Green Options

Like millions of Americans, we’re celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.

However, we’re celebrating this national holiday by focusing on the many aspects of our life that, in various ways, have led us to quite a different vision for a sustainable tomorrow – complete with local, renewable energy and lots of delicious meals harvested within ten miles of where we live – if not from our own kitchen garden.  Sometimes we even celebrate July 4th with a rainbow.

Here’s how our Independence Day is different — and yours can be too:

•  Be energy independent by generating all our power with renewable energy systems.
For a vast portion of the United States, there is enough solar and wind energy to completely meet our needs right where we live.  True, adopting renewable energy will require an investment either personally or for your business if you work from home.  But with present Federal tax credits and many state incentives, the time couldn’t be better.  We completely power our Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and Farm with solar electric and wind turbine systems.  In fact, we overproduce renewable energy to the tune of about 4,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) a year.  We share the surplus with our neighbors.

I’m sitting in my backyard, surrounded by chickens and children. A couple of dogs periodically pester both species of livestock. (Yes, I did just call my child flock “livestock.”) I’m waiting on the first egg of the day, a pink speckled one from my oldest Americana hen.

This backyard chicken experiment is new to my family, only a 6-month-old endeavor. We wanted our children to know where food comes from. We wanted to know that the eggs we ate were from happy chickens.

But as the number of small chicken “farmers” pop up in cities, suburbs, and rural areas alike, our collective grand experiment may be in peril.

More and more people are taking the plunge into backyard gardening. Some are even planting fruits and veggies in their front yard and adopting the “no-mow” approach. Last year one website, Freedom Gardens, used its social networking platform to coordinate the “100 Foot Diet Challenge.” Hundreds of gardeners throughout the country accepted the invitation by getting out their hoes and spades.

The “Freedom Garden” borrows its name from the Victory Garden movement (but dropped its the militaristic overtones). Victory Gardens were popular during World War II, during which many Americans ramped up local food production as a means to bolster the economy and support the war effort. (Hard to believe anyone ever considered gardening to be patriotic.)

My family is coming for Thanksgiving this year and I’m going to try to make it a 100-mile meal.  The 100-mile movement is a local eating “experiment” whereby you buy food that is locally raised and produced from within a 100-mile radius of where you live.

I need all sorts of ingredients to make my meal happen so I went directly to the 100-mile diet resources page to find out if there are any local oil suppliers (there aren’t), honey suppliers (there are) and was happy to stumble upon a local candle maker along the way.

The resources page of this movement’s site, like all good movement sites, lists dozens of other sites on which you as an entrepreneur could promote your products. It occurred to me that if you are in an eco-food or home products entrepreneur, that the 100-mile movement is something you could tap into.

And its not a small movement either. According to Alexa, a Web traffic tracking service, 500 sites link just to the 100-mile diet site. And in fact, its part of a larger movement of locavores. Now were talking about a movement that has hundreds of websites, blogs and articles devoted to it.  So, the question is: is there a movement out there that you can join as a supplier?

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Danae DeShazer, a student in Professor Simran Sethi’s Media and the Environment course at the University of Kansas. Danae originally published this post to the course blog on February 26, 2008.

We’ve all heard of the organic craze. People are switching their diets to “organic” foods. This is all supposed to be healthier and better for the environment, right? Organic food sales are on the up-and-up, increasing 22 percent in 2006 to a $17 billion industry (for the full article, read here). A lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon—with reasons of personal and planetary health—but how do we know exactly what we’re getting?

What does organic even mean? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations.” Also, products that come from animals aren’t given any antibiotics or growth hormones (see The Meatrix if you’re unsure about the standard practices of processed meat companies). Ding, ding, ding! We have a solution. Go out and buy all the organic food you can.

Wrong. There’s a lot more to “buying organic” to save the planet than just looking for that USDA Organic label. Yeah, maybe if your food is organic, it’s probably going to have a better taste and more nutrients (read more reasons to eat organic food in this Prevention magazine article), but you’ve got to read a little closer into those organic labels. Say you want to buy some organic honey. Sure, they probably carry it at your favorite mainstream grocery store—and you’re probably patting yourself on the back for a totally organic purchase. But, take a look at the label. Many honey packages, even organic ones, are produced across oceans from us. Try Hawaii (Volcano Island Honey) and Africa (Zambezi Organic Forest Honey). Even if it doesn’t come from far away lands, it may even be in Illinois (Y.S. Organic Bee Farm) or Pennsylvania (Dutch Gold Honey). Some may even contain labels including multiple countries, such as Full Circle Farm Organic Honey, which can be bought at Hy-Vee, but is made in Mexico and Brazil.

A local friend of mine recently tried out the Consumer Consequences game from American Public Media. (Shirley Siluk Gregory offered a review of the game here last week, as well.) It is essentially another version of a set of questions that help model the now familiar question, "How many Earths would we need so that everyone could live the way you do?" My friend was a bit shocked to

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