Valhalla is a growing tribe of storytellers out to proliferate freedom culture
by igniting a global passion for sustainability, self-reliance, and collaborative action.

4 Steps to a Greener Home ” EcoWatch

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Going green is easier said than done, but even the smallest steps towards living a more environmentally-friendly life can make a difference. We know we should walk rather than drive where possible, and we know we should drive the car that emits the least carbon monoxide possible-but what about at home?

If you are serious about going green there are many ways, big and small, that you can ensure your house is more ecological. Have a look at a few ways you make a difference at home:

1. Invest in Solar

Yes, solar power is still more expensive than energy powered by fossil fuels, but if you are determined to boost your green credentials then investing in renewable solar energy is probably the most significant step you can take. Using 86 percent less water than coal, solar power produces clean, pollution-free energy and is 95 percent less toxic to humans compared to fossil fuels. By going solar, each household will save enough water to fill a large swimming pool-every single month. That’s a lot of water each year.

As solar continues to advance it is becoming more and more cost effective, and because it is so valuable to the environment it’s the first power source to be given substantial government backing. You can cut the cost of a solar power system by up to 50 percent if you utilize all the tax rebates and incentives available to you. Don’t be put off by the first figure you see; if you do your research you may be surprised at just how inexpensive a solar powered house can be.

2. Manage Your Household Appliances

The average American household wastes huge amounts of energy each year. As technology advances, more and more eco-conscious people are installing home automation systems which allow you to manage your energy consumption to reduce both waste and expenditure. Features like motion sensor lights have been popular for a while but the latest systems take control to a new level and prevent any unnecessary energy waste.

Fretting over whether you’ve forgotten to turn the thermostat down or switch off the lights while away may soon be a thing of the past, as no matter where you are located you can now remotely control your home’s energy output. You can even set smart schedules to manage your energy based on your usual daily habits-so for example, the heating will automatically decrease while you’re sleeping. Not only does this type of system avoid wasting energy but it will also save you money in your utility bills.

3. Insulate Your Home

A properly insulated home saves enormous amounts of energy-and like home automation systems, an added benefit is the fact that you’ll also save money. Insulation not only reduces the loss of heat during the winter months but also ensures that less cool air escapes during the summer, so you can often make savings on your yearly heating and air-conditioning bill by up to 20 percent.

Most households in the U.S. lack proper insulation and as a result have significant air leaks. If you add up all the leakages and holes in the outer walls, windows and doors of the average home it’s comparable to the effect of leaving a window open every day of the year.

4. The Small Things

If you don’t have the budget to implement any of the above, there are still multiple smaller ways you can work towards a greener home. Exchanging your home cleaning products for natural ones means that far fewer toxic chemicals are being washed down the drain and re-entering our environment-and you’ll be surprised at how effective natural methods like vinegar water solution can be.

The global meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all transport combined. The more meat people eat, the more livestock is required and the more gases are emitted. Reducing the amount of meat you eat means you’ll have far less impact on the environment, and movements such as Meatless Mondays aim to encourage people to have at least one day a week where they don’t eat any meat.

Who’s Really Paying for Our Cheap Clothes? ” EcoWatch

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Can the fast fashion industry ever truly be sustainable?

Earlier this month, H&M released its 110-page Conscious Action Sustainability Report, its 13th annual review of its green practices and efforts towards fair wages within its factories. Although many of its figures and initiatives are commendable (e.g. its in-store recycling program brought in around 13,000 tons of clothing; it aims to use 80 percent renewable electricity by year’s end; it’s inspecting more textile suppliers in order to improve working conditions), environmental and social advocates have pointed out some of the report’s inconsistencies.

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H&M’s latest sustainability report touts the brand’s commitment to environmental and social responsibility, but who’s really paying for our cheap clothes? Photo credit: Shutterstock

 

First, Quartz shed light on the Swedish fashion giant’s use of cotton. While the company is the world’s number-one user of organic cotton, only 13.7 percent of the cotton H&M uses is organic. As we mentioned before, cotton is one of the most toxic crops in the world. The Organic Consumers Association says that cotton uses more than 25 percent of all the insecticides in the world and 12 percent of all the pesticides. Cotton is also incredibly water-intensive. The World Wildlife Fund says it takes 20,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton-the equivalent of a single T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

And although Greenpeace East Asia called H&M one of its leaders in their Detox Catwalk report last month for eliminating toxic perfluorinated chemicals in its products and banning the use of endocrine disrupting APs/APEOs and phthalates during manufacturing, the whole buy-and-discard mentality of fast fashion has been called into question.

As Quartz pointed out, H&M manufactures at least 600 million items annually for its 3,200 stores around the world, and that’s not even including its thousands of subsidiary brand stores, such as COS. The fashion chain also plans to open a net total of 400 new H&M stores and nine new online markets this year alone.

Fast fashion and e-commerce have presented people with more shopping choices than ever before, in turn causing more waste as more and more clothes are being discarded for new items. In fact, the average U.S. citizen tosses around 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles a year.

“Fundamentally, there is a disconnect between the idea that you are selling a tremendous amount of clothing in fast fashion and that you are trying to be a sustainable company,” said Linda Greer, who, as Natural Resources Defense Council ′s (NRDC) senior scientist and director of Clean By Design, has helped H&M clean up its chemical-intensive textile dyeing and finishing process.

NRDC has partnered up with H&M and other prominent brands such as Target, Gap Inc. and Levi Strauss and Co. through the Clean By Design program to improve their environmental practices in textile mills in China. NRDC produced a new report last week which found that these sustainable fashion leaders save $14.7 million annually through major cuts in water, energy and chemical use.

“Great fashion can also be green fashion. Although apparel manufacturing is among the largest polluting industries in the world, it doesn’t have to be,” said Greer. “There are enormous opportunities for the fashion industry to clean up its act while saving money, and Clean By Design offers low-cost, high-impact solutions to do just that.”

In addition to fast fashion’s environmental input, another major concern is the poor conditions of the textile workers, especially in light of the 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh where more than 1,100 workers were killed (H&M did not have a contract with that factory.)

In 2013, the brand committed to paying 850,000 textile workers a “fair living wage” by 2018. The sustainability report said H&M is testing out a “pay-structure improvement method” in two factories in Bangladesh and one in Cambodia, where H&M is the sole client. The report said that its first evaluation has been carried out in its Cambodian factory and that “overtime has decreased, wages have risen, productivity has increased and dialogue between employer and employees has improved.”

However, the Clean Clothes Campaign, an alliance of garment industry labor unions and NGOs, has criticized the brand’s latest report for having “no real figures to show progress towards this goal” of a fair living wage.

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In the web series “Sweatshop,” three fast fashion consumers visited a Cambodian garment factory for one month to learn about the true cost of cheap clothing. Photo credit: Heather Stilwell

 

“H&M’s report does not accurately reflect the reality on the ground in Cambodia or Bangladesh and their PR rings hollow to workers who are struggling everyday to feed their families,” said Athit Kong, Vice President of the Cambodian garment workers’ union C.CAWDU. “A ‘sustainability’ model that is put forth and wholly controlled by H&M but is not founded in genuine respect for organized workers and trade unions on the ground is never going to result in real change for H&M production workers and only serves as a public relations façade to cover up systemic abuse.”

Also what exactly is a “fair living wage,” as defined by H&M? Bangladesh has the world’s lowest minimum wage at $38 a month. Last November, Cambodia increased the monthly minimum wage for garment workers by 28 percent to $128, falling short of union workers’ demands and creating the potential for further strikes in the country, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Any kind of credible wage pilot project needs to have defined benchmarks and include clear and time-bound plans for making progress happen in all factories, not just the few,” Clean Clothes Campaign’s Carin Leffler said.

As the second biggest garment retailer in the world and the biggest buyer of clothes from Bangladesh, H&M could be a major player in changing the dirty textile industry for the better. H&M said their CEO Karl-Johan Persson has met twice with the Bangladeshi government and visited the Cambodian prime minister to discuss labor topics such as increasing the minimum wage and reducing overtime.

Earlier this year, the web documentary series Sweatshop: Dead Cheap Fashion took three young Norwegians-fashion blogger Anniken Jørgensen and fast fashion consumers Frida Ottesen and Ludvig Hambro-on a surprise trip to a Cambodian garment factory to work for a month. They were horrified to learn about the workers’ impoverished conditions, where some workers and their families have died of starvation because they can’t make ends meet due to low wages.

Although H&M has denied buying items from any of the shops featured in the show, as Ottesen said in episode five, “I can’t understand why the big chains, like H&M, don’t act? H&M is a big company with massive amounts of power. Do something!”

The truth is, cheap clothing has a real cost. “It is not fair that anybody sit 12 hours sewing and sewing until they collapse of dehydration and hunger,” Hambro said. “And the truth is that we are rich because they are poor. We are rich because it costs us 10 Euro to buy a T-shirt at H&M, but somebody has to starve for you to be able to buy it.”

McDonalds Shuts Down Hundreds Of Stores Worldwide As Sales Decline

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It was announced this week that McDonalds will be closing hundreds of stores worldwide, as global sales continue to decline. To begin the year of 2015, the infamous fast food chain will be closing at least 700 of its locations, which is double the number that was planned for closure earlier this year.

In the first 3 months of 2015, McDonalds saw a 2.3% decrease in sales and a 28% drop in operating revenue, continuing a trend of loss that the company has been experiencing for years.

Speaking in a conference call with the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, the company’s new CEO, Steve Easterbrook said that massive changes will be needed to improve McDonald’s struggling reputation.

“I think there is a hunger and an interest in our business to embrace change. McDonald’s management team is keenly focused on acting more quickly to better address today’s consumer needs, expectations and the competitive marketplace,” Easterbrook said.

Over 100 of the recent closures happened in Japan, where McDonalds has faced a number of scandalds relating to the quality of their food.

It is not hard to see that decline of McDonalds is happening, even in your own local neighborhood. Where once there were lines wrapped around the parking lot at multiple McDonalds locations in every town, there are now very sparse crowds at the restaurant, even in high traffic areas and during busy times.

In recent months, we have been paying close attention to how McDonalds and other popular junk food brands are falling out of favor as people become more conscious about their diets. GMO food in general is also quickly losing trust among consumers.

Several months ago, it was reported that organic food sales in the United States had risen to over $35 billion per year. This number is expected to climb as interest in organic food continues to grow exponentially.

Recently, we reported that junk-soda giant Coca-Cola is facing major financial challenges as sales steadily decline. Some fast food restaurants, such as Burger King, have been removing sodas from their kids meals, in an attempt to seem more concerned with health.

John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. This article (McDonalds Shuts Down Hundreds Of Stores Worldwide As Sales Decline) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and True Activist. .

Nation’s Strongest Fracking Ban Bill Introduced to Protect Public Lands | EcoWatch

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Congressmembers Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, both Democrats, have made no secret of their strong opposition to fracking. Last December, for instance, as new rules were being formulated on the opening new areas of public lands to energy exploration and extraction, they introduced a bill to ban fracking entirely on public lands.

“Federal lands should be preserved for the public good,” said Pocan at the time. “We should not allow short-term economic gain to harm our environment and endanger workers.”

Today they upped the ante with the reintroduction of the Protect Our Public Lands Act, which they announced at a press conference in Washington DC. H.R. 1902 would prohibit fracking, the use of fracking fluid and acidization for the extraction of oil and gas on public lands for any lease issued, renewed or readjusted. The bill is being touted as the strongest bill against fracking introduced in Congress so far.

“Today is Earth Day‚ a time to renew our commitment to protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink and the planet we all call home,” said Schakowsky. “Our public lands have been preserved and protected by the federal government for over one hundred years. We owe it to future generations to maintain their natural beauty and rich biodiversity. I believe the only way to do that is to enact the Protect Our Public Lands Act, and I will continue to fight to see that happen.”

Schakowsky and Pocan were joined by environmental leaders, including Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, Hilary Baum of the American Sustainable Business Council, Andrea Miller of Progressive Democrats of America and Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. The legislation is also endorsed by Environment America and Friends of the Earth.

“Our public lands are a shared national heritage, and shouldn’t be polluted, destroyed and fracked to enrich the oil and gas industry,” said Hauter. “Ironically, the President is speaking in the Everglades today, a unique and fragile ecosystem that is threatened by nearby fracking on public land. Congress must follow Congressman Pocan and Congresswoman Schakowsky’s bold leadership and ban fracking on these land, so that future generations can enjoy these special places.”

Other co-sponsors include Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, who is the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline and California Congressman Mark DeSaulnier. All are Democrats.

The reintroduction of the bill follows the new rules for fracking on public lands, which were announced by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in March. Their release followed a comment period that solicited more than a million responses, including more than 650,000 supporting a ban on oil and gas operations. While those rules strengthened some environmental and public health protections, for instance, requiring companies to disclose chemicals used within 30 days of completing operations, Schakowsky called them only “a step in the right direction.”

H.R. 1902 proposes to take another giant step.

“Our national parks, forests and public lands are some of our most treasured places and need to be protected for future generations,” said Pocan today.”It is clear fracking has a detrimental impact on the environment and there are serious safety concerns associated with these type of wells. Until we fully understand the effects, the only way to avoid these risks is to halt fracking entirely. We should not allow short-term economic gain to harm our public lands, damage our communities or endanger workers.”

Legendary Rocker Neil Young Will Release an Entire Album to Boycott Monsanto

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Rock and roll has always been steeped in defiance of authority, and it has also been used as a tool for social change and protest for decades as well.

While most musicians choose to protest topics like illegal wars and occupations, or specific problems and injustices in certain songs, rarely if ever do they devote an entire album to protesting a single corporate entity.

But that’s exactly what one legendary rock star is planning to do by mid-June 2015 with the release of a new album titled ‘The Monsanto Years.’

Neil Young Boycott Against Monsanto Continues

First dipping his toes into the water by announcing a switch to organic cotton t-shirts and a boycott of GMO cotton ones, Neil Young, the rock star in question, is now going all-in with his new LP.

The album will feature Willie Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah as well according to this report from Rolling Stone, and it will be released on June 16 th with an accompanying tour set to kick off on July 5 th at the Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wis., titled the Rebel Content Tour.

Nelson is a co-founder of Farm Aid, a concert series which helps support small farmers, the very kind that have been under attack from Monsanto via lawsuits and false promises attached to their genetically modified seeds and agricultural chemicals.

Nelson’s sons currently are members of a band called Promise of the Real, which will join Young for the album.

Among the Promise of the Real’s newest tracks are titles like ‘Seeds,’ ‘Rock Starbucks,’ and ‘Monsanto Years,’ which Rolling Stone reported could be part of the joint album especially considering their titles which seem to be hand-crafted for inclusion on ‘The Monsanto Years.’

Previously, Young has also called for a boycott against Starbucks for being a part of the Grocery Manufacturers Association which sued the state of Vermont over its GMO labeling law.

The Starbucks boycott was met by a considerable amount of media coverage, showcasing yet again the power of the celebrity in finally bringing certain issues to the mainstream.

For more information or for Young’s upcoming tour dates, you can check out the article here. Also, check out the video below of a secret show Young played with Promise of the Real in California on April 16, via the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Apple Purchases Land The Size Of San Francisco For Conservation And Is Building 2 New Solar Farms In China

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We can’t help but be sceptical when we hear a mega-company like Apple announce it will do something in the greater interest of mankind. We know and have heard -as we’re sure you have too- that Apple is moving copious amounts of cash to parts of the world where they are exempt from tax. Could this be how they reconcile their ability to share and be human? (*note: Apple is not a human)

I (Lawrence) certainly won’t disagree, that the government who claims right to this taxable profit may be the worst people to give the money to in any case (it will be more money to mismanage). However, I would like to point out that Apple executives are, also, in no way qualified to claim the right to stewart the whole planet on our behalf, on the behalf of those living, dying and thriving in a given community. So here is an article written by True Activist, consider it.

Apple is contributing to a cleaner, healthier environment in quite a few ways.

Recently the maker of the iPhone and Mac computers announced that it has just purchased 36,000 acres of forest land for the express purpose of protecting it from future development, as well is already constructing two new solar farm projects in China. Their aim is to duplicate clean energy efforts abroad which have already been started in the United States.

The joint venture undertaken with SunPower will produce two new 20 megawatt solar farms. As stated above, construction in China has already begun, and 2 MW of solar capacity are already sending power to the grid. “The technology combines single-axis tracking technology with rows of parabolic mirrors, reflecting light onto high efficiency SunPower Maxeon cells, which are the world’s most efficient commercially available mass-produced solar cells. Completion of the projects is expected in the fourth quarter of 2015. […] The projects are expected to provide up to 80 million kilowatt-hours per year while also protecting the ecosystem.”

The super-technology company is contributing to a greener planet in more ways than one. To ensure that the packaging for its products comes from sustainable managed forests, it has partnered with The Conservation Fund to manage 36,000 acres of forest that have been purchased in Maine and North Carolina. As shared by Inhabitant, ‘The forests will be protected from development, staying forests forever, though some wood will be sustainable harvested from them.’

Said Larry Selzer, president and CEO of The Conservation Fund, “Apple is clearly leading by example – one that we hope others will follow.”

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“By all accounts, the loss of America’s working forests is one of our nation’s greatest environmental challenges. The initiative announced today is precedent-setting,” said Selzer.

Apple’s efforts to preserve the environment have begun to change the tune of some of its critics, including Greenpeace. Said the non-profit’s USA Senior IT Sector Analyst Gary Cook, “Apple’s announcement today is a significant first step toward addressing its energy footprint in China, and sets an important precedent for other companies that have operations in China: they can take action to power their operations with renewable energy.”

In addition to their conservation plans in the States and abroad, Apple intends for its new headquarters in California to be 100 percent solar-powered by the time of its completion.

This is just one example of how successful businesses can reduce their environmental impact and help shape a greener, cleaner world.

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Italian Spends 40 Years Building a Human-Powered Theme Park, It’s Amazing!

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It’s social enterprises like this that we -at Valhalla- espouse. Organizations that bring people together while preserving our harmony with Gaia.

Bruno first began his journey to create one of the first human powered theme parks in Battaglia, Italy on June 15, 1969 with two jugs of wine, a bag of sausages and a grill. Two individuals walked by Bruno’s odd, but interesting display and asked, “What is this?” Bruno responded, “It’s a restaurant!”, and Ai Pioppi was born. The family run restaurant still operates to this day, even after 45 years later. The work that Bruno has created over the years to attract customers is phenomenal.Bruno began to build rides like: swings, slides, seesaws, gyroscopes and roller coasters all by his own two hands. Bruno, being the passionate builder that he is, hoped the rides would attract families and provide a memorable experience for the kids, who would in turn encourage their parents to return.The end game for Bruno and his park was fantastic. The spirit of adventure is definitely a bonus in this seemingly dangerous (but fun) place to be. This video allows you to see the masterpiece and hard work that Bruno has put into his park. I couldn’t help but be a little curious myself to actually believe how some of these rides work.

Ai Pioppi Rides

(Photos by: Alessandra and Oriol Ferrer Mesià)

None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use

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The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs.

While the notion is incredibly useful, especially in folding ecological concerns into economics, I’ve always had my reservations about it. Environmentalists these days love speaking in the language of economics – it makes them sound Serious – but I worry that wrapping this notion in a bloodless technical term tends to have a narcotizing effect. It brings to mind incrementalism: boost a few taxes here, tighten a regulation there, and the industrial juggernaut can keep right on chugging. However, if we take the idea seriously, not just as an accounting phenomenon but as a deep description of current human practices, its implications are positively revolutionary.

To see what I mean, check out a recent report [PDF] done by environmental consultancy Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program. TEEB asked Trucost to tally up the total “unpriced natural capital” consumed by the world’s top industrial sectors. (“Natural capital” refers to ecological materials and services like, say, clean water or a stable atmosphere; “unpriced” means that businesses don’t pay to consume them.)

It’s a huge task; obviously, doing it required a specific methodology that built in a series of assumptions. (Plenty of details in the report.) But it serves as an important signpost pointing the way to the truth about externalities.

Here’s how those costs break down:

The majority of unpriced natural capital costs are from greenhouse gas emissions (38%), followed by water use (25%), land use (24%), air pollution (7%), land and water pollution (5%), and waste (1%).

So how much is that costing us? Trucost’s headline results are fairly stunning.

First, the total unpriced natural capital consumed by the more than 1,000 “global primary production and primary processing region-sectors” amounts to $7.3 trillion a year – 13 percent of 2009 global GDP.

(A “region-sector” is a particular industry in a particular region – say, wheat farming in East Asia.)

Second, surprising no one, coal is the enemy of the human race. Trucost compiled rankings, both of the top environmental impacts and of the top industrial culprits.

Here are the top five biggest environmental impacts and the region-sectors responsible for them:

UNEP

The biggest single environmental cost? Greenhouse gases from coal burning in China. The fifth biggest? Greenhouse gases from coal burning in North America. (This also shows what an unholy nightmare deforestation in South America is.)

Now, here are the top five industrial sectors ranked by total ecological damages imposed:

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It’s coal again! This time North American coal is up at number three.

Trucost’s third big finding is the coup de grace. Of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. Ponder that for a moment: None of the world’s top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. Zero.

That amounts to an global industrial system built on sleight of hand. As Paul Hawken likes to put it, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.

This gets back to what I was saying at the top. The notion of “externalities” is so technical, such an economist’s term. Got a few unfortunate side effects, so just move some numbers from Column A to Column B, right?

But the UNEP report makes clear that what’s going on today is more than a few accounting oversights here and there. The distance between today’s industrial systems and truly sustainable industrial systems – systems that do not spend down stored natural capital but instead integrate into current energy and material flows – is not one of degree, but one of kind. What’s needed is not just better accounting but a new global industrial system, a new way of providing for human wellbeing, and fast. That means a revolution.

If you Love a Tiny House, Then You’ll Really Love A Tiny Houseboat!

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Have you ever wanted to just up and quit your job, build a boat, and travel the world? Sure, that might seem a little extreme, but maybe one day at least part of the package can come true.

Enter Roy Schreyer of Roy Designed That who designs and builds awesome things. His projects require a great deal of skill, but Roy shares his creations with the world, the hope being that others will give his designs and projects a try too.

That’s why when I came across his DIY tiny houseboat, I was super excited. I’ve always loved boats – there’s something very relaxing about being out on the water. Hours fly by and seem to stand still at the same time. But how cool would it be to have a little boat that you could cruise around in all day, and then instead of having to leave the boat behind at the dock, you can anchor it and spend the night right there. That sounds pretty cool to me.

Roy Schreyer has many designs, but this one is by far my favorite.

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It’s a tiny houseboat. The structure was built with minimalist principles to make the best use out of space.

RoyDesignedThat

One of the benefits of the boat’s size is that you can anchor it almost anywhere! Take off for a weekend or just cruise around the lake for an afternoon.

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It’s actually a lot roomier on the inside than you’d think. With this set up, there’s enough space for several people to sit comfortably.

RoyDesignedThat

The seating area can also be converted into a bedroom. I can just imagine falling asleep to the sound of the waves against the boat. RoyDesignedThat

The steering column is an old-fashioned wooden wheel with spokes that hearken back to the days of tall ships.

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The inside is surrounded by windows so everyone is guaranteed a good view.

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It wouldn’t be a Tiny Houseboat without a space for the most important time of the day – mealtime! In addition to a seating area and a bedroom, the cabin can also be converted into a dining room.

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You can dock this little guy anywhere, including a sandbar for an afternoon picnic.

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Here’s a video of the Tiny Houseboat in action:

Original source: viralnova

Organic Food Industry Explodes as Consumer Demand Spikes ” EcoWatch

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Looks like organic food has gone from a new-age trend to a staple in supermarkets and many American diets. According to a new analysis from the Organic Trade Association (OTA), organic food sales in 2014 jumped 11 percent to $35.9 billion, claiming almost 5 percent of the total food sales in the U.S.

The numbers are a huge spike since the OTA first kept record in 1997, where organic food sales only totaled around $3.4 billion, accounting for less than 1 percent of total food sales.

Fruits and vegetables-the number one selling organic category-raked in $13 billion in sales, a 12 percent increase from the prior year. Organic fruits and vegetables now account for 12 percent of all produce sold in the nation. Organic dairy also jumped 11 percent in sales last year to $5.46 billion, the biggest percentage increase for that category in six years. Organic food has consistently far outshone the three percent growth pace for the total food industry, the OTA said.

There are many reasons why more consumers are buying organic, including the perception that it’s healthier, more sustainable and has fewer pesticides. As we previously reported, the Rodale Institute found that there is 7 percent pesticide residue in organic foods as opposed to 38 percent in conventional produce.

The industry has not only boomed due to consumer demand, the federal government-which decides which foods can be considered organic-is also spending a lot more money on this sector. As Quartz ′s food and consumer goods reporter Deena Shanker observed, “Mandatory spending on organics under the 2002 U.S. farm bill totaled a measly $20 million, but by 2014, that number had risen to $167.5 million.” Shanker also noted that the number of certified organic farms, ranches and processing facilities in the U.S. have almost tripled to a record 19,474 operations since 2002.

The data also showed that imports of organic corn and soybeans from countries such as Romania and India are booming because while demand for organics grows among U.S. consumers, there remains a “near-total reliance by U.S. farmers on genetically modified corn and soybeans,” according to Bloomberg News.

The U.S. is the top grower of corn and soybeans in the world and yet we are importing these products because about 90 percent of U.S. corn and soybeans are genetically modified, and thus, cannot be certified as organic. As a result, imports to the U.S. of Romanian corn rose to $11.6 million in 2014 from $545,000 the year before and soybean imports from India more than doubled to $73.8 million, according to Bloomberg News.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is set to propose standards for organic seafood raised in the country this year. Currently, “organic” seafood sold in the country is not approved by the U.S. government. The varieties that are available from menus or the market come from European, Canadian or other countries’ standards or via a private certification company.

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The USDA wants to set standards for U.S.-raised organic seafood this year, but some in the farmed fish industry as well as environmental groups are crying foul. Photo credit: Shutterstock

 

The U.S. is “trying to play catch-up on organic aquaculture,” Miles McEvoy, who heads up USDA’s organic program, told the Associated Press.

However, designating a fish as “organic” is much more difficult than a piece of fruit, and some environmental organizations have spoken out against the USDA’s proposed move.

“The designation ‘organic’ is directly related to whether the feed an animal has been reared on is organic, whether it has been exposed to chemicals or pesticides and whether it has been genetically altered,” Food & Water Watch said. “Because the food sources and environment of wild fish are completely uncontrolled, they should not be considered organic.”

The farmed fish industry also said they expect that the requirements for fish feed may be so strict as to be financially prohibitive, according to the AP. So it might be some time before you can buy U.S. certified organic seafood from your local fishmonger.

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