An Environmental Bailout: Where is the Real Urgency?

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:59:48 GMT

Indigenous Bribri man overlooking the vast rainforest I am honestly tired of hearing about the bailout of our financial system. Maybe the very best thing for the environment would be a complete collapse and restructuring of the way our government handles our tax dollars. All I hear these last couple of weeks is the great fear people are having for the loss they are seeing in their pensions and 401K's. What about to the hundreds of species that go extinct every year and the human languages and cultures that are rapidly disappearing succumbing to modern ways? Does our society have its priorities straight?... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Beyond the Supermarket: Incredible herbs and spices!!

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:27:50 GMT

Fresh herbs and spices are crucial! Cooking with fresh herbs and spices will always brighten up any meal and certainly are better than what you may pull out of your spice rack. We have a plethora of incredible spices and flavors and nearly every meal is like a global culinary experience. Lets go clockwise in the photo above beginning with the orange-brown roots in the center called turmeric. Turmeric is native to India where it is most commonly used as the main spice in curries. It is what gives it its bright yellow color and for this reason, it is often used as a natural dye for fabrics and baskets. Turmeric is also a very important Ayurvedic medicine and has been used for centuries and can be found in many vitamins including my favorite supplement company, New Chapter Organics. It is used topically for skin problems and on wounds and also as an anti-inflammatory and for digestive problems. To the left in the black and red bowl is chunky sea salt and it is often one of the few ingredients that does not come from the farm. We actually live right on the beach and have tried several times to make our own salt with very little success. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Ecological Daydreams: Our Veggie Oil powered caravan to Costa Rica

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:47:21 GMT

Our crew at the Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage, Tepoztlan, Mexico On November 10, 2003 twenty-six of us aboard two school buses and a pickup truck all running on recycled vegetable oil departed Berkeley, California on a journey through Mexico and Central America en route to our final destination, Punta Mona, Costa Rica. We ranged from a 20 year old hippie from Ohio, a hobo anarchist from Los Angeles to a 55-year old radical clown named Brino, and we lived in very close quarters. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Edible Journey: The roots of my love for food

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:08:19 GMT

My neighbor Padi, good friend Rufino and I in Punta Mona Costa Rica I grew up in North Miami, Florida in a Jewish family that is obsessed with food. A deep relationship with food began at a very young age and anytime my entire family was together, several hours before a meal, my dad would always bust out with t"Let's talk about important things, what are we doing for dinner?" Everything revolved around food in all generations of my family. My grandparents and great grandparents were making Jewish food eastern European style with things like chopped liver, gefilte fish and brisket with gravy.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Burning Man: Is There Anything Green About It?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:31:43 GMT

Here I am with the Tuna Crew in the desert at Burning Man 2005. Burning Man 2008 So another year passes in the Black Rock desert, in ultra rural Nevada, where the infamous yearly Burning Man event takes place. It is the most far out city in the world and as much as I think I have grown out of it each year I just returned from my eighth consecutive year on the playa. The playa seems like the surface of some other planet. It is so flat and barren that you could literally ride your bike with your eyes closed for long distances. There is nothing. This year there were over 50,000 people there, ranging from newborns to an 85 year old and it's certainly not your average hippie fest. It is a true human experiment that brings all walks of the alternative movement to live together in the harshest conditions for a week.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

It's so Hip to be Green: What will the next trend be?

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:20:09 GMT

Organic veggies on the honor system. Stephen Brooks is the co-founder of Kopali Organics and a correspondent for Planet Green's G Word . It absolutely blows my mind how cool it is to be green these days. Was it Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth? Or could it be the rising fuel costs? I mean didn't you know that Cameron Diaz has "gone green". Or maybe the time has just really come and people are really starting to wake up all at the same time? Oooh that's deep! Do all these steps we take to walk lighter on the Earth actually matter?... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Beyond the Supermarket: A Global Tour of Exotic Fruits and Vegetables

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:45:58 GMT

A super ripe Biriba fruit, an orgasmic Amazonian treat! Now why do some foods become popular and others just don't ever make it to the shelves of your market. Some of the worlds greatest foods are barely eaten outside of their area of origin. How did a fruit like the kiwi go from being nearly unknown outside the Yangtze Valley in China to be found in almost every fruit salad around the world? Just who makes those decisions?... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Permaculture: Spreading the Green Gospel

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:36:46 GMT

Stephen Brooks is the co-founder of Kopali Organics and a correspondent for Planet Green's G Word . Combine the words "permanent" and "culture," subtract a few unnecessary letters and you end up with one amazingly efficient term - "Permaculture." How does that roll off your tongue? You have just derived another one of those brilliantly synergistic terms, a single word that signifies an entity bigger and more productive than its individual pieces. And this is exactly what the term Permaculture set out to do - Permaculture doesn't tell you what to do, but tells you how to think in a systematic and logical way that is efficient for you as well as the planet.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Beyond the Supermarket: A Global Food Exploration

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:14:51 GMT

Have you ever wondered why the foods that you find in your grocery store have become so popular? Like, why are those foods, of all the tens of thousands of edible plants, so massed produced that they can now be found in supermarkets throughout the world? Sometimes they are fresh, sometimes in cans, sometimes frozen but what they all have in common is that they have been made popular enough and produced enough to grace market shelves everywhere. Lets go on a global journey and learn about some of those foods that are just waiting for their chance to shine.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

The Diaspora of Food

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:20:34 GMT

Stephen Brooks is the co-founder of Kopali Organics and a correspondent for Planet Green's G Word . Isn't it crazy to think that everything we eat or use that comes from plants at one time grew completely wild? That's right, rice, corn, beans, cotton, oranges, tomatoes... everything came from somewhere on the earth and grew there wild. It's somewhat hard to believe. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

The "Real" Cost of Bananas: Crop Dusting and Toxic Fungicides in Costa Rica

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:28:20 GMT

Stephen Brooks is the co-founder of Kopali Organics and a correspondent for Planet Green's G Word. A common topic when discussing environmental issues is the acronym "NIMBY," meaning "Not in My Backyard." This simple phrase refers to the way many people around the world are not overly concerned with many of the environmental problems, because they are just not happening in there own backyards: things like dealing with garbage and our landfills, or the fact that sweatshops that employ children in developing countries that make our favorite shoes do not really effect us in the ways they should because we just do not have to see it or feel the pain that these activities around the world cause. This ignorance creates consumerism and the needless waste continues. This short video is actually filmed very close to my backyard on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Ethical Eating: Our Endangered Food Supply Chain

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:10:29 GMT

Stephen Brooks is the co-founder of Kopali Organics and a correspondent for Planet Green's G Word http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/g-word/. TreeHugger. In this day and age we try and consider all of the certifications and seals on the packages of the food we buy. Is it organic? Fair Trade? Wild harvested? Rainforest friendly? Local? What does this all mean anyway? Who is actually growing my food and who is profiting when I buy it? Most people do not want to contribute to destroying our planet's ecosystems, nor do people want to support child slave labor in the Ivory Coast when eating their favorite chocolate bar. Yet, somehow, these atrocities are taking place with many, many of the products we consume everyday. Now the question is: Is it possible for our food to be both affordable and not destroy the planet? ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

TreeHugger Welcomes Stephen Brooks!

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 13:57:27 GMT

Stephen Brooks grew up in North Miami, Florida and has been living in Punta Mona, Costa Rica since 1995. After an eye opening trip to Costa Rica, Stephen was inspired to make a positive impact on the planet and started Costa Rican Adventures, www.costaricanadventures.com, an educational eco-tour company striving to raise environmental awareness. After identifying and enumerating the many environmental problems there, Stephen wanted to present possible solutions and in 1997 founded the Punta Mona Center for Sustainability and Education, www.puntamona.org. In 2003, Stephen founded the Sustainable Solutions Caravan, a nonprofit organization promoting sustainable living by driving several buses running on recycled vegetable oil from San Francisco, California to Costa Rica. This led to the co-founding of the Conscious Goods Alliance. The "Veggie Bus" travels the country as an eco showroom featuring coconut floors, bamboo paneling, natural latex cushions covered in hemp, recycled paper countertops, an alcohol fueled stove and solar panels providing electricity. In 2005 Stephen co-founded Kopali Organics, a company which sources and develops sustainable, organic products from small farm cooperatives around the world and is distributed through Whole Foods Market in the United States. Foods that are "Good for you, the farmer and the planet we all share", www.kopaliorganics.com. In 2006, Stephen envisioned and co-founded Kopali Communities, an ultra ecological developer and builder of planned communities in Costa Rica, www.koplaicommunities.com. Stephen's passion lies in seeking more sustainable ways to live our daily lives without compromising quality of life. Stephen traveled around the world in search of experiences in sustainable living culminating in the creation and hosting of "Edible Adventures" for the Travel Channel in 2006 and now he is the food field reporter for Planet Greens Daily news show G-Word.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Recent Posts by TreeHugger's Stephen Brooks, Punta Mona, Costa Rica