Starbucks/Kathryn Barnard

Starbucks recycling bin

If you've ever finished your drink in a Starbucks cafe, then looked around in vain for a recycling bin in which to deposit the empty cup, you're not alone. With fewer than 10% of Starbucks in Los Angeles County equipped with customer recycling bins, a lot of our cups end up in landfills. There are 364 company-owned Starbucks in L.A. County. Of those, 34 have customer recycling bins in the front of the store. In addition, there are 52 stores that have recycling used by employees behind the counter (or in the "back of the house"). While some customers go the extra mile and take the empty cups to their home or other recycling bins, more often, the cups are tossed in the trash.

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Jeanne Kelley

foraged salad with goat cheese

You don't have to be a Nordic, Michelin starred-chef like Rene Redzepi to work wild-grown foods into your cooking. We can forage right here in Los Angeles County. Because of our summery winter, edible plants such as lamb's quarters, miner's lettuce, nettles and wood sorrel are flourishing now in our local canyons and mountains and maybe even in your own backyard.

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Sifu Renka/flickr

turkey slices

When you examine a heap of sliced deli turkey from Von's, you see no obvious connection between the slippery pink sheets and a semi-winged, beaked creature, or even a lovely roasted bird like you'd enjoy at Thanksgiving. Had you no prior knowledge, if someone told you this meat -- spongy, slick, and loaded with broth -- had been popped out of a machine in a lab, you would not be surprised. Lab meat is still a few years down the road, but scientists are making strides, not least of which is this week's revelation that lab-cultured meat would significantly reduce greenhouse emissions.

According to the results of a just-released study funded by New Harvest, a non-profit research organization working to pioneer alternatives to conventionally-raised meat, meat made using a tissue engineering process being developed by study co-author Dr. Joost Teixeira de Mattos of the University of Amsterdam would have a lower environmental impact across the board -- to the tune of 78-96% lower greenhouse gas emissions, 7-45% less energy used, 99% less land used, and 82-96% less water used.

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Flickr/ldrose

If you needed another reason to book an Air France flight to Paris, you can now do so in the name of environmentalism. Well, at least if you ignore the carbon footprint part. According to Mother Nature Network, Air France-KLM has announced that this fall it will start fueling planes with a blend of cooking oil and kerosene. The first flights to use the alternative fuel will run between Paris and Amsterdam. Your pot brownie and biofuel joke here ______.

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D. Gonzalez

Taking two for the planet: Platine's Cookies' Pots de Creme

Local. Organic. Sustainable. Adjectives that bring to mind the goodness of food. Food that tastes good. Food that is good for us. And food that is good for the Earth. However, one environmentally friendly attribute that doesn't come into consideration much with regards to food purchases is reusable. Nevertheless, Culver City based bakery, Platine Cookies is looking to change that with its pot de crème, a luscious treat that comes in L.A.'s most adorable and highly reusable container.

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Flickr/DotPolka

Starry Kitchen, Chego, and a good number of eateries in the city already package their foods in eco-friendly to-go containers, but if the state Senate has its way, all food vendors in the state will be prohibited from using Styrofoam, er, expanded polystyrene foam^[1] starting in 2014. Not at all discouraged by the Legislature's recent failure to ban plastic bags, local state Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) introduced a bill in February to ban food vendors, including restaurants, from using the classic clamshell and its related plastic family of convenient take-out and to-go packages. SB 568 passed the Senate by a tight 21 to 15 margin, and is now in the hands of the state Assembly.

The Senator tells us what we already know: this stuff is everywhere. Fifteen percent of the litter in the state is expanded polystyrene foam, thanks to the apparently millions of people who think the world is their oyster and trash can. The foamy plastic is not biodegradable, but, because it is recyclable, cities that establish a recycling program specifically for the material will be exempt from the bill.

Guess who's for and against the bill? You're probably right.

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Maigh/Flickr

Thin Mints + palm oil

As the awesomely-named Julie Jargon reports in The Wall Street Journal, a couple of Michigan Girl Scouts are making their cookie-slinging organization a bit queasy. With the sort of earnest, honest, single-minded conviction only young people can muster, high school sophomores Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva, once stellar vendors of the sweet treats, have, for the past four years, led a grass roots crusade against a primary ingredient: palm oil.

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Los Angeles residents aiming to celebrate Earth Day 2011 might want to gas up the whip and spew noxious emissions up the coast for the 5th annual Earth Day Food & Wine Festival. From April 15th through the 17th, growers, winemakers, and chefs will gather to celebrate sustainably produce food and wine.

On Friday the 15th, Thomas Hill Farms' owners will give a tour of the operation's beds, orchards, and vines and offer a lunch at the celebrated Thomas Hill Organics restaurant. On the same day, Cass Valley Winery in Creston will present "The Ultimate Tax Relief Dinner," or "Cooking With Booze," in which beer-battered bar snacks will come slathered in Bloody Mary "ketchup" and smoked drunken chicken will stumble onto a plate with whiskey-braised mushrooms. On Saturday, the 16th, Pomar Junction Winery will host an epic bash featuring over 200 area food and wine stars handing out samples of their wares. One will be able to back-slap farmers, gobble until walking proves difficult, pass out in a muddy heap, face soiled with pinot, and leap back to life at the sound of live music.

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Kofi Annan used to preside over the mass of bickering poker buddies known as the U.N. Back then, he worried about an AIDS epidemic and that retro scourge "weapons of mass destruction." Nowadays, Annan is a travelling sage, collecting causes the way Hiltons collect boyfriends: namely, those related to economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Climate change specifically will be on the menu when the former Secretary-General speaks on April 13th, the first day of the Third World Congress on Climate Change and Wine in Marbella, Spain. If you seek evidence of Annan's take on the issue, skim the video embedded above.

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Flickr/Darby Rose

Four loco, etc.

You may remember the relative chaos over Four Loko, the energy drink that contains up to 12% alcohol, which debuted in US markets in 2005 and provoked a warning letter from the FDA this past November. The FDA called the caffeine and alcohol combination an "unsafe food additive" and said that further action, including seizure of the offending products, could occur under federal law. Well, instead of turning the happy combination of alcohol, caffeine, taurine and guarana (hence the four in the product's name) into a frat party punch bowl, wiser grown-ups have decided to turn the stuff into ethanol. Wow. Somebody might have finally found an actual use for Jägermeister.

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