Miami couple forced to rip out 17-year-old veggie garden in their front yard Fruit, flowers, and flamingos are fine in a Miami Shores front yard, but a veggie garden is “inconsistent with the city’s aesthetic character.” That’s why Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll were ordered to ax the vegetable garden they’d had for 17 years or pay a daily $50 fine. (Judging by its reputation for tacky tropical print shirts, I’m not sure how much “aesthetic character” Miami actually has, but whatever, city officials.) Here’s Ricketts’ and Carroll’s story in a cutely animated nutshell: Sadly, this is no isolated case. A Michigan woman faced 93 days in jail for planting a garden in her front yard, a Tennessee man’s sunflowers and veggies were deemed a “nuisance,” and an Oklahoma woman’s strawberries, mint, and fruit trees were bulldozed because they were too tall. Now The Institute for Justice’s Food Freedom Initiative, which created the video above, is trying to protect Americans’ rights to grow our own food.
Re.Verso: Wool Waste Fibers Recycled Into New Material If wool is on your shopping list for sustainable materials to source for your next collection, then you should check out Re.Verso. This new textile platform puts a more eco-friendly spin on this already versatile fiber. Using a 100% transparent method of production, pre-consumer waste fabric and fibers (mostly wool) are collected and recycled into an entirely new material. Produced in Italy, Re.Verso fabric is a multi-step collaboration between three mills: Green Line, Nuova Fratelli Boretti and Lanifico Stelloni. The raw material to be recycled is sourced from all over Italy, as well as a few other European countries, courtesy of Green Line. Once the waste fiber is collected, this raw material is prepped for spinning at Nuova Fratelli Boretti. The result is beautiful woolen textiles that are of the same quality as fabrics that are brand new- but with a much smaller carbon footprint. In fact, if you’re a designer who wants to take recycling a step further, Re.Verso can help with that.
Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare January 24, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Americans love their shrimp. In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are farmed in one region of India. Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics. Understanding the shrimp that supplies our nation's voracious appetite is quite complex. A more responsible farming system involves closed, inland ponds that use their wastewater for agricultural irrigation instead of allowing it to pollute oceans or other waterways. One more consideration, even in these cleaner systems, is the wild fish used to feed farmed shrimp.
Qmilk - the bio Milk Fibre Founder of the company is Anke Domaske who originally was searching for chemically untreated clothing for her stepfather with cancer. Eventually milk proteins came to her interest. Those had already been processed to textiles in the 1930s, but the fibers were treated with various chemicals and produced in a complex process. Qmilk started as a classic start-up – however not in a garage, but in a kitchen. In April 2011 the Qmilch GmbH was founded.
As You Sow: Environmental Health - Nanomaterials It is reported that nanotechnology is already being used in food and food related products but, due to the food industry's lack of transparency on the issue, concrete information about whether, and how much, nanomaterials are being used in food products is difficult to obtain. In order to begin answering this question, As You Sow filed the first shareholder resolutions on nanomaterials and food safety in 2008 asking Kraft and McDonald's to report on their use of nanomaterials in their products and packaging. In 2009, our dialogue with McDonald's resulted in the company publicly stating that it "does not currently support the use by suppliers of nano-engineered materials in the production of any of our food, packaging, and toys." Kraft also responded with a public statement about their use of nanomaterials in food and food packaging including that "If we ever intend to use nanotechnology, we will make sure that the appropriate environmental, health and safety concerns have been addressed."
Bioesters As You Sow: Issue Brief on Nanomaterials Slipping Through the Cracks is designed to inform companies, investors, and consumers about the emerging use of engineered nanomaterials in food and food related products. It highlights the potential risks of nanotechnology for companies who are knowingly or unknowingly using it in their products and for public health. As You Sow and other leading investors surveyed 25,000 food manufacturers and tested a range of popular donuts; the results of both inquiries proved that nanomaterials are currently being used in food products. To test more food products for the presence of nanomaterials, As You Sow has also launched a crowdfunding campaign. The majority of food companies have not been responsive in providing information about their specific uses, plans, and policies on this topic and no U.S. laws require disclosure. Slipping Through the Cracks presents:
Introducing Piñatex™ - ananas anam Key Attributes OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE Piñatex™ is strong, versatile, breathable, soft, light, flexible, and can be easily printed on, stitched and cut. NATURAL & SUSTAINABLE Piñatex™ is a by-product of the pineapple harvest, thus no extra water, fertilizers or pesticides are required to produce Piñatex. VERSATILE Various thicknesses, finishes and applications (under development). Piñatex™ is produced on 155cm width textile rolls. TECHNICAL TESTS Piñatex™ is tested according to ISO international standards for: Seam rupture Tear & tensile strength Light & colour fastness Water spotting Flexing endurance Abrasion resistance Resistance to ignition by cigarettes Tests conducted at ITTC, Shanghai; The Institute of Natural Fibers & Medicinal Plants, Poland; Intertek UK & Turkey; and Bonditex SA. Download the Technical Sheet
Methodology | EWG's 2013 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ Finding Healthier Food People don't want to consume pesticides with their food and water. The most recent government pesticide tests establish the widespread presence of pesticide residues on conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables and in tap water. In government tests analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, detectable pesticide residues were found on 67 percent of food samples after they had been washed or peeled. ^ back to top The Dirty Dozen Plus™ For the past nine years, EWG has scrutinized pesticide-testing data generated by scientists at the U.S. Highlights of this year's Dirty Dozen™ The most contaminated fruits are apples, strawberries, grapes, peaches and imported nectarines. Plus Two food crops – summer squash and leafy greens -- did not qualify for the Dirty Dozen list under the traditional EWG Shopper's Guide ratings methodology but raised special concerns because many samples test positive for: -- Organophosphate pesticides. The U.S. Pesticides in Baby Food Drinking water
The Hail Mary Plan to Stop Rhino Poaching By Growing Horns in a Lab It's a seemingly crazy idea, but it's the mission of Pembient, the brainchild of two biologists who say that they have already used bioengineering techniques to create lab-grown rhino horn powder. Rhino horn is used as a traditional medicine in countries such as Vietnam and China, with proponents saying it can help cure everything from cancer to hangovers while working as a general detoxifying agent. That demand has led to record levels of rhino poaching, with 1215 killed in South Africa last year, up from 83 in 2008. Rhino horns are primarily made of keratin, the same material that’s in your fingernails. That said, the team won’t yet go into detail about how, exactly, they plan to fabricate full rhino horns, though Markus says they’ve already created something resembling rhino horn powder. “Saying it’s only keratin is a gross oversimplification of it, there’s lots of trace molecules and elements inside the horn, rhino DNA and other things,” Markus told me.
How Your Chicken Dinner Is Creating a Drug-Resistant Superbug - Maryn McKenna Continuing to treat urinary tract infections as a short-term, routine ailment rather than a long-term food safety issue risks turning the responsible bacteria into a major health crisis. kusabi/Flickr Adrienne LeBeouf recognized the symptoms when they started. The burning and the urge to head to the bathroom signaled a urinary tract infection, a painful but everyday annoyance that afflicts up to 8 million U.S. women a year. LeBeouf, who is 29 and works as a medical assistant, headed to her doctor, assuming that a quick course of antibiotics would send the UTI on its way. That was two years ago, and LeBeouf has suffered recurring bouts of cystitis ever since. There is no national registry for drug-resistant infections, and so no one can say for sure how many resistant UTIs there are. Dr. But the origin of these newly resistant E. coli has been a mystery -- except to a small group of researchers in several countries. The U.S. In 2005, University of Minnesota professor of medicine Dr. Dr.