This is very egg-citing!!

Thanks to a great neighborly recommendation, I have recently been checking out a website called The Eat Well Guide. They compile great information so that you can be an informed food consumer. It is difficult to know what the real deal is with all of these labels that we see in our local grocery. It seems that everything now is labeled "sustainable" or "environmentally- friendly" or "organic" or a million other things. What do these labels mean? Is there any truth to them? and will we be healthier for adhering to them?

Well, the truth is there are a lot of labels so use this guide to help become educate yourself. There are certain labels that are regulated and certain that aren't: know which are and aren't so you can make the right choices for you and your family. I have spoken to many nutritionists on the subject of organic and every one of them tells me that eating foods labeled organic is essential to healthy living. Get those chemicals out of our bodies!!

Here is a blurb about what the Eat Well Guide is all about:

The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of thousands of family farms, restaurants, markets and other outlets of fresh, locally-grown food throughout the United States and Canada. Visitors simply enter a zip or postal code to find good food and create free printable booklets. Originally a database of sustainably-raised meat, poultry, eggs and dairy, Eat Well Guide listings have expanded over the years to include farmers' markets, CSA programs, local advocacy organizations, and vegetarian/vegan restaurants. Many listings are also accompanied by water conscious ratings.

Here are some great things to look for when buying Eggs...now you can chuckle a little because of my hilarious, clever title:

Cage Free:

Cage Free simply means that egg-laying hens are not confined to battery cages (67 square inches of space) where they are denied their natural behaviors such as perching, spreading their wings and nesting. However, birds can also be called cage-free without ever being outdoors or “on pasture”. The USDA does not regulate this label. “Cage Free” must be differentiated from “Free Range”, a term that is defined by the USDA and used for poultry (chickens raised for consumption rather than egg-laying).

All Natural:

The “all natural” label, although quite popular, is not regulated by the US government or verified by third party inspectors. The Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA states that “natural” is defined by a product “containing no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed (a process which does not fundamentally alter the raw product)” and it must explain the use of the term by stating on its label phrases such as “no added colorings or artificial ingredients”, etc.

No Antibiotics or Hormones Administered:

These labels are defined by the USDA, but only for poultry, pork, beef and red meat, not eggs. Consequently there are no controlled guidelines or verification by third party inspectors.

Omega-3 of 225mg in Each Egg:

With the increasing awareness of the nutrient value of Omega-3 fatty acids, an increasing number of egg cartons contain this label. Most often it means that the hens were given a diet rich in flax seed – a good source of this fat. DHA, a type of Omega-3 fatty acid is also labeled similarly.

Vegetarian Fed/Organic Vegetarian Feed:

Again, this label is not defined by the USDA. Vegetarian fed simply means that the hens were given a diet containing no animal by-products. Grains (e.g. corn, wheat), silage, hay and similar vegetarian feed is common. Vegetarian fed does not guarantee that antibiotics or pesticides were not used in the production of the feed or that the feed was not genetically modified. Organic vegetarian feed, on the contrary, does.

75 mcg of Folic Acid:

Folate, a vital B vitamin, especially necessary for a healthy pregnancy, is present in eggs (mainly in the yolk). However, similar to the development of Omega-3 eggs, egg producers have opted to enrich eggs with folic acid by supplementing feed. Therefore, instead of the 24 mcg or so of folic acid you may receive from a standard egg, enriched eggs contain three times as much

Go out and get egg-static about buying eggs! (ok, I'll stop.)

Algae into Fuel

The more I read about being green and green related things, the more I become fascinated by alternative fuels. It is incredible what can substitute for traditional oil now and also what technologies are being developed to get us closer to oil independence.

I came across an article on algae and how it is being harvested and the oil is being used as a biofuel. They are saying it is much more efficient that corn, because you don't have to grow it as you would traditional crops. Also, it has been said that growing corn is very harsh on the soil and takes out all nutrients so afterwards, to grow anything on that soil is impossible.

Algae is made up of up to 70% oil, is completely renewable and photo-synthesizes a lot of Carbon. Could Algae be the savior to our dependence on foreign oil and cleaning up our atmosphere? Let's hope they discover something soon!!

Here are some excerpts from this great article:

Algae is the slimy stuff that clouds your home aquarium and gets tangled in your feet in a lake or ocean. It can grow almost everywhere there is water and sunlight, and under the right conditions it can double its volume within hours. Scientists and industrialists agree that the potential is huge.

"This is the ultimate fast-growing organism," says Peter van den Dorpel, chief operating officer of AlgaeLink, which makes bioreactors for speeding reproduction. "Algae is lazy. It eats carbon dioxide and produces oxygen." It has no roots, no leaves, no shoots. "It grows so fast because it has nothing else to do. It just swims in the water."

Farming algae doesn't require much space or good cropland, so it avoids the fuel-for-food dilemma that has plagued first and second generation biofuels like corn, rapeseed and palm oil.

It can grow in fresh water, polluted water, sea water or farm runoff. It can purify a city's sewage while feeding on the nitrogen and phosphates in human waste.

And it is rich in oil. The most common types farmed today have an oil content of 30 percent, and it can go up to 70 percent or more.

It also consumes nearly twice its weight in carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas that is discharged by vehicles, power plants and many heavy industries and which scientists say is causing climate change.

Science is So Cool: Plastic-Eating-Bacteria Edition

So we all know by now, plastic sucks. It leaches causing all sorts of weird diseases including obesity, is taking over the Pacific Ocean, is thrown away more than 60 million times a day filling up our landfills....need I go on? ( I can, on this subject. Possibly for days!)

So, what's a brilliant, problem-solving scientist to do? Figure out how a bacteria, who's preferred snack of choice is already plastic, to gobble it up faster while producing a bi product that can be used to make recycled plastics. I mean serioulsy! How cool is THAT?!?!

Here's the real info:

...scientists around the world are working on ways to enlist bacterial help in
green technology. A crew from University College Dublin in Ireland has devised a
way to put bacteria to use in recycling plastic into better quality versions
than the lowly PET we're used to.

...Using a different approach, New Zealander Matthew Darby made the mother of all toasty machines to recycle previously-unrecyclable plastic.

One of the big problems with plastic recycling is that the end result is polyethylene terephthalate--a fairly low-grade plastic that isn't as desired as polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA...But PHA is expensive to make. Microbiologist Kevin O’Connor and his team came up with a process...that heated PET to break it down into a gas, a liquid, and a solid. From there, they grabbed some Pseudomonas putida (the bacteria) which were partial to the plastic at a local bottling plant in Dublin. Sure enough, the bacteria took a liking to O'Connor's snack and turned the solid--terephthalic acid--into PHA. The other byproducts will be burned as a heat source to make more of the stuff. While it won't outright solve our plastic problems, this
process should encourage more recycling and open up new markets.

Some people are just geniuses...

Cow Power

This isn't the first time I have heard of converting cow manure to electricity but since it was in the New York Times yesterday, I am pleased to see it must be catching on. What sort of genius came up with this idea? Seriously, turning cow poop in to electricity has so many positive environmental effects:

1. Reduces the amount of methane (cow's 'gas') in the air (top contributor to ozone layer depletion)
2. Provides sustainable energy to homes while generating another source of revenue for farms
3. When the poop is separated, the solid matter serves as bedding for the cows (RECYCLING!)

This is seriously thinking outside the box! If we can power houses on cow poop, the possibilities are endless!!

While this has not caught on to the dairy farm masses, this practice has been around since 2005. Here are some of the best excerpts from the New York Times article:

The Rowells’ cows live in a barn where a mechanical scraper sweeps the animals’ waste into a large drain. The waste is then pumped into a huge sealed concrete tank known as a digester, which holds 21 days’ worth of waste and is kept at a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Anaerobic bacteria break down the organic matter in the waste, producing a mix of methane and other gases, known as bio-gas. The gas is burned in an engine that runs an electrical generator.

The cow waste produces 250 to 300 kilowatts of electricity daily, enough to power 300 to 350 homes, according to the utility.

“We’re making a resource out of a waste stream,” said Bill Rowell, who is running for the State Senate

“We’re saving money by not using sawdust, reducing original waste by recycling and generating revenue by selling electricity into the grid,” Ms. Audet said.

This is seriously innovative and extremely cool. If dairy farmers can figure out ways of turning poop to gold and do their part for the environment in the process, we can all reevaluate our lives to make the small changes. A local shop owner, who gets her electricity from the cow poop said it best:

“It’s worth it to us to spend that money to help the producers and use power that helps sustain the environment,” Ms. Hatch said. “When you live in a place like we do, which is a beautiful part of the country, you’re really aware of the environment and want to keep it that way."

Here's a great link to a photo slide show of this process that I found on Flickr:

Solar Power For All!

MIT engineers have come up with an unbelievable invention. This is one that could revolutionize solar power and make it affordable and accessible to all. What it is, is a transparent dye that coats windows, absorbs the energy emitted from sunlight and somehow magically powers your house. The official explanation is much more detailed than mine:

The scientists coated glass sheets in organic dyes to concentrate the sunlight that hit the panels. The dyes collected the sunlight and carried the light to the edges of the panel much like fiber-optic cable.

Solar cells located on the edges of the panels then transforms the sunlight into electricity.

"It consists of just a piece of glass with a layer of paint on top of it," said Marc Baldo, MIT electrical engineering professor and lead researcher on the solar panels.

"The idea is the light comes in and hits the paint. The paint then bounces the light out to the edges of the glass. All you need is the solar cells on the edges. So we think we can use this to reduce the cost of solar electricity," he added

Here's the graphical depiction of the process:

Eco-Friendly To Go!

Our little local Latin Bistro is awesome. It is called Pan Latin and the food that they sell is organic and fair trade. Everything is always extremely fresh and they are always trying to find ways to be more green. Their coffee cups and plastic cups are all made from recycled materials and they discovered how to be even greener:

What happens is you order a delivery, they deliver it in these handy metal containers and then you leave it downstairs with your doorman for them to pick up when you are done. E-Z!!!

Nice thinking outside of the box Pan Latin! You will always be my go to for anything yummy and green!