Tribulations and Local Food

It has been a long long time. Sometimes in life, you get bogged down in unexpected events of sorrow and joy, and projects and pledges take a back seat. I have just went through one of the periods. Loss of a father, supporting my wife finishing grad school, and a multi-state move, brings us to this moment now. It has been a long year, and life has thrown us lemons, oranges, grapes, and whatever other fruit life can throw at you, and we made a lot of "lemonade". Now after everything was said and done, it is time, and there is time to pick-up with conservation and getting Slay Energy Vampires! Moving in the right direction. With all of that said...

...welcome back, I am glad you are still following me. Now, on to some brief information.

A few days ago, the city of Tempe in Arizona, added to their city web page a page dedicated to all of their locally crafted food. Everything from Pasta, to Beer, to Popcorn. It is a long and informative list with direct links and locations to where you can purchase this local food. Local food is still the best and most effective way to cut down on your food's carbon footprint. So, if you are in the Tempe, Arizona area, check out this list. They proudly advertised this list on their Facebook page as well.

Right here for great local food!

---Justin

In.gredients a new way to shop, and new way to think

There is a new grocery store that is opening up soon in Austin, Texas, it is called in.gredients. It has already started getting plenty of buzz in the mainstream media so I thought it would state a few words about it. In.gredients is offering all local, all organic food to the customers. That is nothing new at all, right? Not really, but it is what else they aren't offering that is new. In.gredients is striving to be the first non-waste food store in America right now. Non-waste? What do you mean? Well, there will be no packaging for their food. You will have to bring in your own containers, weigh your food, and then pay for your food. Only buying what you really need, with no packaging to deal with. According to their video:

Americans throw away 1.4 billion pounds of waste every day, and 40% of it comes from one-time packaging. But it's hard trying to be a conscious recycler after a while because of the double or triple wrappings for every product.

Wow! That's a lot of waste! One of the biggest challenges we have in America right now is over-packaging. Unfortunately, where we get our supplies to live on (i.e. food), is one of the worst culprits in this problem (in my mind shipping, especially for big business seems to be the worse, but I have no states, just personal observations). In.gredients is slated to open this year, and is already getting a lot of attention. I am hoping other companies start paying attention to this new delivery method, which almost ensures that we have to start thinking about slow food (something I will talk about soon in a later article).

Let's see what they have to say for themselves:

Wow, I will have to check this out when it opens!

---Justin J. Stewart

Slay Energy Vampires! the return, plus a new local business in Tempe that composts!

Hello all! Justin here, and I am pleased to announce the return and reboot of Slay Energy Vampires. I am sorry for leaving all of you hanging, I took a quick break for the holidays, but when I returned I found that my computer was on the outs, and after many weeks of battling the computer, and other issues I finally started gathering information and idea for the return of Slay Energy Vampires! We are back in complete operation now, hoping to provide you with tips and tricks on reducing your footprint, plus local businesses trying to make a difference, and yes, Meatless Mondays, and my own adventures to make my house just that much energy conscious. I thank you again for the patience, my own person New Year's resolution this year was to make this site 100,000 hits...please help me out, spread the word, send me some links, or heck, even write an article, this is a community here, not just me...

Now with the news!

Coming out ot Tempe, Arizona, there is a new business in town called EcoScraps. EcoScraps offers to takes unusable rotting fruits and vegetables from local restaurants and grocery stores and uses them to turn into nutrient-rich compost and which they then  sell back to local nurseries and landscaping companies. This is removing the need to ship in other compost from out of town, and keeping the whole decomposition chain local. According to the press release from the City of Tempe:

This month alone, they will likely create enough compost from what would otherwise go into a landfill to offset the emissions of 13,000 cars for a month.

That's a lot of cars to offset. I applaud companies like this that take the initiative to bring green farming, and sustainable practices to a city and community.

EcoScraps started as a brainchild of Dan Blake who noticed that so much of his food was getting thrown out in restaurants. He started dumpster diving for food from local restaurants and composting at home as an experiment with different methods of composting. EcoScraps is currently in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. You can find EcoScraps on Facebook: here.

---Justin J. Stewart (...link via Angie Fretz)