The Green Guide Blog

BPA's in almost everything, it seems. The chemical is great for making transparent, nearly shatter-proof plastic, called polycarbonate, so it shows up everywhere--in CDs, water bottles, even eyeglasses.

Now it's in your urine, too. And if you're a guy, it's messing with your hormones.

Researchers at the School of Biosciences at the University of Exeter in the UK have found an association between BPA (Bisphenol A) and higher levels of testosterone, proving a link that up until now has only been decisively shown in lab animals.

The new study, published this month in Environmental Health Perspectives, looked at hundreds of men in Italy who had volunteered to donate blood and urine samples.

Out of all these men of all ages, 98 percent had some level of BPA in their urine.

"And as soon as you see something in 98 percent of the population, you think, 'That could be a health risk,'" said Tamara Galloway, the lead author of the study.

Photograph by Ana Meza/MyShot

Galloway's group's previous work with BPA has established links between exposure to the chemical and cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. But the chemical had long been suspected to also act as an endocrine disruptor; that is, something that mimics or blocks hormones in the body.

The men who excreted the most BPA through their urine also had the highest amount of testosterone in their blood.

BPA passes through the body "rapidly and completely," according to the study. But because BPA is so ubiquitous, the damage is through a low level of constant exposure, so even as "old" BPA is flushed out, we're ingesting more of it. "everything we've seen suggests that there's a low level of consistent exposure," Galloway said.

Getting Rid of BPA

In an unrelated study, researchers have been working on ways to degrade BPA-containing plastic without releasing BPA into the environment.

Mukesh Doble, a professor in the Indian Institute of Technology's biotech department, and his colleagues exposed sheets of polycarbonate to UV light and then inoculated them with white-rot fungus. The researchers were able to partially decompose the plastic with no release of harmful BPA. The fungus isn't exactly feeding on the BPA, Doble said, but "this fungi breaks it into pieces, so whatever is coming out is not exactly a BPA molecule." Left alone without the white-rot fungus, the plastic will be attacked by bacteria that eventually do break it down, but release BPA into the environment during the process, Doble explained.

Instead, using Doble's technique, the UV light "pretreats" the plastic, making it easier for the mold, used commercially for bioremediation all over the world, to grow. Combined, they made for the best and fastest plastic killer.

The solution isn't a quick fix: after a year, the plastic was only about 6 percent degraded. Doble estimates it would take about 20 years to break down the entire thing. And until a plastic treatment plant based on the scientists' findings opens up near you, your only option to get rid of your bottle is to dump it in the trash. Most municipalities don't accept #7 plastics for recycling.

Many companies, prompted by health concerns, have been phasing out polycarbonate in favor of other plastics. But BPA is still found in some food storage containers, baby bottles, the linings of metal cans, and in all sorts of non-food related uses, so it'll be with us for a long time. Even if we do let it rot.

--Rachel Kaufman

By Tasha Eichenseher

Crabbing, shrimping, and fishing along sections of the oil-tarnished Gulf Coast were re-opened last week.

The media buzz is about whether the seafood coming out of the Gulf is safe to consume, but you'd never know there were health concerns when you sit down to eat with the locals.

"This is the safest seafood in the world. It's like flying after 9-11," remarked the Lafourche Parish President's husband over dinner with Expedition Blue Planet last Friday night. His reasoning: The catch coming into shore here is probably more thoroughly tested than anything being imported into the state.

The questions are tested for what, and is that testing adequate?

Photograph by Ali Sanderson/Expedition Blue Planet

Read the whole post.

Coverage of Expedition Blue Planet is part of a special National Geographic News series on the global water crisis.

We're all told to lower our carbon footprint. But as far food goes, it's not always that simple.

Companies are increasingly attempting to label products--from cribs to Coke bottles to cabbages--with a number that encompasses all the carbon that went into producing that product. So a box of powdered laundry detergent might have a carbon footprint of 750 grams, while a bottle of concentrated liquid might have a footprint of 650 grams. It's more popular in the EU so far, though last year California Rep. Ira Ruskin introduced a bill that would have created a labeling standard in the state. (The bill didn't make it out of committee.)

But even if every bag of chips and tray of veggies came with a sticker telling consumers about its environmental impact, it's not that easy.

Susanne Freidberg, a geography professor at Dartmouth, has been studying the issues, and presented some of her findings at the American Association of Geographers' conference earlier this year.

She says that when British supermarket chain Tesco started adding "food miles" labels to produce, a common way of distinguishing between "good" locally grown food and "bad" imports, it was a "fiasco." Most of Tesco's produce comes from Africa, but it turns out that growing green beans in Kenya actually produces less carbon than growing them in a hothouse in Europe. "Even Tesco eventually admitted that the label was 'of no environmental use whatsoever.'"

And even if a label includes more than just food miles, where do you stop? "Let's say my client is a retailer comparing apples from Washington State to apples from New Zealand. What are you going to measure? It's standard to count on-farm machinery and fertilizer," Freidberg said, "but do you also count the emissions that make that machinery? The transport of the workers going to the farm and back? If you don't count those workers driving to work, you're biased against countries where people walk to work, like Kenya." There are very few studies about life cycle assessments (LCA) on food in peer-reviewed literature, she added.

And doing an LCA--on anything, not just food--is hard. It requires "a lot of data," wrote Scott Kaufman on GreenBiz.com. "Some of the data is relatively easy to come by -- the amount of energy used in a manufacturing plant that your company owns and operates, for example. Other types can be extremely difficult to obtain -- a common example is a material used in your product (such as plastic packaging) that is bought from an overseas supplier." After Tesco ditched its food miles label, it announced it was going to put more accurate carbon footprint labels on 70,000 of its products--three years later, it's managed to label just 120, including milk, orange juice, potatoes, and toilet paper.

Carbon footprinting isn't all bad. Walkers, a potato-chip brand in the UK, was one of the first to sign on to have its footprint measured, in 2007, so it asked The Carbon Trust, a UK nonprofit created by the government to lower carbon emissions, studied the life of a Walkers potato chip--from growth to transport to manufacture. The Trust discovered that Walkers' suppliers were storing the taters in humid rooms to keep their skins soft, and that a huge amount of heat was needed to dry them out before frying. Walkers now pays farmers a bonus if their potatoes are drier, which has helped reduce a bag of chips' carbon footprint by 7 percent. But clearly more work is needed to develop a standard that is fair to all producers and yet easy for consumers to understand.

There's currently no standard in the U.S. for carbon footprint labeling, but the International Standards Organization (ISO) is working on a set of standards that's currently going through committee and should be published by 2011.

--Rachel Kaufman

File photo by Rebecca Hale

For the first time, a genetically modified (GM) crop has been caught in the wild in the U.S., growing weedlike across roads and parking lots across North Dakota.

Cynthia Sagers and colleagues from the University of Arkansas sampled canola plants along 3355 miles (5400 kilometers) of North Dakota road. Out of more than 400 plants collected, 80 percent of them tested positive for "Roundup Ready" or "LibertyLink" genes, which give crops resistance to weedkillers.

Photo: Herbicide-resistant canola grows out of a sidewalk crack in North Dakota.  Courtesy University of Arkansas.

Farmers like these GM breeds of plant because they can spray a field with herbicide and then plant resistant canola. The canola will grow though nothing else can.

Sagers said that most of the very dense populations of canola--where there were more than a thousand growing in a narrow, 164-foot by 3.3-foot (50-meter by 1-meter) strip of land--were found in agricultural areas, where seeds could have blown from a nearby farm, or along major roads, where seeds could have spilled off a truck. But one GM plant that contained resistance to both Roundup and Liberty was "in the middle of nowhere," Sagers said. "There was no canola within 50 miles."

"Feral" GM plants have been found in the wild before, but never at this scale.  A third type of GM canola exists too, but Sagers and her team didn't have an easy test for the third gene. That means that it's possible that more than 80 percent of wild canola could contain human-engineered genes.

GM advocates say that modified crops allow farmers to produce more and thus feed more people. Critics, like the Organic Consumers Association and Greenpeace say that the long-term health risks to humans consuming GM crops haven't been thoroughly studied. Some GM crops using nut genes, which never reached the market, have been found to cause allergies in people allergic to nuts.

The companies that create these GM plants have not been shy about trying to protect their patents.  More than a decade ago, Monsanto sued Percy Schmeiser for growing "Roundup Ready" in his fields without paying Monsanto's technology use fee. One problem: Schmeiser had never used "Roundup Ready" and didn't even want it there.

At the time, he argued the plants must have contaminated his field from a nearby farm. "They argued in court it couldn't have blown in, because the seeds would only blow a few feet," he said. (The case ended in a "draw" with the Canadian supreme court finding Monsanto's patent valid for Schmeiser's "volunteers," though Schmeiser was not forced to pay anything to the agribusiness company.)

The new study seems to cast further doubt on Monsanto's claims, though Schmeiser, nearly 80, who now spends his time speaking and trying to raise awareness of GM crops, says he's done with lawsuits.

Sagers said her concern with detecting so much transgenic canola is the effect it could have on the native ecosystem. Ten years ago, she said, agricultural, non-GM crops hybridizing with native species was a concern. Now, "we're pretty certain that what we stick into a crop is going to get out there somehow."

Schmeiser added: "Once you introduce a new lifeform, there's no calling it back," he said. "It's over."

--Rachel Kaufman

National Geographic Little Kids blogger Jane of the Jungle Gym occasionally blogs about being a green mom, and here are some recent green-themed posts:

• Paper Cuts: Jane discusses ways to green your kids' doodling.
• Gray Matter: Jane tackles those pesky gray hairs and green ways to get rid of them.
• Bye-Bye Plastic Bottles: Jane discusses how to cut bottled water from your lifestyle.
• Good for the Planet, Good for the Sole: Jane goes over ways to re-use the shoes kids grow out of quickly.
  

Jane also asks for ways you green your lifestyle, so join the conversation!

In the near future, maybe everything we need will be assembled on the spot in machines like Star Trek's replicators, but for now, we'll have to settle for growing cups, plates, and packing material from food.

A few inventors are working on products that use mushrooms, rice husks, and even agar to create new versions of single-use disposable items. They're less harmful to the environment and break down into nothing.

Ecovative's rice-and-mushroom packaging, for example, is intended to replace Styrofoam and uses an eighth of the energy required to make a similar amount of the petroleum-based stuff. And product design consultancy The Way We See The World is working to bring edible drinking glasses made of flavored agar--similar to gelatin--to the consumer market.

Yes, cups from corn and the like have been around for years, but those products have their own problems. Products made from polylactide (PLA)--which can be derived from corn, beets, potatoes or wheat--can't be recycled with the far more common polyethylene terephthalate (PET) used in soda bottles, and claims that the plastic biodegrades may have been greatly exaggerated. Could a gelatinous tumbler be any different?

Photo courtesy The Way We See The World

For one, the feel is totally different, says Chelsea Briganti, one quarter of The Way We See The World. "It's slightly rubbery, very soft," she says. And no, the "Jelloware," (a term coined by The Way We See The World) made of agar and flavored to complement whatever you're drinking, doesn't get sticky.

The group is working with manufacturers right now to try to bring the cups to market. They're also exploring a heat-tolerant version--right now "Jelloware" can only be used for cold drinks. Either way, when you're done, you can take a bite out of the glass or chuck it to the earth, where it will decompose within a week.

Another product made from food--sort of--is Ecovative's EcoCradle, which is composed of rice husks and fungal mycelium--more or less mushroom roots, explains company founder Gavin McIntyre. His company fills a mold with agricultural waste, like rice husks or cotton gin discards, adds mycelia, and within two weeks the roots have grown to form a dense, lightweight network stronger than styrofoam and ultimately compostable, says McIntyre. 

Photo courtesy Ecovative

Currently the process, which Ecovative says takes 1/8th the energy to produce than traditional foam, requires steam-pasteurization and takes place in a cleanroom. This prevents other, less useful mold spores from contaminating the product.  But Ecovative is testing a new method that would sterilize the mixture with cinnamon-bark oil, thyme oil, oregano oil and lemongrass oil, compounds that kill bacteria and mold but ones on which Ecovative's 'shrooms thrive.

When that tech rolls out--by 2012 or so--not only will the energy consumption of EcoCradle drop to 1/40th that of foam products, but folks will be able to grow their own packing material almost anywhere. "People could do it in their kitchens," McIntyre says. "With a process like this, you can mix a couple components together, and it's really like baking bread.

It turns out that being good for the environment and eating tons of animal products aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. It just depends on which animals you eat. So instead of chowing down on pork, beef or tuna, what about eating an invasive species?

The idea of eating an invasive species to control it isn't a new one: over the years, people have proposed everything from gnawing on squirrel (in the UK, where the gray squirrel was outcompeting the native red squirrel) to jellyfish (in Japan, where swarms of giant jellies destroyed fishermen's nets and poisoned potential catch). So why hasn't the concept caught on? And is there hope?

Lionfish

Photo courtesy NOAA

A native of the western Pacific, the lionfish was released from fish tanks in southern Florida sometime in the late 1980s. Now it's been found in North Carolina, the Caribbean, and even South America. It reproduces quickly and eats baby snapper and grouper, which are commercially viable species in addition to being reef stewards--so an increase in lionfish means a decrease in coral reef health. Furthermore, predators in the caribbean don't see a lionfish and think "food"--they see its venomous spines and think "yikes!"

Luckily enough for humans, though, the fish supposedly tastes great--it's said to have a mild taste, with firm, white flesh. Environmental groups like the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) have been monitoring lionfish populations in the Bahamas since 1994; last year, REEF started an event called the Lionfish Derby that encouraged divers to spear lionfish--and then eat them.

Great for the Bahamas, but this year's derby collected just 941 lionfish -- and if we're truly going to eat our way to sustainability, we'll need a lot more lionfish. That may be why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been working with a distributor on a new 'Eat Lionfish' campaign to get the fish to go mainstream. And it may be why the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary allows divers to take lionfish from most parts of the sanctuary without any permit (and to get a permit for the few remaining spots, you just have to complete a safety course).
But lionfish aren't easy to catch. You've got to get in the water and spear them. And there's still the matter of those pesky spines, which pack enough venom to really ruin your day.

One guy thinks he's solved both those problems.

Gregg Waugh's the founder and president of SafeSpear, LLC. He grew up in the Bahamas and spent a lot of time diving. "Seeing lionfish just wasn't a part of my experience, and it's not a natural part of that ecosystem," he said. He's about to launch a lionfish hunting kit that, he says, takes all the risk out of lionfish hunting and makes it easy enough for a novice to do.

The SafeSpear kit includes a pole spear, safety gloves, a gripper, and spring-operated spine clippers. (Once you remove the spines, there's no risk of stinging, says Waugh.) It also includes a filet knife, a recipe book, and--just in case you do get stung--a first aid kit. The spear has a plunger on the end so hunters can plop the fish into a bag or bucket without ever touching it. "We wanted to make it as safe as possible so the largest number of people could target lionfish," he says.

Admittedly, it's not cheap: the SafeSpear kit costs $350, "and we're running into challenges, that some of the fishermen in these Caribbean countries can't afford that much," Waugh says. So for now the product might be more of a draw for tourists, which, again, doesn't necessarily help lionfish filets and lionfish sticks get to your local grocer's at any scale.

Asian Carp

Photo courtesy NOAA

Perhaps best known for their jumping ability, Asian carp were imported to the U.S. by catfish farmers in the 1970s to clean out algae from their fish ponds. When the ponds flooded in the 1990s, the carp overflowed into the Mississippi river basin. The carp have been found as far north as Minnesota, have been sighted just outside Lake Michigan, and are crowding out native species. Folks have proposed eating them for years, even suggesting we rename it to "Kentucky tuna," "silverfin," or "winged silver roughy."

Problem: They're bony, which American consumers don't like, and some have called the bottomfeeders' flesh tasteless. (The old joke goes: the proper way to cook a carp is on a cedar plank. When it's done, throw away the carp and eat the plank.) But in China, the fish are considered good eating--partially because it's easier to avoid bones when you're using chopsticks--so we may end up exporting our invasives back to whence they came. Actually, mllions of pounds of the fish are already exported every year, but since there are just so many carp, that's hardly making a dent. A new deal to export 30 million pounds of carp by next year may actually make a difference.

Nutria

Photo courtesy USGS

These ugly swamp rodents were imported into the South from Argentina for their pelts, but when the demand for fur dried up, they escaped into the bayous, wreaking havoc on marshes by eating the roots of plants that prevent erosion. In the '90s, the government of Louisiana tried to curb the population by encouraging people to eat the rodents; the campaign failed, largely because people were reluctant to munch on what looked like a very large rat or greasy beaver. They supposedly taste like beaver, which may mean more to you than it does to me. Perhaps ironically, a strategy that may be making inroads in nutria population control is to turn the fur into clothing and the scary, scary teeth into jewelry--the idea that got nutria into the country to begin with.

--Rachel Kaufman

This post is part of a special National Geographic news series on global water issues.

Not too long ago, if you wanted to know what type of seafood was best for the environment, your tools didn't get any more high-tech than a wallet card or a fridge magnet. But the fridge magnet doesn't help much when you're at the grocery store, and wallet cards are easy to leave behind (just ask me how many times I've forgotten mine). Luckily, sustainable seafood watchdogs have kept pace with technology and now, like with almost everything else in our lives, there's an app for that.

Quite a few, actually.

The Blue Ocean Institute recently launched the free FishPhone for iPhone. The app was developed in conjunction with a sustainable winegrower, so in addition to seafood rankings, the app includes recipes and wine pairings. No iPhone? Blue Ocean is still offering FishPhone through SMS. Just send "FISH SALMON" or "FISH LOBSTER" to 30644 and you'll get a text message back ranking the fish's sustainability. (The service is free, but as with all texting, you could be charged standard messaging rates from your carrier.) FishPhone also flags seafood that is known to contain high levels of contaminants like mercury and PCBs. (Get FishPhone, link will open iTunes)

The Monterey Bay Aquarium, which publishes the Seafood Watch guide, has a free iPhone app that lets you access their database without an internet connection. The app uses GPS to determine where you are and what seafood might be available in your area. It also updates every six months to keep the information current. If you have a different brand of smartphone, you can visit the Seafood Watch mobile site at mobile.seafood.com. (Get Seafood Watch, link will open iTunes)

Safe Seafood costs a dollar, which makes it infinitely more expensive than the free alternatives, but it's the only app that compiles information from ten different seafood rankings to create its list. (The developer of Safe Seafood did not return a request for comment on which ten information sources they used, but we know that two of them are Monterey Bay's list and the Environmental Defense Fund's toxicity ratings.) The app also allows you to sort by "best to worst."

Again, this app costs $1, but the developers donate 10% of all proceeds to the Environmental Defense Fund. (Get Safe Seafood, link will open iTunes)

Why is sustainable seafood so important? Poor management practices can pollute or destroy habitats (like when mangrove forests are destroyed to build shrimp farms, which then release waste and disease into the open water); bad harvest practices can hurt endangered species (like when a trawler or net picks up leatherback turtles instead of the species a fisherman was hoping for), and overfishing can weaken important links in the food chain. According to a World Wildlife Fund report, scientists believe that overfishing bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea would lead to an explosion of the squid population, which could then destroy the sardine population. But beyond that, it's a good idea to let the bluefin survive--if only because you want your kids to be able to enjoy it every now and then.

--Rachel Kaufman

In "foodie-heavy" parts of the country, if you want to buy a side of locally-raised bacon or organically-grown pears, it might be as simple as asking your neighbor or heading down to the local farmer's market.

But if you live somewhere besides San Francisco or New York, you very well may have access to local farmers but not know it.

That's the impetus behind Locifood, a new start-up that aims to be the Facebook of the local food movement.

Producers, customers, and restaurants that buy local food sign up on the social networking site to share information, rate a farm's produce, or just discuss what on earth to do with the mountains of zucchini that are all that seem to be in season this time of year. Farmers post photos of what's in season so shoppers will know what to expect at the farmer's market or in the CSA box. Plus, shoppers who are trying to locate a particular locally-sourced item can use Locifood to find it.

"I have friends who've seen 'Food, Inc.,' and they're all excited about it and want to change their eating habits, but they don't know where to go," Cindy Peterson, co-founder of Locifood, told Green Guide. "I've had stories of people telling me, 'I finally found a guy who sells hormone-free beef, and he goes to this parking lot and sells beef from his truck.' But to find this information, it took them several months." With Locifood, shoppers could build a map of the nearest farmers or markets and just head out shopping. The site is serving just the Portland, Ore., area for its pilot, but the founders hope to expand nationwide.

That's the idea anyway.

The site has been slow to catch on: the latest update from one of Locifood's registered farms was from two months ago (Bella Organic Farm updated to say that they were now growing garlic, both hard and soft neck). And getting users to interact has been a "challenge," Peterson admitted. "It's not what people normally think about when they go to a local food website," she said. "Like with LocalHarvest [a competitor to Locifood which is best known for its directory of local producers, farmer's markets, and CSAs], you go on, get information, and take that information. You don't necessarily interact." Locifood wants users, not just farmers, to supply shopping and cooking tips.

As for the farmers and producers signed up on the site, they appear to see the service, so far, as just another piece of their marketing pie: Johnny Kondilis of Bella Organic Farm uses six farm directory websites, including Locifood, Twitter, an e-mail list, a website, and advertises in the local paper.

Souriya Khamvongsa, who owns Phoenix's Egg Farm, says he spends two hours a day working on the farm's website, Facebook page, and answering customer e-mail--despite the fact that most of the farm's business is to wholesale clients. "You have to make time for the people that come to your farm," he says. "Locifood, they're definitely newer so I'm not sure how much brand awareness they have at this point. I think they've got a good product, so we'll just see how it goes. People have told me they've found us from LocalHarvest, so Locifood is not gonna hurt."

--Rachel Kaufman

If you live in a city, you might have a window box or a pot of tomatoes on your balcony. You might even be lucky enough to have a small backyard garden. But do you compost?

Probably not: composting in a small space is tough, not to mention smelly. You could get a worm bin or a bokashi system, but the truth is: for city dwellers, composting is more often an ideal than a reality.

Enter Compost Cab, a soon-to-launch concept for city-dwellers in Washington, D.C. For $8 a week, Compost Cab provides you with a trash bin which you fill with organic waste. Then the company picks it up each week and trucks it to a nearby urban farm, which turns your banana peels and coffee grounds into soil.

The idea's the brainchild of entrepreneur Jeremy Brosowsky, who saw that community gardens and urban farms near him were having trouble finding rich enough soil to grow large quantities of food, at the same time he was wishing he could do something with his own kitchen scraps.

Brosowsky's interest is in urban agriculture--greening cities, reducing the heat island effect (covering all that concrete and asphalt with parks and gardens) and getting local food to people who need it through community gardens and other projects. So he hasn't even calculated whether the emissions saved through a composting program will offset the carbon pumped out of the back of Compost Cab's truck.

But "it's impossible for me to envision doing less good by not letting this stuff rot in a landfill," he says.

We're definitely skeptical of carbon footprint "calculators," but we had to run the numbers. If Compost Cab was using, say, a late-model diesel SUV (it's not; it's using a truck), it'd put about 10 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Composting a ton of food saves a quarter-ton of methane and 60 pounds of carbon, so Compost Cab would need to collect and compost 330 tons of food yearly to be carbon neutral. But, Brosowsky says, just four average families produce a ton of food waste a year. He'd only need to sign up 1320 families, or a few office buildings, to get those kind of numbers.

And of course, the benefits of composting go beyond saving a bit of carbon. Food gets a little more local. Neighbors get a little closer to the earth. Even the green-collar workers hauling away your grass clippings and celery tops get a little more respect, says Brosowsky. "Garbage men don't get treated with respect, because we treat trash like trash. So why would we treat the people who handle the trash any different? This compost has value--we're imbuing it with value--and imbuing them with value too."

The service is starting small in Washington D.C., but Brosowsky hopes that Compost Cab will expand. He sees the model as eminently franchiseable, so people in other cities can start up their own compost cabs. And eventually, he hopes, even city governments will get in on it.

"My hope is that we'll be able to show the city what we're capable of doing and prove to them there's money to be saved. Then I'll say, 'Give me Ward 1,'" he says, referring to one of the eight districts that make up Washington D.C. Ultimately, he wants to haul compost from a large area on the city's dime--even as the government saves money on trash-hauling because less of it is being hauled.

And that's a win-win situation everybody can benefit from. No worms required.

--Rachel Kaufman

Compost Cab image courtesy Jeremy Brosowsky.

I grew up watching my dad fix stuff. I still have a scar where my thumb meets my wrist from when he dropped a hammer on me (claw-down, naturally) while installing drywall in our living room. From changing the oil in the car to putting in a patio, I would help him with whatever project he was doing. 

Mark Frauenfelder's book Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World took me back to those days, and inspired me to make a list of stuff I want to do myself.  While I lack some of my father's carpentry and mechanical skills, I'm pretty handy at fixing computers and a decent cook.  What could go wrong?

Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of Make, a quarterly magazine with projects for do-it-yourselfers.  Made by Hand details Frauenfelder's successes and failures with the do-it-yourself world.  He killed his grass, planted a garden, kept bees and chickens, made his own kitchen utensils and musical instruments, "hacked" his espresso machine, and documented the whole process. 

What results is not so much a how-to book, although there are some handy tips inside, but a how-to-think book.  Frauenfelder focuses on what effect the trial-and-error process required to carry out his projects has had on his outlook on life, and how that feeling is at odds with the consumer culture that is prevalent in the United States.

As mentioned before, the book's subject matter deals with lots of green topics, most notably urban farming, recycling, and sustainability.  Frauenfelder's style is conversational, accessible, and, well, bloggy.  That bloggy-ness is one of the small nit-picks I had with the book, however, when it came to the inclusion of websites that may not be around in the future. 

Altogether, Made by Hand is an excellent introduction to the world of doing-it-yourself, and is an inspiring look into how the author decided to find meaning in relying less on consumer goods, and more on himself.

--James Robertson

Cover photo courtesy Penguin Group

P.S: Just for fun, here is Frauenfelder's appearance on The Colbert Report last night:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cMark Frauenfelderwww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox News

Jane of the Jungle Gym, a blogger for National Geographic Little Kids, has a post up with tips on composting and getting kids interested in recycling.  Head over to her blog to read it!

--James Robertson

National Geographic Little Kids blogger Jane of the Jungle Gym recently wrote about picking strawberries at a local farm with her son, Kellan. You can check out her post here.

Two large, grease-stained paper bags; one small, foil-lined bag; two paper wrappers; four plastic sauce cups, with lids; three cups, one plastic, two wax-lined paper; a handful of crumpled paper napkins; and a receipt. That's what I was left with after cheeseburgers for two yesterday.

I'm sure you've had this experience too, of surveying the carnage after a take-out restaurant meal. Eating out is quick, delicious, and expensive--both in money (I paid $17) and in our impact on the world around us. All that paper and plastic came from the Earth, after all, and it's probably going to sit in landfills for decades before returning to the soil.

What to do? Well, you could stay home: Cathy Erway, author of the 2010 book "The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove," tried shunning restaurants. I spoke with her at the Austin festival South by Southwest about her experience and how buying restaurant food affects our planet.

As a self-regulated experiment, Erway completely avoided all carry-outs and restaurants for two years.

Seems rough, right? She suggests that once you factor in all the travel and waiting, it's not necessarily easier or faster to eat at a restaurant. "Going out to dine should be a luxury. Some people have it the other way around, where cooking something at home is this big production," says Erway. (For an easy at-home example, Erway suggests her Fresh Veggie Korean Pancakes.)

According to Erway, 77% of all meals "eaten out" aren't served on tables in restaurants; a surprising amount of our food comes from carry-out food vendors, like sandwich shops (or coffee houses). And a lot of it comes with Styrofoam, which takes years to degrade.

Or break-apart disposable chopsticks: It's a rare pair that's made from bamboo, believe it or not. Erway says that most are cut from the heart of old-growth trees, such as aspen, and that forests are clear-cut just to make them. (A 2006 Nat Geo News article and a 2001 Washington Post article explain more about the environmental impact of disposable chopsticks.)

One question Erway gets a lot is how to date when dinner-and-a-date is verboten. "Why did we get to a place where 'a date' means going to a restaurant together?" she asks. She suggests dinner-over as a litmus test, under the theory that if your prospect doesn't like it, you wouldn't like him or her. And there's always bowling.

Eating in also has its economic benefits. Erway says that, restaurant-free, she spent $25 a week on food in New York City. An "Opposite Week" experiment of getting all food from restaurants or carryouts cost her $200.

"The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove" is available in bookstores.

--Chris Combs

Photograph by James P. Blair, National Geographic

Sustainability was fashionable way before modern-day threats of climate change and pollution, according to Azby Brown, the director of KIT Future Design Institute in Tokyo and the author of Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green From Traditional Japan.

The book is about late Edo period Japan (1603-1868), before the industry of the West made its way to the Asian country.  The Edo period saw a large population boom in Japan, from about 12 million at the beginning to 30 million by the end.

Because Japan is an archipelago, and the society of the time rarely ventured beyond the islands, the country had to make due with the natural resources on the islands alone, which were beginning to be experience depletion through deforestation, erosion, and decreased agricultural production. 

Brown credits a number of factors, including government intervention, technological advances, and design (he is an architectural design professor, after all) with helping reverse the environmental damage.  But he credits the  attitude of the time--an attitude that "encouraged humility, considered waste taboo, suggested cooperative solutions, and found meaning and satisfaction in a beautiful life in which the individual took just enough from the world and not more,"--with being the biggest reason behind the reversal of Japan's environmental fortunes.

Brown takes a look at three classes of Japanese society that existed during the Edo period and explains a day in the life of a person in that class (peasants, merchants, and ruling samurai).  He focuses especially on the design of everyday tools, living quarters, and land use. After each chapter is a section on how the previously introduced concepts can be applied to modern life. 

The book suggests a historical approach, rather than a technological approach, to solving resource and pollution problems.  When we (or at least I) think of solutions to strained resources and pollution, new scientific discoveries to sequester carbon, filter water, grow more environmentally friendly crops, or produce clean energy come to mind.  But Brown sees the solutions that come from the past as being the most efficient and ecologically sound. 

Fans of design, architecture, and history will probably enjoy this book. Everyday users may be able to use the book to inform some decisions, but may not have the means or motivation to change things like farm irrigation, building design, city planning, or environmental management.
Read on.  

--James Robertson

We thought you might be interested in some recent posts by Jane Kim Gauger, a parenting blogger for National Geographic Little Kids who goes by the name "Jane of the Jungle Gym."

Jane has recently blogged about gardening, which you can also learn more about on our Gardening page.

If you are a parent, head over to Jane's blog to learn more about green products and activities for you and your children.

--James Robertson

"Let's now work together to change the world...and not just occupy it."

This is the mantra of an environmentalist trained by Al Gore, winner of many environmental awards, and founder of an environmental nonprofit organization for kids.  What is unusual is that he's done all of this before he turned 16.

Alec Loorz, a young man from Ventura, California, saw Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" when he was 12, and, after a heated discussion with a friend about the reality of global warming, decided he needed to know more about the science behind it.

He applied to become one of 1000 people being trained to give Al Gore's slide show presentation featured in "An Inconvenient Truth," but was denied by the organization because he was too young.

He decided to start giving his own presentation anyway.

Loorz modified his presentation to make it easier for his peers to understand, and began delivering it to schools, community groups, and conferences in California and across the country, including at the United Nations.  

In 2008, Gore took notice, and he invited 14-year-old Loorz to be trained to give the "Inconvenient Truth" presentation.

Loorz started his organization, Kids vs. Global Warming, as a way for kids to learn more about climate change and take action against it.  While visiting National Geographic headquarters in Washington, Loorz said that kids are in a unique position to speak up on environmental issues--they will inherit the consequences of the action or inaction of today's decision makers, and don't have a political voice, which would normally complicate the issue.  The issue is survival for his generation, said Loorz, not the economic, social, and security concerns Americans are worried about today. 

One of Kids vs. Global Warming's projects involved placing large poles on the beach in Ventura marking places that would be underwater if sea levels rose.  Another major project of the organization is the Declaration of Independence from Fossil Fuels, which Loorz wrote when he was 15 and had checked over by NASA climatologist James Hansen.  The petition will be sent to President Obama and other key leaders that make decisions about the environment.

Loorz and his organization are now planning a nationwide, and possibly worldwide, million-kid march for 2011.  To help organize the effort, they are using a social networking iPhone application.  The first version of the iMatter app is available now, and will help kids to connect with other kids that are doing greening projects inspired by the organization's iMatter campaign--things like encouraging biking, planting trees, hanging laundry, changing lightbulbs, and more.  A second version of the app with an interactive map is planned for release, and a companion Web site is also in the works. 

--James Robertson