Do you know a kid who speaks for the trees? Tell us your eco-hero’s story in our Kids for Our Planet contest. You just might win a screening of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax in your hometown theatre for 200 friends and family on March 1^st, the night before the movie opens to the public. Read on to find out how to enter our Facebook contest.

Curious about Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax? Here’s how Universal Pictures describes the movie:

From the creators of Despicable Me and the imagination of Dr. Seuss comes the 3D-CG feature Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, an adaptation of the classic tale of a forest creature who shares the enduring power of hope.  The animated adventure follows the journey of a 12-year-old as he searches for the one thing that will enable him to win the affection of the girl of his dreams.  To find it he must discover the story of the Lorax, the grumpy yet charming creature who fights to protect his world.

In hopes of spreading the eco-message of the film, we’ve partnered with Universal Pictures on our Kids for Our Planet contest as well as on pre-screening events and ticket giveaways in some of our stores. (Check here to see if your store’s included.)

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My challenge-to-self for 2012: Reduce my household food waste to less than 5%. I spent the week after Christmas clearing out closets, the pantry and the refrigerator — following my own advice. The biggest reveal was when I discovered that my largest kitchen appliance had turned into a scary hybrid compost bin/messy biological laboratory.

Life got away from me for about six weeks during the most food-focused time of year. The CSA produce bags kept coming while I ate at home less due to holiday parties, travel and deadlines. When I finally took the time to assess the damage, only half of the food in the fridge was still edible. My compost bin brimmed, while a back-of-the-napkin tally showed that I tossed nearly 25% of December’s food budget. Ouch.

In the United States, food waste is estimated at 40% and more. While a lot of that food loss occurs pre-consumer, a significant amount occurs once food arrives in households. A 2002 study of American households indicates that families discarded 14% of their food, to the tune of 470 pounds and an annual cost of $600 per year. Read the rest of this entry »

As the year comes to a close, do you find your home filled with a bunch of stuff you don’t know what to do with? Cleaning up and clearing things out from the holidays is a perfect time to start fresh for 2012. I mean wouldn’t it be great to clean out a few closets, donate items to charitable organizations and take down the tree before, say, St. Patrick’s Day? Here are some tips that might help you plan your tidying-up strategy in the most planet-friendly manner.

Holiday items:

• Compost, chip, or donate your real tree for wildlife habitat. Many cities and counties have programs for helping you dispose of your tree. Check soon: most programs start the week after Christmas.
• Carefully box or cover your artificial tree for storage and reuse. Dust and mildew from an improperly stored tree can wreak havoc on immune systems next year.
• Recycle holiday cards and gift-wrap and/or store for reuse. Used cards and heavier wrapping paper can be repurposed for next year’s holiday tags and craft projects.
• What about those battery-powered decorations, toys and gadgets? Hopefully you chose rechargeable batteries instead of regular ones. Recycle regular batteries instead of sending them to the landfill. You can find info on how and where at earth911.com.

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Say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new in green style! It is possible to have a fun holiday feast or blowout New Year’s Eve party that jump starts resolutions about reducing clutter and living lighter on the planet in 2012. Here are some timely entertaining tips that will serve you well for all of 2012 — and the rest of 2011:

• Instead of resorting to disposable cups, use wine glass charms, ribbon, twine, rubber bands or other items to create a unique marking system for glasses, cups and mugs. Everyone knows which cup is theirs and nothing goes in the trash!
• If your party isn’t formal, acquire a mix of plates and beverage glasses at local thrift stores and yard sales. It can be fun to drink wine out of juice glasses and jelly jars and they aren’t as tippy as stemware. After your party, box everything up and return it to the thrift store. The organization receives a nice “donation” from you, and you aren’t left with the clutter — or a trash can full of paper plates.
• While beer bottles and cans are recyclable they’re also heavy and take up a lot of space in the recycling bin. Consider springing for a torpedo keg, a pony keg or a whole keg. Beer glasses are washable, as are plastic cups. And, of course, you return the keg and its tackle.

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Every year I try to be more mindful about how my entertaining, decorating and gift giving affects the environment. Some studies say that household waste in the US increases by 20 to 25% during the holidays. Yikes! Here are a few ideas about how to keep a closer eye on the stuff that typically ends up in the trash can.

Gifts

Do your friends and relatives really need another “thing” in their closet? Mine don’t. Try some of these ideas:

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The “Goals Gals” were coming to my house. The three of us have been meeting for more than six years, supporting one another with new career, volunteer and hobby goals. A few years ago, one of our trio developed chemical sensitivities after a bad experience with a bug bomb when trying to rid her house of fleas. My friend Ella (not her real name) now reacts negatively to air fresheners, incense, artificial scents, most conventional cleaning products, plastic, paint and carpet that off-gasses — a condition sometimes called Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS). When Ella comes in contact with these materials she says it’s like her “brain just starts sizzling, like it is frying and I simply cannot concentrate on anything.”

While our group typically meets outdoors, this time it was my house and I didn’t want to let Ella down. Nor, frankly, was I interested in spraying questionable chemicals in my living quarters. Thanks to Ella’s influence, I stopped using air fresheners (and even conventional perfumes) years ago. I have bamboo floors and the last time any walls were painted was 11 years ago, so I felt like those elements were under control. But I’d let a few things slip over our long, hot summer and I now had 24 hours to tidy my house in a mindful way, removing dust and grime, while using products that wouldn’t cause Ella distress.

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Erin Schrode is the co-founder and spokeswoman of Teens Turning Green, a student-led movement promoting global sustainability, youth leadership, environmental education and conscious lifestyle choices.

 Have you ever felt as if you wanted to “do something,” but didn’t know where to start? Project Green Challenge is that chance, your entry point into action and sustainability. Our upcoming 30-day eco lifestyle challenge is mobilizing high school and college students nationwide through fun, simple and high impact daily steps. We challenge you to complete themed actions each day in October. Can you do it? Can you take your life from conventional to conscious?

I am proud to say that Project Green Challenge (PGC) is an initiative of youth, by youth, for youth! Our team of more than fifteen interns, staff, partners and a number of newly-appointed PGC campus reps has spent the last four months working tirelessly to develop the program structure, corporate and non-profit partnerships, and our multimedia platform. We have spoken with hundreds of high schools, colleges and universities about grounding this initiative, incorporating the Challenge into campus culture, extracurriculars, even curriculum.

Involve your campus – because this is a nationwide competition for schools too. Win an on-campus Sustainability 101 event, eco resource fair, organic lunch for leadership council, ice cream party, green cleaning supplies, and consultation with Teens Turning Green to set your school on a greener path. This is the beginning of a dynamic, collective, student-led movement to shift the paradigm!

We are using social and traditional media, a robust digital platform, and strong on-campus presence to bring the Challenge to you, into the hands of our generation. As a twenty-year-old, I fully understand the need for relevant themes and straight-forward actions to ensure the Challenge is accessible to young people and has maximum impact. Here’s a short video we created that you can post and share with your friends:

Bottom line: I want to empower YOU. I want to inform and inspire, showing my peers that small changes in our daily actions really can have a positive effect on our health and the environment.

Sign up to take the 30-day eco lifestyle Challenge and we will deliver the daily challenges directly to your inbox, complete with resources, tips, a glossary, experts, videos and more. When it is this simple and high impact, there’s no excuse for you not to join the movement to change the world – and spread the word far and wide!

Delve deeper, become more engaged, complete the green, greener and greenest levels of daily challenges, share your experiences with our audience – and you might just earn yourself a spot in the Challenge Finals! Ten finalists will be flown to San Francisco for an educational and inspiring two-day eco summit, which we have titled Green University.

You could win some really phenomenal prizes too! A $5000 college scholarship, $1000 gift card for Whole Foods Market, weekend trip for two to southern California, bicycle courtesy of Natracare, full eco dorm or room makeover, year’s supply of Nature’s Path breakfast and snack foods, organic and ethical clothing, natural body products, and much more.

We aim to raise awareness about conscious living, informed consumption, and the collective impact of individual actions, as well as empower students with actionable steps for their own lives. Help us get the word out! If we all take the Challenge and commit to being the change we wish to see in the world, then yes, we can build a powerful, diverse and far-reaching movement that inspires this generation to lead the transition from conventional to conscious and sustain our world. Sign up for Project Green Challenge today!

We believe in full disclosure. That’s why we are now requiring all cleaning products sold in our stores to list every single ingredient on the label by April 2012. So, if you’ve noticed your favorite laundry soap now has a longer list of ingredients – it may not be a reformulation – it’s most likely because we’re asking our suppliers for complete transparency in their labeling practices.

When it comes to cleaning products, there are no government regulations for listing ingredients on packaging. This doesn’t sit well with us. As a result, we developed our Whole Foods Market Eco-Scale™ rating system to help you make the best choices about the cleaning products you use to do laundry, wash dishes, mop floors and more! By Earth Day 2012 – April 22^nd – all of the household cleaning products in our stores will list full ingredients on their packaging and be rated and third-party verified based on safety and environmental impact.

With the launch of our new standards, Whole Foods Market is the first to require full disclosure ingredient listing on household cleaning products. No one else — retailer, government body or trade association — is requiring full disclosure ingredient listing to the extent that we are.

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Last September, we unveiled our color-coded, science-based sustainability ratings for wild-caught seafood created by our partners, Blue Ocean Institute and Monterey Bay Aquarium. At the time, we said that we would seek out ways to source swordfish and tuna more sustainably as part of a larger initiative to move toward fully sustainable seafood departments — and we have!

Whole Foods Market’s skilled seafood buyers source tuna and swordfish from green- and yellow-rated fisheries such as those using handlines (a fishing method that uses a single baited line to catch one fish at a time), which have low to no bycatch.

One of the new sources of green- and yellow-rated tuna comes from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean where fishermen catch tuna traditionally using a low-impact pole and line. Elsewhere, most tuna is caught with nets or longlines, which can capture not only the targeted catch, but also juvenile tuna and large amounts of bycatch, including threatened or endangered species such as sea turtles, sharks and seabirds, earning some of these fisheries a red-rating.

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THANK YOU FOR ALL THE COMMENTS! Congratulations to our winners!

Debrah M. from Manchester, MO
Alicia W. from Clarksville, TN
Gioya F. from Bronx, NY
Jackie D. from Greenwood, SC
Maria S. from Overland Park, KS

Could you use a “green” makeover of your household cleaning products? In celebration of Earth Day, we are giving away a collection of household cleaning products to five lucky winners! This will include everything from paper towels and bath tissue to sponges, trash bags, laundry detergent and spray cleaner. Just tell us why you’re inspired to give your home a greener clean by May 10th. We’ll pick five winners at random from the comments below.

Here’s the rundown on some of the products that will be featured in each gift package:

365 EVERYDAY VALUE®

Our 365 Everyday Value products will clean your clothes, your dishes and your home – all without emptying your pocketbook. Plus, we’ve made some recent improvements in our line of paper products, like using 100% recycled paper and whitening without chlorine. Our household cleaning products have your home, and the environment, in mind.

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