A little while back, Earth Fare asked if I wanted to give a $50 Earth Fare gift card to one lucky (Green)Grounded reader.  With a landslide of holidays coming, a $50 gift card is exactly the stimulus package we each could use!

A happy Earth Fare gift card, valued at $50, is waiting for your happy, warm wallet.  I would love for each of us (myself included) to receive one, but only one winner for this giveaway.

So how do you win?

1.)  Leave a comment with your favorite tip for living green in a grounded way.  You know… how do you live a little greener without feeling a tremendous pinch?  A tip that perhaps someone else could use as they and their families are heading into this holiday season.

Me?  I started buying hand soap in the refill pouches and bottles instead of always getting the pretty little container to go by the sink.  Now I just refill the cute soap bottle and keep the giant refill stash under the sink.  Less packaging is a great thing, plus it saves me money!

2.)  Want a second way to enter?  Twitter fans have the advantage here.  All you have to do is tweet this (or something similar):

Living greener & tastier is easy with a $50 @EarthFare gift card giveaway via @AshleySue at http://idek.net/eQa!

Then, come back and leave a second comment with your Twitter @ handle.

One comment on being green = one chance.

One comment on being green + one separate comment about your tweet (with @yourname) = two chances.

I cannot wait to hear all the different ways you live greener and more grounded!

Sustainably yours, Ashley Sue

(Contest runs Tuesday, 10th November 2009 at 930 A.M. EST until Monday, 16th November 2009 at 7 P.M. EST. Winner will be selected on Monday, 16th November 2009 at 7 P.M. EST.  Winner will be contacted via email.  Once winner acknowledges winning and replies with physical address, gift card will be sent via USPS.  Winning comment number will be selected via Random.org.

Also, many of your comments may be held for moderation.  Do not worry, I will daily approve comments, so they will appear within 24 hours, and in the order received.  Thank you for your patience as I fight spammers.)

Steve Wasik, CEO of Swiss-made SIGG water bottles, finally offers his full apology for not disclosing to the public that the resin epoxy liner of their reusable water bottles contains trace levels of BPA in products manufactured before August 2008 ~ an admission that made many of their best and biggest advocates outraged and heartbroken.

Unfortunately, I am still learning to be a green CEO. When I took this position, I naively assumed that “green” meant being a steward of the environment…  However, being a green company also means being held to the highest degree of corporate transparency.

I appreciate Steve Wasik’s apology.  A sincere apology is always better late than never.

Regardless, as a CEO, Wasik has failed.  (more…)

Without dramatics or great elaboration, here is a list of common ingredients in foods that I work hard to avoid.  I would love to hear what ingredients you choose to avoid and why.

• A huge “duh”: High Fructose Corn Syrup, despite their fluffy (ridiculous) ad campaign
• Should be a huge “duh”: Corn Syrup, period
• Monosodium Glutamate, aka MSG
• Aspartame
• Propyl Gallate, which prevents fats from going rancid in food and cosmetics
• Propylene Glycol, which I found in my cosmetics, antifreeze, and shredded coconut
• Acesulfame K, aka “Sweet One”
• Food Colorings, such as FD&C anything
• Olestra
• Potassium Bromate (see here also regarding iodine deficiency…your bread is a culprit!)
• Sodium Chloride, aka “table salt”
• Sulfites (very hard, as they are in most beers and wines, but can cause asthma attacks, rashes, headaches, etc)
• Non-organic Corn (likely genetically modified, which concerns me because of this, this and this)
• Non-organic Berries, Grapes, Apples, Leafy Greens
• Meats (for Marc) with Sodium Nitrites or Nitrates, Butylated Hydroxy anything (BHA or BHT)

These can be very tricky to avoid, and I have learned not to take anything for granted.  Now I read every label, and you might be shocked to realize what “healthy”-marketed brands have completely horrific ingredients.

Any food ingredients I need to avoid that I missed?

Always do your own research.  Know what your ingredient list is.  Decide for yourself how you feel.  Plus, be warned that finding credible third-party information from peer-reviewed scholastic independent journals can be incredibly hard to find.  Do not rely on any information supplied by branches of the government, pharmaceutical companies, or food processors… as they have obvious ties and financial interests in securing you to believe what they want you to believe.  In fact, with every single study you find, you have to find out not only who conducted the study, but who paid for that study.  Like the “high fructose corn syrup is made with corn, so it’s good for you” ads: provided by the Corn Refiners Association of America.  That said, please do not rely on scare-tactic emails and Wikipedia as your sources either.

Sustainably yours, Ashley Sue

So this post is provided by me a bit late, as my friends at the Nevada Conservation League (not local, obviously, but a really great blog), posted that NYTimes wrote on Frito-Lay going “green”.  I felt I had to respond, due to my previous post on their atrocious packaging habits.

The articles states:

Its goal is to take the Casa Grande plant off the power grid, or nearly so, and run it almost entirely on renewable fuels and recycled water. Net zero, as the concept is called, has the backing of the highest levels of corporate executives at PepsiCo, the parent company of Frito-Lay.

The article also comments on Toyota and Texas Instruments being among the gigundo corporations heading toward environmentally friendly manufacturing.

You know what would be even better?  If Frito-Lay made their chip containers out of potato starch… and thus fully biodegradable.