Well, what about the non crafty people? Should they be relegated to using plastic bags? What if everyone was given a free handmade bag to carry home their fresh produce instead of those plastic bags? And what if these bags were made out of fabric left overs such as outgrown t-shirts and scraps?

Bags for the People was formed in reaction to when Glenn Robinson would work at his local farmers market in Union Square in New York and hand out hundreds of hundreds of plastics bags every day. He would see people that would bring their own bags, but they would still rely on some plastic, too.

Having some free time on his hands Robinson used some old clothing to create bags that he then gave away at the farmers market to help curb plastic bag use. The simple idea was received very well and people thought they were being given a gift with their purchase. “People were so excited to get these bags,” Robinson said.

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When you are out at the Farmer’s Market, get to know your farmer.  Ask pointed questions, find out if they have an open door policy (can you tour anytime), are they certified organic or do they go beyond organic (beyond organic is a philosophy that USDA organic isn’t enough).   If you are a meat eater, find local farmers and arrange direct meat purchase (our plan is every 3 months because we have decent storage space).  Some meats we find locally: tuna (which we can ourselves), bison, chicken, beef.  Prices average $3.00-$4.00/lb, so this also encourages us to use less meat.  For our family of 7 + 3 daycare kiddos, we have meat packaged in 1 lb sizes to ensure we don’t get meat crazy. :)  You can probably find local eggs at the farmers market, this usually saves you money and supports small, local farms.

Here are some tips to help you navigate healthier, local eating.

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I’ve always loved the idea of foraging for food, but the idea of dying from a poisonous mushroom overdose has always put me off from plucking edibles from the ground for dinner. Luckily, you can often find a carefully selected array of wild and exotic mushrooms at grocery stores or farmers markets. Sometimes, when there’s potential for serious injury, I find it’s best to leave things up to the professionals.

I found this gorgeous array of exotic mushrooms at the Sporeboys stall at London’s beautiful Broadway Market. Mushrooms are easy to cook, good for you, and have a deliciously rich, almost meaty taste that’s a great vegetarian substitute. I made a simple sautéed mushroom mix with olive oil, herbs, and cheese that tasted great on toast as well as pasta. It could also top a number of other dishes that you’ve already got in your kitchen. It’s simple, versatile, and oh so tasty…and no fear of poison! What more could you ask for?

Here’s an easy way to cook your mushrooms and a number of ways to serve them too:

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Is there anyone NOT sucked into the whirlwind of earth day hype? Is there anyone that isn’t thinking of how they can get their green on? Is anyone else feeling overwhelmed by it all?

Us Green Divas area all about easy does it! If we make earth day more of a lifestyle and simply start by making one green improvement from wherever we are on the big green super highway, sustainable living habits seem to sprout like hearty organic weeds and multiply. Before you know it, you’re talking local sustainable agriculture at your favorite new potluck dinner club!

I started with food. Yum.

The low-stress way of doing this, is to know you don’t have to do it ALL. Just pick one that resonates with you and start there. It should be fun and bring you some joy. This is NOT about adding stressful activities to your lifestyle, but adding some thoughtful and hopefully more meaningful activities to the things you already do anyway.

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The number of  farms in the USA has increased by 4% since 2002. Most of the new agriculture is small, part-time and family run, which means that instead of being self-sustaining, most new farms need at least one family member to be working off the farm to generate income – this is an increasing trend too: in the last decade the number of farms that require farmers to have off-farm jobs too has risen from 55% to 65%. And nearly half the farms who reported income in 2007 earned less than $3,000 in sales. That’s hardly a living wage.

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Soon, however, there may not be meat at farmers markets, or meat raised by small farmers, at all. That’s because of the roll out of the National Animal ID System (NAIS), requiring farmers to attach radio frequency identification ear tags on cattle, dairy cows, pigs and chickens.

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These farms, or CSAs, provide fresh produce, and sometimes meat and dairy. For a fee, you get baskets of fresh food once a week. One well-known CSA in LA is the Tierra Miguel Foundation, which drops off batches of organic produce at designated spots around town. All you do is swing by and pick it up. Or, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can visit the North San Diego farm in person the first Saturday of each month. The farm is also a charitable foundation that supports education in sustainable agriculture.

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Image credit: Flickr.com user FotoDawg at Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license

Working local, seasonal foods into your diet is an easy and delicious way to reduce your carbon footprint. The average food item travels 1,500 miles to get to your plate. Local food uses far less gas to get from farm to table. On top of that, local food is usually fresher than something that’s traveled a long time and distance. If you hit your average grocery store chain it seems nearly impossible to stock up on local eats. With a few handy resources, though, it’s as easy as (organic, locally-grown apple) pie!

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In case you’ve been in a cave for the last two decades, Farm Aid is:

The nonprofit organization, whose mission is to keep family farmers on their land, works with organizations to help family farmers thrive through programs that develop local food markets, training, youth education and food awareness initiatives.

Farm Aid promotes food from family farms, helps grow the good food movement and takes action to change the “system”. How? The most visible of the organization’s work is an annual daylong concert featuring some of the top names in music - headliners Willie Nelson, Mellencamp, Neil Young, and Dave Matthews.

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The Arnold Palmer is an exceptional beverage. It takes two individual beverages, iced tea and lemonade, each very good in their own right, and creates an even better one. That’s how we feel about social media and green living i.e. sustainability.

There is nothing inherently green about social media. The Web 2.0 revolution is driven by code and the Internet as a platform. According to Wikipedia, it describes this as a trend in “technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.” This is largely a virtual world.

The move toward sustainability, on the other hand, is taking place entirely offline in the actual world. It is about balancing our impact and more wisely managing our natural resources. The United Nations describes it as commitment to “the provision of a secure environmental, social, and economic future.”

As different as they are, these two trends share one key quality: they’re changing the world for the better. They are changing politics, business, culture, and society. In the following we explore 10 ways that the trends of social media and sustainability intersect as well as align.

Special Note: Sustainablog and Max Gladwell are supporting Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C). By clicking this link and signing up for SocialVibe, once featured in our Ten Ways to Change the World Through Social Media, you’ll effectively donate $1 to the cause. We also encourage you to watch the live telecast on ABC, CBS, and NBC, September 5th, at 8:00pm ET/PT.

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Well, maybe not literally, but it can feel that way at this time in the summer, when home gardens, farmer’s markets and fresh produce aisles abound with these versatile and prolific veggies.

There is something kind of funny about these little green monsters. It could just be the word ‘zucchini’, which by the way has its roots in the very food-associated Italian language. ‘Zucca’ is the Italian word for squash. Not to get bogged down in an etymology thing . . . the point is that zucchini has been party to many silly jokes, such as:

What is a zucchini’s favorite sport?

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Growing fresh berries may be the most exciting - especially if you have a local bear that becomes familiar with your crop! Until our current house, I’ve always had some berry bushes and enjoyed the picked-off-the-bush freshness of berries for breakfast AND dessert! I tried container strawberries on the deck in the last couple of years, but it was such an unbelievable chore to keep them from the critters, that I gave up, surrendered my succulent beauties to some very happy chipmunks and whoever else was enjoying them.

I love to buy fresh local berries or even pick them myself from some of the U-Pick farms in my area (Northern New Jersey). Knowing that berries often get the worst kind of pesticides sprayed on them, I’m kind of careful of how they’ve been grown. I almost never buy them non-organic out of season in the grocery store as they often come from South America, where they are allowed to use more pesticides. (not sure about current trade laws, but it used to be that we (US) weren’t allowed to use DDT on our own crops, but we still produced the stuff, sent it down to Mexico and S. America, where THEY used it on various crops, and turned around and sent it back to us - this may not be the case any more, but it is so emblazoned in my little mind, that it is very difficult for me to buy any berries from the supermarket that are NOT organic).

Wow. There’s a berry rant for you! Click on to see my favorite ways to eat berries!

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 - the lower carbon impact of supporting food that isn’t ‘big Ag’ produced and shipped across the country

 - I personally enjoy meeting the farmers (whenever possible) and supporting their efforts

 - the food is so much fresher and tastes better to me

 - I simply get great satisfaction in knowing that I’m helping to move towards a more sustainable agriculture system by eating/buying locally

The following list of various ways to find and buy local food is an excerpt from a story we did last May/June in Relevant Times, by Tamara Jean Scully, who is a freelance writer, specializing in agricultural issues. She is a local foods advocate, working with the Foodshed Alliance to support local, sustainable family farming. Tammy is also a part-time farmer, growing perennials, raspberries and minor fruits. tamarajeanscully.com

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The farmers’ market season may not yet be in full swing so we don’t see — nor appreciate — the flurry of farm activity going on across the country as growers get ready to keep us freshly stocked all summer. But Bradbury, a fledgling Oregon farmer starting her growing venture this season, along with thousands of small-scale, family farmers across the country, have been putting in long work days for weeks.

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Keep in mind that the typical consumer is NOT paying the true cost of food. The meat, dairy, and egg industries, in particular, enjoy many government subsidies, which keep the cost of these unhealthful products artificially low. The same goes for produce laden with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Also, organic fruits and veggies are usually not grown on an industrial scale, so efficiencies aren’t as great. Also, as pointed out in a recent article on the subject, "there are also significant costs involved in switching farmland from nonorganic to organic status. And there’s a lot more manual labor involved, such as weeding by hand."

So it’s not that organic is expensive; it’s the non-organic is cheap.

I’m always struck by the fact that so many people think organically grown food is some new-fangled, trendy idea. To grow plant foods with the least amount of chemicals as possible is to return to a time before industrical agriculture. Supporting local farmers is a very old ideal. As consumers, we should be shocked that an apple from clear across the world costs less than an apple grown a few hours from our home. When you go to a farmer’s market and buy directly from that farmer, you’re paying the true cost of that food.

Buying local and organic is the best thing you can do for so many reasons. First of all, the taste is absolutely superior, because the fruits and vegetables are grown with flavor in mind. When you buy produce that has been shipped in from all over the world, that produce is grown not with taste and flavor as the first priority but rather the ability to withstand the long shipments and sit on the shelf for long periods of time.

Also, when you purchase local produce, you’re purchasing produce that is seasonal - grown according to the climate of the region in which you live. And seasonal veggies are generally cheaper than purchasing out of season fruits and vegetables. But cost doesn’t refer only to dollars. As with the health costs that comes from eating an animal-based diet, there are also environmental costs, and when you buy locally at a farmer’s market or through something like Community Supported Agriculture, it means you’re paying for food that was driven down from a couple hours away as opposed to shipped from thousands of miles away. That’s a huge savings in terms of the resources required to get that food to your table – resources that include oil and electricity.

In terms of organic produce, when you purchase organic, you’re supporting a growing system that works with the Earth rather than against it. You’re paying for sustainable growing methods that enrich rather than deplete the soil. When you purchase out-of-season produce that was shipped in from other countries, there concerns about food safety, as well. The growing standards in other countries may not be the same as those in the U.S. or more specifically as high as those of the farmers you can talk to at the markets. I mean you can find out exactly how they grow their food, and in many cases you can also visit the farm yourself.

Having said all this, as we adjust to paying the true cost of food, it’s helpful to know which fruits and vegetables are the most highly sprayed so we can make informed decisions when we simply cannot purchase organic. Certain produce, termed the "Dirty Dozen" by the Environmental Working Group, is so highly sprayed with toxic chemicals that, many experts recommend eating them only when they’re organic. These include:

• Apples
• Cherries
• Grapes, imported (Chili)
• Nectarines
• Peaches
• Pears
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Bell peppers
• Celery
• Potatoes
• Spinach

The U.S. Department of Agriculture found that even after washing, some fruits and vegetables consistently carry much higher levels of pesticide residue than others. The produce you can get away with purchasing as non-organic includes:

• Bananas (though I do recommend purchasing "Fair Trade" bananas)
• Kiwi
• Mangos
• Papaya
• Pineapples
• Asparagus
• Avocado
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Corn
• Onions
• Peas

When I have the opportunity, I do tend to purchase many of these as organic anyway, mainly because I shop at farmer’s markets and also because I want to support local, organic farmers. But it’s helpful to have this list on hand (or in your memory) to help you make the best choices possible.

To make it even easier for you, the Environmental Working Group has a handy little guide called Pesticides in Produce that you can either download from their website Food News, or order a wallet-size version of to keep with you at all times.