Meatless Monday — Breaking News — A Day Late

Yesterday (Monday — better late than never) there was some really big news for lovers of meat without feet. Whole Foods Market announced that it is partnering with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program and Blue Ocean Institute to label all the wild-caught seafood in its North American stores according to the sustainability criteria determined by the Aquarium's science-based organizations.

Green (Best Choice), Yellow (Good Alternative) and Red (Avoid) labels will now be displayed next to EVERY item in the seafood case, and similar information (using Whole Foods' own criteria) will be posted for farmed seafood. You can watch the Whole Foods video here.




Whole Foods has also pledged to eliminate all Red label seafood by Earth Day 2013.

This is a big step forward. But I do find myself asking two questions:

1. Why carry the Red label fish at all?
2. What happens to the Red label fish if no one buys it? After all, if the campaign works, that is what will happen, particularly with a price tag of $23.99/lb. for Venezuelan yellow fin tuna steaks. 

Readers of this blog have been hearing about the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s handy Seafood Watch cards for some time. You can download one here (be sure to select the correct region). That way you can have one for easy reference wherever you shop or eat.

Whole Foods is not the only chain to have taken an action on how they source their fish. In late January, Target Corp. eliminated all farmed salmon from its fresh, frozen and smoked seafood sections at stores nationwide. Farmed salmon has been deemed less healthy than wild-caught salmon for a number of reasons, including the the high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) found in supermarket samples. You can read Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s thoughts on the subject here.

Finally, there is good news for those of you who eat eggs. The blog Food Democracy Now announced on September 2 that Trader Joe’s and Fareway Stores Inc., have agreed to pull DeCoster-affiliated brands of eggs from the shelves of their combined 442 stores nationwide. DeCoster is the the owner of both Wright County and Hillandale Farms, the two Iowa farms linked to this summer’s salmonella outbreak. Food Democracy Now had organized an online campaign requesting this action.


PS I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”

Not Quite the Last Weekend in August Updates

Even the most intrepid blogger needs a break now and then. I took one and have returned rested, refreshed, and full of new ideas. You will probably hear of an adventure or two in the coming days. But, for now, here are the updates for AUGUST!

Our solar fan is turning away, helping us to stay cool during the unseasonably warm late summer days whenever they come around (Cooling with the Sun: 9/1).

Shark sightings continued to plague Cape Cod swimmers (Times Are Strange: 7/16). One was tagged off the coast of Truro on August 23, and sighting of what turned out to be a harmless basking shark forced swimmers out of the waters of Nauset Beach on August 27. But hurricanes and riptides have become the more serious threat.

A manatee was spotted at the Clinton Marina. And, for the first time ever, we had to stop our car on Farnam Drive in East Rock Park to let a doe and fawn stroll across the road. Deer sightings have traditionally been much more common on the west side of town.

Shooting of woodchucks (Woodchuck Wednesday: 6/16) has returned in Beaver Hills; apparently the traps were not a complete success. But a pair of pantyhose, stuffed with rags which had been liberally doused with fox urine, and then tossed into the hole under a porch in the Berkshires, has driven at least one woodchuck to seek a new residence.

Recycling left, trash on the right

The new trash/recycling program in which a newly-delivered small (48 gallon) brown toter becomes the trash container and the old trash toter (larger and blue) becomes the recycling container, began in New Haven’s Westville and Beaver Hills neighborhoods on August 23 (Weekend Updates 8/1). So far, at least on one street, it seems to be working. You can read more about it in the Independent.

Other News:

A second oil platform caught on fire off the Louisiana coast on September 2. The fire was quickly extinguished, all the workers were safely rescued, and the initial reports of an oil leak proved unfounded. The FDA would like us to believe that Gulf seafood is safe to eat, but not everyone agrees. The safety of the dispersants used to break up the spill remains the big question for many. A commercial fisherman was quoted asking in Time: "If I put fish in a barrel of water and poured oil and Dove detergent over that and mixed it up, would you eat that fish?"

The massive egg recall is the new poster child for the risks to humans posed by factory farming. You can read more about the risks to chickens here.

New Haven’s newest and greenest apartment building, 360 State Street, opened on August 1. It has many Green features, including a 400 kilowatt fuel cell which combines hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to produce electricity, heat and pure water. The largest residential installation of this type in the world, 360 State's fuel cell will generate
most of the building's energy needs.

August Birthdays:

Blogger, the Google product that allows me to publish ontheroadtogreenness turned 11 on August 31, and my blog turned a year old on August 14. This is my 72nd post. Thank you all for reading, commenting, making suggestions, and sharing with your friends over the past year. Having a blog has changed my life.

Cooling with the Sun…

It was serendipity. We almost never see the evening news, but on February 9, 2009 we happened to be flipping channels when we landed on a story on the ABC Nightly News about Bill Keith, President of SunRise Solar in Indiana. 


A former roofer, Bill got the idea of building attic fans powered by the sun on one very hot day when he was in a very hot attic installing an electric model. A tinkerer and home repair expert, he started SunRise Solar in his garage and began to manufacture solar-powered attic fans, from components manufactured locally or in nearby states whenever possible. The site proclaims, Taking Green Mainstream! Made in the USA!


What began as a dream had turned by 2009 into a $4 million dollar a year business in an area with extremely high unemployment. His fans had been cooling the Honolulu Airport for years, and at the time of the broadcast, Bill had just learned that they would soon be installed on the Indiana governor’s mansion.


We live on the top floor of a rowhouse. We know how hot an attic can get under the summer sun, and the thought of cooling without using any electricity was certainly an appealing one. But it was February. Heating bills rather than cooling bills were our big concern. By the time summer 2009 rolled around, the home project ToDo list was rather large, and the summer rather cool, so the idea of a solar fan moved to the back burner.


The summer of 2010 was another story. The heat arrived early and never left for long. June Green Drinks brought us to New Haven’s Neighborhood Housing Services with its Green Roof and all its energy-saving devices. The Green Roof idea was an intriguing one, but rather daunting. And then we remembered that story about the solar fan from the evening news.


Googling ABC News and solar-powered fans led us right to the SunRise Solar website. We learned the fan qualified for a 30% tax credit. The site described an installation that sounded easy enough to my skillful husband. He had a few questions about the type and size of fan we needed so he emailed the company. He received a quick response and was told to call and ask for Bill Keith if he needed any more info. He did. Bill came on the line and asked a few questions of his own, including the type of building and roof. He then spoke excitedly of his recent visit to Philadelphia to meet with Joe Biden. After looking down upon the vast number of rowhouses in need of cooling, Bill now had a dream of installing a solar fan on every rowhouse rooftop. Bill decided he would like our roof to become his rowhouse demo project and made us a deal we could not refuse.


A few days later we were the proud owners of a SunRise Solar 1250 curb base ceiling fan with thermostat. The installation went smoothly. But, as I said, my husband is good with tools, can follow directions, and also has access to a table saw. He first constructed a box to fit the slope of the roof and then to tip the fan 5° back to grab the late afternoon sun. Our roof is just slightly sloped, so working up there was not overly scary or dangerous for us. Let me stress however, that this is not a DIY project for everyone. (Installation qualifies for the tax credit as well.)

SunRise Solar 1250 up on the roof

We’ve had nearly a week of cloudless days. And I am very happy to say that the fan blades have been quietly spinning away from dawn to dusk. It’s been close to 100°, and the fan has made a real difference!


With the thermostat, the fan will stop running if and when the attic cools to 65°. The SunRise Solar website promises that the fan will save up to 30% on cooling bills. With CT’s rates being as high as they are, it shouldn’t take too long to recoup our investment, although I must confess I haven’t yet done the math.


The tax credit for homeowners who make energy efficient improvements to their existing homes is part of the much-maligned American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Homeowners are saving money and energy; their purchases are helping companies like SunRise Solar (and all its local vendors) grow. 


According to an article in the most recent Time, Joe Biden is the “point man” whose job it is to “exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building, and green transportation real…launch green manufacturing industries…” Companies like SunRise Solar.

I hope Bill Keith’s dream comes true, and I’m happy we could do a little bit to help him on his way. It’s going to be another day of “abundant sun” in weatherman speak. I’m so glad our SunRise Solar 1250 is working so hard up on our roof today. And all the while the fan blades are turning away, it’s not going to make our electric meter spin one bit.