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I have yet to meet a kid who does not like pizza. So it’s no wonder that pizza is the ultimate family favorite and easy dinner fallback. According to American Heritage Magazine, 93% of Americans eat pizza at least once a month. That’s pretty much right on target around my house, maybe even a bit more if work and school schedules get hectic. With all that pizza, I couldn't help but wonder if I was serving up the most eco-friendly pie. Here's how to green your pizza:
DIY It: If it’s a distance to your local pizza place, make your own pizza at home. (Better yet, let your kids make it.) You'll save money on the pie and on the gas (not to mention saving the planet)
Plan It: O.K., I know pizza delivery is tempting, but unless your favorite spot delivers their pizza by bike or hybrid, avoid these unnecessary driving miles by picking up your pizza on the way home from school or work.
Order It: Speaking of pizza places that delivery by bike or hybrid, each of these pizzerias are going the extra mile to go green, (using organic ingredients, eco-friendly cleaners, recycled products, and in some cases…bikes and hybrids for deliveries.) So if you’re lucky enough to live near one, be sure to stop in for some planet-saving pizza.
Pizza Fusion: With a motto like “Saving the Earth One Pizza at a Time,” you just know you can feel good about the pizza at Pizza Fusion. There are currently 22 Pizza Fusion locations across the U.S. Check out their site to see if there’s one near you.
Galactic Pizza: Galactic Pizza serves up “Pizza with a Conscience” in uptown Minneapolis.
Amici’s Pizza: Amici’s Pizza in Berkley, Michigan recently received green restaraunt certification from the Green Restaurants Association.
Veg It: Stick with cheese and veggies when dressing up your pizza. These ingredients are healthier for you and for the planet. (For more info, check out this old post on the environmental impact of eating beef.)
Recycle It: Your cardboard pizza box is recyclable, but only if it’s clean. Grease/cheese/sauce covered cardboard really shouldn’t get tossed in with the recyclables as it could contaminate the whole lot, so tear those sections off and recycle the rest.
Reuse It: Pizza boxes make excellent craft (and unusual) craft supplies. Here are a few cool ideas to try:
Portfolio: Use pizza boxes to store your child’s art projects. The size is perfect for holding all sizes of artwork and it fits neatly under the bed. (Let kids jazz them up with stickers, markers, recycled paper, cut outs from old magazines, and paints. )
Got more pizza box craft ideas or know of another eco-friendly pizza joint? Share your ideas here...
Whether you have the kids in tow or you are heading out for a much needed reprieve, eating out can be a fun break from the usual hum-drum of the home kitchen. But eating out also gives you less control of what you will eat and how it will be served. Here's how to eat out the green parenting way.
Go Local: Keep the location in mind when you select a venue for your meal. Choose a spot that's close to home to minimize driving. If possible, walk, take public transportation, or ride your bike and you will save time, money, and traffic/parking frustration.
Eat Your Greens: Patronize restaurants that use local and organic foods in their selections. Check with your favorite restaurant to find out if they incorporate healthier “green” foods into their recipes. Check out the Eat Well Guide for a list of restaurants that use local, sustainable ingredients.
Go Veggie: If you have a choice, go for a vegetarian selection. A vegetarian meal is better for your health and that of the environment, and it is often one of the cheaper items on the menu. And it may just give you a creative new meal idea to try at home.
B.Y.O.P (Bring Your Own Place Setting) Sometimes you can't always control where you will be eating. If you know you will be headed to a restaurant that uses paper napkins or plastic silverware, consider bringing your own reusable napkins and silverware from home to minimize waste. Sure, you may get a few odd looks. But any parent who has ever taken their child to a restaurant should be used to these looks by now. Greener Take Out: If you decide to abandon the restaurant setting and get your order to go, ask that your food be packaged in as few boxes/bags as possible. Also ask the restaurant to forgo the usual wad of napkins, plastic utensils, and unnecessary condiments.
Mornings in my house revolve around a frenzy of food. Between preparing breakfast for my girls (they are on a cinnamon toast kick) to packing their lunches (PB&J, carrots, and applesauce), and taking a stab at defrosting what we will have for dinner, it seems almost surreal to me that outside my home, throughout my town, my country, and certainly throughout the world, there are mothers who will not be able to feed their children today.
It is heartbreaking and it is humbling.
Lest you think that hunger is a social issue and not an environmental issue, remember, many environmental problems such as air pollution, water pollution, and genetically engineering livestock and crops are the direct result of our desire to feed people in need.
And it’s pointless to beg people to recycle or install a CFL lightbulb when their only thoughts are on feeding their children.
So parent to parent…let’s go green this year by making sure that other parents have the food they need for themselves and their children. Here’s how:
- Go Local: Contact your local food bank, soup kitchen, or church to find out what you can do to help. Donate non-perishable items, distribute flyers, organize pantry shelves, or volunteer to serve.
- Get Clicking: It’s easy to become jaded and think that the money you donate will simply get lost in an administrative slush pile. But there are charities out there that are really making a difference by getting food and funds into the hands of the people who need them. Here are a few worth checking out:
Meals on Wheels: Meals on Wheels organizations provide hot meals (either at local community centers or by delivery) to elderly, homebound, and disabled folks in need throughout the country. Check out their website to donate or find a program near you. Target Hunger: Target Hunger aims to alleviate hunger in inner-city neighborhoods. They distribute about 3 million pounds of food each month to families in need in addition to offering courses in nutrition, self-esteem, English-As-A-Second Language, adult literacy, math and job search workshops.  Heifer International: Give a man a fish and he’ll have food for today. Teach him to fish and he’ll have food for life. That’s the idea behind the programs at Heifer, International. This organization provides farm animals to the world’s hungry so that they can have something to eat today, as well as hope for the future. Heifer’s recipients also become future donors, as they pledge to donate their animal’s offspring to another family in need.
- Get Your Kids Involved: After all, we teach our children from an early age that it’s important to share. What better way to walk the walk than to show them how sharing benefits kids in their community and in their world.
Photo of child eating corn courtesy of Radharadhya dPhoto of child and goat courtesy of Heifer International
 Nothing says "Happy Halloween" like a pumpkin. Whether it's carved or painted, spooky or silly, a pumpkin is a tried and true symbol of the Halloween festivities. They are ridiculously versatile...you can use them as decorations, as side dishes, and even as inspiration for your costume. And growing pumpkins is even good for the environment. According to a report from the Royal Military College of Canada, pumpkins have the ability to remove toxic DDT from the soil. So do something good for the planet and go get some pumpkins!
Here's how to Green Your Halloween and have a Jack-O-Lantern full of eco-friendly fun with pumpkins.
- Go Local: Buy your pumpkins (as well as apples and other seasonal produce) from your local pumpkin farm or farmer's market to save energy and resources that would otherwise be used for shipping, packaging, and transportation.
- Use It All: If you carve your pumpkin, be sure to save the seeds. Pumpkin seeds can be baked and served as a special treat at home or at your next Halloween gathering. You can also feed them (dry or wet) to the birds and squirrels in your yard. Some zoos even accept pumpkin seed donations for their animals.
- Compost: When the holiday has past and your pumpkin begins to look a little wilted, be sure to give him a proper "burial" in your compost pile.
I recently wrote about the exploits of Manny Howard, who attempted to grow all of the food he needed for his family of four in his 20 x 40 foot Brooklyn backyard. And while Manny's experiment went beyond the limits of extreme, it was indicative of the growing national trend to eat locally.
Eating locally is not a new idea, in fact, the opposite is true. When my grandmother wanted tomatoes in the winter, she reached into her cupboard and opened a jar that she canned over the summer. It never would have crossed her mind to order tomatoes from Israel for her holiday menu. Yet today, my local grocery store gives me access to any type of produce I want, regardless of the season or my locality. And this access comes at a hefty price to the environment.
According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, "the vast majority of energy used in the U.S. food system (around 80 percent) goes to processing, packaging, transporting, storing, and preparing food."
In 2001, the Leopold Center created a paper called "Food, Fuel and Freeways," that tracked the distance that 30 items of produce travelled to get to the average Iowans table. According to the Leopold Center, "fresh produce transported to Iowa consumers under the current conventional food system travels longer distances, uses more fuel, and releases more CO2 than the same quantity of produce transported in a local or Iowa-based regional food system." Check out the following graphic to see a summary of their results*.
So what does all of this mean for you and your family? It means that you need to think twice about the foods you choose to bring home from the store. Even produce that is grown organically will cause unnecessary environmental damage if it must be flown from overseas, or trucked across the country to get to your kitchen table. Here are a few great ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your next meal:
- Check out Sustainable Table for a state-by-state list of seasonal produce availability. It's a great opportunity to teach your kids about the types of foods that grow in your area and the seasons they prefer to grow in.
- Talk to your school officials about the Farm To School Program that benefits local farmers while providing fresh fruits and vegetables to schools.
- Plan a 100-mile party with your friends; a potluck where you all bring dishes prepared with foods found within 100 miles of your home.
* Information for this chart is based on the weighted average source distance, a single distance figure that combines information on distances from production source to consumption or purchase endpoint. For these calculations, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service arrival data for 1998 were used to identify production origin (state or country). Distances from production origin to Chicago were estimated by using a city located in the center of each state as the production origin, and then calculating a one-way road distance to Chicago using the Internet site Mapquest (mapquest.com). Estimations do not include distance from the Chicago Terminal Market to point of retail sale. Source: Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, "Food, Fuel and Freeways" by Rich Pirog, Timothy Van Pelt, Kamyar Enshayan and Ellen Cook. Graphics by Matt Miller.
Skip the beef at dinner tonight and opt for a veggie meal instead. A vegetarian diet is not only healthier for you, it is also better for the environment. The production of beef makes more of an impact on the environment than any other type of food. According to a report produced by the World Wildlife Fund, more pasture is used for cattle than all other domesticated animals and crops combined. Cattle also eat an increasing proportion of grain produced from agriculture, are one of the most significant contributors to water pollution, and are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. The average American eats roughly 4 servings of beef each week. So hold the beef at dinner tonight and you can reduce your environmental impact by 25%.
Now, I know it can be difficult enough to get your kids to eat veggies as a side dish. If you tell them their dinner is “vegetarian,” you risk an all-out mutiny. But it’s easier than you think to pull off a vegetarian meal. Cheese pizza is popular with kids of all ages, and the same goes for mac and cheese, bean burritos, or spaghetti with a yummy marinara.
If dinner is a hit and you decide to take things one step further, consider taking PETA's "Pledge To Be Veg" for 30 days. Sign up at their website and they'll send you an email loaded with recipes and tips for going veggie. Check out their "Chew On This" video below for 30 reasons to go vegetarian. (Please note...THIS VIDEO IS VERY GRAPHIC. IT IS NOT FOR CHILDREN OR FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.)
Watch more videos at PETA.org
Just a few years ago, the organic section in my small town grocery store was limited to a dated funky looking package of tofu and a few dried up herbs. Now, organic foods are all over the store, from coffee, to eggs, to salad dressing. Organic foods are produced without all of the chemicals and genetically modified ingredients that are common in traditionally produced foods, so they are bound to be better for your health and that of the environment. But if you can't afford to go whole hog (so to speak) and purchase everything with an organic label, use these tips to decide out when to buy organic and when to pass.
Buy Organic
- Fruits and Veggies: Foods such as apples, bell peppers, celery, cherries, imported grapes, lettuce, nectarines, peaches, peanut butter, pears, potatoes, red raspberries, spinach, and strawberries use and retain the most chemical pesticides.
- Baby Food: If you have a baby, find room in your budget for organic baby food, or better yet, make your own homemade baby food using organic ingredients. Babies have fragile, developing immune systems that cannot protect them from the adverse health affects associated with pesticides.
- Meat and Dairy: Beef, poultry, and eggs are also good to buy organic, especially if you and your family eat them frequently.
- Extras: If money is no object, consider purchasing organic processed foods such as ketchup or soup. These foods will contain some, but not solely, organic ingredients.
Don't Bother
- If your budget is tight, don’t worry about organic when it comes to onions, avocado, pineapples, mango, asparagus, kiwi, bananas, cabbage, broccoli, and eggplant as these fruits and veggies contain the least amount of pesticides.
- Don’t even bother with organic seafood as there are currently no standards in place to regulate their labels.
Top 10 Foods To Buy Organic
- Peaches
- Apples
- Baby Foods
- Peanut Butter
- Bell Peppers
- Berries
- Imported Grapes
- Beef
- Dairy Products
- Eggs
One final note: All grocers are legally required to place organic foods (especially fruits and vegetables) where they won’t be exposed to the pesticide-laden water runoff from conventional produce. If your local store has forgotten that rule, remind them. If they still don’t move the organic food, shop somewhere else.
I find it incredible that in this day and age when we are battling with issues like childhood obesity, ADHD, and environmental degradation, the majority of schools across the nation still support the use of vending machines loaded with sugary-sweet and nutrionally-voided foods. Sodas and vending machine fare are not only terrible for our children’s health; they also create waste and use ingredients that can be harmful to the environment. What good does it do to pack your child a healthy "no-waste" lunch everyday when she will toss it aside in favor of Twinkies® and Pepsi®?
Of course, as parents we need to talk to our children about good nutrtion. But we also need the schools to be on our side. So talk to your school officials and other parents about banning soda, candy, junk food, and fast food from school grounds. I know that these machines benefit our schools financially, but are you really willing to pay that price?
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