The Brighter Planet Blog

Recently we’ve been talking a lot about a topic within sustainability that’s a language we can all relate to– food! We released our Sustainable Cooking Guide, which is chock-full of energy conservation tips, stories and recipes for everyone who loves eating and wants to keep their impact under control.

For all the data-lovers out there, we also published a white paper about FOODprints called “The American Carbon Foodprint: Understanding and Reducing your Food’s Impact on Climate Change.” The average American’s carbon foodprint is 6.1 tons of CO2e a year. That’s more than the combined impact of all their driving and flying. That means you can start eating your way to a healthy climate. The seven take-home tips on our previous post are a good place to start.

Now on to the tuna sandwich. The oceans are a crucial part of our planet’s ecosystem and destructive overfishing is rampant. Scientific American predicts overfishing could take seafood off the menu by 2048, with a total collapse of world around 2048. Seafood is not something everyone can relate to, but if you’re a buyer and consumer of seafood I’m here to give you the run-down on what’s responsible and what’s not.

There are some great Seafood Guides out there to help you stop contributing to this problem: The Monterey Bay Aquarium has pocket-sized Seafood Watch Guides you can print out and keep in your wallet. These guides are get updated and they’re based on what region of the U.S. you live in. There’s also a Sushi Guide and a National Guide.

The Environmental Defense Fund has a three part list of Eco-Best, Eco-Ok and Eco-Worst commercially sold fish. (A.K.A. what you’d buy in a store or restaurant, not freshwater or sport fish).

Over at the Blue Ocean Institute, there’s a seafood guide where you can search by your favorite fish and see the environmental ranking. They say “Chefs are the gatekeepers of the seafood industry” because 70% of the revenue generated by seafood sales in the United States occurs in restaurants and catering services, and they even have a program with Chefs Collaborative for chefs and culinary students: oceanfriendlychefs.org.

The good thing is, you won’t be alone alone in making an effort to choose more sustainable seafood. My family and I have kept these cards in our wallets for the last few years, British chef Jamie Oliver stopped using bluefin tuna and recently Target stores stopped selling farmed salmon. More and more restaurants have sustainable seafood options on their menu in Washington, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Maura at Fresh Greens shared a few good rules of thumb to remember about seafood:
- Always avoid bluefin tuna, bigeye tuna, Atlantic halibut, European eel, and any species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List.
- The smaller the fish, the more sustainable it is, and often, the healthier it is for you – so give those sardines a try.

Moreover, aside from eating or not eating seafood, everyone can contribute to ocean health by avoiding plastic. Beth’s blog Fake Plastic Fish is a great place to get inspired.

-Carolyn

photo credit: environmentalfolly.blogspot.com

Wanted to share with you all a white paper that we just put out, entitled “The American Carbon Foodprint: Understanding and Reducing your Food’s Impact on Climate Change.” Using the emissions model that we built to power the footprint calculator on this website, we analyzed the cradle to grave climate impacts of the average diet, and pulled the results together in a report that explains and interprets them. It turned up some pretty enlightening (and sometimes rather surprising) stuff – good background for anybody who is into understanding the food they eat.

A few highlights:

• The average American’s carbon “foodprint” is 6.1 tons of CO2e a year. That’s bigger than the combined impact of all their driving and flying.
• Production accounts for close to half of a meal’s total climate impact, and red meat is by far the most potent emitter of all the food groups.
• Of all the transportation emissions associated with your food, less than a tenth result from delivering food from the producer to the vendor, while more than two thirds result from your own driving to grocery stores and restaurants. That puts the importance of “food miles” in perspective!
• Kitchen energy accounts for 29% of a meal’s life cycle impact. Cooking at home is far more carbon-efficient than eating in restaurants.

Yes, the climate impact of our dining habits is substantial. But it’s pretty straightforward for each of us to make changes that significantly reduce those impacts. We distilled the learnings into seven take-home tips:

• Eat fewer animals and more plants
• Buy unprocessed foods with less packaging
• Grow and harvest your own food
• Minimize car trips to restaurants and stores
• Cook at home more and eat out less
• Cook with efficient appliances and techniques
• Compost, recycle, and relish leftovers

Check out the full paper to get answers to all the carbon foodprint questions you never knew you had, and let us know what you think.

–Matthew

We ran the Mastering the Art of Sustainable Cooking contest up until Dec. 31st 2009 to give people everywhere the opportunity to share tips and experiences about reducing their environmental impact in the kitchen. We received entries with tips about how to approach leftovers, efficiently raid your pantry, how to choose more sustainable ingredients and more. We’re excited to announce the judges have voted, and the five overall winners are:

Menu and Dining Planning
Jeff Thorp from CA with his delicious plan for getting three meals for two out of one chicken (and you can get the recipes to try it yourself at his blog).

Food Sources
Bettina from Loulies in DC blew us away with a handful of fabulous tips and recipes. One of our favorites (and the judges, too!) is a guide for Getting to Know Your Farmer’s Market.

Ingredients
Thomas from MA shared gorgeous photos and inspiration from his winter garden. Yes you can reap a harvest year-round even in a cold climate.

Techniques
Dave in Florida knows how to increase a BBQ’s efficiency. You just have to learn one little secret…

Appliances, Gadgets, and Gizmos
Cynthia in CA had an awesome idea: create a gadget co-op and share rarely-used appliances and tools instead of piling them up in the back of a kitchen drawer.

These winners will receive Amazon Kindle DXs—predicted by the New York Times to slash the publishing industry’s environmental impact.

The judges chose these winners from the top 15 entries with the most votes on our website. The panel includes celebrated local food pioneer Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Slow Food International; visionary environmental writer Bill McKibben of 350.org; sustainable entrepreneur Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farms; food activist and anthropologist Amy Trubek; director and producer Ana Sofia Joanes of FRESH; EatingWell Magazine’s editorial director Lisa Gosselin; CEO Patti Prairie of Brighter Planet; and food television writer and producer Zachary Cohen of Farm to Table. Judges rated top-ranked entries based on eco-effectiveness and ability to inspire conservation in others.

Today also marks the release of our Mastering the Art of Sustainable Cooking Guide where we’ve compiled the top tips, stories and recipes from the contest for your benefit. Please enjoy it and spread it widely. The average American’s carbon footprint from food is as big as that of their car or their home, so food is a good place to reduce your climate impact. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also published a complimentary white paper for all you data-loving left brainers with an extensive analysis of the American carbon “foodprint.”

Thanks very much to our partners EatingWell Magazine, Guyot Designs
To-Go Ware, and Stonyfield Farms for donating food-related prizes to outstanding contestants.

As Gary Hirshberg said, “There is a connection between your health, healthy food and a healthy planet.” Cheers to that. We can all make choices in this arena and create heaps of benefits.

Bon appetit,
-Carolyn

It’s that time again! We’re happy to announce that the Antigo City Farm Urban Tree Program in Antigo, WI will receive $5,000 in seed money from the Project Fund. The funds will go to purchase 500 trees and support a project coordinator who will oversee a city-wide tree planting and education program. Through workshops, community members will be trained to plant the trees and tap local maple trees to produce syrup, a valuable local resource. If they succeed in their goal of reaching 500 households (20% of the city), the positive impact will be widespread.

With seven worthy projects from Montana, Wisconsin, Vermont, Oregon, Missouri and Colorado, we saw another diverse and successful month for the Project Fund. Other leading projects were weatherization projects from Montana Energy Corps and Button Up Middlebury, and an effort from Solar Oregon to educate on solar energy in rural areas. All of the projects brought in a whopping total of 9,572 votes.

We’re seeing plenty of new proposals coming in for the February round of voting. Be sure to visit the Project Fund homepage after the 1st to let your voice be heard!

-Matt V

In a recent post on Fast Company, we ranked the major US airlines by climate impact per passenger.

We started with data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ T-100 database, a collection of monthly reports from every airline that is certified to fly in the US. We took factors like flight distance, aircraft model, number of passengers, and amount of freight carried, combined them with aircraft fuel use equations from the European Environment Agency, and ran the lot through our emissions engine. (Fun fact: the calculations took about 15 minutes on a standard household computer.)

This chart shows the complete ranking, from best to worst in pounds of CO₂e per passenger-mile.

Note: a passenger-mile is one passenger flying one mile.

-Ian