March 15th, 2013

What’s the best way to reduce how much water you use? You may be surprised to learn that it doesn’t involve your lawn or a household faucet.

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October 20th, 2010

CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories (Earth Aware, 2010) takes no shortcuts as it squires us on an uncomfortable walk through the ways of modern meat production. It’s a grimy, grisly world and while much is immediately apparent, it’s important to stay for the entire tour so you can appreciate all the connections, redundancies and stupidity in the system.

This isn’t easy. There are pictures — and text — that are pure horror show; glimpses of the slaughterhouse where you can almost smell the stench. But stay on the walk, so you’ll understand. That’s important, because in the end, this is not about a more efficient system that’s brutal but necessary to feed the world, but about a super-controlled corporate game that’s out of control.

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May 6th, 2010

Once upon a time, before plastic water bottles and giant plasma TVs and prepackaged foods and paper towels, there were moms who went about their days doing Earth-friendly things. For some of them it’s a vague memory. For others it may be only legend and lore. But yes, there was a time without liquid detergents and big grocery stories and electric dryers.

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April 9th, 2010

The fast food industry is slow to get that it needs to move to more sustainable packaging. That’s the word from the Dogwood Alliance, which this week launched a public awareness effort called Kentucky Fried Forests campaign to skewer Kentucky Fried Chicken’s practice of using unsustainably sourced paper.

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March 11th, 2010

(The piece posted here is the Introduction to Animal Factory: The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy, and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment by David Kirby. The new book (March 2010)  examines the environmental contamination and heath impacts of industrial livestock production.)

Many Americans have no idea where their food comes from, and many have no desire to find out.

That is unfortunate.

Every bite we take has had some impact on the natural environment, somewhere in the world. As the planet grows more crowded, and more farmers turn to industrialized methods to feed millions of new mouths, that impact will only worsen.

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