The Institute for Responsible Technology has launched a new website for all those Americans (more than 50% of the population) who said they would avoid GMO enhanced food if it was labeled.  It’s called the Non-GMO Shopping guide. Polls show 9 out of 10 Americans want GMOs labled, the US does NOT require labeling!  What are GMOs?  Genetically Modified Organisms or gene-spliced food.  You take the genes of one species and put it into another.  This is not the same as splicing a tree with another tree, this is more like splicing a tree with a cow!

Europe which is always light years ahead of us have many countries that are GM free or reject GMOs.  The World Trade Organization will not let any country outright ban GMO products.

The IRT website lists popular brands that don’t use ingredients from the eight GM crops such as soy and corn.  It also list dairy products that don’t allow the controversial GM bovine growth hormone.  Needless to say I have bookmarked this site and have sent the link to friends and family!

IRT’s Executive Director, Jeffery Smith says, “our new website gives consumers back the power to make an informed choice.” You can even download the guide to carry with you when you go shopping.

Packing your lunch means not only saving money, but also saving the environment. Green Scout Report selected four styles that look great.  We hope that these safe, sensible and style-conscious lunchboxes will inspire you to pack natural and nutritious foods.

While you’re at it, you will reduce the enormous packaging waste in typical U.S. lunchboxes.  We hope you’ll pick one of these up for you and your family!

1. Made by Oots! ($35-$45)

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey promoted Made By Oots! in her favorite things section of the June issue of “O” Magazine.  It was also featured in “Good Morning America” as best Eco-Friendly Picnic Gear.

Made from BPA-free and phthalate-free polypropylene and safety tested for lead, these Oots!  make great looking lunch boxes. The containers are dishwasher safe and microwave-safe.

The Lunchbox comes in three different color combinations: Blue, Green and Orange. They are sold either without containers, or as a Deluxe version, with 4 small and 1 large container inside. Extra containers can be purchased separately.

For more information, visit Made by OOTS!

2. ECOlunchbox Kit

ECOlunchbox Kit is a stylish alternative to the paper bag lunch, but only better. At Eco Lunches promotes that its product as a healthy, no-waste lunch solution.

The ECOlunchbox Kit includes:
- A machine washable, 100% cotton, handmade bag (reversible & convertible to a backpack!)
- One stainless steel 2-tier, rectangular ECOlunchbox food container – Containers are big enough to fit a sandwich and two side dishes that keep food separate
- A reusable bamboo spork
- Three reusable matching cloth napkins

It’s a very stylish and sustainable alternative for your lunch box or picnic!

For more information, visit ECOlunchboxes.

3. Lunch Bots ($12.99 – $16.99)

Lunch Bots remind me of camping gear when I was a kid.  The container and lid are 100% stainless steel. If you really have an aversion to any type of plastic this is a safe lunch box for you.

LunchBots are made from the highest quality 18/8 stainless steel and do not leach chemicals like regular plastic does.

These lunch boxes come in four fun colors: Blue (Uno), Orange (Duo), Green (Eco), and Yellow (Pico).  Best of all, they are dishwasher-safe.

For more information, visit Lunch Bots or Amazon.

4. Crocodile Creek Solar System Lunch Box ($15.95)

School lunches can now be “out of this world” with this beautifully-designed, well priced lunch box. Insulated walls keep food fresh and protected. It has a clever pocket for Mom’s notes, and is simple to wipe clean.

Best of all, in order to conform to the current U.S. & European Consumer Product Safety Standards, these lunchboxes are 100% Phthalate and PVC free.  It is easy Lunch box is 10″W x 7.5″H x 3″D.

For more information, visit Oliebollen.

Article by Justine Suh of www.greenscoutreport.com

Justine Suh is a certified green business consultant and the founder of GreenScoutReport.com, an online resource that profiles and rates companies on their sustainability practices, and offers news and tips on the latest green fashion and design.

Like many of us this summer, I’ve been experimenting with growing my own veggies. Despite a late start, due to moving house in May, we’re starting to get results.

I’ve learned so much about the sheer tenacity of perennial weeds, the deepest meaning of “a weed seedling picked in time saves nine” and how exciting it can be to watch your very own butternut squash start off as thumbnail-sized green fruits, with ridiculously massive sunshine flowers. And I never realised that sweetcorn “flowers” look like a bright pink accident at the hairdresser’s.

I already love the fact that I can pop into the garden and come back with an armful of giant courgettes, mutant runner beans and occasionally a beautiful beetroot that survived the thistles and chickweed.

But the other day, I realised that the majority of my food is still coming from overseas.

We eat a wholefood diet that contains a lot of nuts, seeds and pulses, alongside our home-grown or locally-sourced veggies. But looking at the packets for the dried food revealed that every single one was imported.

Lentils, chick peas, beans, quinoa, buckwheat, rice, almonds, cashews – you name it, it wasn’t even grown in Europe. Most of it came from the USA, South America or the Far East. That’s a lot of food miles. Time to stop feeling so smug…

Now, I’m not about to start a paddy field in rural Hampshire, but suddenly it didn’t make sense to be going on about food miles and yet only applying it to fruit and veg?

At the same time, I’ve also been doing my homework about beans.

I’ve got an impressively cobbled-together wigwam row of runners, cannellini, waxpod and French beans, as well as some sickly-looking broad beans that seriously objected to the May move.

The penny dropped – many of the pulses we eat, which are shipped thousands of miles to reach us, could potentially be grown here, too. Lots of the packets in my cupboard were grown in Canada, for example, which has a spring / summer climate not a million miles from the UK’s.

I’ve been researching.

I have found veggie gardening books that claim you can grow lentils, though don’t quite tell you how. A Sardinian friend is teaching me how to grow chick peas (though you need a lot of plants and a greenhouse for best results). The right varieties of French beans will give you kidney beans. Certain varieties of runner bean will give you butter beans. This month’s Permaculture magazine has an article by Emma Cooper, talking about growing quinoa. The list goes on.

I was wondering – why are we so reluctant to grow our own pulses?
I’m guessing because it’s not a tradition in the UK? We don’t find the seed packets in the shops, so we don’t try it. The gardening books don’t make it easy for us. But that’s no excuse not to bother.

So I’m going to start experimenting.

I’ve missed the boat for some things this year, but that will give me time to do my homework.
By next summer, I want to be having fun with learning how to grow my own pulses and seeds. I’ll be discovering (hopefully) which varieties give the best pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, adzuki beans and plenty more besides.

Of course, I’ll keep you all posted on Green Girls Global. And, if you’d like to join in, we can keep the discussion going on the Green Girls Global Facebook Fan Page.

In the meantime, has anyone out there already played with this in a UK-style climate? If you could offer advice that might shorten the learning curve for us all, it would be much appreciated!

Organic items can range from apparel, to food, to innovative cooking products. As these concepts and items are still new to so many consumers, I feel its more important than ever to share why it’s so practical, ethical and increasingly easier to consume organic products over conventional ones.

According to the OTA (Organic Trade Association) “Organic refers to the way agricultural products are grown and processed. It includes a system of production, processing, distribution and sales that assures consumers that the products maintain the organic integrity that begins on the farm.”
Everyones reasons for buying organic may vary personally, but here is a quick list below of my favorite reasons.

No Crazy Chemicals

Organic farms are not permitted to use toxic chemicals, fertilizers, or harsh pesticides so they are filled with only the crops themselves and the natural wildlife that co-habitats with them.  These guidelines also help to ensure that those nasty chemicals don’t end up in contact with your skin as many crops end up woven into clothing. Growing crops in a natural environment also keeps the farmland healthy, ensuring naturally fertile soil and waterways that stay free from pollution.

Pesticides Are Pretty Evil

Unfortunately the conventional textile industry has become one of the most polluting industries in the world. This is why more and more consumers and apparel producers are demanding sustainable and organic fabrics. Statistically, more than a quarter of the world’s insecticides are used for growing conventional cotton and kill thousands of innocent animals, plants, animals and insects each year. It also can pollute our soil and waters. Pesticides also contain known carcinogens (agents that have been proven to cause cancer) and can harm farmers who are in contact with them daily.

Pesticides are Expensive

Not only are pesticides quite harmful and toxic, they are also expensive to use. On top of this, money from our taxes actually pays for the removal of these harmful chemicals from our water supplies. Sadly, the EPA has had to step in on more than one occasion where pesticide run-off has killed hundreds of thousands of fish in our waterways. If its killing our fish….why are we ok with it all over our foods and cotton crops? Remember, if its something you are eating and its not labeled as certified organic, its probably covered in these pesticides.

No GMO’s

A GMO is a “genetically modified organism” and is man-made in a laboratory. Organic farming does not allow genetically modified crops because it’s just creepy what we can end up with!  It also creates absolute environmental havoc. And the kicker- no one really knows the long term affects.

Ethical Farming

One reason why I truly love supporting organic farming is that organic farmers are following their morals and ethics and not necessarily their pocketbooks.  It takes a lot more time and finances to be certified organic because it’s not the majority way. It also takes years (up to 11 to be exact!) to get all the pesticides out of soil.  Most farmers can’t afford to wait this long and lose their income in the process. Also, organic farms are strictly inspected by international organizations and have to follow extremely specific guidelines. Organic crops can also yield smaller harvests because without pesticides the crops are subjected to consumption by wildlife. Basically, the right thing is not always the easiest—BUT it will be so much easier when everyone is doing it and it would cost us all less as well!

Article by Beth Doane

Beth Doane is a fashion designer and consultant focusing on eco-conscious product development and marketing. She founded and designed the internationally acclaimed Rain Tee collection and Andira International.

I had never grown courgettes before.

For some reason, I thought they would be really tricky. People used to tell me about the manual pollination, training them over frames, staggering the harvest, stopping them from rotting. Quite frankly, it sounded too much like hard work. I decided to stick with easy stuff like runner beans and the occasional potplant tomato.

But this year I planted courgettes.

I didn’t bother with the hand pollination, the trellis work or any of the other palaver people had warned me about. I just stuck seeds in mud, applied water and waited. (My kind of gardening).

I had heard so many “horror stories” about people getting gluts that I planted a mere two seeds back in April, which I transplanted in May and by June I was the proud consumer of a small but perfectly formed, dark green courgette.

The two plants seemed to be going rather slowly, so I planted two more in May (not much happened) and another two in June.

Someone had told me you only get 10-15 courgettes from a single plant, so this all seemed like a good idea at the time.

But courgette-patience would have been a wonderful virtue and my lack of it now means I harvest near-marrow-sized courgettes on a daily basis.

The other week (clearly not having enough to do!), we kept a log of our week’s crop. We harvested – and somehow ate – 5kg of courgettes!

The June plants are only just getting going and, unbelievably, the April plants are still going strong, producing at least 4 courgettes a week.

Luckily we’ve got a few courgette recipes up our sleeves, for example:

• red lentil and courgette soup
• courgette and Roquefort soup
• butter-sautéed courgettes with red onion and balsamic vinegar
• courgette and dill salad
• courgette and chocolate cake

But our courgette output is increasing by the day and I suspect I’m about to hit mutiny at the kitchen table unless I come up with some new ideas pretty soon!

So I was wondering if any of the Green Girls Global readers have been facing a similar problem?
What are your top tips for enjoying courgettes?

Any sneaky tricks for hiding them in dishes so the family won’t know they’ve been “courgetted” again?
How many courgette plants does a family really need?

I’d love to hear your top tips and courgette stories!

It may seem trivial, but trust me it is huge.

Somewhere down the line I had heard something. It was in my past, a voice from a cooking show perhaps, or at a friend’s house while preparing for dinner. I was young and it stuck.  “Never cut the asparagus, gently snap them so it breaks in the right spot; perfect ripeness on one side, over ripe or woody on the other.”
I traveled through much of my life making it an appropriate ritual. I relied on the asparagus to show me what was good and what was bad. I used the good parts and the rest went into the trash without much thought.

Because I consider myself a new green citizen of the 21st century, I am analyzing the details of my life to detect areas to improve upon.  I have been reading, learning and adapting.

One evening last fall, I was making roasted vegetable pasta for dinner.  I washed all the vegetables and began to snap the asparagus.  A rush of emotion passed through my heart and sent unique information to my brain.  I thought, “That seems like a lot of asparagus going to waste.”  Though not really a trait I would ever use to describe myself, there I was being wasteful for only me to see. Private wastefulness is the worst to conquer, but I did. I decided that I know more than the asparagus so I got out the knife to gently cut it into a variety of pieces.

Two things had caused this realization – we had started composting and a friend had shown me how to make a green smoothie.  So, part of the asparagus we ate (the best part of course being the tip) another part I set aside for the next day’s green smoothie, and the last little tiny part went into the compost bin, where soon, by making rich soil to grow lettuce with, we would eat it again.

My point is, there are habits that still need to be broken. I stopped breaking the asparagus. Every small step counts in the big picture.
Painting: “Asparagus on my path”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how being busy everyday can affect how green you live. If I’m strapped for time then I take short cuts I wouldn’t take if I could be a bit more leisurely and those short cuts are not always eco friendly.

I guess they key is to work green habits into your daily routines. I’m not talking about grand gestures like buying a hybrid car or holidaying in an expensive eco-retreat, that’s not realistic for most of us. I’m talking about those things that we can do all the time in our own home and garden.

Here’s a quick run down of 10 of the things we do in our house. I’d love to learn more so do share your everyday eco habits with us.

1. Benevolent Brands?
I’ve put this one first because I think its the most important here and I’ve been doing this since I could spend my own pocket money. Get to know which brands are lacking in positive eco & ethical credentials and show them that you don’t approve by avoiding their products in your weekly shop. I’m a great believer in consumer power and there’s nothing easier than not doing something, not buying something. Online ethical shopping tool Gooshing can help you know the score.

2. Keep it Fresh
Instead of buying foil, cling film or plastic sandwich bags which will just get thrown away, wash out and save a couple of ice cream and margarine tubs to keep food fresh in your fridge.

3. White Vinegar is Your Friend
I have always been a bit dubious about eco cleaning products but one that is a definite winner and as cheap as chips (tastes good on chips too!) is vinegar. There’s nothing like white vinegar to get rid of grease and make surfaces lovely and shiny. I use it on stainless steel, windows and mirrors and I don’t have to worry about breathing in nasty chemicals when I’m using it.

4. Nature’s Bodyguards
Instead of using pesticides to keep aphids from munching on your beloved tomatoes and cucumbers, let nature do the work for you. For some reason a lot of creepy crawlies that like your veggie plants hate marigolds so plant them alongside and let them protect the fruits of your labours.

5. Home Made Labels
Whilst we’re talking gardens, here are a few ways you can recycle bits and bobs from indoors to use outdoors – Keep bottle tops to put on the end of garden canes to protect yourself (especially your eyes) from the sharp edges. Cut yoghurt pots into strips and use them as washable plant labels. Keep a tub or container handy in your kitchen to chuck in tea bags and veg peelings, ready to take out to the compost bin.

6. Old Fashioned Washing
I love hanging washing on the line – I think it’s because it’s one of those jobs that tells us the fine weather is finally here. Although, as us UK based folks know, fine weather is elusive here. So rather than heading to the tumble dryer (we don’t own one), get yourself a clothes horse to dry your washing indoors when it’s rainy outdoors.

7. Sweet Scent
There are so many air fresheners on the market right now I couldn’t possibly name them all. They’re so sophisticated too, spraying out a smell on a timer or whenever you walk in the room, but they’re just unnecessary. Goodness knows what chemicals they’re spurting at you and the amount of plastic that must go into making them makes my head spin. We keep a pretty wooden box (recycled from a wine case) near the front door with a handful of potpourri in it. When the smell fades, just sprinkle a little of your favourite essential oil in there. You could even get some lemon juice or sprigs of lovely smelling herbs like Rosemary. Hmmmmm…

8. Cut Down on the Meat
Until I met Sophie from Food For Change I thought I knew the implications of agriculture, especially farming for meat. I knew nothing. The amount of resources that go into feeding and keeping animals for food is mind blowing. It’s a devastating industry, not only for the animals but for the environment and humans too. Cutting down or cutting out animal products from your diet truly can help relieve this. Read my interview with Sophie or visit www.foodforchange.org.uk to find out more.

9. Make Second Hand First
This is my favourite tip because its about shopping – shopping and feeling good about it. OK, let me just spit it out. If you have hang-ups about second hand get over it! Antiques are second hand and no-one has issues with that. Whether looking for large items like furniture or small things like tea cups or clothes I always go for second hand first. Lots of the furniture in our house is second hand, was very cheap or free and, after a little restoration, beautiful. Buying second hand means you are not using more of the world’s resources to get something that’s new for you. Charity shops are the best because they are full of hidden gems and buying them contributes to something really worthwhile. Why line greedy companies’ pockets only to buy the same old beige, uniform items? Get creative, mix and match and have fun.

10. Take Your Time
I have to confess, I’m working on this one. Rushing around causes me to take short cuts and make decisions that aren’t good for the environment, like driving to the shops because its quicker than walking and grabbing a take-away rather than cooking a home made meal.

I’m far from perfect on the green front but I’d like to learn more. Share your ‘everyday eco’ and let’s make a habit of it.

Maybe I’m nuts, but the boys (3 and 1!) and I have decided it’s time to get some chickens. As long as the landlord agrees!

We’ve got plenty of space in the garden for them to cluck around and a stable that would keep them safe at night.

We’ve even got friends who have offered to look after them, if ever we get around to going on holiday. So all is looking rosy.

I’ve been thinking about having chickens for a good few years now. It’s the eggs we’re after – and the entertainment. It would mean we would know exactly what had gone into the food we are eating.

We always buy organic, free range eggs. But I recently discovered that not all organic birds have the idyllic life we would expect. Apparently many of them are raised in flocks of many thousands of birds, with the restrictions that would obviously create. So we’re ready to take responsibilty for raising our own chickens and keeping them as happy as can be.

For me, it’s also about the boys starting to learn about where food comes from and taking responsibility for the welfare of another creature, from an early age.

So it got me wondering: do any of you have your own chickens? What exactly am I letting myself in for and are there any top tips you could share on keeping our chickens “green”?

I’ve already read so much about “vaccinated birds” and “vitamin enhanced GM feeds” that I’m keen to make sure I’m keeping my chickens (and eggs) as natural as possible.

I’ve already worked out that it’s going to cost us more to produce our own eggs than to buy them, but for me it’s also about getting as close to nature as possible. And I know it’s not all about the romantic visions we might have of cute, clucky, feathered friends eating corn out of our hands – there’s a real-world practicality involved.

So I’d love to hear your stories about the highs and lows of raising your own chickens. Which breed(s) should we go for if we want eggs? What are the idiot mistakes that beginners make? Have you got eco-chickens at home?

I’ll keep you all updated about which breed(s) we choose and how it goes and I look forward to introducing you to our micro-flock some time soon!

Here’s to the freshest eggs in town,
Clare x

I got a bokashi bin for Christmas. Two actually.

And yes, I did ask for them!

When they finally arrived in January, I ripped open the package, full of excitement, to find two black bins, some bits of plastic and a large bag of bran. Somehow all this was supposed to turn our cooked kitchen scraps into something that would feed the garden.

The place we were renting wouldn’t allow a compost bin (short term rental and who wants someone else’s potato peelings when they move out?!!), so bokashi seemed the perfect solution.

In case you’re not familiar with bokashi composting, you basically get an indoor composting bin (the specially designed ones have a reservoir for draining of the liquid which you can use to clear blocked drains. I never knew last month’s porridge could do that! Scary thought) and the bran stuff.

The bran is a mixture of bran, molasses and these special micro-organisms called “ems”. “Bokashi” is allegedly Japanese for “fermented organic matter”.

The idea is that raw vegetables can go straight on the compost pile in your garden, but cooked food shouldn’t because it will attract rats and doesn’t degrade in the same way as the rest of your compost. By putting the cooked stuff in the bokashi bin and sprinkling a layer of bran on top each day, over the course of a month it becomes highly fertile composting material.

I have to say that, over the first few months, I was quite impressed. The food seemed to break down well, the bins were inoffensive in the corner of my kitchen, even after a month, and my drains were beautifully clean (according to the smell, I didn’t actually get in there and look). I had two buckets – the old “use one while the other ferments” idea. And then, one day, both bins were full.

What to do with the contents?

Chuck them under a convenient bush and fertilise away, I thought.

But no, it would appear it’s not quite so simple. On studying the instructions, I discovered that it either has to go in a compost bin, which I didn’t have and wasn’t allowed, or had to be buried in a long, shallow trench and then covered with a predetermined thickness of soil. Not an option either. Yet after all that effort (and expense), I certainly wasn’t going to send my mulched-down leftovers to landfill.

So what did I do? I took both bins with me the next time I visited my parents and donated them to their compost bin!

Now I’ve moved and am the proud owner of a shiny, new, huge compost bin, I don’t have any problems with what to do with my bokashi mix in 3 weeks’ time.

But I was wondering whether it’s all really worth the effort? The bran itself isn’t cheap and the start-up kit is up to £90, depending where you buy.

While I love the idea of all those friendly little micro-organisms munching away at my kitchen waste, it does seem a fairly extravagant way of doing it.

I would love to hear from any GGG visitors out there who have thoughts or opinions on the bokashi subject – and is there a cheaper way of recycling kitchen waste?

Clare x

Although I’m not going to write in any great detail about my veg growing adventures this year I just wanted to do a quick update and let you know (those of you who are interested) that despite not much success last year we haven’t given up on the good life yet.

Well it’s not quite ‘The Good Life‘ (I still love Tom & Barbara’s lifestyle and Margo’s fabulous fashion), in fact I’ve reduced the numbers and types of veggies this year.

2008’s veg patch includes potatoes, sweetcorn, spinach, cucumber, sweet peppers, lettuce, tomatoes (of course), jalapenos, rocket and radish. Radish are so easy to grow that you can give yourself an encouraging pat on the back every time you crunch one of your home-grown in a lovely salad.

The things I learned from last year and have tried to improve on this time are:

• Start sowing seeds earlier (well I did actually fail on this one because wedding arrangements sapped veg growing preparation time in April)
• Be realistic – There’s no point sowing hundreds of seeds if you don’t have the time or space to nurture them to your table. I was not realistic last year
• Be tougher on pests – I just can’t kill the creatures in my garden but I know I can’t ask them nicely not to eat the greens either, so I’ve tried to put them off with marigolds and gravel. The results? So far so good!
• More food – Yes, I know, this is obvious.
• Hope for the right amounts of sunshine and rain – Still working on this one!

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to spend in my garden and so I’m starting small and building up. You never know next year we may get chickens for our very own eggs and the year after that who knows?! The Good Life here we come!!

For any of you who haven’t seen the old 70s TV show ‘The Good Life‘. Here’s a classic snippet from one of the episodes: