This Week In Sustainability - Edition 6

Sustainability In The Press

Across the world, major cities and landmarks turned off their lights for one hour in honor of Earth Hour. While the PR is great and it definitely gets attention, one hour each year is simply not enough to inspire massive change in my book. What if we had Earth Hour once a week every week?

New York is set to ban single-use plastic bags in all retail stores next March. They are the second state to impose a ban behind California. It’s certainly not a catch-all, as the bill has a number of “exempt” situations for things like garment bags, take out bags, and the like - but it’s a start.

Burger King is rolling out its first meatless burger. Sourced from the startup company Impossible Foods, the burger would be available in all 7,200 locations across the US. Impossible’s claim to fame has been how similar their burgers taste to real meat. How do they accomplish this? By using heme. Heme is an iron-rich protein that Impossible Foods thinks brings much of the meaty taste to meat. How do they source their heme? Impossible Foods discovered a way to grow it using the roots of soybean plants and mass-produce it using GMO yeast. Where is that soy sourced from? GMO soybeans. You tell me how much better for the planet this alternative is. The company makes the fatal mistake of likening genetic modification to hybridization - which are two extremely different practices. Hybridization is about breeding similar strains of plants with each other, which farmers have done for thousands of years (think a paste tomato crossed with a cherry tomato - nature does this all on her own) the other is blatant genetic cut and paste (think like squid genetics CRSPRed into a soybean plant - which nature does not do). It’s processed food at the end of day. I’ll continue to enjoy my grass fed burgers, thanks.

Ikea is on track to become “climate positive” by 2030. They are aiming to reduce their climate footprint by 80% through sourcing more earth-friendly material, getting manufacturing plants powered by renewable energy, and tackling deliveries’ carbon footprint. Unfortunately, the numbers show their climate footprint went up by 2.8% since 2016. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good romp through Ikea, but there is something to be said about well made materials that are meant to last. When I think about quality and longevity, I don’t think about Ikea.

In better news, almost half of the EU states have hit their renewable energy goals for 2020. Those who get a gold star are Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania and Sweden.

Sustainability Podcasts

The Positively Green Podcast Episode 12: How to easily incorporate herbalism into your lifestyle with Kyle Denton
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The Green Dreamer Podcast Episode 125: Individual actions adding up to transform the world for the better with Aaron Perry

The Food Heroes Podcast Episode 27: Why Beekeeping is important and how to get started today.

Parting Thoughts

If you want to find local regenerative farmers, one of the best resources is LocalHarvest.org. From pastured eggs to local honey - you can search their database depending on your location and get in contact with amazing farmers growing amazing things. We found our grass fed beef and pastured pork using this resource!

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