| "Good Things Grow In Ontario"
Some good press in The Ottawa Citizen for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture's approach to encouraging support of local foods through the Foodland Ontario program -
Foodland Ontario is a provincial government program aimed at increasing awareness and sales of regionally grown and produced food. Foodland Ontario manager Andy Rankine believes the campaign is showing results, and says he intends to begin to quantify those results this year through the program's annual fall research.
The campaign is a three-pronged one: building consumer awareness of Ontario farm products; branding the Foodland Ontario concept; and encouraging the use of more local food in fine dining and culinary tourism through the Savour Ontario program. There are strong signs consumers are responding and, in turn, grocery retailers are slowly jumping on board, Rankine says.
Still a bit of a ways to go there, though -
Rankine points to two recent examples of how that is happening, even with the big chains: Loblaw has introduced Ontario corn-fed beef, while Sobeys offers a range of Ontario pork and beef under its Compliments label.
Hopefully, there are people in the government who can nudge these supermarkets towards eventually (sooner rather than later...) carrying beef from cows fed the way that they're supposed to eat.
Europe
Apparently tiring of doing most of their killing in the US, McDonald's has moved towards making a killing in Europe -
Overseas sales at the world's largest restaurant chain have outpaced domestic results for some time, and its emphasis on lower-priced menu items helped it weather the economic downturn, luring cash-strapped U.S. consumers away from higher-priced, sit-down restaurants.
The crime scene is one of mood lighting and cheap imitations of real food -
There's porridge in Britain and pasta freshly cooked to order in Italy. In France, there's a smaller-sized burger on a ciabatta roll slathered with a sophisticated mustard sauce - and served with a glass of wine.
The restaurants' decor is another culture shock.
Green swivel armchairs. Modernist murals. Elegant wood, leather and stainless steel instead of retro plastic and Formica fittings.
Even the Ronald McDonald play areas have been given a face-lift and rechristened Ronald Gym Clubs. Pits full of plastic balls have been replaced by climbing walls, bicycle simulators and basketball hoops with electronic scoreboards.
Ohio
A few colleges in the Cleveland area are testing out an interesting method to reduce food waste in their cafeterias -
"The fact of the matter is that human behavior is to load things up on the tray," said Dan Farrell, district manager of food service company Bon Appetit. "People think twice about carrying three or four plates. The tendency is for people to be picky."
And there's also a basic human psychological factor at play here - in social settings like this, people simply don't want to look like gluttonous slobs going back for third and fourth helpings.
Now maybe next, these same schools will head further towards sustainability and finally cut their ties with gigantic 'food service corporations' like Aramark and Sodexo, and start supporting local growers and producers.
Schools have taken other measures to handle rising food costs. Hiram collects food and paper scraps for composting. CWRU and John Carroll place orders for their meals, so food isn't cooked in bulk. CWRU and others also try to buy food locally and in season.
"Do we really need to fly in strawberries from New Zealand in January?" Farrell asked. "A local apple would work just fine."
Vancouver
Vancouver, BC is looking at ways to reduce bottled water usage in the city -
Meanwhile, Stevenson asked staff Tuesday to come back with a report to council on ways to reduce the use of bottled water in all city departments and services.
As part of his motion, he is also suggesting that the city use a small portion of the money saved to invest in reusable water containers for employee use and work with Metro Vancouver, to promote awareness about the environmental and health benefits of tap water over bottled water.
Love it! And I'm absolutely positive that the bottled water industry is currently feeling the 'sting' of these real efforts towards sustainability, judging from their blatant greenwashing attempts with 'eco-bottles' and etc...
Also from Vancouver
An excellent op-ed from David Suzuki and Faisal Moola on "putting the eco back into economics" -
I once hosted a television series in which we filmed 10- to 12-year-old city kids in different locations. For one show, we took a boy and girl to a farm outside of Toronto, where for two days we gathered eggs, milked cows, fed pigs, and rode horses.
On the third day, we took the kids to a slaughterhouse where the 12-year-old boy was upset to learn that hamburgers and wieners were made from the muscles of an animal! City kids often don't know the source of electricity or tap water or the destination of a flushed toilet or garbage on the curb.
Nature is the ultimate source of our water and electricity, and nature absorbs our waste. But in our globalized world, we believe the economy takes precedence over nature, a notion that a provincial environment minister reinforced when he chastised me, saying, "We can't afford to protect the environment if we don't have a strong, growing economy."
Read the whole thing, definitely worth it... |
