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Food System
An Investment in Organic Farmland
Nov 25th, 2014 | By Sarah Stankorb
A road trip to Oregon farmland crystalized a new business idea for partners Craig Wichner and Jason Bradford. “It was very clear farmland was a great asset and that it was basically being underutilized,” says Wichner, “that growing monocrops was operationally efficient, but it was the worst way to get returns from farmland itself.” With investment and the use of sustainable agriculture templates, they developed Farmland LP, a system of livestock, vegetable and grain rotations that could both reclaim land for organic farming and turn a profit.
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Transportation
Students Seeking Fuel Cell
Nov 18th, 2014 | By Sarah Stankorb
We're inspired by a group of high school students in Connecticut who are building their own hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle — a project that has been in the works for a decade. There's just one catch: They need to raise money for a new fuel cell in time to compete at the Shell Eco-Marathon in April. Learn more about these enterprising kids and how to support their project.
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Food System
Free Aquaponics Workshop
Nov 11th, 2014 | By Amy Leibrock
On Dec. 3, 2014, we’re teaming up with FRESH Farm Aquaponics to host a free Introduction to Aquaponics Workshop at our office in Stamford, Conn. This two-hour class will explore how you can grow food organically, year-round, through a variety of highly productive aquaponic growing mediums.
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Food System
Eat Your “Unusual” Greens!
Nov 4th, 2014 | By Katrina Kazda
One of my favorite things about participating in a CSA program is learning about new foods. This year’s most pleasant surprise was sweet potato greens. Our very own farmer didn’t realize these beautiful greens were edible until this year, and boy were we happy that he shared his newfound secret!
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Transportation
Sustainable America Celebrates Launch of Stamford 2030 District
Oct 29th, 2014 | By Amy Leibrock
What if our cities could help solve pressing climate and energy issues instead of contributing to them? That’s the idea behind the 2030 Challenge for Planning, a national movement that asks the global architecture and planning community to find ways to reduce energy use, water use and transportation emissions from new and existing buildings dramatically by 2030.
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Food System
Adventures in Indoor Growing
Oct 23rd, 2014 | By Katy Franklin
Over the last few months, we’ve been experimenting with a menagerie of indoor food-growing systems at our office: a vertical garden, a hydroponic system and an aquaponic system. While the versions we've installed won't revolutionize the local food landscape in our neighborhood, if scaled up, these alternative growing methods have the potential to help urban areas meet the growing demand for food. We wanted to get hands-on with a few of these methods to learn more and to provide a showcase of what's possible. Here's how we did...
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Food System
We Came, We Gleaned, We Fed Thousands
Oct 21st, 2014 | By Amy Leibrock
We had the privilege of participating in a tremendous event on Saturday: Feeding the 5,000: Oakland. The event saved thousands of rolls and loaves of bread and a staggering 11,200 pounds of apples, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, acorn squash and spaghetti squash that normally would have been destroyed because they were cosmetically imperfect and could not be sold to grocery stores. Learn more about this groundbreaking event.
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Food System
Food Waste in 9 U.S. Cities, Exposed
Oct 16th, 2014 | By Amy Leibrock
This week, environmental activist Rob Greenfield completed a most unconventional road trip. Not only did he travel from Wisconsin to New York City on bike, along the way he recovered food — thousands of pounds of unspoiled, perfectly edible food — that grocery stores and restaurants had thrown away. See photos of what he found in nine cities.
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Innovation
6 Ways the Coffee Industry Is Turning Waste Into a Resource
Oct 14th, 2014 | By Jenny Neill
Consider this over your morning coffee: Almost half the biomass of the coffee cherry — the fruit that contains coffee beans — ends up as processing waste. With worldwide coffee production reaching 9 to 11 billion pounds on an annual basis, that’s a lot of byproduct to handle. Thankfully, industry players keep striving to solve this problem. Here are six ways they are turning coffee waste into a resource.
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