Tiered T-shirt Dress by Dahl

One of my very favorite designers, Alison Kelly of Project Runway fame, is finally coming over to the green side where eco-designers dwell.

Look for a small capsule collection she and her soul mate, Dane Risch, are putting together for both men and women.

(For the record: cutest couple going!)

The dress, made from 100% Tencel, a soft and buttery fiber made from wood pulp cellulose, is pure comfort and is so sweet.

Alison says: “The colors are putty, cafe au lait and black. I use these color names to conjure up the proper tones, seeing that the computer monitor can sometimes manipulate color. This top is available in all of my size offerings. It hits about mid-thigh so it can also be worn as a dress.”

Oh Alison, you had me at putty.

Leave a comment below to win and for official rules, click here.

Commuting could take on a whole new meaning with the Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) research project funded by the European Commission.

The project, based on the concept of linking vehicles together using wireless sensors, is aimed at finding an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way of getting cars to travel together, convoy style.

The way to do this, according to project SARTRE, is to create road trains of up to eight separate vehicles – cars, buses, and trucks – which has the potential not only to reduce fuel consumption, but also improve journey times and reduce congestion.

Lead vehicles would be driven by a professional driver controlling the road train. Any vehicle could use their sat-nav sensor to determine if a road train’s going their way. If it were, they would be able to approach the moving road train and indicate that they wish to join. The lead vehicle would then take control of the vehicle, positioning it and pulling it closer, allowing the newly joined driver to sit back, relax and enjoy the scenery rather than focusing on driving.

The SARTRE project, scheduled to run for three years, aims to first determine the true feasibility of these “road trains” and then track test it in the UK and Sweden, with further plans for public road trials in Spain.

If successful, road trips as we know them will never be the same again.

Read more about this project here.

Image: pedrosimoes7

Anvil CSR

The t-shirt. How many are crammed in your drawers?

You may not think of this everyday fashion staple as making a big eco dent, but if you trace the tee you’ll quickly see how it can work as an effective instrument for change.

Anvil Knitwear, sponsor of Track My T, is a new interactive web site that chronicles the journey and environmental impact of a t-shirt, from cottonseed to consumer. The site aims to show you the impact, but in a creative way.

The company recently added the educational program to compliment their mission and CSR bottom line, adding to an already impressive effort to make as small a carbon footprint as possible for a large company.

The experiential site, which specifically tracks t-shirts for youths aged 2-12, allows users to explore cotton farms, a gin and spinners, as well as Anvil’s textile mill, cut and sew plants and distribution facility – all by inputting a unique tracking number printed on their very own shirt.

Anthony Corsano, Chief Executive Officer of Anvil says: “Our goal in creating this site was not only to comply with industry requirements, but to turn it into an educational experience and teach about our footprint and ecological impact.”

Anvil, a leader in the sustainable apparel industry is also the sixth-largest organic program in the world.

Even so, conventional bike fashion and gear has presented a road block from switching out four wheels for two as an alternative mode of transportation.

For the stylish set, those visions of unflattering spandex and cumbersome helmets don’t exactly make you want to hop on a bike to ride to that job interview or catch cocktails with the new flame. But an upswing in the popularity of biking means two-wheel fashion is climbing to new heights. The era of cycle chic is upon us!

Here are four ways to dress for sustainable cycling success:

1. Get inspired!

Start navigating the unlimited modern bike fashion waiting for you to explore. Think the Sartorialist on two wheels. Kick off with the blog that started it all, Copenhagen Cycle Chic. Then work your way through Vélo Vogue, Velo Couture and Riding Pretty. You’ll be putting together cycle-ready outfits and hopping on your two wheels before you know it.

2. Choose clothes that are giving and made with eco-friendly materials.

There’s nothing worse than riding around in tight clothes, no matter how good those skinny jeans look, so make sure what you’re wearing is soft and flexible. Go for options like merino wool, bamboo and organic cotton.

Organic cotton t-shirts from Cyclelogical celebrate the spirit of cycling with designs printed with reflective ink – perfect for making sure you’re being seen. And even though their products aren’t available in the US yet, UK-based company Cyclodelic has some designs that make cycling look like the next big thing on the catwalk.

Remember that cycling fashion isn’t just for the female market. Guys should check out Outlier, which specializes in tailored garments for city riding and makes many of the line’s beautiful pieces right in NYC.

3. Accessorize.

Let’s be honest, nothing is better than a fabulous-looking reusable bag, and in the bike world, their are plenty of well-designed, eco-friendly options. Rickshaw’s Zero Messenger Bag, designed to optimize cutting and eliminate material waste, is made from nylon, making it 100% recyclable.

And every beautiful, functional bike has to have a bike basket, or at least a rack back, to carry your goods in. There are some great designs by Basil, PoCampo and Design House Stockholm worth a peek.

4. Be safe.

Yes, helmet hair is annoying but when it comes to cycling, safety should certainly come first. Plus, with companies like Yakkay, it’s easy to make your helmet fit your style.

Photo Credits: tejvanphotos, Cyclelogical, Design House Stockholm, Yakkay

Who says the pantry has to be a catch-all black hole for prolonging that shelf life? That’s what high school lockers are for!

It’s time to take stock in our most commonly used household storage nook, and make it as inviting as a vintage general store (with a modern green twist, of course).

Open pantries offer easy access for the organic gardener and cook, but also should look tidy since they are exposed to your visitors. Mine is en route to the powder room. Yep, that’s country life.

I find it’s easy to arrange a cool display of dry goods, serving dishes and other odds and ends containing them in boxes, baskets and jars. Not an organizer? Just read Catherine Pond’s The Pantry, chronicling the history of keeping every can and tin in its place.

I have staged many pantries of  homes, finding prospective buyers are sold on nicely organized utility spaces, especially when they also reflect some style with a pop of color, especially red. Yes, panache even extends to the shelves of rice and cereal.

Here are some ideas for ordering and celebrating your own healthy green pantry:

First, sort by category: If you haven’t done so already, clean and designate shelves for categories, i.e. stack tea and cereal boxes side by side on one shelf, canned goods on another, bulk items like rice, pasta and beans on another. Make sure the opened items remaining in original packages are well sealed to preserve them. I use painter’s tape to reseal cardboard boxes to keep items fresh.

Reuse glass mason jars: Mason jars from pasta sauce, jams and other goods are great to reuse for storing and displaying dry goods from quinoa and baking ingredients to various herbs and spices. I love reusing an array of food jars in my pantry because they look cool and help extend the shelf life of the dry goods.

Reuse plastic take-out containers: If you are stuck with plastic, spare the landfill and clean out some of the small containers to store items. Below, they work well when reused for cake decorating sprinkles and beans.

Store packaged items in boxes: You can recycle your old shoe or gift boxes or locate eco-friendly storage to place on the shelves along with the jars and cans. Boxes, especially those with fun patterns from the Container Store and other organizing outlets, add flair even when the cupboard is bare.

Canisters add flavor: Mix in canisters (an easy second hand store or garage sale find) to hold organic flour, raw sugar, baking soda and other items you use for baking those healthy treats every day after work (yeah, right). I have a collection of canisters given as gifts or found in various towns. I love how they look in an open pantry, especially red ones like these from Amazon. These are also great for animal kibble which you might want to buy in bulk to avoid the large paper bags.

Stackers for shelving help you squeeze more in and add depth: Locate metal stacking shelves, like this one from Oraganizeit, to lift and separate cans and other packages. These work really well in both small and large pantry nooks.

Baskets add charm and warmth: Good natural fiber storage, like these water hyacinth nesting baskets from Cultural Elements, work well for onions, potatoes and other perishables, especially in an enclosed pantry. These fresh foods tend to last best in darkness and under wraps. Baskets are great for all loose food items and add that creature comfort organic appeal.

Design tip: Remember, even if your pantry consists of one cupboard in your apartment kitchen, you can still make it look fun and appealing – you might even hang cups on hooks inside.

For me and many of you, ordering clutter reduces stress. When I don’t have to spend an hour searching for taco mix, I don’t scream as much on taco night. Can a neat pantry save on therapy? Try it and see.

Images: The Book Depository, Container Store, Stevie Rocco, La Fattina, Container Store, la fattina, Organizit

Sustainability has become so ingrained into my life that sometimes I inadvertently assume everyone knows what I’m talking about.

My days are filled with issues such as Climate Change, renewable energy, recycling, LEED buildings, CO2 sensors, de-lamping and composting. The reason for this is because when I’m not writing for EcoSalon, I’m the communications specialist for sustainability at Boston University.

On my way to work last week I was listening to the radio, surfing between Lady Gaga and NPR when I heard the uber-clever green moniker AstroTurfing. Astroturfing, taken from the root AstroTurf (the artificial grass laid down on sports playing fields) refers to events or missions planned by an organization, but masked to appear as grass-roots efforts, which are built on passionate people dedicated to helping a cause.

Here are eight other terms everyone should know that are sure to turn you into an eco-expert:

1. Greenhouse Gas

Chemical compounds that contribute to the greenhouse effect. When in the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas allows sunlight (solar radiation) to enter the atmosphere where it warms the Earth’s surface and is reradiated back into the atmosphere as longer-wave energy (heat). Greenhouse gases absorb this heat and “trap” it in the lower atmosphere.

2. Global Warming

The current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is said to be approximately 385 ppm (parts per million). Before industrialization it was about 280 ppm. As stated in the U.S. Climate Change Conference data, analyses of air contained in ice from the Antarctic ice cap shows that there is far more CO2 in the air today than at any time in the last 650,000 years. The consequence is that the greenhouse effect is becoming stronger, and the earth is becoming warmer.

3. Greenwashing

Using environmental claims, which fall short, to sell a product. Check out the Greenwashing Index for the worst offenders.

4. Sustainability

In 1987, the Brundtland Report, also known as Our Common Future, defined sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

5. Phantom Energy

Also called Vampire power, this energy is taken from the grid when an appliance is plugged in but not being used. Think printers, cell phone chargers, TVs and computers. One easy way to stop this is by using a Smart Power Strip, which cuts off energy with the flip of one switch.

6. Carbon Footprint

The amount of carbon produced by an individual, organization, or location at a given time. Carbon footprint describes the environmental impact of carbon emissions, measured in units of carbon dioxide.

7. COP15

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, which takes place from December 7-18^th in Copenhagen, Denmark, will bring together world leaders to discuss the Climate Change Crisis and the Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

8. LEED

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED is an internationally-recognized building system aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO₂ emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

Image: Vincent Boiteau

A new study has found that the American health care sector accounts for 8 percent of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions.

The study, conducted by University of Chicago researchers and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, measured how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases the health care industries (hospitals, scientific research, pharmaceuticals, etc) released. It is the first-of-its-kind calculation of health care’s carbon footprint.

Using the environmental input-output life cycle assessment (EIOLCA) model of environmental impact developed by the Green Design Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, the researchers were able to determine exactly how much health care activities directly and indirectly affected the environment.

Not surprisingly, hospitals release the largest amount of carbon emissions, mainly due to their high energy needs for temperature control, ventilation and lighting in large and often aging and poorly structured hospital buildings. But interestingly, the second largest contributor of carbon emissions was the pharmaceutical industry, primarily because of associated manufacturing and transportation.

While the researchers realize that hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are more concerned with treating people than the environment, they hope that the results of this study will encourage them to look at ways of providing health care and researching and developing drugs in a more environmentally friendly way.

Image: tacitrequiem

Rachel Avalon, 2009 Project Green Search winner

Have you followed the progress of Project Green Search? It’s a recent contest that closed recently with winner, Rachel Avalon, being “crowned.”

Aysia Wright of Greenloop and Remy Chevalier of Lu Magazine, who co-hosted the event, say Greenloop’s education, outreach and fund raising arm naturally evolved into Project Green Search, a platform aimed at inspiring people to start thinking about how to align their careers with their environmental ethics.

Wright saw this inspiration as opportunity to reshape a particular  economic landscape, to support progressive, triple bottom line business models, media projects and non-profit organizations seeking to move forward in the realm of sustainable living.

In the case of Avalon, Wright admits she’s beautiful, but much more than just a fresh face.

“People relate to other people, especially people who tell a good story, who are accessible and authentic,” says Wright. “For many companies, non-profits, and media projects, telling their story in a compelling manner is a huge challenge. With the right person, this monumental task is so much easier.  It’s usually pretty clear when a cause is only skin deep to the person relating it, which affects its ability to take root and grow. When the right person tells the story though, a person who lives and breathes the story themselves, you can see it and feel it, and it resonates. ”

Wright says that is her goal with Project Green Search: to educate, inspire, make the connections and serve as the platform where all of this can take place.

Chevalier agrees, but has his own spin.

“Models and actors in ads or commercials need to believe in what they’re selling, so they’re not just doing it for the paycheck, prostituting their image to pay the rent,” Chevalier says. “We want to create an environment where that can happen, grow and expand, so as to transform the entire industry, which has always been led by where the next ‘it’ girl wanted to be.”

Based on Chevalier’s remark about transforming the idea of what a model is or represents for a brand or even for our culture is massive, especially when you’re standing out for the eco-world. There’s a lot more to be hold accountable for.

Avalon has a lot of weight on her shoulders now, and I’m not talking about the Swarovski crystal-embedded crown. What makes her the green girl to stand tall?

I  asked all the Project Green Search judges one question: Was your choice to crown Rachel Avalon as the next green “it” girl based more on her being a fresh face or for her ease in being an advocate for all that is green and good?

Here’s what they had to say.

Darren Moore, Alter Eco Co- host on Discovery’s  Planet Green and Ecovations Founder:

“The reason Rachel Avalon was chosen as the next green girl was because all the judges considered her to be in the top two of their list. For me, Rachel represented the qualities we agreed were most important as judges:

1. History of work in the field
2. Relateable to the masses (look included)
3. Knowledge of green priorities (what’s most important)

This was a challenge to choose because each of the contestants had strong points with unique talents, skills and looks that were difficult to place in comparison with each other. This being the first competition, we had to devise our own criteria and all of us judges had a opinions on who they thought was the best public figure. We were essentially deciding on who we felt would be the choice of the people.”

Deborah Lindquist, Eco-fashion designer combining environmental responsibility with cutting-edge aesthetics:

“I suppose a bit of both. We needed to pick a girl who was commercially viable as a model but who also could speak well and was knowledgeable about the green lifestyle.”

Anna Griffin, Editor-in-Chief of CocoEco Magazine:

“My main criteria in choosing the Project Green ‘It’ Girl was to find a fresh face that was accessible to both big brands and the general public, who could also walk her talk in our green space, was passionate and had super integrity. In order to make green a mainstream conversation, it is imperative we start considering what is commercially viable, and build bridges between our industry, large brands and the general public.  Rachel has the ability to transcend each area, and has all the qualities needed to be that spokesperson.”

Starre Vartan, author of The Eco Chick Guide to Life: How to Be Fabulously Green and publisher of Eco Chick:

“I chose Rachel Avalon for three particular reasons: she has an amazing face that telegraphs natural beauty, she is graceful, well-spoken and easy on camera, and most of all, her passion for a greener planet is contagious and genuine. After interviewing Rachel, and speaking with her both formally and informally, her love for the planet was palpable, like something that spread from her and infected everyone around her. That is the quality I was hoping to find and several of our contestants were incredibly dedicated to various environmental causes, but Rachel Avalon’s love for the Earth is like a living thing and as we all know, Mother Nature needs representatives who can communicate both the challenges and the joys of going green.”

Josie Maran, Professional model and founder of Josie Maran Cosmetics:

“Rachel is our ‘It’ girl because she is fresh faced and a great advocate and spokesperson for all that’s good. She’s beautiful inside and out!”

As the World Summit on Food Security convenes in Rome this week, world leaders will debate how best to combat worsening worldwide hunger and escalating food prices. Biotechnology will most certainly be on the table.

As a polarizing subject, biotechnology has no peer.

On the one hand, it has potential to raise crop yields, increase the nutrient value in food and speed up traditional plant breeding through marker-assisted selection, a biotechnology that does not mix genes of different species.

On the other hand, biotechnology is generally funded and controlled by large corporations. The corporations then patent the products produced through the technology and sell them to farmers to make a profit.

In the past, agricultural knowledge and seeds have been owned by everyone for the common good and shared freely among gardeners and farmers. This new system is a departure from how food has traditionally been raised. By turning knowledge into private property, it effectively removes the control over food production from the communities engaged in it.

There are many other problems with biotechnology, as well, including potential loss of biodiversity, environmental degradation caused by indiscriminate spraying of pesticides and herbicides on crops that have been bioengineered to withstand heavy doses of chemicals, and the unknown impacts on our health we may experience from consuming genetically modified organisms.

Another problem is with the companies that develop and promote this technology. Monsanto in particular is known for spying on farmers and suing them if Monsanto-patented crops are found in the farmers’ fields – whether or not the farmers planted these crops or they ended up their via “drift.” Further, Monsanto is known for using strong-armed tactics to gain new markets in countries around the world.

Monsanto has also been devoting significant resources to an advertising campaign aimed at thought leaders who read publications like The New Yorker, or listen to NPR stations. To influence a public that is wary of biotechnology, the campaign asserts that we need biotechnology to “feed the world.” The ads imply that if you care about starving people around the world, you’ll support biotechnology.

This advertising is disingenuous because most crops patented by Monsanto are engineered to withstand the pesticides and herbicides the company also sells. In reality, developing these crops and selling them to farmers is another way to sell more chemicals.

Furthermore, the most widely-planted GMO crops don’t feed the people in the countries where the crops are grown; they are export crops for the global marketplace. Most are not used for food at all.

Soybeans, the most-planted GMO-crop worldwide, go mostly to feed animals or for biofuel; GMO corn is used in animal feed and industrial products; rapeseed is used to make canola oil; cotton, of course, is not even a food crop.

All of these crops favor large landholders, not the people we think of when talking about hunger.

With GMO development being framed as the only way to combat hunger, let’s take a look at some of the global hotspots around the world.

Africa

The Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations are currently funding what’s touted as a Second Green Revolution in Africa. Unlike the first Green Revolution in Asia and South Asia, which promoted a fossil-fuel dependent form of heavy input agriculture, this new, improved Green Revolution is supposed to benefit smallholders, use genetic engineering to reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers and utilize the extensive knowledge of the farmers on the ground.

According to an article in Seed Magazine, seven out of every 10 Africans make their livelihoods through farming. They produce the majority of Africa’s food but with minimal resources and little support. Agriculture receives, on average, just 4 to 5 percent of national budgets.

This article asserts that the main problem is not lack of technology. It is that national governments have not invested enough in basic programs that will turn smallholder farming into a viable economic enterprise.

The Gates Foundation funding is being distributed to AGRA, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. According to AGRA’s website, AGRA “works to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa through the promotion of rapid, sustainable agricultural growth based on smallholder farmers.”

That all sounds good, but in an article in The Nation this past September, it was revealed that though the Gates Foundation appears to have learned something from the first Green Revolution, much of what is being funded looks like business as usual.

The Gates project is doing some work engaging small farmers and sharing technology with African scientists, but researchers at the Community Alliance for Global Justice have found that a hefty portion of the Gates money is going to organizations connected to Monsanto.

Some farmers that have been working on their own sustainable, ecologically based farming systems to increase yields say they have been ignored. For their part, The Gates Foundation responded to these charges in a letter to the editor in The Nation. That letter (and others) can be read here.

According to Africa Files, “a network of people committed to Africa through its promotion of human rights, economic justice, African perspectives and alternative analyses,” AGRA is a “hoax.”

Africa Files accuses AGRA of promoting monoculture type farming that relies on heavy irrigation and ignoring the possibilities of economic gains when smallholders engage in organic farming.

According to Annie Shattuck, Policy Analyst for Food First, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, and co-author of the article in The Nation cited above,

“The pattern of the Green Revolution is to reduce agriculture systems to a monoculture crop that responds well to a highly limited set of circumstances and inputs. Trying to engineer genetic resistance to one more circumstance is not going to cut it for the agriculture of the future. We need systems that provide resilience to multiple hazards, and to do that we need diverse sustainable systems that also provide a decent living for the people who work them.”

India

The first Green Revolution begun in the 1970s was touted as a success. But today, it looks more like a disaster in India. While yields did go up, hunger did not go down. The reason for this is the high input technologies promoted tended to favor large, already privileged landholders. What it really did was push a lot of rural people into cities to try their luck there.

Today, despite the Green Revolution, there are famine conditions in India caused by drought and extreme weather. Suicide among Indian farmers has been epidemic as farmers find themselves in crushing debt when technological farming fails. Recent stories profile Indian farmers going back to organic methods.

What’s clear from the stories in India is that technological solutions only work for so long. Whether you are talking about chemical fertilizers, or genetic modification, such solutions are a crude fix overlaid across nature’s elegant variability. Currently, the only GM crop grown in India is cotton, but the country recently approved the development of GM eggplant.

“The myth of “one gene, one solution” to complex problems like climate change and poverty, (the root cause of hunger), is a myopic way to look at what is a complex ecological and social problem”, says Annie Shattuck. “So far attempts to engineer drought tolerance have been a miserable failure. The crops do well in drought years, but not in a normal year. We know agriculture will have to use less water and less fossil fuel in the future. It will also have to deal with increasingly wild weather – delays in the rainy season, erratic frosts, more intense storms. Unpredictability is the name of the game.”

China

Due to concerns about food security while agricultural land is being lost to rapid industrialization, China has been engaged in state-sponsored GMO research since the early part of this century. Details of the Chinese program are sketchy but the most interesting aspect of the program is that it is owned by the Chinese government rather than being funded by Monsanto, BayerCropScience, Syngenta or any of the other large agricultural biotech companies.

According to an article in Reuters, a large budget was approved in 2008 for GMO research with a huge portion of that budget earmarked for safety research. A good thing, because unauthorized GM rice has been found in processed foods imported into the EU from China.

With consumers in Europe among the least accepting of GM foods, China would do well to be cautious.

According to Chinese officials, the Chinese program “aims to obtain genes with great potential commercial value whose intellectual property rights belong to China, and to develop high-quality, high-yield and pest-resistant genetically modified new species.” Currently China grows large amounts of transgenic cotton. Rice, wheat, corn, soybeans, and a few food crops like peppers and papaya are in the development phase.

Mexico

In October, Mexico issued the first permits to grow GM corn. Despite assurances that the corn will not be planted in the same areas as native corn, native corn in Mexico is already contaminated. In a study published in the journal Nature, in 2001, scientists reported that corn in remote fields in Oaxaca was contaminated with GM genes.

This report set off an ugly industry effort to discredit the scientists who published the study. But in spring 2009, the controversy was finally put to rest when another study confirmed the findings of the first study. At any rate, according to the story in Reuters, some Mexican farmers in the north have been planting GM corn illegally.

Turkey

In a surprising and controversial move in October, Turkey (which doesn’t grow any GM crops) put restrictions on the import of GM foods into the country. Some say the move did not go far enough toward an outright ban and will endanger Turkey’s chances in its bid to join the EU. The regulation does not restrict or ban the import or use of GMOs but rather introduced some criteria for their import. Because Turkey does not yet set rules and regulations for GMOs, the government sees this as a stopgap measure until a comprehensive law comes into effect.

Ireland

Also in October, Ireland joined a growing number of countries with an outright ban on growing GM crops or using GM feed for livestock.

The battle lines are sharply drawn.

As Europe, Japan, and some Middle Eastern countries increasingly reject GM foods, look for more action in developing countries as agricultural biotech companies muscle in. Just last week, President Obama nominated Dr. Rajiv Shah as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Most recently, Dr. Shah served as undersecretary and Chief Scientist at the Department of Agriculture under Tom Vilsack and before that was the Director for Agricultural Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he promoted the technological farming solutions of the organization.

As we debate how to feed the world, we would do well to remember that the problem is not so much lack of food. The problem is lack of food sovereignty. When control of the food system is in corporate hands rather than local ones, people who have no money to buy food on the open market starve.

For more information on the GMOs in the developing world, and other battles for food sovereignty, sign up for the Food First newsletter or check out their publications section. If you want to help, donations are always welcome.

Image: Untitled blue

Coffee makes the world go around. Well, at least my world anyway. Without it, I’m a bit like one of  Snow White’s dwarf’s – sleepy, grumpy and dopey.

But I won’t drink just any coffee. Bad coffee doesn’t get past my lips. It not only has to taste good to me but it also has to be good for the environment. Which makes the Seattle based roaster Grounds for Change my perfect coffee match.

And here’s why. Grounds for Change:

- Deals not only in certified organic and fair trade coffee but also shade grown coffee which helps ensure healthy and safe habitats for migratory birds.

- Contributes 1% of all their sales to environmental groups worldwide through the 1% For the Planet organization.

- Their policy of offsetting 100% of the global warming emissions associated with their coffee has resulted in Grounds for Change becoming the first U.S. coffee roaster to obtain a CarbonFree® Certified Product label.

- They use sustainable energy (wind, solar and biomass) through Puget Sound Energy’s green power program. In turn, the energy company gives its customers Grounds for Change coffee as an incentive to join the energy-saving program.

- They support community-based programs in coffee growing countries such as the Café Femenino Mexico program that provides a blend of coffee that is grown, processed and traded exclusively by a group of women in the southern Chiapas state.

In other words, Grounds for Change coffee is seriously green.

In fact, this company is so green that it was one of the top ten nominees for this year’s Green America’s Green Business of the Year award.

All in all, Grounds for Change may be just the right brew for anyone who has a well-developed coffee conscience.

Now, here’s the fun part: leave a comment on this post and you could be one of four EcoSalon winners to receive a free supply of Grounds for Change coffee!

Editor’s note: this is a sponsored post. See giveaway rules.