AlternativesMagazine

With people dying of starvation around the world, the California drought, plus all that fresh water, land, fertilizer and energy wasted, AND yet we still have an obesity epidemic?? You have to say . . . . WTF By Brad Plumer Each year, about 40 percent of all food in the United States goes uneaten. It's just tossed out or left to rot. And that's a fairly large waste of resources. All that freshwater and land, all that fertilizer and energy — for nothing. By one recent estimate, Americans are squandering the equivalent of $165 billion each year by rubbishing so much food.  But these statistics don't tell the full story. How does the food actually get wasted? For that, here's a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council that tries to track food waste up and down the system, from "farm to fork." 1) Farming: Roughly 7 percent of the produce that's grown in the United States simply gets stranded on fields each year. Some growers plant mo

Though President Obama has not made a final decision on whether he will green light the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, it will no doubt create a firestorm, especially with the environmentalists, if he does. Labeled the Dirtiest Pit on the Planet, the Alberta tar sands During a recent survey, when asked about the Keystone Pipline project, most people didn't know much about it except that it will generate a lot of jobs and reduce US reliance on Mideast and Venezuelan imports.  They knew less about the kind of crude oil it would transport, or the environmental consequences, and none realized it was a mining procedure and not conventionally drilled.  And proponents want to keep it that way. The dumbing down process at its best. Back in 2010, in our November edition , and before it became politically newsworthy, we published an article, "The Dirtiest Pit on the Planet." It discribed the Alberta tar sands oil field as one giant nightmare. This is the oil the K

A record-high 71 percent of Americans consider the environment as one of their top priorities when they shop.  That's up from 66 percent in 2008. However, almost three-quarters of them wish companies would do a better job helping them understand environmental terms and issues. In reality, while we all would prefer to buy green products and buy them from greener companies, all things equal, it's hard to know which "purposeful brands" are really getting the job done. As consumers, we don't have enough knowledge readily available to help make meaningful choices. So, we're skeptical and, at times, confused. Right now, the confusion is preventing progress because everybody can talk about "going green" but no one really knows what anyone is doing specifically. That makes it easy for some companies to not do much. When companies are more transparent, and that information becomes easily available and in one consistent format, consumers can make smarter

Over 38% of DC residents own no cars, while in many neighborhoods “people own more bikes than cars."   January 17, 2014 | Ethan Goffman   Chicago and New York have been vying for the title of greenest city in America, and for 2013 Washington, DC has joined them, with a new plan, Sustainable DC. The idea, according to Mayor Vincent Gray, is to “make the District of Columbia the healthiest, greenest, and most livable city in the United States.” To do so, Washington, DC is focusing on seven areas: the built environment, energy, food, nature, transportation, waste, and water. Of these, transportation has been drawing attention, particularly the goal of getting automobile use down to 25% of local trips. This has led critics to charge that DC is waging a “war on cars,” but city officials describe the plan as putting other means of transportation on an equal footing with automobiles. Everything Is Connected Transportation is part of the Sustainable, DC plan because it’

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has known for more than 12 years that routine use of antibiotics in livestock is harmful to human health, yet it has taken no meaningful action. Routine use of antibiotics in food animals has promoted a rapid rise in antibiotic-resistant disease, which now claims more lives than emphysema, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, and homicide combined. Two million American adults and children become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, and at least 23,000 of them die as a direct result of those infections. Virtually all animal feed additives containing penicillin and tetracycline antibiotics—both of which are used to treat human disease—pose a “high risk” to human health, according to a new report   Many bacteria are developing cross resistance; a situation where a bacteria becomes resistant to multiple drugs, making them virtually impossible to eradicate once they infect you.   Read full story

Must see videos   We all know someone who has either died from, or is fighting cancer right now. If you are one of them, and are considering traditional western medicine treatment, or simply want to know as much about cancer as you can, you owe it to yourself to view this video first. "The Beautiful Truth." Prologue: This documentary follows the journey of Garrett Kroschel, an animal-loving teenager raised in Alaska who, after reading a book by Dr. Max Gerson, is inspired to investigate its premise that diet can cure cancer and other diseases. Garrett travels across the country, visiting with physicians, scientists and cancer survivors to discuss Gerson Therapy -- and Gerson's claim that the multi-billion dollar medical industry has suppressed natural cancer cures for years.  You can rent it for 7 days ($2.99)  or buy ($9.99)  the video on Amazon , or if you have Netflix , you can download it or stream it to your computer. Overall it received 4 out 5 stars fr

S.F provides residents with green bins for food scrapes San Francisco has been called the "greenest city in America" and when it comes to keeping garbage out of landfills, it's a title the city has earned.  The city keeps an astonishing 80% of solid waste out of landfills, in part because residents not only use blue bins for their glass, plastic and papers but an additional green bin for all their compostable food waste.  The company Recology manages the city's solid waste and notes that its composting program "takes 650 tons per day of organic matter and turns it into compost that goes to farms, orchards, vineyards and landscaping businesses." The city is aiming to be zero waste by 2020.  More than 90 other cities have followed San Francisco's lead with curbside composting, including Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; and Seattle. Most recently, city councilors in Boston have been lobbying hard for curbside compost pickup in their city.

by Dr. Mercola  Last year, the first-ever lifetime feeding study assessing the health risks of genetically engineered Roundup Ready corn was published. Last month, Food and Chemical Toxicology retracted the study saying it “did not meet scientific standards.   While no errors or misrepresentation of data were found, the journal stated the study had too small a sample size to make any definite conclusion about health effects. This is in clear violation of retraction guidelines for scientific publishing.   Earlier this year, the publisher created a brand new editorial position, Associate Editor for Biotechnology Richard E. Goodman, a former Monsanto scientist got the job.   The bizarre justification for retracting the feeding study is enough to indicate that “corporate terrorism” has seized the field and is actively undermining science as we know it.  READ >>

Green Up, Get Moving was inspired by a survey, conducted by National Geographic, that found American consumers ranked DEAD LAST as consumers of renewable energy, recycling, transportation, food consumption, and everyday consumer goods and NUMBER ONE in obesity and related diseases. The Green Up promotion addresses both issues. It combines the green movement with fitness sports to help bring awareness to the importance of maintaining a sustainable planet and healthy body! It's designed to get people of all ages involved in physical activities and to serve as a platform to help promote zero-waste and the universal green marketing theme of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. It's also about having fun! THIS IS HOW IT WORKS: In a nutshell Green Up, Get Moving is a hands-on promotion. We work with event promoters and attend as many fitness related sporting events, trade shows, markets and festivals as possible throughout the year. We assist participating promoters by advertising an

Can you imagine participating in a protest outside the White House and forcing the entire U.S. government to resign?  Can you imagine a group of randomly chosen private citizens rewriting the U.S. constitution to include measures banning corporate fraud? It seems incomprehensible in the U.S., but Icelanders did just that.   Icelanders forced their entire government to resign after a banking fraud scandal, overthrowing the ruling party and creating a citizen’s group tasked with writing a new constitution that offered a solution to prevent corporate greed from destroying the country.  The constitution of Iceland was scrapped and is being rewritten by private citizens; using a crowd-sourcing technique via social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.  These events have been going on since 2008, yet there’s been no word from the U.S. mainstream media about any of them. In fact, all of the events that unfolded were recorded by international journalists, overseas

Just as natural resources are becoming scarce and costly; customers, employees and investors are increasingly environmentally-conscious.  A record-high 71 percent of Americans consider the environment as one of their top priorities when they shop.    Just think what it would be if businesses actually let consumers know they promote and demonstrate a commitment to green principles and policies.     Do the Green. Find out what a $25 promotion looks like. Call us 406-871-6282, or click here and we'll contact you  

It's Time to Confront the Corporate Giants that Are Hurting Americans' Health Jeffrey Hollender | salt, fat, sugar Recently Michael Moss in a New York Times Magazine cover story—“The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”—examined how food companies have known for decades that salt, sugar and fat are not good for us in the quantities Americans consume them, and yet every year they convince most of us to ingest about twice the recommended amount of salt and 70 pounds of sugar – up to 22 teaspoons a day. As a critique of corporate behavior for 25 years, Michael Moss’s story convinced me to add US consumer food companies such as Pepsi, Kraft and General Mills to part of America’s evil corporate empire that already includes the banking and finance industry, the chemical industry, and the defense industry together with the US Chamber of Commerce. Is every company in these industries evil? Certainly not, but too many of them have acted with a blatant disregard for re

Today in the United States, by the simple acts of feeding ourselves, we are unwittingly participating in the largest experiment ever conducted on human beings.  Each of us unknowingly consumes genetically engineered food on a daily basis. The risks and effects to our health and the environment are largely unknown. Yet more and more studies are being conducted around the world, which only provide even more reason for concern.  We are the oblivious guinea pigs for wide-scale experimentation of modern biotechnology.  GMO OMG tells the story of a fathers discovery of GMOs in relationship to his 3 young children and the world around him.  We still have time to heal the planet, feed the world, and live sustainably. But we have to start now!-- written by anonymous GMO OMG director and concerned father Jeremy Seifert is in search of answers. How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice? And perhaps the ultimate question, which Seifert tests h