AlternativesMagazine

S.F provides residents with green bins for food scrapes San Francisco has been called the "greenest city in America" and when it comes to keeping garbage out of landfills, it's a title the city has earned.  The city keeps an astonishing 80% of solid waste out of landfills, in part because residents not only use blue bins for their glass, plastic and papers but an additional green bin for all their compostable food waste.  The company Recology manages the city's solid waste and notes that its composting program "takes 650 tons per day of organic matter and turns it into compost that goes to farms, orchards, vineyards and landscaping businesses." The city is aiming to be zero waste by 2020.  More than 90 other cities have followed San Francisco's lead with curbside composting, including Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; and Seattle. Most recently, city councilors in Boston have been lobbying hard for curbside compost pickup in their city. ...

by Dr. Mercola  Last year, the first-ever lifetime feeding study assessing the health risks of genetically engineered Roundup Ready corn was published. Last month, Food and Chemical Toxicology retracted the study saying it “did not meet scientific standards.   While no errors or misrepresentation of data were found, the journal stated the study had too small a sample size to make any definite conclusion about health effects. This is in clear violation of retraction guidelines for scientific publishing.   Earlier this year, the publisher created a brand new editorial position, Associate Editor for Biotechnology Richard E. Goodman, a former Monsanto scientist got the job.   The bizarre justification for retracting the feeding study is enough to indicate that “corporate terrorism” has seized the field and is actively undermining science as we know it.  READ >>

Green Up, Get Moving was inspired by a survey, conducted by National Geographic, that found American consumers ranked DEAD LAST as consumers of renewable energy, recycling, transportation, food consumption, and everyday consumer goods and NUMBER ONE in obesity and related diseases. The Green Up promotion addresses both issues. It combines the green movement with fitness sports to help bring awareness to the importance of maintaining a sustainable planet and healthy body! It's designed to get people of all ages involved in physical activities and to serve as a platform to help promote zero-waste and the universal green marketing theme of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. It's also about having fun! THIS IS HOW IT WORKS: In a nutshell Green Up, Get Moving is a hands-on promotion. We work with event promoters and attend as many fitness related sporting events, trade shows, markets and festivals as possible throughout the year. We assist participating promoters by advertising an...

Can you imagine participating in a protest outside the White House and forcing the entire U.S. government to resign?  Can you imagine a group of randomly chosen private citizens rewriting the U.S. constitution to include measures banning corporate fraud? It seems incomprehensible in the U.S., but Icelanders did just that.   Icelanders forced their entire government to resign after a banking fraud scandal, overthrowing the ruling party and creating a citizen’s group tasked with writing a new constitution that offered a solution to prevent corporate greed from destroying the country.  The constitution of Iceland was scrapped and is being rewritten by private citizens; using a crowd-sourcing technique via social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.  These events have been going on since 2008, yet there’s been no word from the U.S. mainstream media about any of them. In fact, all of the events that unfolded were recorded by international jo...

Just as natural resources are becoming scarce and costly; customers, employees and investors are increasingly environmentally-conscious.  A record-high 71 percent of Americans consider the environment as one of their top priorities when they shop.    Just think what it would be if businesses actually let consumers know they promote and demonstrate a commitment to green principles and policies.     Do the Green. Find out what a $25 promotion looks like. Call us 406-871-6282, or click here and we'll contact you  

It's Time to Confront the Corporate Giants that Are Hurting Americans' Health Jeffrey Hollender | salt, fat, sugar Recently Michael Moss in a New York Times Magazine cover story—“The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”—examined how food companies have known for decades that salt, sugar and fat are not good for us in the quantities Americans consume them, and yet every year they convince most of us to ingest about twice the recommended amount of salt and 70 pounds of sugar – up to 22 teaspoons a day. As a critique of corporate behavior for 25 years, Michael Moss’s story convinced me to add US consumer food companies such as Pepsi, Kraft and General Mills to part of America’s evil corporate empire that already includes the banking and finance industry, the chemical industry, and the defense industry together with the US Chamber of Commerce. Is every company in these industries evil? Certainly not, but too many of them have acted with a blatant disregard for re...

Today in the United States, by the simple acts of feeding ourselves, we are unwittingly participating in the largest experiment ever conducted on human beings.  Each of us unknowingly consumes genetically engineered food on a daily basis. The risks and effects to our health and the environment are largely unknown. Yet more and more studies are being conducted around the world, which only provide even more reason for concern.  We are the oblivious guinea pigs for wide-scale experimentation of modern biotechnology.  GMO OMG tells the story of a fathers discovery of GMOs in relationship to his 3 young children and the world around him.  We still have time to heal the planet, feed the world, and live sustainably. But we have to start now!-- written by anonymous GMO OMG director and concerned father Jeremy Seifert is in search of answers. How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice? And perhaps the ultimate question, wh...

The Dangers of Fracking:  Fracking uses a toxic chemical cocktail known as fracking fluid. Companies using fracking fluid have resisted disclosing the contents of fracking fluid, claiming the information is  proprietary. However, samples from well sites indicate that the fluid contains: formaldehyde, acetic acids, citric  acids, and boric acids, among hundreds of other contaminants. It has recently come to light that, despite the illegality of the action, companies have been caught using diesel  fuel in the fracking fluid. Fracking removes millions of gallons of precious freshwater from the water cycle. Each well uses between two and five million gallons of locally-sourced freshwater which will be permanently  contaminated by ground contaminants and toxic chemicals contained in the fracking fluid. The “Fracking by the Numbers” report measured key indicators of fracking threats across the country • 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated...

  "Pulitzer price winning author Russell Baker once said "The American dream is to turn goods into trash as fast as possible."  Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Bill Kirkos' film Trashed. “Trashed” is a provocative investigation of one of the fastest growing industries in North America. The garbage business.  The film examines a fundamental element of modern American culture…the disposal of what our society defines as “waste.”  It is an issue influenced by every American, most of whom never consider the consequences. Nor, it seems, the implications to our biosphere. At times humorous, but deeply poignant, “Trashed” examines the American waste stream fast approaching a half billion tons annually. What are the effects all this waste will have on already strained natural resources? Why is so much of it produced? While every American creates almost 5 pounds of it every day, who is affected most? And who wants America to make more? T...

"Going Green" is the latest marketing buzzword. Airlines, car companies, retailers, restaurants, bars — even churches and stadiums are incorporating environmental responsibility to their marketing programs. More often than not, that’s a good thing. But what does it really mean?  There's another term associated with going green. It's called greenwashing. It’s when a business or organization claims to be “green” through advertising and marketing, but aren't -- it’s just making green claims to sell more stuff. Smart businesses are finding out that doing right by the environment actually does increase profitability in many cases. With so many easy ways for businesses to reduce their environmental impact or improve their products and processes, it’s a real head-scratcher when they don’t. It’s even worse when they don’t make changes and claim to be a green company just to push their agenda.  Consumers are Starting to Get it . . . . Accord...