In the last few years, with demand for environmentally friendly, natural materials on the rise, much attention has been paid in this regard to bamboo. But while it is a beautiful, sustainable, durable and versatile substance, we need not live by bamboo alone, particularly when there’s cork. More
As we noted earlier on Serious Eats, a London chef is opening a fish and chips shop selling only sustainably caught seafood. A basket of fish and chips is going to cost about $20. This reminded me of the age-old question facing all of us: Are we willing to pay more for food that is sustainably grown, raised, or caught? Food in the U.S. is still, relatively speaking, incredibly cheap, mostly because of a combination of government policy and the laws of supply and demand. Our food supply is created too efficiently. So people who can pay more should. And I don't think it's an either-or proposition. We produce enough food in this country to feed every man, woman, and... More
British restaurateur Tom Aikens is working on a sustainable fish and chips shop in London: "He has consulted half a dozen environmental groups to decide 'which fish I shouldn’t be using' and to make sure the rest are sustainably fished. He will get most of his fish from 30 British fishermen whose practices he has studied." A typical basket of fish and chips will cost £10 (about US$20).... More
In my heart I would like to be a locavore purist, eating food grown or raised within a 500-mile radius of my house. When I read about Broadway East, a restaurant opening this fall in New York City that is going to serve three locavore squares a day, I applauded. I believe in local food, slow food, and every other kind of "food" movement that supports local farmers and sustainable agriculture. I pledge allegiance to Alice Waters every day. But what's a localist to do when the cherries taste better from Washington, 3,000 miles away from where this local yokel calls home?... More
Although carbon emissions, water use, and waste stream are probably rampant in NYC, there's actually a place within the city where food is being grown without any of those elements. This place is on the Science Barge, a sustainable urban farm created by New York Sun Works that is powered by solar, wind, and biofuels, and irrigated by rainwater and purified riverwater. The farm uses recirculating greenhouse hydroponics to grow lettuce, cucumbers, and peppers. Why should New Yorkers care about the farm? Unless we become a more sustainable city, we can expect prices for food and energy to continue to rise, we can expect traffic congestion and air pollution to get worse, and we will have to deal with... More
Salon.com interviews Charles Clover, author of The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat on "the scourge of overfishing, disgraceful restaurants, and yes, sustainable McDonald's." It's worth reading in its entirety, but a few choice quotes: On whether consumers should continue to eat fish: I didn't say in my book, "Don't eat fish." I say, "Don't eat certain fish, don't eat endangered fish." If a fish takes 20 years to double its population, that's a long time. If it takes 30 years before it breeds, don't touch it. But if you eat something that's fast reproducing and not overfished, you should be all right. And there's quite a lot of those species... More
Wal-Mart sells more than 50 million pounds of shrimp a year, most of it from Thailand, where the company has put into place new rules requiring the shrimp to be farmed in environmentally sound ways as certified by Global Aquaculture Alliance or Aquaculture Certification Council.... More
If I didn't tell you these colorful, beautiful bags were meant to carry your groceries, would you ever think it? Designed in Australia (and made in China), the Envirosax are meant to replace the 500 or so plastic bags that each one of us uses once and then throws away every year. $33 for a set of five bags, each of which is lightweight but strong enough to carry the contents of two supermarket shopping bags, and they roll up into a pouch you can keep in your glove compartment. I buy groceries in small amounts but frequently, like a good New Yorker, so maybe I'll buy a set, keep two bags rolled up in the bottom of my... More
The SF Chronicle's Carol Ness reports on one of the area's newest trends: "At a small but growing number of sustainably inclined Bay Area restaurants, bottled water has become as much of an outcast as farmed salmon and out-of-season tomatoes. Instead of bottled water, diners now are served free carafes of -- gasp! -- tap water. It's filtered and comes still or sparkling, fizzed up by a soda-fountain-style carbonating machine." Incanto's been serving tap for years but Chez Panisse used to go through 24,000 bottles of Italian water, an ironic choice for a pioneer of sustainability to make. They investigated using locally made sparkling waters but found them too carbonated to go with their food; eventually they purchased a $400... More
