude and thoughtfulness in 2011.

Image _lmaji_

The post Things We Thought We Knew About the World, That are Wrong appeared first on EcoSalon.

We recently gathered once again for a gal’s night out, something me and my friends do to honor one another when our big day bites us in the ass (I mean elates us) each year. It’s all warm and buzzy, the serious sipping of full figured red wine, the grazing of small sumptuous Spanish plates, the embarrassingly intimate inebriated birthday toasts counting the ways we count. And the climax hasn’t changed since you were ten, the oozing dessert all aglow and the presenting of pretty packages that will transmogrify into long overdue thank you notes.

While the loot does indeed get much better as we get older (did I mention the jewelry?), there is nothing I need to acquire to feel more blessed. I cherish the handcrafted cards my children make each birthday, but beyond that, I feel guilty about accumulating more stuff. If you feel the same, why not consider other options? Don’t feel pretentious suggesting to your friends that they honor you with an eco alternative. The following options take the cake!

1. OptNow Gift Cards

Instead of the Nordstrom gift cards my friends love to gift as group gifts, the OptNow option is used to support a mission to end global poverty.

2. Pack up Party

You’ve wanted to clean out the cupboards and closets for months and pack up what you don’t use to donate to a shelter or other needy recipient. Invite the group over (even a couple pals can make it a party) and have a ball rummaging and packing up your junk.

3. Take a Hike

On one of my “milestone” birthdays, I decided to do a hike rather than a chichi dinner or costly trip. It was free, amazing exercise (just ask Kendra Wilkinson) and an ideal way to reconnect with wildlife and our natural surroundings. The greatest team building gift of all: No cell phones.

4. Board Public Transit to the Farmer’s Market

You and your epicurean pals or kids can shop for locally grown, organic produce and eat some for your b-day lunch. It’s an ideal way for ladies who lunch to munch responsibly while celebrating you and supporting community growers. But don’t drive if you have access to a bus, bike or train and of course, take a basket or reusable bags.

5. Renewable Energy Sponsorships

Ditch the new laptop purchase, and instead ask for a sponsorship from the start-up company, Powered Green. It sponsors new wind turbines that make enough clean and green energy to power your old computer for seven years. Each laptop credit covers 690 kilowatt-hours of certified wind energy and stops 1030 pounds of CO2 for $16. For $28, you can buy a desktop sponsorship for 1300 kilowatt-hours of certified wind energy, ceasing 1900 pounds of emissions. Each sponsorship comes with a decal for your computer, showing off your commitment to the planet. Way to grow!

6. Group Food Bank Volunteering

My 11-year-old’s friend held her party this year at the San Francisco Food Bank where guests donned protective plastic gloves and spend a couple of hours sorting can goods and packing them up for the needy throughout the city. Why limit this to kids? It is a great idea for grown ups, too, and a way to still have fun dishing and laughing while you work, all for a great cause: Feeding hungry neighbors. Now, that’s a gift. Oh, and guests can also donate money while they are visiting.

7. Say it with Darkness

Don’t say it with diamonds. Instead, make it lights out, candles in. Let her or him create a candlelit ambiance – beeswax naturally – to show how you glow, even when adding another year to the time clock. Spend the day without any electronics if possible and then flicker away at night. Spread out on a blanket if you like and recite poetry instead of watching the tube. A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou beside me, singing in the wilderness. . .It’s all so very friendly.

8. Scrap It

Scrapping is in big time – no, not just the recycled steel – but also scrap books as gifts lovingly assembled using existing materials by your friends and family. You can re-purpose an old photo book to create a personal masterpiece. It is the best gift I have ever received – one large book from friends on a big birthday and a small, beautiful pink one from my daughters on a Mother’s Day.

9. Gifts from the Garden

If eco is a return to purity and simplicity, then an ideal green birthday gift would be staying home and enjoying the fruits and veggies of your husband or best friend’s labors. There is nothing like cut flowers from the garden (give it up for lilacs and dahlias) and a nurturing soup of fresh picked veggies made and grown by someone who adores you.

10. Adopt a Furry Child

Come on, a new best friend from your old best friends? It’s a win-win situation. There are too many unwanted and neglected dogs and cats waiting for homes and the SPCA can connect you to a loving shelter pet on your birthday or any day. Tip: As I found out, some gifts snore a lot louder than others!

Images: AlphaTangoBravo,Luanne Bradley, SPCA, Polkadot Creations, Aldon;  San Francisco Food Bank

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