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My pet is green!

by The Green A-Team

Has your pet gone green yet?

There are 72 million pet dogs and 82 million pet cats in the United States.  The pet population has an impact just as we do, but the difference is that we’re making the calls as to how we care for them, decisions that can also have strong impact on our health and the environment.

Here’s a few tips for greening up your pet:

1.) Adopt. The shelters are teeming with abandoned pets that are desperate for a home and the cost of adoption is minimal.

2.) Feed them right. Meat byproducts, commodity corn, and chemical fillers in pet food are as bad if not worse for them as they are for us.  Nourish their little bodies with brands that are certified to have the good stuff or make  your own pet food!

and 3.) Compost pet waste. Keep it out of your vegetable garden but it use it your flower beds and lawns for them to come up really strong!

For more ways to green your pet, check out some of the following sites:

How to go green: Pets (Planet Green)

Great Green Pet

Bideawee

Photo by hippolyte photography.


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White House Farmer Polling Results

by The Green A-Team

This just in from WhiteHouseFarmer.com:

Thank you for your outpouring of support for a White House Farmer – we received nearly 56,000 votes from all across the country in just 10 days!

This amazing grassroots effort has sent a huge wave of awareness across the nation.  You have spoken loud and clear — not only to encourage the new administration to make Michael Pollan’s call for a White House Farmer a reality — but also for the larger cause that we are working toward with our farms and with our forks, delicious food grown sustainably by farmers in our communities.

We offer our congratulations to all the nominees, and to farmers across the nation who steward the land and grow good food.  You are all winners, and we are grateful for the work you do.

The top three vote-getters in this poll were:

1. Claire Strader, Troy Community Farm, Madison, WI

2. Carrie Anne Little, Mother Earth Farm, Puyallup, WA

3. Margaret Lloyd, Home Farming, Davis, CA

Congratulations, Margaret!

Scroll down for more of Margaret’s fight to farm the White House lawn.


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New Year’s Revolution

by The Green A-Team

If becoming green is on your list of resolutions this new year, why not start with the party?

Planning a sustainable New Year’s celebration takes more than just balloons. It means working to ensure that almost everything from the lights to the decor produces little to zero lingering waste.

Here are some tips to stay green while tipsy:

1.) Buy food that’s locally and sustainable grown and put up a sign that lets your guests know it.

2.) Send web invitations for your party. With a colorful card on a computer screen, you can get more creative, invite more people, and generate no waste.

3.) Make an extra effort to recycle hard goods and compost your food waste.    If you don’t have a compost container, put it aside for someone who does.

4.) Organize a carpool and encourage public transportation. This will not only keep gas guzzling down but leave extra room for food & drink guzzling at your celebration.

For more sustainable party tips, have a gander at some of these sites:

Sustainable Party: Where your green event planning prowess begins!

Sustainable Table: Serving up healthy food choices

How to go green: New Years (Treehugger.com)

Having a green New Year’s Eve (Suite101.com)

Photo by Tokyo Boy.


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Converted Organics (cont.):
Full Interview with Ed Gildea, CEO

by The Green A-Team

With a third of our country’s waste problem completely avoidable, it’s interesting to follow the progress of a developing market that hinges on it’s removal and recycling.

Ed Gildea, CEO of Converted Organics, shared a few moments with us to discuss the process and ethos of turning food waste into organic fertilizers.  Ed’s background in law and finance coupled with the sustainable business policies formulated by his brother, Bill Gildea, set him up as one of the leading visionaries in the restructuring of American waste stream management.

Read the rest of this entry »


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Cutting Edge Breakthrough: Organic Composting Factories

by The Green A-Team

Every year 25 million tons of solid waste is entering our landfills but can it be used to grow healthier crops?

With food prices choking our wallets, you may be surprised how wasteful Americans are with food. Whether it’s fresh food gone bad or throwing good food out, 27 percent of all edible food produced in the US never even makes it to our plates.

One company though sees the food waste stream as a way to benefit the community. Ed Gildea, CEO of Converted Organics.

With forward-thinkers like Ed, our country’s mounting trash may soon be a thing of the past and the promise of a Greener future.

Here’s some more on Converted Organics and information on home composting.

Photo by rotomotor.


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Urban Composting Made Simple

by Tracy Fay

Dear Readers,

I’ve been bestowed the Greenest graces of friend and fellow blogger, Tracy Fay, author and founder of ModernUrbanLiving.com to share her inspiration and simple tips on urban composting.  We look forward to more from Tracy and if anyone is interested in guest posting, I’m all ears!

Yours,

Rich

————————————————————–

I have many fond memories of the garden my family kept at our Colorado home. One memory stands out above all others is my step father’s almost fanatical devotion to composting. Thanks to his constant drilling we became accustomed to saving all the leftover food scraps for the compost pile we kept in the corner of our garden.

Now far removed from the mountains of my home state, I still experience a strong twinge of guilt every time I toss an apple core or an orange peel in the garbage. I always thought composting wasn’t exactly conducive to living in a cramped New York City apartment. Then I read a post on Green Air that inspired me to challenge that perception and I designed a simple but effective solution to help do my part for the environment and banish my gardening guilt forever.

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Worms World:
Composting in the USA

by The Green A-Team

Ready to get your hands dirty, America!?

It’s not even a question anymore about filling landfills with stuff that shouldn’t be there. Landfills are the real end result of our society’s waste and the best thing we can do is to help make less of them. That means USING stuff you think is garbage.

Organic matter, stuff like egg shells, old bread, fallen leaves, vegetable peels, fruit rinds, and garden trimmings, is the easiest waste to keep out of your garbage. All you need is a little plastic quart container with some holes perforated in the lid to drop the kitchen scraps into (we keep ours next to the sink).

Almost every American community has a composting facility or program. You can find out where to dump mulch and other acceptable bio-materials or a local composting organization will offer individual household composting units to its residents for cheap (around $10 and even FREE).

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