Rather than letting excess produce go to a landfill, this California startup has started collecting food waste from agricultural companies in order to preserve the fruits and veggies as dried snacks.
The company sources food waste from production facilities, meaning that all its products don’t require any new agriculture and can help cut down on our massive food waste problem.
“Food waste is the #1 item in landfills, making it the 3rd largest source of methane behind China and the US if it were ranked as a country. The more food we can all prevent from being wasted, the less additional growing capacity and resources we need to bring online in feeding an increasing global population.”
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/companies-send-excess-produce-to-be-dried-into-snacks/
Hope for a world that needs food sources that also help the environment These icky little creatures can munch through garbage and convert it to protein and compost while lowering carbon footprint. But they need to disguise it before anyone will eat it.
Amusing side note re: maggots. When I was young, many of my friends would go back to Italy to visit family. One of the things that one or two of my friends liked to smuggle back was a special cheese from their parents' village, near Campobasso. What made the cheese special was that it had maggots on/in it. I remember hearing them tapping on the brown paper bag my friend kept it in. Yes, I tasted it, but I made my friend serve me - it was customary to brush the maggots off and spread it on a piece of italian bread. It was stinky, for sure, but not rotten. I suspect now that the maggots actually had a disinfectant quality that matured and preserved the cheese.
I only know the dialect name for it, in case anyone else has heard of it: "Caciobundu"
So this idea is very much a "back to the future" approach.
You have to see this to believe it. I'm still smiling as I write this and will go back and watch it again and again. Researchers have found that cockatoos can be creative. This one has created a bunch of amazing dance moves.
A few years ago I touring an aviary in Florida somewhere when I noticed this enormous yellow cockatoo perched on a branch high above me. As I stared at him or her, she began descending down the brach towards me. To my amazement, she continued all the way up to me and then just nuzzled me. It was so adorable. I think he or she knew I needed a hug.
I like to post about good news because I feel the stories bring some light into our world. They can inspire us and remind us that even when things seem dark, there are light workers at work, making a difference.
Today I thought I would post this wonderful interview with heart warrior Jane Goodall. She is a true light worker and continues to inspire people from around the globe. And, well, her name is ACTUALLY filled with "good". I also love her Roots and Shoots programs.
:D
https://www.dw.com/en/the-biggest-problem-is-greed-says-conservationist-jane-goodall/a-49556942-0
Not the typical type of good news I normally post but it is good news.
Tonight my 20 year old daughter and I were walking our dog in the Colorado mountains while on vacation. He needed one last potty break before bed. We took the trail to the left of our building, near the forest, a little bit more remote than the pathway by the pool which we usually take at night.. That was the direction the dog chose and we followed his lead. He stopped at a lamppost by some grass and was would not stop sniffing the grass. He was VERY interested in whatever had been there before he arrived. As we made our return and rounded the corner of the building, directly in front of us rounding the opposite corner was a HUGE black bear heading toward us. He/she took up the width of the entire walkway and starred straight at us . 40 feet or so separated us. I don't know who was more startled, me or the bear. Our dog didn't see him and my daughter was 10 feet behind me, not yet rounding the corner and didn't see him either. After staring at each other for a second, the bear quickly turned the other way and disappeared behind the building again. After he disappears, I then yelled "OH My God" and ran the opposite direction, but only about 20 feet because any further and I would be running into a dark forest. My daughter said she knew it must have been a bear even before I tyelled bear to her.
We were now back the lamppost where the dog had been sniffing ( my guess would be a big black bear trail/ footprint). Getting back into the building was tricky because we had to go within 15 feet of where the bear was last seen and we couldn't see past that corner where he disappeared. We didn't know where he went. We came up with a plan A and a plan B. Plan A was to open a door to a stairwell closest to us but we didn't know if the door would be locked from the outside. Plan B was to enter the double doors which we knew would be unlocked, but were closer to where the bear had been. We decided on trying plan A but alas the door was locked from the outside. So we went for plan B and made it. No bear encounter.
So that is my good news story. The good news? The bear is safe, we are safe and the dog had the common sense or good fortune to lead us away from the trail the bear was on when we began the walk. It could have been much more scary had we originally gone the direction the bear ended up coming from.
Oh my goodness Lovendures! What a story and event. Growing up in Alaska bears were a danger we kept in our awareness. We were taught the grasped hands behind our neck and curl into a ball if attacked like most kids have fire drills but more importantly to stay aware and away. You did well really, as did the bear and dog in harmony to have it all go so well.
Now, everyone is taught to make themselves big as in hands outstretched to the sides it they are looking at us, but yelling like crazy, banging metal things if farther away. And most hikers have to carry bear spray.
With that said, just a year or two ago a young teen lost his life in a huge group endurance run up and down a mountain in Anchorage. Running up exhausted him so he rested longer than the others heading back down, lost his way and a bear feeling threatened killed him. A very different deeply sad to all kind of ending.
Bears are quite dangerous and avoiding them and heading away as fast as you can no doubt kept him from feeling threatened.
But it's a wonderful and positive story of a good and positive outcome as well as a true blessing of grace and mercy that you were all safe.
Best stories, best possible ending there is. You'll never forget this encounter that's for sure.
Seeing a bear in animal symbology or animal medicine is receiving the gift of introspection. Bear seeks honey or the sweetness of truth and then enters her womb-cave to digest it.
To attune yourself to the bear energies you enter the energies of the Eternal Mother abd receive nourihment from the Great Void where all answers lie in harmony. This place is often known as the Dream Lodge where one sits in council and seeks answers from the harmony of inner knowing. Seeing beyond the smokescreen of the teepee and the illusions of this world into that of another visionary one.
How wonderful your daughter combined her energy with yours and brought out your mother instincts to a deeper and more receptice energy now. (Your pineal gland is the physical symbol for this summoning by bear energy also known as the cave of Brahma.)
Bear has symbolically invited you to enter the mystical silence of the dream lodge/cave and as a positive you have entered a rite of initition into greater introspective wisdom. Dream your dreams sweet lady and own them and your own power of sweet wisdom.
So glad you are all safe, Lovendures. Thanks for telling us your story.
Today was a lovely day and I wanted to share.
We live up in the cascades, so hiking is a common hobby for a lot of us PNW folks. Today, I took this kids and my sister up to a lake in the middle of nowhere. Oddly enough, we don't hike very often. Why?
As we walked the trail, winding through the woods, we passed many people - young, old, many with dogs, babies in backpacks... and everytime we passed, everyone would say, "hello! Happy trails!" Or "how is the lake, is it beautiful?" It became so routine to meet and greet that even my kids got into the kind gestures. Every person was smiling and so relaxed.
After our hour hike in, the woods cleared and there before my eyes was the most breathtaking glacier lake with a background of sheer cliff mountain as high as my head could lean back. It was silent except for the sound of birds and little kid giggles. The sound of the gentle lake ripples and the sun reflecting on the water filled my heart with such peace.
My takeaways:
1) first time in a long time I brought my camera as a photographer for pleasure instead of income...and I remembered why I started in the first place.
2) My babies, my life....enjoyed a day as close to mother earth as you can get. I felt them center and relax, to see the small things and find awe in nature.
3) People are kind. There's a white flag we hold up when the general need to be one with nature forces us to put our shoes on and seek simplicity. Away from the noise, away from the constant engulfing emotional response of society.
4) I came home and felt.... recharged. Today was a beautiful day. Life is busy and loud. I forget easily how important it is to remove and ground myself from time to time.
I'm so lucky to live on this earth. She still knows how to take care of us. She's truly a mother... silently waiting, allowing you to explore your boundaries...and when it's time to come home, she's waiting with open arms and loving comfort. ❤
This is so beautiful, Periwinkle10! Thank you for sharing that. What a rejuvenating experience. I can feel it through your post.
ap news fact check actually helped me feel way better today. I actually felt myself tune in to my own grounded feelings and that was deeply settling for me as I spend most of my day and days in that state as I work on horses and listen to them graze together encouraging the feelings of being a herd at peace and tuned to the natural hum of connectedness in the world around them. It helped me gain my own equilibrium and so I wanted to pass that along to everyone here. Thank you for the support with the happy stories.
I love this story that happened last week. These four DC boys not only saved a child on an Ireland beach in a miraculous rescue from an almost certain drowning but the rescue happened on the anniversary of their own great uncle’s drowning in Ireland. Dee-do dee-doo!
Oh, Jeanne, that is so wonderfully, absolutely perfectly amazing. Time, place, anniversary of the uncles death and all 4 boys champion swimmers!
Wow wow wow.
Cue the music, indeed!
I wasn't sure where to post this, but I was struck by the power of this image of a teen girl sitting peacefully, reading the Russian Constitution in protest with a backdrop of riot police: https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/world/olga-misik-how-teenage-girl-reading-constitution-in-front-of-putins-riot-police-became-a-symbol-of-russian-resistance/ar-AAF8HLL?fbclid=IwAR2_i2ODSsqGEEHHyL8ma88s8-w5857lv-_gAtC5BWO8sjyBevPCs5uGgy8
First, I can't help but think of the predictions about how our youth will make the world a better place. Even in the darkest of places we see a light standing up for democracy. I would never suggest to avoid feeling angry or fearful, but there is room for hope within the swirl of chaos of the changes now.
While we have always tried to follow the principles of reduce/reuse/recycle long before those concepts came into the collective, we also lament the strange ignorance or laziness that is so prevalent in a wasteful society that often seems to go out of its way to deliberately.even unconscionably waste enormous amounts of materials and goods on massive levels that almosts seems to denigrate all of the good we do on our own comparativy minute level.
I applauded and shared organizations finding ways to use and share excess foods, materials, resources etc by starting this topic and am grateful to many here for keeping the topic going when i could not.
So when megalithic Amazon started a program to reuse their boxes by putting donatable items inside and returning them to Amazon postage free for donation to Goodwill, i thought hurrah for that.
And when they just announced this latest program and it came up in my newsfeed I knew i had to share-- even if its a mega company wiping out smaller ones all over America.
"Amazon launches FBA Donations program for unsold inventory"
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/14/amazon-launches-fba-donations-program-for-unsold-inventory.html
I said Hurrah! again but I remind everyone that we need to continue to be the little good guys at every level personslly and professionally in our own small or big business ways to do the same.
Yesterday, a family member was at the transfer station where usables are put in one pile, recyclables in another, and outdated or no longer computer etc.parts put into another for recycling in many ways.
The last area was the garbage dump, itself. There he saw a large delivery truck from a company business that uses a lot of very nice, replaced every few years, office furniture (desks, couches, chairs, lamps) looking not just perfectly reusable but far nicer and of better quality than what most of us can afford or have in our homes--dumping their entire load into the garbage dump, getting rid of perfectly, beautiful furniture by dumping all of it right into the filthy, waste of garbage!!
?
I applaud Amazon and anyone who tries to do better and be better for whatever reason but remind us all that we need to begin at home, in our businesses we own or be bringing attention in any and all ways we can (even in this forum) that we can all do better and be better by thinking of others and asking why do we do what we do and how can we change those old practices to do better?
At least Amazon tries and that's so much better than not trying at all.....
Thank you so much for posting the link about the Russian teen protester. That is a very powerful photo and the article will stick with me for some time. She will need a lot of light and prayers sent her way. So courageous and inspiring.
@michele-b-here-in-the-forum
I do agree with you. I am very glad Amazon is taking this step. What amazes me is that the were destroying the inventory previously. I can't imagine that. Your furniture dump story is the same thing. What is the world are they thinking? Let's hope more sanity prevails.
In Arizona, there is a wonderful organization called Market on the Move. It is an offshoot of The 3000 Club. It collects produce and food from growers and distributers that would go to waste and allows people to purchase 60 pounds for 10 dollars. The hope is that it can be shared with those who are in need. They often have organic produce as well. There are also prepared food items from major companies and they have a have a some new household products which are sold for a deep discount as well. They have 3 main permanent centers as well as produce only stands which move to different locations through out the month. It is a true blessing for so many and is an example of what we should be doing.
The story you posted about the 17 year old girl is beautiful and poignant. I am going to save it and cherish that photo. https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/world/olga-misik-how-teenage-girl-reading-constitution-in-front-of-putins-riot-police-became-a-symbol-of-russian-resistance/ar-AAF8HLL?fbclid=IwAR2_i2ODSsqGEEHHyL8ma88s8-w5857lv-_gAtC5BWO8sjyBevPCs5uGgy8
Well, I'm posting about another teen standing up to the elite in power: Greta Thunberg. She's on her way to North America & then will head to Brazil (in a solar powered yacht). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/14/greta-thunberg-sets-sail-plymouth-climate-us-trump?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR1phOTsBslGz2sA2RvBk-hlgE6iMuuYhr5wmRRVKuet_Bmo79TkMe_eKWk
I'm hoping you will join me in praying for this brave young woman--for her safety and that her message will be heard by those in power to take action, and that we will continue to see minds and hearts opened and more action to work against the causes of the climate crisis.
Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise youth movement (and others) fit the predictions about youth rising up to work to solve the problems of our era. I hope you all see more of this in your visions! ❤️ Today I start a new year teaching college students and I've centered the course theme on the environment. I'll be showing her "The House Is on Fire" speech and encouraging them to use the power of their voices to speak out on issues that matter to them. Most of the students I see already care deeply about "being the change" and they give me hope.