Sierra Club Green Home

FRESH is a documentary by Ana Sofia Joanes which focuses on local farmers and food suppliers and their positive relationship to the food that we eat. Watch FRESH The Movie online for free today, or sign up to host a screening anytime. (Photo courtesy of Growing Power)

All through the year, massive amounts of food are discarded in landfills in the United States. Not just from homes, but from grocery stores and restaurants as well. Much of this food is perfectly edible and, as the documentary Dive shows, still packaged. Why do we as individuals and a nation discard so much food? Is it just an automatic response? Are we too busy to find a happy home for the leftovers? Maybe many people do not think of food waste as a problem, because they assume it will biodegrade in the landfill (it won’t). (Photo by Ericortner, Stock.Xchng)

Everyone wants to enjoy the freshest food possible. Sierra Club Green Home recommends fresh produce that is grown locally and bought in-season. Many local farms have Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs where people can buy shares in the farm and receive part of the harvest. (Photo by Safari11, Stock.Xchng)

OAKLAND, CA — Six hospital systems in the San Francisco Bay Area are joining with local food distributors to make healthy, sustainable food an integral part of the hospital network. The Regional Produce Sourcing Project aims to make sustainable food more available to hospital systems, and to create more demand for it. (Photo courtesy of Kaiser Permanente)

It takes 17 million barrels of oil to produce the amount of bottled water Americans buy each year. Coca-Cola’s brands Dasani and Odwalla, claim to have a solution: plastic made from plants. Sierra Club Green Home decided to find out how these PlantBottles compare to conventional plastics. (Photo by Leonardo Bonanni, Flickr)

Sierra Club Green Home will ring in the new year with gratitude for what 2011 has given us and excitement for what the next year holds. Here, writer Roland Oehme shares the top 12 things he is grateful for going into 2012.

When we purchase food, toys, household-use items, and other products for our infants and children, we rely on the manufacturers to create safe merchandise. Some toys are not what they seem, however. In fact, many contain substances that harm infants and children. California recently joined 10 other states in banning the chemical BPA from infant and children’s products. Here is some background on BPA and its brushes with the law. (Photo by)

If predictions are correct that climate change and rising sea levels will create greater numbers of urban dwellers, the need for greater local food resources will be critical. Back in World War II, a large percentage of Americans had gardens to help supplement their food. This tradition, which continues today, has spread to the middle of some of our largest urban areas.

Composting—whether in your backyard or through your city program—adds a variety of benefits for the ecology as well as economy. Read on for more reasons to compost your food scraps and soiled paper.

SAN FRANCISCO — Waste management company Recology has hit a milestone: 1 million tons of composted materials in San Francisco. What’s more, Thanksgiving is the biggest food week of the year, and Recology is calling for all scraps to be composted. Read more about the company’s many programs, including art, education, and falcons. UPDATED: Take a video tour of its facilities.