At the same time, about a third of all food is wasted.

Studies have determined that the energy needed to cultivate, process, pack and bring food to the table accounts for around 26% of the European Union’s energy consumption in 2013, with similar numbers in the US and around the world. This has called for a need for a more sustainable, earth-friendly way to manufacture food: an organic, eco-conscious food system that takes care of the environment and the people alike.

Initiatives are already reaping significant success. Between 2012 and 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations engaged farmers, governments, retailers, consumers and people at every stage of the food system to raise awareness of the issue and create a dialogue on sustainable production and consumption.

Organizations such as the Stone Barns Center are working tirelessly to address the main problems of unsustainable farming practices, food manufacture, and food consumption. Driven by the motto to create a healthy and sustainable food system that benefits all, they provide educational resources, training, workshops and launch various initiatives to invest in resilient, regenerative farming.

One of the greatest issues behind the unsustainable food system is the prioritization of profits over people. The current food system doesn’t pay farmers living wages, all while putting their lives and health at risk with practices that degrade and pollute the environment. Stone Barns Center aims to address all these problems by advocating for viable and just incomes for farmers and everyone involved in the food system while maintaining food prices affordable to ensure everyone has access to nutritious, quality food.

The organization is already making a difference via various initiatives. The Growing Farmers Initiative targets the human aspect of the food system, supporting farmers with training, workshop and the necessary resources to help beginning farmers succeed. At the same time, the Food Ed initiative aims to educate the public about the issues of the food system, how these affect our planet, our health, our lives and everything in between, and the ways we can tackle the problems, moving to a more sustainable way of consuming and producing food. The industry is slowly but certainly moving towards a more sustainable, planet-friendly food manufacturing but is there a solution in sight? A growing body of evidence suggests the answer lies in agroecology: a paradigm that takes a systems approach to the food system, taking into account all of its aspects – including production, distribution, and consumption. Specialists believe that agroecology has the potential to double food production while alleviating rural poverty and diminishing the effects of climate change. Are we there yet? Not entirely but thanks to the efforts of organizations like Stone Barns Center, and their family-oriented education system, we are slowly working towards a more balanced food system that benefits everyone.

The post How do we make the food system more sustainable? The Stone Barns Center is paving the way. appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

Below, we spotlight a new crop of super fashionable loungewear lines that are reimagining underwear through the lens of sustainability.

These eco-friendly brands make products that are comfy, durable, chic, and ethically made– they’re well made, but they also look and feel amazing. We promise that once you try on a pair, you’ll never go back.

Azura Bay

Azura Bay is the premier sustainable loungewear brand of the moment, selling not only a wide variety of ethically made undies, but also a better body image. We love that AB shows off women of all shapes and sizes in their photography, and the undergarments are great, too!

We particularly love their fashion-forward lingerie and streetwear-inspired underwear, like these Floral Lana High-Waisted Hipsters (which are super soft and made from eco-friendly lyocell, aka wood pulp). Lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of ladies cop the trend of wearing high waisted hipsters under their jeans and letting them show by wearing a crop top. Issa lewk.

Undone

Those who love boutique fashion need look no further than Undone. Undone’s perfectly-curated designer collections feature some gorgeous favorites: Marieyat, Lonely, and The Nude Label, among others. We are forever indebted to them for exposing us to Baserange’s velours highwaisted bell pants and bras, which are sustainably made in Portugal and super comfy. I mean, who doesn’t want a velvet bra?

Botanica Workshop

Came for the bralettes, stayed for the vibes. Botanica Workshop makes our favorite bralettes anywhere, crafted out of organic cotton and stretch silk that looks polished when worn but is comfy on the body. BW’s bralette’s come in an impressive variety of shapes and sizes (more of a cup, less of a cup depending on your boob size) so there is truly something here for everyone. They also make recycled nylon swimwear and super cute high-waisted briefs.

Pansy

Pansy makes comfy organic cotton underwear that are dreamy, ethical, and made from cotton that is grown domestically and sewn locally. Founded by California girls Laura Schoorl and Rachel Corry, their products are made with organic Texas-grown cotton that is milled in North Carolina and “sewn in a factory in San Leandro, CA, a fifteen minute-drive from Laura’s apartment.”

We love this holistic, traceable model. Pansy undies are sturdy, minimal, and chic, and they’re dyed without toxins in Novato, California. Even the natural rubber/cotton elastic is made domestically in South Carolina. They also offer socks, leggings, and loungewear that you can coordinate with your underwear. What’s not to love?

Want more sustainable fashion? Then definitely check out Reformation, Ferragamo’s orange peel fabric, or read about How Orange Peels Are Saving The World.

The post Where to Get The Best Green Undies appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

Green Is The New Black is a pioneering new sustainability festival that brings together over 70 conscious brands from the world of beauty, fashion, and lifestyle alongside a host of talks, screenings, panels, workshops, and keynotes from thought leaders from around the world.

This year’s festival will take place April 20-22, 2018 at PMQ in Hong Kong. Tickets are available here.

This year’s program will feature an intriguing cast of speakers, including David Goldsmith, Founder of the Project Moon Hut Foundation in conjunction with NASA, and Doug Woodring, Founder and Managing Director of the Ocean Recovery Alliance.

Watch the video from last year’s festival, below.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit Green Is The New Black’s website.

The post Green is The New Black Festival Returns to Hong Kong appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

The plant-based polyethylene proposed for this new product will be sourced from sugarcane to make a plastic-like material with the same structural properties as true polyethylene. (Sugarcane is indigenous to tropical South and Southeast Asia, and is not invasive– unlike bamboo, for which it is occasionally mistaken. According to MIT Technology Review, it’s also just as cheap to make plastic from sugar cane as it is to make it from petroleum, a boon to both business and the environment.)

“We are proud that the first Lego elements made from sustainably sourced plastic are in production and will be in Lego boxes this year,” said Tim Brooks, Lego’s vice president for environmental responsibility. “This is a great first step in our ambitious commitment of making all Lego bricks using sustainable materials.”

Lego is aiming for zero waste operations as part of its membership in the RE100— a consortium of the world’s most influential companies committed to using 100% renewable power. Lego has also committed to using sustainable materials in all of its products by 2030– a noble goal towards which using sugarcane based plastic is a first step.

Lego joins a handful of high-profile companies that are finally beginning to embrace sustainability as a cornerstone of their new business model. Apple, IKEA, Adobe, and Burberry have all made 100% renewable pledges– and more and more companies are joining the pledge every day.

Looking for ways to reduce your own plastic use? Consider doing a plastic cleanse, using compostable “plastic” bags, or consider making one of these 10 easy pledges to better the environment.

The post Lego to Start Using Sustainable, Plant-Based Plastic appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

In addition to establishing an open source record of all existing data on living things (which would no doubt spur innovation in drug, textile, and energy production) experts speculate that such an endeavor would also curb attempts to defy the Nagoya Protocol— an international quorum to protect and secure access to genetic information.

Now, according to new reporting from Fast Company, entrepreneur and Chairman of Space Time Ventures Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio is beginning this process with a pilot program that proposes to register all biological assets in the Amazon rainforest on a public blockchain, which he believes could form the basis of a new environmentally friendly intelligence based economy.

The Amazon Bank of Codes, or ABC, would also encourage developing countries to “make money from the scientific breakthroughs that would result, rather than selling their natural resources.” By offering economic incentives for preservation, governments are more likely to comply– and their participation is key to ensuring that the indexing is thorough.

“We posit that there is a multi-trillion-dollar innovation opportunity if we make these assets visible to entrepreneurs and corporations around the world,” Castilla-Rubio told Fast Company. “We can develop a whole new bio-economy based on these assets.”

Much like the Human Genome Project– which sequenced a complete genetic map of human beings in 2013– the ABC’s data would be open and would establish an ethical protocol for the use of this genetic data, with provisions to ensure that the plants, animals, and other species being sequenced would remain protected and invulnerable from private interest. Read the rest of the article in full over at Fast Company.

The post The Earth Bank of Codes Aims to Protect Nature Using Genetics appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

We reviewed the best podcasts of 2017 and discovered more than a few sustainability podcasts, mind-body podcasts, herbal medicine podcasts, health podcasts, and the best podcasts about creativity that are all worth listening to in 2018.

Below, we spotlight our favorite award-winning and little-known podcasts that address aspects of food, beauty, health, medicine, mindfulness, and the environment from a variety of different angles.

Did we leave something out? Let us know your favorites on social media at @gardencollage.

The People’s Pharmacy

The People’s Pharmacy with Joe & Terry Graedon is an NPR-affiliated public radio show that is kind of dry when it comes to traditional “entertainment”, but it is a great serious listen for nutrition, health, and alternative medicine buffs.

Featuring a mix of policy news and updates related to pharmaceuticals (natural and otherwise) as well interviews with leading industry experts on various common health problems, their show– which features topics like “How To Protect Your Vision” and “How Do Endochrine Disruptors Affect Your Health?”– answers many intriguing questions about topics you’ve likely heard of but might not know much about.

The Mind Palace Podcast

The Mind Palace Podcast is simply a podcast about what it means to lead a meaningful life, addressing everything from life choices, beauty, breathwork, pop culture, and free speech to language, politics, trends, and, most recently, “Meyers-Briggs madness.”

We like that this podcast covers the full spectrum of intentional living, and we recommend it specifically for people who are looking to find more meaning in their work, relationships, mindfulness practice, passion projects, and/or daily lives.

Food Is…

Documenting the issue of food waste, the Food Is… series is a documentary project by Chris King that’s aimed at addressing the sometimes invisible ways we can reduce avoidable food waste while motivating people to take action to change the culture of conspicuous food consumption.

One episode, for example, features an interview with Hannah McCollum, the entrepreneur behind ChicP— a company that gathers food that would otherwise go to waste and turns it into delicious hummus.

The Energy Gang

With titles like “Tax Reform and Tesla’s Semi-Truck”, “Did Steve Bannon Hint at a Solar Trade War?”, and “Painful Lessions from Hurricane Harvey”, The Energy Gang podcast is a weekly digest on energy, cleantech, and the environment through the lens of current evets.

Produced by Greentech Media, the show features industry-focused debates and discussions between energy specialist Jigar Shah and Greentech EIC Stephen Lacey, who together address everything from energy storage and distribution to grid modification and the technological, political, and market forces that drive energy and environmental issues.

The Herbrally Podcast

The Herbrally Podcast is an excellent podcast for herbalism lovers and natural remedy junkies, organized under the tagline, “Herbalism in your neck of the woods”. The podcast features recorded lectures from various experts in the (literal and metaphorical) field, who address a variety of super-relevant topics, from “Plant Medicine and Sexual Trauma” to “Pumpkin Spice: A Deep Dive into the Medicinal Properties of This Beloved Fall Blend”.

If you love learning about how to heal yourself using natural remedies, teas, tinctures, herbs, wild edibles, homemade salves, hydrosols, biofeedback, and other holistic health care methods, this is the podcast for you. Recently, Herbrally has spotlighted everything from blue vervain to moringa to the best plant medicine for menstrual health.

Think: Sustainability

Think: Sustainability is a podcast dedicated to exploring practical solutions to global warming and issues related to our finite supply of natural resources.

The podcast addresses common questions related to these topics in the spirit of “How Things Work”– episode address quirky concepts like the new phenomenon of “thunderstorm asthma” and why it’s getting worse with Climate Change; Australia’s war on feral cats (yes, you read that right); what happens when a species goes extinct; is being a vegan sustainable; the carbon footprint of your Facebook posts; the idea of “acid rain”; gassy corals (yes, you also read that right); why Lake Chad is shrinking; how drone technology is engaging with conservation; and there’s even a podcast called “Bill Gates really loves chickens”. We’ll let you explore that last one on your own.

The Slow Home Podcast

Brooke McAlary hosts The Slow Home Podcast to address “slower” ways of living, discussing everything from barefoot walking to “the Age of Distraction” and how to live slow while still being connected on social media (and doing so with a lovely Australian accent).

For the uninitiated, some of the ideas discussed may be revelatory– and for those of us already in the flow, it offers ample reminders and good tips for how to maintain the ethos of slow living in a fast-paced world.

The World Resources Institute Podcast

The WRI Podcast features smart, incisive commentary and direct-to-the-issue conversations with various players in global resource development. The podcast focuses on the intersection of socio-economic development and the environment, from electrifying continental Africa to rainforest restoration in Brazil to efforts to restore water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.

This is a great podcast for people interested in global development, public health, policy, government, and the ways these myriad issues intersect.

Climate One

How can art help us understand the human cost of Climate Change? This was a question asked of world renown artist Ai Weiwei in a recent interview for Climate One Podcast, which addresses environmental, energy, policy, and humanitarian issues in a series of live, recorded conversations between activists, artists, policy experts, change makers, and other stakeholders.

By gathering “inspiring, credible, and compelling information”, host Greg Dalton provides essential insight from concerned citizens that is helpful for those looking to stay informed and/or get involved in affecting change.

This is a great podcast for activists and those looking to educate themselves about climate issues in popular culture; recent pods include topics like “Greening Professional Sports”, the aforementioned “Ai Weiwei: Human Flow”, and “Concussions, Cigarettes, and Climate”, which is prefaced as such:

“What do football, tobacco, and oil have in common? A common narrative of deceit. When tobacco companies faced public scrutiny about the link between cancer and smoking, the industry launched a campaign questioning the scientific evidence. Oil companies and the National Football League have used the same playbook to mislead the public. Listen to the stories of how industries endeavor to confuse.”

Low Tox Life

Hosted by Alexx Stuart of lowtoxlife.com, the Low Tox Life Podcast addresses sustainability, health, fashion, farming, lowering your toxic load, and happiness (all of our favorite things!) for those who theoretically would love to live in an “off grid hippie commune” but who know that just isn’t a practice or universal solution for modern living.

Offering smart, achievable suggestions for how to improve your daily life, Low Tox Life takes a relaxed and curious approach to better living, inside and out.

50 Shades of Green Divas

I know. The name alone is enough. The 50 Shades of Green Divas Podcast explores crazy, awesome, seemingly-unrelated-but-actually-related topics that intersect with sustainability. Like sex, among other topics addressed in a recent podcast titled “Intimacy with Nature.” Other GD segments address everything from “eco-sexuality” to “green dude stuff,” “Green Divas Confessions,” “GDs iMatter Youth,” and “Green Divas Foodie-Philes.” And yes, there are a lot of nature puns.

The Spirit of 608 Podcast

The Spirit of 608 Podcast features conversations among women at the forefront of fashion, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and tech– or F.E.S.T., as host Lorraine Sanders likes to call it. In this podcast, Sanders explores the many ways various innovators are working to build a better fashion industry for consumers, creatives, workers, the environment, and more.

PRI’s Living On Earth

The Living On Earth Podcast is a great incisive podcast focusing on global environmental news and developments. Hosted by Steve Curwood and presented by Public Radio International, LOE reports on a wide variety of ecological issues animated by expert interviews and input from leaders from the scientific and legislative community. Recent topics include “Bitcoin, the Energy Hog”, “Saving Trees That Helped Save Dust Bowl America”, and a segment about how “Heat Drives Migration.”

The Herbal Highway

Helmed by Sarah Holmes of The Blue Otter School of Medicine in Siskiyou County, California, The Herbal Highway is a super-informative podcast dedicated to herbal healing inside and out. From this podcast we’ve learned everything from how to heal a cough naturally to how to live and thrive with diabetes.

For The Wild

For The Wild features hard-hitting and emotionally engaging stories featuring engaging activist personalities like Bill McKibbon on “Dampening the Blow of a Spiraling Climate.”

They also have conversations with experts like pioneering oceanographer Dr. Sylvia A. Earle– the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, a celebrated best-selling scientific author, and a woman who has lead over 100 expeditions and logged over 7,000 hours underwater. If nothing more, this episode alone is worth listening to on repeat!

Love these podcasts? Watch some of these inspiring environmental documentaries next.

The post The Best “Green” Podcasts appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

The plan, which broadly outlines World Bank President Jim Yong King’s “Climate Agora”– a marketplace designed to showcase new financing models and innovation for climate action– includes providing concessional funding for Geothermal Energy Production in Indonesia and initiating the West African Coastal Areas Management Program (WACA), with the goal of “crowding-in two billion dollars to tackle coastal erosion, flooding, and climate change adaptation” in this vulnerable part of the world.

“The bank has signaled that the international community is taking the fight against global warming more seriously than ever.”

Taken together along with a handful of other new plans, Kim’s outline reaffirms the World Bank’s position that global warming is a “common concern of humankind” and that the global milieu has a collective need to “respond to the urgent threat of climate change.”

As Jason Kirk, Associate Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies at Elon University and author of The Conversation‘s piece, explains:

“I see this move– which World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced in December— as significant for two reasons.

The bank has signaled that the international community is taking the fight against global warming more seriously than ever. And it shows that the bank intends to keep playing a leading role in that battle at a time when its most powerful shareholder, the U.S., is turning its back on global environmental leadership.

Kim has been taking the World Bank in a direction that climate change activists and other critics have long advocated by positioning the institution as a global environmental leader since he became its president in 2012.

“In 2013, the bank decided to stop financing the construction of coal-fired power plants, except in cases where no viable alternatives existed.

Three years later, the World Bank pledged that it would make 28 percent of all of its transactions by 2020 advance climate action.

The bank’s climate efforts are wide-ranging. It lends money to build solar and wind farms, requires its borrowers to take steps to shrink their carbon footprints, and has a goal of ‘greening the whole financial system.'”

Read the full article here, via The Conversation. 

Interested in learning more about how you can support clean energy in your community? Consider donating to an environmental nonprofit, or check out these 5 transformative, educational documentaries.

The post The World Bank Looking to Distance Itself From Fossil Fuels appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

The post 10 New Year’s Resolutions That Help The Environment appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

If you’re like my family, you probably keep the Christmas tree around through the New Year (and maybe even a few weeks into January!) to keep the holiday #vibes going and to make the tree’s sacrifice worth it– but most people just check their tree to the curb as soon as December 26 rolls around.

Interested in recycling your old tree and turning it into food? Us, too.

Photo: Susy Morris/Flickr

Photo: Susy Morris/Flickr

Photo: Susy Morris/Flickr

Photo: Susy Morris/Flickr

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“Plug spawn” is a word that, when first heard, doesn’t exactly sound appetizing, but they are huge in the mushroom-growing community.

Plug spawn are wooden dowels that get hammered into fresh cut logs and then are stacked or buried in your garden or outdoor space, where they eventually turn into tiny mushroom gardens. This is a couple day project will fruit for years to come if done properly.

Smugtown mushrooms offers a special variety of Phoenix Oyster mushroom that typically grows on hardwoods, but is naturalized for conifer trees like hemlock, pine, fir, and spruce. (Aka, your Christmas tree.)

To use this Phoenix Oyster Plug Spawn, simply chop all the branches off of your Christmas tree so that what remains is just the trunk. Predrill the logs and hammer the plug spawn into the holes so that they are flush, they seal them up with melted cheese wax.

If it’s winter, wrap the log in a trash bag and keep it in the garage or another cool environment until the Spring, when the log can be transplanted into a shady part of your garden or other secluded, shady part of the yard. Then, forget about the log and let nature run it’s course. By next year or so, you’ll have a fruiting bloom of mushrooms that reminisces of a chia pet, and the mushrooms will return yearly to create a lasting permaculture mushroom garden.

(If you live in a woodsy area, be sure to keep your mushroom log away from places where wild mushrooms might be growing. If you’re not good at identifying the difference, you don’t want to mix the two up, as consuming unidentifiable wild mushrooms can be dangerous.)

How cool is that?

The post How to Use Your Old Christmas Tree to Grow Edible Mushrooms appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

According to a recent report by the New York Times, glitter is an environmental scourge that is polluting the ocean, lakes, rivers, streams, and other watersheds.

Because glitter is a microplastic, it runs the risk of polluting waterways just as any other microplastic (like microbeads) would, and while reps from the Marine Conservation Society and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) both told the Times that they were happy to see some UK scientists calling for a ban on glitter, it’s unclear yet whether such a ban would be entirely necessary (“That would possibly be a little bit draconian,” said Sue Kingsley, Senior Pollution Policy Officer at the Marine Conservation Society).

Still, the only people questioning the validity of the ban on glitter are those who seem to think it doesn’t go far enough: “Because it is a microplastic, we would have the same concerns as we would with any other microplastic that ends up in the environment,” Amy V. Uhrin, the chief scientist of NOAA’s Marine Debris Division, told the Times. 

We will update this post if and when glitter gets banned or regulated for environmental reasons. 

The post Glitter is Bad For the Environment and Should Be Banned, Scientists Say appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.