Success stories

Days without meat: the non-vegetarian initiative that convinced 86,000 people to skip meat

As a Flemish girl, I was taught that a decent meal had to have potatoes, vegetables and meat. But in 2011, another Flemish girl turned my ideas about food upside down. This year, over 86,000 people are following her by eating less meat for 40 days. Meet Dagen Zonder Vlees, a booming Belgian initiative.

By seeing value in what others throw away, Daniel Brown and Michael Robinson found a creative way to turn their passion for helping their community into a full-time job. The inspiration for their business came while they were running a community garden in Cleveland, Ohio. The garden was formerly the site of a factory, so turning the poor-quality compacted soil into fertile farmland was a constant struggle. They turned to composting as a means to improve the soil condition but had trouble procuring the volume of compost that they needed. Brown and Robinson were both working in restaurants at the time, and they began soliciting food scrap donations for the garden.

Major cities in Saskatchewan have the good fortune of being some of the sunniest places in Canada. Specifically in Saskatoon, on average there is 2268 hours of bright sunshine every year, 319 days annually with some bright sunshine and 49% of daylight hours are sunny.[i] Now enter the Saskatchewan Environmental Society (SES), an environmental non-profit organization based in Saskatoon, aiming to form the province’s first solar power cooperative.

Today, we are facing a serious global challenge wherein everyone should be aware of climate change. It affects you, me, our loved ones and the future generations. We only have one planet to live in, one home, which caters all our needs. Certainly, it is a privilege to be in an environment accurately conducive to live in; thus it should not be taken for granted.

To many Americans, farming is an activity associated exclusively with rural areas, separated from urban metropolises characterized by what we imagine modernity and progress to look like. However, with increasing population growth and food security threats, the line between rural and urban will have to be crossed. Not only are urban populations growing around the world, but the global level of urban poverty is expected to accompany this growth.
Rather than have the current production of food stretched thin across these growing metropolises and transported thousands of miles between farm and plate, urban communities are beginning to realize sustainability and self-sufficiency through urban agriculture.

Paris, Milan, London, New York and … Glasgow? Scotland is emerging as a center for fashion. And Scotland is possibly our new favorite fashion destination because it is not at the cutting edge of just any type of fashion, but sustainable fashion!
On November 20th, during the Scottish Textile Symposium in Glasgow, a catalyst for sustainable fashion production was unveiled. Zero Waste Scotland, an environmental nonprofit funded partially by the Scottish government, announced the creation of the Circular Economy Textile and Apparel Grant Fund. Through this fund, sustainable fashion designers can apply for grants of £5,000 as well as mentoring from an “industry expert” to propel their ecological fashion efforts. The first grant awards were distributed in December 2014.