Elisa's Green Scene

ColaLife: How big companies can help make big change...with a nudge

Hat tip to Treehugger for cluing me in to the existence of ColaLife. ColaLife is a volunteer-run nascent non-profit organization that seeks to take advantage of the distribution network of one of the largest companies in the world in order to save lives.

To be clear: ColaLife isn't an initiative born at Coca-Cola, although Coke themselves has many many corporate social responsibility programs. But ColaLife has reached out to Coca-Cola with some sucess to take advantage of one simple fact:

You can get a Coke in almost every corner of the Earth, no matter how poor or remote that corner may be. That speaks to a massive existing distribution system...and that distribution may happen by men on bicycles.

What you can't get in every corner of the Earth, however, is clean water.

And sometimes the fix for that problem is pretty small: oral rehydration and water purification tablets, for example.

ColaLIfe has created packaging for such fundamental first aid supplies that slots in amongst the normal Coca-Cola bottles in their normal packaging. It's really genius.

And with Coca-Cola cooperating with ColaLife, it sounds like this could bring revolutionary assistance to those far corners.

I do believe when big companies make change it has big impact. And that even if they don't do everything right, we need to recognize and encourage the things they do right. 

And the ColaLife story shows that we can't rely on the big companies to think up every way they can help make these changes: We need to keep nudging them along.

I love this story. I hope it keeps progressing in the right direction. I hope it changes lives, and the world just a little bit.

[Disclosure: Coca-Cola has intermittently been a customer of BlogHer's this year, but I knew nothing about this initiative until I read about it on Treehugger.]

Great interview with Anna Lappe from Britt Bravo at BlogHer

I've been reading a lot of social action/change/justice books lately as part of a BlogHer Virtual Book Club. After the last three books, we all felt a bit shell-shocked, and like the human race is a bit hopeless. I mean, I do believe I'm taking very positive action, mostly by my vegan diet, if nothing else, but some of the problems seem so big, so systemic, so beyond systemic, even endemic to our species...is our individual action all for naught?

BlogHer Britt Bravo interviews Anna Lappe about her new book, Diet for a Hot Planet, and it seems like there is hope. And there is meaningful action. I interviewed Anna myself a couple of years ago, and she has the same practical, positive message as then. Check out this year's recent interview and feel hopeful, not downtrodden, about mankind's future:

http://www.blogher.com/little-bit-gloom-between-two-slices-hope-diet-hot-planet-author-anna-lappe-0

Will you be watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution?

I missed the opening episodes, but I've rectified that with a Season Pass to Jamie Oliver's new show, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.

I think now is an interesting time in our history where we are open to hearing the message about how our ways have become unsustainable. it's not just about green; it's not just about the planet; it's not just about animals; it's not just about personal health; it's not just about the children; it's not just about underlying classism.

It's about all of these things together...it's about the entire Earth as a system that is being, systematically, destroyed...and we humans are regrettably driving that.

We all must eat, and how we eat is fundamental to a lot of our problems today..environmental problems, health problems, ethical problems.

There are some folks who seem to be able to get the message across. Folks like Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser (the guys behind Food Inc), Alicia Silverstone, even Michelle Obama.

After watching his TedTalk, I think Jamie Oliver is another such voice.

I remember back at BlogHer '06. Shuna Fish Lydon stood up and talked about how food was a class issue...that everyone needs to eat, but how government policy basically ensures that only higher-income people get to eat well. Four years on, this is still basically the case.

I'm hoping that with these new voices being raised, we may finally get it, and we may finally take concrete action.

Yes, personal action is awesome. But we need to act as a community, and as a government.

Maybe I'm putting to big a burden on little Jamie Oliver and his show. But I'm going to atch, and I'm going to hope.

Are you? (Watching? Hoping? Changing?)

Great interview with "The Story of Stuff"'s Annie Leonard over on BlogHer

Go here now:

http://www.blogher.com/its-about-community-interview-annie-leonard

Obviously if you haven't watched her video, it's a must-see, and editor Beth Terry has the link. Plus a sneak-peek video of her next project.

But it's the interview itself that's fascinating, not just the stuff you already may know about Leonard and her stuff crusade, but about how she lives her life.

I of course had to rabble-rouse a bit in the comments, but I also had to rush right here to share the link.

The PCRM is starting another 21-day Vegan Kickstart tomorrow

If for nothing else than the many awesome recipes they'll introduce you to, I hope you'll give it a shot!

Jamie Oliver at TED

I actually don't think Jamie is saying something revolutionary or new in his TedTalk this year...all about teaching children about real foods in order to save our lives...BUT:

1. He has a passion that is, hopefully, infectious
2. He's actually gone out and done something about it in a community in our unhealthiest state, West Virginia. And it seems replicatable.

Check out his 20 minute talk:

Will "organic" finally start to mean "humane"?

As more and more people begin to pay attention to how the food they consume is produced (as evidenced by the popularity and widespread media coverage of documentaries like Food Inc, and books like Eating Animals, The Omnivore's Dilemma and Fast Food Nation), more and more people are beginning to realize some disturbing facts:

-Many words applied to animal food products are marketing, not meaningful. Words like "cage-free", for example
-Other words have meaning, but not to the extent that, again, the marketing might have you believe. Words like "organic", for example

In other words: Cage-free has no regulation tied to it, and is, essentially, meaningless. Organic may mean something about what an animal is fed, but not how. Organic does not equal Humane, and this has become clearer in the last two years or so.

Well, hat tip to the Whole Foods blog for pointing me to the breaking news that the USDA has announced new guidelines for how much access to grazing and pasture cows must have in order for their dairy or meat products to be called "organic". 

Does this mean the Dairy Industry's Happy Cow campaign is now total truth in advertising?

Well, not really. There are still plenty of exemptions and exceptions. You can peruse the FAQ about the new guidelines yourself to see what some of them are.

Mostly, the big glaring exception is that there is what's called a "finish feeding period". And this can last up to 120 days. So the last FOUR months of a cow's life can still be miserable...off-pasture and fed unnaturally. You know. Before slaughter, which may still more likely than not be painful and terrifying.

But while my personal choices are based on an animal rights view, I am not one of those who thinks we should forestall animal welfare improvement until some perfect day arrives.

So, I hope these guidelines are a good step, even as I think they don't go nearly far enough!

What do you think?

Paul McCartney guest-edits on Gwynyth Paltrow's Goop

And it's all about Meat-free Mondays. It's a start, eh?

http://goop.com/newsletter/68/en/

Growing Green Awards 2010

Hat tip to Fedele Bauccio for pointing me to the 2010 Growing Green Awards organized by theNational Resources Defense Council. Bauccio was a 2009 winner in the Business Leader category.

The four categories are:
Food Producer
Business Leader
Thought Leader
Water Steward

Here is the eligibility information:

Eligibility

Recipients may represent a variety of fields including food production, food service, retail or restaurants, academia, journalists, policy advocacy, and government. The panel will consider candidates from across the country (candidates operating outside of the United States will not be considered) Individuals in the following four categories are eligible: 

Food Producer: Farmers or other food producers, including aquaculture, who employ innovative techniques to sustain agriculture, the natural environment, workers and community;

Business Leader: Entrepreneurs who effectively use the marketplace to promote sustainable food systems, develop infrastructure that enables producers to be more sustainable, or advance sustainable innovations anywhere along the supply chain from farm to fork;

Thought Leader: Visionaries who advance sustainability as it relates to food through creative research, public education, and outreach.

Water Steward: Farmers or other food producers who have made extraordinary contributions in demonstrating water efficiency, sustainable water use and the protection of water quality.

And here is the criteria:

Innovation in promoting ecologically-integrated food systems. This may include minimizing inputs of energy, water, and chemicals; reducing pollution and global warming gas emissions; use of on-farm polyculture; increasing natural resilience; and stewardship of biodiversity, pollinators, open space and land resources.

Potential to achieve wide scale adoption, implementation or behavioral change.

Advancement of health, safety, and economic viability for farmers, farmworkers and rural communities.

As you can probably guess, I would love for every submission and winner to be about food production and distribution that was not animal-based. Although most of last year's winners were indeed involved in plant-based agriculture, certainly a couple of them were not.

However, I do acknowledge the value of rewarding people meeting the criteria above, and in particular I'm so glad to see the last criteria about improving the lives of farmers ***and farmworkers*** on this list. 

In all the recent hype and hoopla about conscious eating, I have seen a lot of ink devoted to talking about the health and well-being of humans, animals and the planet. All of which is true. But very little ink has been devoted to the health of a particular subset of humans...not the ones eating the food we're all so conscious about, but the ones producing it. 

Happy to see it here.

This is, admittedly, not my field, and I'm not sure I know who to nominate. Perhaps Jonathan Safran Foer as a Thought Leader? He qualifies because I think his work this year will be the catalyst for a lot of behavioral change.

Or perhaps blogger and BlogHer Food '09 speaker Greg Massa, who migrated his family's brown rice farm into an organic one. [Although I confess to being bummed he has incorporated raising ducks for meat into his farm.]

Who would you nominate?

Blog Action Day for Climate Change

Today is Blog Action Day.

You know what I'm going to say, right?

The single most important thing you can do each and every day, as an individual, to help the environment, our planet, your own health and, of course, the animals is: Go Vegan!

Why? Well, you can find a lot of links explaining on Vegan Soapbox's Blog Action Day Post.

The bottom line is that going vegan will reduce your own person carbon footprint and contribution to climate change more than driving a hybrid or a myriad of other perfectly nice, but let's be clear, less effective, personal actions.

Now, I also happen to drive a hybrid. And I recycle. And I actually am very good at not over-consuming. I don't shop for clothes hardly ever. I buy my music and books electronically now. I try to shop for local and organic foods (easy for me, living in California.) I work via BlogHer to make our conferences greener. 

So, being vegan isn't all I do to be green. But it is the most important thing I do.

And it is the thing I do over which I have the ultimate total and final control.

And if you consider yourself an environmentalist and you aren't doing it, you need to be thinking about why. because the answer is, I bet, going to be about personal pleasure and what you think your preferences are (having often never tried.)

And that, my friends, is the same rationale for driving a Hummer.

Happy Blog Action Day. did you participate? If so, leave a link in the comments, so i can read your thoughts!