School started yesterday, and with it came a whole new crop of students in my environmental sustainability class. Although I wish the summer was longer, and getting back into the routine is hard (falling…asleep…now), I love the first few days of the semester, when I first start to see kids reaction to the idea of sustainability.

Teens, by nature, don’t have a ton of impulse control. Parents of teens are thinking to themselves, "Well, duh." But seriously, many lack the frontal lobe development to fully consider how their actions impact others. It’s why many make stupid choices.

However, this doesn’t prevent them from grasping the notion that how most Americans live might not be the best way to live. I started our first full day by having the class go through the Earth Day Foundation’s online eco-footprint calculator. This simple test asks participants questions involving such subjects as the size of their home, their eating habits, and their transportation habits. Though far from comprehensive, it’s quick enough that I can get a whole class through, working in small groups, in enough time to tabulate the class average, and the results, though probably not 100% precise, give students a rough idea of the magnitude of how they live.

Not only does the quiz give students a score of approximately how many acres of resources they use, but it roughly calculates "how many planets" it would take to sustain humanity if everyone lived like them. After each student finished the quiz, they came up to the SmartBoard, where I had an Excel file with everyone’s name, and entered their scores, then calculated a class average. On average, if everyone lived like my class, we would need 3.5 planets to sustain us. When I explained what this number meant, the class guiltily looked at each other, particularly those who had high numbers.

"Why is that number a big deal?" I asked.

"There aren’t 3.5 planets," a student volunteered. "Well, there are, but we can only use one. So…" he sheepishly trailed off. The class laughed.

I asked the kids what questions from the quiz surprised them. Remember, most of them are coming in with little prior knowledge of sustainability other than "recycling=good; global warming=bad." The number one concept they didn’t expect was questions about their diet. Why does it matter how much meat I eat? Why does it matter where my food comes from? I explained the them that a lot of resources go into food production, like water and fossil fuels.

"Wait, so it basically takes gas to make our food?" one student asked cautiously. I smiled slyly because I love watching the synapses fire!

"If it’s Twinkies, there might be actual petroleum in your food itself," I countered.

"So what are we gonna do?" another student asked panickedly.

"Well, that’s what this class is about. Getting the number down to one," I said Like a television show, the bell rang.

If you are a brown-bagger (or stylish, reusable bagger), you know that sometimes packing your lunch can be a pain. It’s hard enough for me to make it out the door each morning fully dressed, let alone with a decent meal for later on. It’s easy to fall into a culinary rut that leaves you bored with the same old sandwich. How can you pack an eco-friendly, tasty lunch that is healthy and affordable? It’s easier than you would think. Here are some tips for lunches that will keep both kids and adults happy.

1. Avoid individually-packaged foods. You pay more for the convenience, create more packaging, and, unless you’re eating little packets of carrots or apple slices, are probably eating something processed. Invest in a variety of reusable containers in different sizes so you can buy in bulk, which eliminates packaging waste and saves you money. Do I have to tell you to avoid these?
2. I can’t stress this enough: farmers markets. Raw fruits and veggies, particularly locally-grown, in-season produce, is usually a zero-waste choice that’s completely healthy. Carrots and celery are old standbys, but what about sugar-snap peas, radishes, edamame, cucumber rounds, jicama, cherry potatoes, or bell pepper rings? Peaches, plums, kiwis, cherries, and berries are a sweet treat, and frozen grapes are an awesome twist. Add a dip, such as peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, salsa, hummus, or low-fat dressing, to keep things interesting. Kids love dipping things. Why, I do not know.
3. Put it on a pita. Or a tortilla. Or naan. Tortillas keep longer than regular bread, and can break up the monotony of a normal PB&J or ham and cheese. Wait, what about mini-bagels? Or flatbread? There’s a whole world of bread-like possibilities.
4. What about chips? There are low-fat, whole grain tortilla chips and pita chips, or you can make your own. Hummus, salsa, baba ghanoush, bean dip, or tapenade all work with chips in a lunch.
5. I love salads, but I hate how the dressing gets the lettuce soggy by lunch time. Check out this bad boy, that keeps the dressing separate from the salad in one container. Speaking of salad, translate your favorite salad into a wrap. Try chicken caesar, caprese, or spinach and walnuts.
6. For adults with access to a microwave, soup is a sometimes-forgotten lunchtime food that can provide an almost-endless variety of flavors. Trader Joe’s has a particularly wide selection, and I have yet to be disappointed by any of their concoctions (Roasted Red Pepper is my favorite). Add some crusty bread leftover from last night’s dinner and a piece of fruit, and you have a pretty tempting spread. Your local deli probably sells pints or quarts of soup to take home if you’ve got a local favorite.

Bottom line: lunch doesn’t have to be monotonous, unhealthy, or trash-producing. With little thought before your grocery shopping, you can have delicious, nutritious meals that leave a lighter footprint.

What do you think? What are your favorite packable lunches? Leave your comment below.

I’m a vegetarian, and cook for myself and my husband, who is not a vegetarian. Despite the fact that he’s Italian, sometimes, we get sick of regular pasta. I was excited to I found an awesome Israeli couscous recipe on Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite food blogs, and modified it to fit our tastes and what herbs we had on hand. If you’ve never had it, Israeli couscous, sometimes called pearl couscous, or Middle Eastern couscous as it was labeled in Whole Foods’ bulk aisle, are like little pearls of pasta usually made of semolina. You can add whatever veggies you like, but who can argue with the cherry sungolds at the farmers’ market right now? This dish can also be served warm or room temp, though, to be honest, I couldn’t wait for it to cool down before chowing down.

Israeli Coucous With Roasted Tomatoes

Serves Six

For the roasted tomatoes and dressing

2 pts grape or cherry tomatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs)

3 large garlic cloves, left unpeeled

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup warm water

1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

For the couscous

2 3/4 cups vegetable broth

2 1/4 cups Israeli couscous

1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

handful chopped parsley

handful chopped basil

Roast tomatoes and make dressing:

Preheat oven to 250°F.

Halve tomatoes through stem ends and place, cut sides up, in 1 layer on a baking sheet. Add garlic to pan and roast in middle of oven until tomatoes are slightly shriveled around edges, about 1 hour. Cool in pan on a rack 30 minutes.

Peel garlic and purée with oil, water, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and 1/2 cup roasted tomatoes in a blender until dressing is very smooth.

Make couscous:

Bring broth to a boil in a saucepan and stir in couscous, then simmer, uncovered, 6 minutes. Cover pan and remove from heat. Let stand 10 minutes.

Spread couscous in 1 layer on a baking sheet and cool 15 minutes.

Transfer couscous to a serving bowl and stir in remaining ingredients, dressing, roasted tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste.

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I’ve got food on the brain these days. Who can blame me? The farmers markets are teeming with a variety produce at the height of their flavor. I wrote Tuesday on some of my favorite food blogs where I glean recipes to test out in my kitchen. But what about those days when I don’t feel like cooking, when it’s too hot to fire up the stove, when I just don’t have much in the fridge? What about special occasions? Going out to eat, particularly for a special meal with good wine and a group of friends, is a treat I look forward to. But how to find greener options? In a word: local.

Local restaurants are more likely to use local ingredients (read: less food miles), cook seasonally (again, less food miles), and invest in the local community. In fact, local restaurants often partner with farmers markets for cooking demos or classes. I see one of the chefs of my favorite local restaurant at a farmers market every Saturday, checking out produce and talking to farmers.

Here in St Louis, along with several other cities in the US, there’s another incentive to dine locally: the DineOriginals program. Started by independent restauranteurs looking to promote their restaurants in the face of expanding chains, DineOriginals offers a rewards program for diners, and a fairly decent one at that: for every $150 you spend at DineOriginals restaurants, you earn a $10 credit. For my husband and I, it’s not hard to earn credits, particularly since our, ahem, local microbrewery participates. It’s free to join, you can sign up at any participating restaurant, and a no-brainer for those of us who try to eat local anyway. See if your city participates, and find a list of restaurants, here.

America is becoming a land of foodies. From the popularity of the Food Network and shows like Bravo’s Top Chef, to the popularity of cooking gear stores like Sur La Table and Williams Sonoma, more and more of us are finding out how sublime and satisfying preparing and eating dishes at home can be. Just yesterday I lingered over a bowl of perfectly-ripe tomatoes from the farmers market, dressed simply with extra-virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, purple basil from my garden, and a little bit of grated parmesano-reggiano cheese.

My favorite part of the foodie-fueled kitchen craze? Food blogs. I love the democracy of blogging, the connecting with people passionate about cooking, the recipes tested by real! live! people!, and the sumptuous photos of prepared dishes. There’s a ton of food blogs out there, so many that it can be quite overwhelming. For those of us in the know about how our diets impact our environment, there is a thriving community of online bloggers focusing on vegetarian, vegan, organic, seasonal, and local foods. We’ve got great recipes coming from our writers every weekend, but if you’re looking to expand, check out my favorite in greener-eating blogs.

Mighty Foods
According to their site, Mighty Foods is about "natural foods, organic ingredients, fair-trade products, veg-friendly recipes, sustainable farming, whole grains, organic wines, ingredient spotlights, news, profiles, reviews, gift ideas, new product information, culinary travel ideas, studies and trends - information and inspiration, all wrapped up in one food-loving bundle." It’s a mouthful, but it’s a comprehensive blog with information about all areas. A great starting point for food blogs that is updated often.

What The Hell Does A Vegan Eat Anyway
These are the gourmands of the vegan world. If you’re really into food, here’s where you get vegan ideas. Full of gorgeous photos, the recipes can be skeleton, but this is a great site to be inspired by vegan cuisine.

VeganYumYum
Again with the mouth-watering photos! Lolo’s blog features recipes for a variety of vegan dishes from a wide range of cuisines.

Vegetarian Cookster
Chronicling the life of a vegetarian who is trying to experiment more with vegan and vegetarian cooking, this candid blog highlights quality food that amateurs can prepare without fear.

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World
Finally, if anyone needs any convicing that vegan foods, particularly vegan baking, can be devastatingly, addictively tasty, look no further than Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero’s Vegan Cupcakes blog. I can’t say enough good things about the recipes from the authors of a cookbook of the same name, and I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of cupcakes. Great links, too.

Image courtesy of the Wakarusa Music Festival

More and more buzz is being generated in the music industry about artists greening up concerts and venues greening their practices. I was able to see some of this first hand while spending four days at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival in Lawrence, KS, this past weekend.

Lured by the temptation of such acts as Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, Son Volt, Yonder Mountain String Band, Widespread Panic, and my personal favorite, the John Butler Trio, my husband and I set out for an extended weekend of camping and concerts approximately 45 minutes west of Kansas City at Clinton Lake State Park. We were pleased to find multiple efforts at sustainability from the moment we got to the venue.

When driving into the park, after receiving our wristbands from festival organizers, volunteers handed us two plastic bags: a clear bag for trash and a green bag for recyclables. Dubbed "Recycalusa" Wakarusa's recycling efforts extended to glass, aluminum, cardboard, and plastic. Wakarusa even urged festival-goers to bring canned beverages, not bottled, because the market for glass recycling was far smaller in Lawrence than for aluminum. There was a Recycalusa booth where festival-goers could take their green bags, sort their recycling, and win prizes such as band merch.

For those who didn't want to head to the booth (like us), campers could place both green and clear bags on the "corner" of their respective campgrounds, and Waka volunteers would pick up both recycling and trash. There were also recycling bins everywhere in the venue: 240, according to festival organizers, clearly marked for trash, plastic, aluminum, and glass. New Belgium Brewery, sustainability leaders in the beer industry, and sponsors of the festival, exclusively sold beer at the venue, and encouraged drinkers to reuse the plastic cups the beer was sold in.

Waka organizers began offsetting the energy costs of the festival in 2006 through the Bonneville Environmental Foundation's partnership with Zephyr Energy, which features a mix of low-impact hydro and wind power projects ( I know some of you are already shaking your head at the idea of offsets–keep reading). This year, organizers were able to eliminate about 40% of their total energy costs by eliminating one of the main stages. Festival patrons could also offset their travel to Lawrence by purchasing wind tags offered by Zephyr Energy.

Food vendors offered more veggie options than any other event like this that I have been to. There was an amazing Lawrence restaurant, Local Burger, that had veggie burgers, beef, buffalo, and elk burgers, and numerous other outstandingly delicious meals all locally sourced, yet reasonably priced (best veggie burger of my life, if you must know). Indian, Chinese, and Mexican-themed vendors all provided numerous meat-free meals. Most vendors made a special effort to use packaging that could be recycled at the festival.

Perhaps my favorite part of the sustainability efforts at Wakarusa was the Sustainability Symposium. Featuring such individuals as Big Coal author Jeff Goodell, Land Institute president Dr. Wes Jackson, and Director of Sustainability for New Belgium Nic Theisen, we spent almost three hours listening to six individuals discuss energy and sustainability, policy and ecology, music and beer. I'll be writing about this at-length on Thursday.

There were a few disappointments over the weekend (other than Saturday night's rain). Despite the obvious efforts of Waka organizers to make recycling just as convenient as regular trash, I was heartbroken to see how few patrons took advantage of recycling. There was also some confusion on the location and time of the different sustainability speakers, some of whom only spoke for a few minutes. I was also under the impression (from Waka's website) that all packaging from Waka food vendors had to be either recyclable or compostable, but that was not the case. All in all, though, the disappointment I had was mainly because people weren't taking advantage of the sustainability efforts of the concert. And the music, most definitely, was well worth the drive.

Eaten in a school cafeteria lately? Chances are you'll be dining on processed, reheated food that helps tiny school lunch budgets stretch their pennies. In an attempt to make lunches healthier and more sustainable, the state of Oregon is taking significant steps towards increasing the amount of local food that goes into public school lunches.

One legislative bill, awaiting Gov. Ted Kulongoski's signature, that will limit caloric, sugar, and fat content of foods sold in vending machines and school stores. Three more bills currently being debated that would promote, among other things, utilizing food from Oregon farmers, bakeries, and other processors. HB 3476 allocates seven cents per meal served in Oregon public schools to incorporate Oregon agricultural products. HB 3307 creates a Farm to School program within the Oregon Deparment of Agriculture, and HB 3185 awards mini-grants to schools creating gardens and other agriculture/food-based learning. The three bills would cost the state approximately $10 million.

Because public school cafeteria budgets are often strained (at best), many cafeterias rely on fatty, salty, and sugary products that students will pay a premium for to boost their budgets. This is particularly true in Oregon, which is one of a handful of states that does not supplement the National School Lunch and Breakfast program with state dollars. Incorporating local food puts less-processed foods on the table for students, promoting a healthier diet than chicken nuggets and pizza.

Utilizing local producers also cuts down on fuel use/costs, provides fresher, better tasting produce, and boosts local economies by forging steady partnerships between school districts and local agriculture. For example, in the Bend-La Pine School District, students eat blueberries, strawberries and cantaloupe from the local 25-acre Happy Harvest Farms. In Gresham, blueberries, broccoli and milk come from Portland-area farms.

There are downsides. Using local produce can cost more, and that cost will likely be passed onto the students despite the state's possible additional funding. And the amount of local food being used in only a fraction of the food being fed to schoolchildren. But it's a step in the right direction for healthier kids and creating a more sustainable food system.

The Oregonian

My problem with The Lazy Environmentalist, green radio host Josh Dorfman's self-proclaimed "guide to easy, stylish, green living" isn't that it lacks information. It's actually a quite comprehensive guide to supporting green companies. I dog-eared multiple pages so I could visit websites of the companies in which I was interested. But it's not so much a guide to green living as it's a guide to green buying. I guess the tone set forth from the brief introduction rubbed me the wrong way:

These innovators make it easy for us to integrate environmental awareness into our lives. They understand that while so many of us are concerned about the environment, we don't always have the time, energy, or inclination to do something about it.

I only wish this was written in a less-than-serious voice. In my mind, if you don't have the "time, energy, or inclination" to do something about the environment, than you can hardly classify yourself as an environmentalist. You are looking to alleviate guilt for your conspicuous consumption, a culture of consumption that is devastating our planet. It's exactly the "culture of convenience" that's waging all-out war on our resources. Consider this passage from the chapter on cars:

There really is something for everyone–even those who drive Hummers, the most colossal of all urban assault vehicles…By offsetting the carbon dioxide emissions spewing from your car's tailpipe, TerraPass offers Hummer drivers eco-salvation.

Eco-salvation for Hummer drivers? A little too, oh, oxymoronic, for my tastes. Lazy is definitely geared towards a more high-end clientele, despite it's mention of Wal-Mart as an organic clothing retailer (Yeah, I know what you are thinking…I can't trust them quite yet, either).

Stepping off of my soapbox, for those of us who do have time, energy, and inclination to do something to lighten our footprint still have to buy goods and services, and Lazy provides a well-laid, well-written plan to finding greener versions of those goods and services. If you have to spend money, you might as well spend it on more sustainable products, right?

There are 22 chapters focusing on different products and services, from home furnishing to energy providers to media outlets (what, no shout out for Green Options?) Each chapter begins with a narrative insight into what practices these eco-companies are establishing to go green, then lists several companies, along with their websites and a brief description of what their business does or produces. Reading about different design innovations companies are using was fascinating (BraveSpace's hollow bamboo tables, anyone?), and I'll definitely check out many of the websites listed. If I'm going to save the planet, though, I've got better things to do.

Is there a more eco-friendly way to package milk besides plastic jugs and gable-top cartons? A UK company seems to think so. Greenbottle is a new two-part milk packaging system that was recently test-piloted in Asda supermarkets during a one-week trial. The bottles quickly sold out.

Designed by Martin Myerscough from Framlingham, Suffolk, the bottle consists of a pulped recycled cardboard outer (think cardboard egg cartons) and a corn-based bioplastic bag liner. After the milk is gone, the bioplastic bag can be removed and composted, and the outer shell can be recycled or composted.

The UK produces over 3 million metric tons of plastic waste each year, of which only 7% is recycled. The vast majority of plastic ends up in landfills.

During the test run, the milk in Greenbottle's jugs cost the same as milk in traditional containers, although the packaging cost the company 30% more to produce, although they expect that margin to drop significantly as the packaging's distribution expands.

Any in-season eater will tell you that spring has officially sprung when the asparagus show up at the local farmers markets. Here in the Midwest, asparagus is often one of the few veggies ready when farmers markets open in the spring. Not only are they tasty, but they are low in calories and high in nutrients such as folic acid, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and potassium. This is a simple, yet sublime preparation that will showcase the flavor of this phenomenal veggie.

Balsamic Asparagus

• 1 lb fresh asparagus spears, washed and ends trimmed
• 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. On baking sheet or in baking dish, drizzle asparagus with olive oil, then toss with salt and pepper to taste.

3. Roast in oven for ten minutes, then drizzle with vinegar. Return to oven, roast 2-3 more minutes, until spears are bright green and "popping" in the oven. Spears should still have crunch.

Tip: Asparagus will tell you where the ends should be trimmed. Just bend in half gently–wherever the spear snaps is where you should trim. Compost the ends or add them to a veggie stock.