Sustainability : Buzz

Second Chance, a Baltimore-based non-profit, is making a name for itself by salvaging what might normally be thrown away and repurposing it.

Here's an excerpt:

"Where does stuff salvaged from old homes go? To answer that question, I drove an hour north to Baltimore Saturday to check out four warehouses run by Second Chance, a non-profit training group.

The warehouses, open to the public as retail outlets, are brimming with sofas, antiques, fireplace mantels, stained glass windows, chandeliers, old church pews, appliances, cabinetry, bathtubs, doors and lumber taken from dozens of houses and sold at low prices."

Read the entire article here.

If you haven't been able to cop a ticket to a Stew dinner, here's a peek at a recent dinner and the trend that is spreading across the country.

"A Stew meal is not elaborate. The main course is soup; tonight it's a choice between vegan spring onion and rabbit with dumplings. Tickets to the event are $10 each. But there's more to this meal than the composition of a plate of radishes, or of the next course: spears of roasted asparagus, pleasantly salted, arranged to form squares that overlap at the corners.

Stew is the brainchild of the Baltimore Development Cooperative (not to be confused with the Baltimore Development Corp.), which was started in 2007 by three recent MICA graduates, all artists now in their late 20s: Scott Berzofsky, Nicholas Wisniewski and Nester. They wanted to use food to foster community and stimulate activism."

Read the entire article here.

Baltimore's vegetation-covered roof tops make it one of the nation's leading cities for green roof tops according to a new study.

Here's an excerpt:

"Chicago, Washington D.C., and Baltimore are among the cities in the U.S. with the most green roofs installed, according to an Associated Press report yesterday. Based on a study by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, a green roof industry group, the AP reported that Chicago led the nation with more than 500,000 square feet of green roof..."

Read the entire article here.

If you haven't made it to one of the many farmer's markets in the Greater Baltimore area, you don't know what you've been missing...

"Vendors at farmers' markets in Baltimore, Howard and Carroll counties can only sell what they produce or what they make from something they grow, such as soap or baked goods. Goods travel no further than 50 miles to get to market.

The only drawback of shopping at local farmers' markets is you will only find foods that are in season.

"When you go to the markets in May, you won't see corn because corn isn't seasonal in this area until summer," Zimmerman says..."

Read the entire article here.

A new bill signed by Gov. O'Malley lets electric car drivers travel in HOV lanes regardless of how many people are -- or are not -- in the car. It's another incentive to get Marylanders to give up their gas guzzlers.

Here's an excerpt:

"If there was ever a sign the US is taking the whole concept of electric vehicles seriously, it is the recent news the State of Maryland has mandated free access to high-occupancy lanes for plug-in models.

State governor Martin O'Malley (D) has put his signature to a bill that not only gives EV access to HOV lanes, but crucially allows their use regardless of the number of passengers.

That's a pretty important distinction - the whole point of HOVs after all is 'high occupancy' but it sends a clear message that EVs will be given preferential treatment no matter how full.

The EV sector in Maryland will also benefit from fairly generous tax breaks - namely a $2,000 excise motor vehicle credit..."

Read the entire article here.

Ah spring! It's undoubtedly one of the most loved times of the year for those into local produce. What better way to celebrate the coming cornucopia of locally grown goodies than with a celebration of one of the season's first offerings -- asparagus.

Here's an excerpt:

"As the only crunchy vegetable locally harvested this early in the season, it's easy for asparagus to become the center around which meals are built. Perhaps too much for some people, but not for me. Of course, I'm not eating it alone for weeks, but still, I'm eating quite a bit.

If you can't beat them, join them. That seems to be the philosophy behind a Johns Hopkins study seeking to find a solution to Baltimore's "food deserts." Many Baltimore neighborhoods do not have a local grocery store or supermarket that offer healthy eating alternatives to combat the glut of fast food that is available.

Hee-Jung Song, Ph.D., a researcher in the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, is studying whether Baltimore's ubiquitous corner stores, might just be the solution.

Here's an excerpt:

"In Baltimore, corner storeowners increased their stocking, promotion and sales of healthier foods and customers showed a tendency to buy and prepare more fruits and vegetables through one such program.

"Inner-city Baltimore is a 'food desert" with many fast food restaurants and corner stores, but few supermarkets," said lead author Hee-Jung Song, Ph.D., a researcher in the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. "These food environments result in less availability of and accessibility to healthy food and impact on the kinds of food consumed by low-income residents."

The study appears online in the journal Health Promotion Practice.

The Baltimore Healthy Store program provided monetary incentives or free food to store owners, coordinated education about nutrition and developed guidelines for the owners to follow to help overcome language and cultural barriers. This is important, since most corner storeowners in Baltimore are Korean-American, while the customers largely are African-American."

Read the entire article here.

Lawns are so yesterday! Homeowners are going green and converting their lawns from ho-hum grass to a plant lover's paradise with native species.

Here's an excerpt:

"I record my casual gardening observations as I go about converting our boring suburban lawn into a more attractive, diverse and environmentally beneficial landscape. I prefer trees and shrubs to flowers, battle deer and groundhogs regularly but welcome all wildlife, and am always on the lookout for plants that thrive in the mid-Atlantic and for commonsense, inexpensive gardening solutions. I've been a Master Gardener for 10 years but have been gardening one way or another all my adult life . . . and I'm more than a little obsessed with plants."

See the photos here.

Going vegetarian, if only for a day, is a growing trend not just in Baltimore, but around the U.S. Johns Hopkins Hospital recently joined the meatless movement, following in the footsteps of Baltimore City Public Schools.

Here's an excerpt:

"The campaign started in 2003 as a nonprofit public health initiative of The Monday Campaigns, in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore, Maryland.

But aside from the alliteration, why meatless and why Monday?

"Studies suggest we are more likely to maintain behaviors begun on Monday throughout the week," according to the Healthy Monday public health campaign.

Research compiled by the initiative suggests going meatless conserves water, reduces carbon footprints and lowers intake of saturated fats.

"You certainly don't need to eat meat to get protein. Meat is an important part of your diet, but you don't need to eat it every day of the week," Ralph Logiscli, director of the Healthy Monday Project, told CNN.

On April 12, Johns Hopkins Hospital's cafeteria began offering only vegetarian options in its Wellness Corner on Mondays. "If you think chili needs meat, you don't know beans," touts a promotional poster featuring the cafeteria's chef, Shawn Fields.

There are vocal critics.

When Baltimore City Public Schools adopted Meatless Mondays last year as a way to cut costs, conservative commentator Glenn Beck deemed it an indoctrination of children to vegetarianism and veganism and decried it as an over-extension of governmental control."

Read the entire article here.

A law newly passed by the Maryland legislature will enable entrepreneurs to combine their desire to do good works with their responsiblity to their shareholders.


Here's an excerpt:

"Maryland has created a new legal structure -- called a benefit corporation -- for companies that blend business with social and environmental good.

The legislation, signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley, requires that benefit corporations create a positive impact on society and that boards of directors consider how decisions will affect employees, local jurisdictions, and the environment, rather than just looking at shareholders' interests. It also offers board members legal protection for taking social and environmental issues into consideration."

Read the entire post here.

A few years ago, the Contemporary Museum asked an environmental artist, Fritz Haeg, known for his Edible Estates front lawn transformations to come to town and work his magic on a lucky recipient's front yard. Clarence Ridgley was that lucky guy. It was all part of the museum's "Cottage Industries" exhibit. Now, Haeg has included the experience in the new second edition of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn.

Here's an excerpt:

"Here's how it went down: Clarence and Fritz conferred over what types of foods the Ridgleys would like to grow (and eat), Fritz planned the garden and organized the volunteers, then executed the documentation with the help of photographer Leslie Furlong. Haeg acts as kind of a garden party organizer, if you will: he blows into town, gets it going and then leaves. "I just kind of make these gardens happen then disappear. I want the families to feel like they're their gardens, not my gardens."

Read the entire post here.

As more and more drivers consider trading in their gas guzzlers for the more environmentally-friendly alternatives that include models that are fully or partially powered by electricity, a Maryland company, SemaConnect, has created charging stations that can be installed in area hotels, parking garages, etc.

Listen to the interview:

 

Or read the transcript here.

Spurred on by both the growing local sustainability movement and the current economic downturn, home gardens have been springing up all across the country. However, new gardeners find growing their own produce is not as easy as it may seem.

"First-timers typically overlook fundamentals like light, good soil, planting time and proper spacing between plants. Also, "a lot of young people are kind of curious but don't know the time commitment," says Jon Traunfeld, a senior agent with the University of Maryland's Extension service, which assists gardeners in communities statewide. Mr. Traunfeld, who specializes in fruits and vegetables, says the service was hammered with questions, logging in 1,963 phone calls and emails last year, up 47% from the year before.

The city of Baltimore replaced its flower beds in front of city hall with vegetables last year. The goal, says designer Angela Treadwell-Palmer, was to show that vegetable gardens could be attractive and to grow harvests to donate to a local soup kitchen. But the local charity reported that some crops�particularly beets, kohlrabi and eggplant�weren't appetizing to people.

So this year, Ms. Treadwell-Palmer is redesigning the garden to grow bigger yields of fewer crops like cabbage, kale and collard greens. The garden will also have a less-fussy, more minimalist look. And in the spring, at least, not all the beds will be vegetable plots, leaving room for some tulips�and more time for gardeners to breathe. "It was hard work," she says."

Read the entire article here.

Canada and Vermont may have tapped into the motherload of sappy harvests, but did you know that Western Maryland boasts its own sweet harvest?

Here's an excerpt:

"In a few days to weeks, the trees in Western Maryland will start blooming . . . buckets.

As maple syrup season nears, producers in Garrett County are readying their tapping equipment for harvesting time, which runs from the end of this month through April. The sap starts to flow during the spring thaw, when the combination of mineral-rich soil and temperate weather yields exceptionally rich and sweet syrup. (Quick dendrology lesson: Sap is the sugary water that circulates in a tree after it wakes up from a cold winter.)"

Read the full article here.

Looking for local taps? Find it them here.

For Woodberry Kitchen's Spike Gjerde its all about local, local, local. The acclaimed chef shares his passion for getting the freshest produce and seafood.

Watch the video here.