What: Climate Counts web site

Features: Keep tabs on your favorite companies and their efforts to address climate change with Climate Counts, a web site that scores their impact on the environment. Check the scorecard for a ranking of a company’s grade and the ways they’re reducing their carbon footprint (Kraft Foods, for example, is up 19 points from last year and is listed as ‘Striding’ toward their environmental goals. Sara Lee, on the other hand, is ‘Stuck’, meaning they have yet to take meaningful action on climate change)

Green Factor: The goal is clear (and green): to encourage awareness among consumers, and, in turn, within the companies themselves

Bonus: The site is full of information. Sign up for their newsletter, watch videos, contact companies directly, download a helpful iPhone app and more!

Find It Here: Climate Counts

When you’re shopping for produce, what do those numbers on the stickers mean?

The PLU “Price Look Up” code stickers on fruits and vegetables can help you identify organic, conventional and even genetically modified produce.

•  Organic produce stickers start with a 9 and have 5 numbers
• Conventional produce has 4 numbers
• GM (Genetically Modified) produce have 5 numbers like organic produce but start with the number 8 so be particularly cautious of those fruits and vegetables

Choose 9 for peace of mind!

Author Annie Malka is a mother of four living in the Florida Keys. She writes about cooking, nutrition, organic foods and sustainability at her blog Hip Organic Mama.

What: Cork Cutting Board

 Features: Cork is a great surface to use in the kitchen – it’s wear-resistant and durable, keeps knives sharp, is impermeable to liquids, and hypo-allergenic, to boot!

Green Factor: PVC and formaldehyde-free, FDA food-safe and sustainably harvested

Cool Factor: The cork itself comes from China’s cork oak tree. Harvesting the cork is harmless to the tree itself, and the outer bark is quickly regenerated

Find It Here: Grass Roots

What: Food, Inc.

Features: Want to learn more about what you’re eating? Food, Inc., an award-winning documentary that takes a hard look at the nation’s food industry, is now out on DVD

Green Factor: Since its release, Food, Inc. has prompted thousands of people to re-think their eating habits, like eating more local and sustainably-grown food

Cool Factor: Check the web site for lots of cool features – watch the movie trailer, find out how to get involved, and sign a petition to support healthy food choices in schools across the country

Find It Here: Food Inc. movie

What: Wine.com

Features: Green wines made with sustainable, organic and/or biodynamic practices and a fabulous, very reasonably priced organic wine and food gift set.

Bonus: 1¢ shipping on orders over $99 for a limited time. Use promo code “1cent” in the shopping cart. in the shopping cart1cent

Find It Here: Wine.com

Finally, someone reads my mind and does exactly what I needed them to do. No, no, they didn’t invent that laundry-folding robot yet. No, but almost as brilliant, they wrote The ABC’s of Natural. It’s just a simple, easy to understand guide to the good and bad stuff commonly found in supermarket foods—which, I might add, is WAY more convenient than whipping out the old smart phone to Google isodium guanylate or EDTA or bromate (none of which are on the good list, by the way). Created by Hain Celestial, this list will make shopping while avoiding the crap much easier so go download it (for free!) and keep a copy handy next time you go to the supermarket.

Find it Here:  The ABC’s of Natural

We all know chlorine is a poison. It’s toxic and has been linked to infertility and disease. Sadly it’s everywhere—in our drinking water, bleaching our paper towels and toilet paper, in pools, in PVC plastics, in pesticides, so we do our best to avoid it by getting unbleached products and filtering our water (even the showers!) and just when we thought we were safe, we find out that chlorine is routinely used to keep our healthy produce “fresh” by, and I quote the MMS Newsletter:

“In the grocery store, glistening carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, bell peppers, etc. all glisten and look fresh primarily because five days ago they were picked, washed, then passed under a cloud of ClO2 gas that destroyed bacteria and disease-germs that ordinarily cause food to quickly spoil.

Some transportation trucks carrying produce (sometimes on two-day trips) can blow some ClO2 into the enclosed truck before closing the rear doors. The spoiling of food begins from invisible surface contaminants. ClO2 eradicates such bacteria.”

I learned this first hand before searching for it on the web to confirm. A truck driver was explaining how when transporting strawberries, chlorine vapor kept his strawberries from molding and therefore looking pretty and lasting longer. Read the rest of this entry »

Chef Ann Cooper, also known as the “Renegade Lunch Lady,” has been making school lunch programs healthier across the U.S. for the past decade.  This is your chance to bring her to your school or district for your very own action plan to improve your lunch program.

Just create and post a 1 minute (One little minute, yo!) video to Youtube showing why your school is in need of a School Lunch Makeover, and submit the link to: schoollunchmakeover@wholefoods.com

Send us a link to your video using this form  and your email address, and we’ll randomly select one of you to win a $50 Whole Foods Gift card, on October 8th! (use WF as the giveaway name and put your link in the Entry Answer field) Contest Closed.

You can learn more about Chef Ann and the Video contest here.

Read it. See it. Change your life and the lives of your loved ones. Make a difference in your health and the health of the planet and our future. We CAN do it and most certainly we must make more informed choices.Grocery stores are such an illusion. The waste in packaging, transporting products, the ingredients (and the real ingredient behind what is mysteriously listed on the label), shelf space and electricity, dated items going to the garbage (that’s mostly produce since the other stuff has a life span to practically last into our child’s adulthood), how the animals we consume are treated (you are what you eat), hormones shot into our animals and getting into our dairy and meats, genetic modifications to the DNA of the foods, the colors and additives and smells added that now seem normal to us. It’s all a strange place with food-like substances. Read the rest of this entry »

Minimal Mercury Marinated Tuna by Small Footprint Family — Like tuna but hate those pesky high mercury levels? Dawn highlights some sources for tuna with much lower levels of mercury and as a bonus, shares a recipe.

Will Your Kid Be Carrying a Pesticide (Triclosan) in His School Supplies? by The Smart Mama — Jennifer illuminates an issue that has been chapping my proverbial butt for a while now… Microban is in/on lunch boxes as well as a ton of other school-related items and it’s not good stuff.

Color My Driveway: Cornstarch Sidewalk Paint by Pink and Green Mama — This homemade sidewalk paint, made with ingredients you can probably already find in your own kitchen, is so cool that I wish I’d thought of it first.

Do I Make You Uncomfortable? by Heather’s Homemaking — Do you ever wonder if your commitment to the environment makes your less-green friends uncomfortable?

How to Clean a Toilet by Oooh Baby Green Living and Parenting — J. Claire teaches you how to clean your toilet the green way.

Cleaning Out Plato’s Reusable Closet with a Stylish Texas Teen by Greenopolis — Consignment stores can help fatten up a teen’s wardrobe at a fraction of mall prices. And? It’s much greener than buying new.

On Our Blog:  Back to School at the Thrift Store

Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) is used to force cows to make more milk. It is, in essence, a genetically-engineered synthetic hormone. Most of the industrialized countries in the world have banned rBGH but here in the United States, we’re giving it to our most vulnerable citizens—our children! It is estimated that at least 84 million gallons of milk from artificial hormone-treated cows were distributed through the school nutrition programs in fiscal year 2005-2006. That’s about 20% of the milk offered in school cafeterias nationwide. I don’t give my kids rBGH-derived milk at home—why would I be okay with them having it at school??? The good news is that we have a great chance to bring milk free from artificial, genetically engineered hormones into our schools as Congress takes up legislation on the National School Lunch Program. Make your voice heard on this important issue by signing the True Food Network’s petition to ask Congress to state that schools can specifically seek out and purchase artificial hormone-free milk and organic milk.

My husband just sent me this link to a short article on Current about how there is no “local vs. organic.” I was glad to read it because when I hear people say that buying local is better than organic and vice versa, it made no sense to me. They’re two completely separate things. Buy organic AND local, if you can, or choose the one that’s most important to you but don’t feel like you’re choosing between two equal options. One is specifically better for Read the rest of this entry »