Although many now cite sustainability as one of their key targets, often it is not clear as to how this declaration translates into action, or if the actions that are taken go beyond green window dressing.

Adopting environmental measures brings social and economic benefits. Just to make an example quality of water sources improves health in the population of a city, but also provision of sanitation and cleaner energy. Waste management can also turn into business when sorting, and recycling materials can be a source for local manufacturing businesses, even biowaste becomes a source of energy.

Being sustainable means being smarter, caring more about our present and future by understanding that we need to respect each others and the environment we live in in order to prosper and live a better life.

Instead we would like to talk more about a project in alternative energy that was at first diminished as an outlandish announcement by chief minister Narendra Modi. This is an installation of solar panels atop the Narmada canal at Chandrasan village, about 25 miles from Ahmadabad, the largest city in the region.

The electricity power generated by the solar panels will be used as a supply to villages alongside the canal, this will lead to lower transmission losses and it will also help to reduce the evaporation of water in the canal itself.

Even though the first announcement by chief minister Narendra Modi was greeted with a lot of skepticism, the project, which now is already in advanced stages, has been recognized as the first of its kind in the whole country.

You will be able to find out more about the Narmada canal solar installation at the following links:

dnaindia.com

msnbc.msn.com

thesolarindia.com

Here instead you will be able to find out more regarding tourism and traveling in Gujarat: gujarattourism.com

Other unhealthy ingredients in fact are: sodium, trans fats, hidden calories, genetically modified ingredients, phosphates and a vast range of food additives that are linked to higher rates of chronic kidney disease, weak bones, and a lot of other issues that we don’t really want to get into here.

Processed food is full of all these hidden additives and food companies in most of the cases aren’t really required to list all levels of these.

What is even worst is that we have lost the conception of what is junk food and what is heavily processed and still full additives that we don’t really would like to eat.

Processed food can be grouped in the following categories:

- Canned

- Frozen

- Refrigerate

- Dehydrated

- Aseptic Processed

This means most of the food we end up buying is processed and can contain stuff that we don’t want to eat. The problem is we will never find out unless we start reading those labels.

Most of processed food products have in fact a wide list of ingredients similar to that of a can of… paint!

Just to make our point, take a look at the list of ingredients from a strawberry flavoring of a milkshake:

Amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamylvalerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl Nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerbate, heliotropin, hydroxphrenyl-2butanone(10% solution to alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbone, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl slicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobulyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, sore rum ether, g-undecalctone, vanillin, and solvent.

Would you eat that if you were told?

In California insectivorous cavity-nesting birds have been encouraged to occupy vineyards and agriculture fields with next boxes that have been placed in the areas, and the results after a few months are now showing how the birds are providing a significant eco-friendly pest control service to winegrapre growers and farmers.

Apparently little we know about applying biodiversity in agriculture in the western world, and much of what we have discovered comes from strategies applied in the tropics. Things are changing now though, because when faced with the choice of using poisons or different strategies, farmers are now increasingly looking at what biodiversity can offer to them, since poisons doesn’t only kill pests but also humans in the long run.

According to this Israeli conservationist, one adult barn owl will catch between 2,000 to 5,000 rodents each year. And as an added bonus when barn owls live close to farms and fields, their foraging activities can improve agricultural yield for certain crops by 24 percent. And if you think about it, birds are also not expensive compared to poisons as they will live on the rodents and pests that will catch.

You can find out more on the following reading list:

The Secret Lives of Garden Birds

Bird Conservation and Agriculture: The Bird Life of Farmland, Grassland and Heathland (Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation)

Biodiversity in Agriculture: Domestication, Evolution, and Sustainability

Agriculture, Biodiversity and Markets

12 slices white or brown bread depending on your tastes
mayonnaise to spread
leaves of your choice: iceberg, romana, rocket salad, baby spinaches
Tomatoes, sliced
Sea Salt and pepper
Avocados sliced
Sun dried tomatoes sliced as well
Plastic cocktail swords

First we need to Toast the bread on both sides and cut the leaves.

To make a double-decker club we start by arranging 3 bread slices in a row. Spread some mayonnaise over each bread slice add some leaves on top, some tomatoes slices and some salt and pepper.
Now here is where the magic happens. Add the avocadoes, cut the slices to fit nicely if necessary, and top with some sun dried tomatoes slices. Add pepper but no salt this time as the tomatoes are already salted.

Repeat the procedure with the second bread layer and pin the sandwich’s layers all together with the cocktail sword. Continue this way and cut the slice of bread when finished in two or four pieces across the diagonal.

And here you have a perfect vegetarian club

If you want for extra taste you can add some melted cheddar cheese between the layers.

Vienna is not just museums though, as the city is also seeing a trend of.. well.. greening up its vertical surfaces with plants! Greening up is not a new phenomena to Vienna though, if we look at the history of the city in fact, we discover that its green belt has tripled in size since the early 1900. But also since the ’80s the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser started creating a new style with his natural designs with the goal to reshape the austere buildings and introducing irregular motives and vegetation.

Vienna is one of a kind as a city, and if you happend to visit it soon you will notice for example than more of half of the city is covered in green. This doesn’t include just parks and gardens but also green roofs and balconies. In fact, when shopping at Stilwerk on the Danube Canal, you will notice one of the most outstanding of Vienna’s “Green Walls“:  it is the interior courtyard of a building designed by architect Jean Nouvel, and which does contain a 600 m² free-standing steel construction on which 20,000 different plants form what can be considered an unusual urban garden.

Vienna was reviewed among the 10 best travel destination of this year by Stylist Magazine.

The website wien.info has instead lots of news and tips for travelers to the Austrian capital.

Also don’t forget to buy yourself a travel guide before leaving:

Wallpaper* City Guide Vienna 2012 (Wallpaper City Guides)

City Guide to Vienna by U-Ba’hn (Michael Brein’s Travel Guides): U-Bahn Map and Guide

SEKAI Explorer Guide Vienna (2011)

Or make your own guide:

Moleskine City Notebook Vienna

After all of the stories, how weird would it be, to discover that, the world’s worst enemy, might look like this?

At first you might think it is just humour, yet I believe there is something more to it. Something more than meets the eye. If traditionally the human race has always seen themselves as the guardians of planet earth, we haven’t ever stopped considering the fact that we are responsible of an extinction of species that has not been seen since the disappearance of the dinosaurs probably. And only in a very short period of time. The rate at which we are destroying species is unprecedented and fast, but what it is worst is that the process will be difficult to reverse once it has begun.

This is why it is extremely important that world and political leaders take a stance and some serious and practical measures to defende our planet greatest treasure: biodiversity.

Mass production was the answer when the world needed more food. We now need smart production! We need to think global but act local in order to preserve the diversity of our environment.

If you want to find out more about biodiversity loss on Planet Earth, check the following links:

Farming.co.uk

agro.biodiver.se

Also the following amazon reading list can help you finding some answers to many questions:

The Diversity of Life (Penguin Press Science)

Biodiversity

Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity

Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning, and Human Wellbeing: An Ecological and Economic Perspective

Of course the dynamics of the global financial market are not easy to understand and predict, yet if we focus for a moment on our current productive system, many questions arise.

Is it possible to imagine a different Economy with different rules and a better productive system? The answer is Yes, not only that future is possible but is happening now.

Just this morning BBC News has posted an article regarding new jobs and business opportunities created by the green economy. Followed by another article of the Telegraph stating that a Green economy possible with political will.

There is hence a lot of noise around these initiatives, with a lot of project spotting literally in every part of the world.

Here are some links that we have collected so far:

koreaittimes.com - A 5-year government plan will nurture a “low carbon, green growth” economy in Korea.

cec-mi.org – The Clean Energy Coalition has partnered with Detroit-based NextEnergy to work on Detroit’s green economy initiatives.

marioninstitute.org - A program of the Marion Institute, developed in collaboration with the Greater New Bedford Economic Development Council and the City of New Bedford, to address the gaps that are currently inhibiting the development of a robust and sustainable green economy.

And if you want to find out more, here is a short reading list that we can recommend:

Blueprint for a Green Economy

Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business

The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems

Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment

While you are reading this article in fact, a patent on broccolis and tomatoesis under scrutiny at the European patent office. Shocked? Well, already in 2002 Plant Bioscience Ltd. (PBL), a UK based company, was granted a patent by the European Patent Office (EPO) for a method they used to identify the anti-carcinogenic properties of broccoli. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

The patent enabled the company not only to select and grow only plants with a high concentration of this property but it also give them some rights on the plants selected and produced by their method, not just the process. Essentially they had a patent on broccoli.

This is opening the road to a dangerous scenario, something that is yet unknown in Europe, but that American Farmers are already fighting against. Over the past 20 years or so, one specific corporation has in fact achieved a monopoly on some of the most important seed markets in the States and is trying to do the same in Europe.

If this was not enough the same company has pushed genetically modified food crops. These same crops are now contaminating non GM crops, allowing the same company to abusively place lawsuits against small producers and independent farmers.

The name of this giant corporation is Monsanto, and just to make an example, approximately 95% of all soybeans and 80% of all corn produced in the States grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents.

This is why family farmers are taking part, on January 31st, on a court case filed to protect farmers from genetic trespass by Monsanto’s GMO seed.

Monsanto’s monopoly on seeds and crops has grown so much in the last 20 years that they are now controlling through patents about 90% of all most common crops, forcing often farmers to stop growing certain crops to avoid genetic contamination and hence potential lawsuits.

144 lawsuits have already been filled by Monsanto in the last 15 years, and another 700 have been settled outside of court for undisclosed amounts. Farmers are driven into bankruptcy and the biodiversity of our crops is destroyed.

Find out more about this issue here:

Organicconsumers.org

Disasterandemergencysurvival.com

Fooddemocracynow.org

Naturalnews.com

naturalsociety.com

At vegancalisthen-x.com you will find lots of training tips and amazing vegan recipes, completed with also lots of information on how fruits, seeds, nuts and vegetables can help you have a balanced and healthy diet even if you want to be an athlete or bodybuilder.

Superfoods like berries, brown rice, flax seeds, oatmeal, spinach, almonds, avocados and cacao, are nutritious as much or even more than a meat dish and if combined all together provides a source of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that meat alone wouldn’t be able to give you. As an added bonus you will also introduce a lot of biodiversity in your diet!

You don’t have to start being vegan or vegetarian all together but you can certainly reduce a lot your meat consumptions and feel a lot better. And there are many websites that can help you in following this path:

Ed Bauer is a vegan body builder who blogs and gives lots of hints and tips.

Vegan Muscle and Fitness is a website of vegan bodybuilders passionate about nutritions and willing to demonstrate the amazing health benefits of a whole foods plant-based diet.

Vegan Essentials is instead a webshop for vegan products.

1,000 Vegan Recipes is a book providing a lot of vegan recipes that prefer natural products and avoid the usual meat substitutes.