In the United States, food waste is estimated to be between 30-40 percent of the food supply. A USDA study found that Americans waste about a pound of food per person, per day! Food waste that decomposes in landfills produces methane – a greenhouse gas. In regards to climate change, food waste is a not-often-talked-about contributor. 

So, how can we as a society change that? Three main ways:

• Buy and grow only what you plan on using (unless you give your extra food away)

 

• Eat your leftovers! 

 

• And compost your scraps  

Composting keeps waste out of landfills. Not only that, compost can be used to nourish your garden or plants, thereby creating a continuous and beneficial partnership. 

Backyard composting is one of the easiest and most convenient ways to begin your composting journey. Compost containers are readily available at neighborhood garden centers, hardware stores or second-hand. No need to buy new when food scraps will be going in it! You can also DIY a compost bin or turn an unused  garbage can into a composter. 

If you do not have the room for a compost bin in your backyard, you live in an apartment or condo, or your homeowner's association doesn't allow it, there are other options to consider. Community composting in a neighborhood, schoolyard, or community garden is one option. Another option is to look into a community composting organization near you.  It's a paid service where the organization will come pick up your food scraps. In exchange, you can get some of the finished product back to use. 

Not everything can be composted. As a general rule, no:

• Meat or bones

 

• Fats or oils

 

• Dog or cat feces

 

• Plastics

     - This includes plastic stickers on fruits and vegetables
     - Tea bags (which are made of plastic)
     - Plastic wrap
     - Disposable plastic-like cups that say they can be composted (those items need to be composted at a commercial         composting facility – which very few cities have)

If you want to try a vegan Thanksgiving this year but need a little guidance or you have plant-based family or friends coming for a holiday dinner you’re hosting and you want to know what you can serve them, check out this handy guide. 
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Each year, more than 46 million turkeys are killed to become food on American’s dinner tables for their holiday get togethers. Raised in inhumane conditions on a mass production scale, the treatment of factory farmed animals is why many have chosen to leave them off their dinner plates and opt for cruelty-free alternatives instead. 

It’s easy to make “the fixins” or side dishes vegan by using plant-based substitutions like vegan cheese, non-dairy milk and egg replacers. There are even holiday roasts made from faux meat that can take center stage at your table, should you desire. 

Vegan products are mainstream. No longer hiding amongst the shelves of specialty markets or health food stores, if one wants to purchase a vegan substitute, they need to look no further than their local grocery store – you just need to know where to look and what to look for.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. New vegan products are hitting the shelves at a staggering rate. 
If you have trouble finding any of the products, use the store locator function on the manufacturer’s website to find a location near you. If you can’t locate the items in the store, ask an associate. Oftentimes, there’s a special section for plant-based foods that they can guide you to. 

Wow your guests with a holiday roast! Tofurky has even introduced a ham-style roast as opposed to traditional roasts with stuffing. The grocery chain Trader Joes sells a turkey-less stuffed roast and also carries a packaged organic vegan gravy. Or, you can make your own vegan gravy, like this recipe from Loving It Vegan. 

Field Roast brand has a Celebration Roast with Traditional Bread Stuffing & Mushroom Gravy or Hazelnut Cranberry Roast En Croute products. 

Another vegan brand, Gardein –the maker of many a faux meat – has a Holiday Roast. And Tofurky brand, as mentioned earlier, has ham roast or traditional roast. Tofurky also has a Holiday Feast frozen meal that includes the traditional holiday roast, along with dessert – vegan chocolate cheese cake. 

Yes, there's even a vegan substitute for eggs. In fact, there are many! 

Just Egg is made from mung beans and is given it’s egg-like golden hue from turmeric. Its versatile nature ranges from being used to make scrambled eggs to French Toast batter. Like Just Egg, VeganEgg from Follow Your Heart can also be used to bake, scramble and use just as you would a regular egg. 

There are also several brands of store bought egg replacers on the market including: Ener-G egg replacer, Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer and Neat Egg. 

Or, you can make your own egg replacer using ingredients you may already have on hand, such as bananas, applesauce, flaxseed meal or baking powder. 

To make a flax egg, mix one tablespoon flaxseed meal with three tablespoons water. Let set in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. Each flax egg equals approximately one egg. Double or triple the recipe if it calls for more than one egg.

Mashed banana and applesauce are two other potential egg replacers, but they may not work well in all recipes. For brownies or cookies, they should work fine, but sometimes as far as egg replacers go, you may need to experiment a little until you get your desired result. One ripe mashed banana equals one egg and one tablespoon of applesauce is equivalent to one egg. 

Another egg substitute trick is to whisk together two tablespoons of water, one teaspoon of oil (such as vegetable or canola oil), and two teaspoons of baking powder. The mixture is equivalent to one egg. 

Have you ever heard of aquafaba? It can be both an egg and egg white substitute. It’s made from – believe it or not – the leftover liquid from chickpeas. That’s right! Drain a can of chickpeas and reserve the liquid. Whip the liquid until it thickens. For more in depth instructions, check out this beginner's guide to aquafaba from Minimalist Baker. 

There are also several brands of vegan mayonnaise on the market including Just Mayo, Hellman's Vegan Mayo and Vegenaise (pronounced VEDGE-en-aise) from Follow Your Heart. Vegenaise is a little bit sweeter of a mayonnaise alternative that tastes a bit more like Miracle Whip. 

Vegan cheese melts and stretches just like dairy cheese. You can find a vegan substitute in almost any variety – mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan, feta, cream cheese, and ricotta cheese. 
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Available in block, shreds or slices, Daiya's cheese line includes cheddar, mozzarella or pepperjack style. Daiya also has a line of vegan cream cheeses and cheese sauces. So, if you're looking for a Velveeta substitute and don't want to make your own vegan cheese sauce, you could use a store bought brand.

Daiya's website also lists cooking tips and recipes including a 5-minute cheese sauce recipe and baked buffalo cheezy mac. 

Follow Your Heart brand also has a large selection of plant-based cheeses including slices and shreds in a variety of flavors and even a parmesan cheese alternative. There's also a vegan cream cheese and vegan sour cream alternative. Check out some of the recipes on their website for some holiday inspiration, such as vegan mac and cheese and Thanksgiving lasagna. 

Violife is a newer brand on the market. Products include mozzarella and cheddar-style shreds and slices. Violife also has vegan feta and parmesan products as well as a vegan cream cheese. 

Chao Creamery cheese slices by Field Roast are available in Creamy Original, Tomato Cayenne and Garden Herb flavors. Chao also has a line of frozen mac and cheese meals. 

Tofutti brand has vegan cream cheese, vegan sour cream and vegan ricotta.

Kite Hill has a variety of products such as almond milk and greek-style yogurt, ricotta cheese and cream cheese spreads in a variety of flavors. 

​Miyoko's Creamery has your fancier cheeses including cheese wheels, Buffalo mozzarella style vegan mozzarella, cream cheese and cheese spreads. 

The Girls Gone Green joined Keep Jacksonville Beautiful and others from around the globe in picking up litter for the annual Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup Day Saturday, Sept. 21!

Keep Jacksonville Beautiful is the local affiliate of The Keep America Beautiful commission. Each year, Keep Jacksonville Beautiful organizes local International Coastal Cleanup Day cleanup locations throughout the city led by site captains. This year, The Girls Gone Green was once again site captain at Riverside Park, next to historic Five Points. 

Why was an inner-city park part of a cleanup devoted to cleaning up the coastlines and waterways? Simple. Trash travels! Located just a few short blocks from the St. Johns River, Riverside Park gets a lot of people traffic, which equates to a lot of trash – litter that can easily blow or wash down the road or make its way into drains. Stopping trash in its tracks prevents litter from washing into the river and out to sea. 

International Coastal Cleanup Day was established more than 30 years ago in Texas. Since then, it has grown to include volunteers from states and territories in the U.S. and more than 100 countries. Since its inception, more than 12 million volunteers have collected more than 220 million pounds of trash! 

The Ocean Conservancy has some great resources for starting your own cleanup – before, during and after. You can make plans to join an established cleanup next year or start your own!

Download the Clean Swell app to document the trash you find year-round. You don't have to wait for an official cleanup to make a difference! Pick up trash wherever you see it. Next time you're at the beach, bring a bag or bucket to collect litter. Everyone can make an impact. 

Thank you to all of the wonderful volunteers who came out to help clean up at our site and around the world! How cool is it to participate in and international event united to protect our seas from harmful trash?

Why grow your own? 

Growing your own food puts to use space you have available. Even in small spaces, you'd be surprised by how much you can grow with container gardens or raised garden beds. Alternatively, community gardens like the Riverside Avondale Community Garden and others like it, provide a space to grow if you don't have the room at your home.

Produce in supermarkets has a high carbon footprint because it is often grown on the other side of the country or even in another country and shipped to your local grocery. That's why growing your own food or supporting your local farmers is critical to being eco-conscious and lowering your carbon footprint. It also often tastes better and you can control exactly what's going into growing your food i.e. what goes into your food, goes into your body when you consume it. 

Plus, you can attract beneficial pollinators to your yard which in turn gives them a food supply – symbiosis at its best! Involving children in the growing process is not only educational, but it often gets them to try new things and eat healthier as they try the foods they labored and nurtured to grow. ​

By Carrie Resch

Instead of buying bottled water, invest in a refillable water jug that you can fill pre-storm and use to refill reusable water bottles. Get creative! You don’t necessarily need to run out and buy something new – fill up your existing containers and pitchers. You can throw some pre-filled water bottles in the freezer, so if you lose power, you will have cold water. As a bonus, the frozen bottles can double as “ice packs” for your food. Don’t forget to fill your bathtubs and sinks up with water as well for bathing, washing hands and flushing toilets. If you don’t end up needing the water you’ve collected, you can use it to water plants.

If you're concerned about your water quality for drinking water, you could always purchase a water filter. Brita water filters are recyclable through Terracycle. Details about how to recycle the filters are available online.

Make sure you have plenty of charcoal or propane for cooking. This handy BioLite Wood Burning CampStove can cook your meals and charge your devices. 

Keep non-perishable foods on hand such as Amy's Kitchen canned chilis and soups or Dr. McDougall's vegan meals. 

Don't forget to make plans for your pets! Have a plan and take them with you! Remember, pets are a lifetime commitment. In case of emergency, they will need you more than ever. Don’t leave them behind — plan ahead. 

Locate your pet-friendly shelters in the area and make sure you have all the required paperwork like vaccination records. Keep a photo of your pet handy and also a photo of you and your pet to prove ownership. 

Check out sites like www.petswelcome.com to locate pet-friendly hotels you can evacuate to. Check out this list from the Humane Society for other resources, including how to make a pet evacuation kit. 

The Girls Gone Green hopped aboard the Matanzas Riverkeeper’s Litter Gitter with Captain Adam Morley on Aug. 31. It was a pre-planed G3 Affair, but the cleanup just so happened to take place right before our coastline was to be impacted by Hurricane Dorian. So, we went out to look for trash in the waterways before the storm hit – which could potentially take litter out to sea. 

The Litter Gitter II is special because it enables volunteers to pick up trash from marshes and islands unreachable by land. The Litter Gitter is the waterway cleanup division of North Florida Coastal Caretakers. Morley is the current chair for The Litter Gitter committee – a community project to collect data on the litter removed from our local waterways. 

The Litter Gitter II has collected more than 5,000 pounds of trash since April (and counting)!

Our cleanup area was the Salt Run in the Matanzas waterway near St. Augustine, Florida. 

We collected several cups, bottles, cans and bags today along with clothing items — a pair of pants, a flip flop and a visor. We even helped tow and secure a piece of a floating dock ahead of the impending storm.

We also spotted tons of wildlife, including bottlenose dolphins, egrets, ospreys, turtles and Roseate spoonbills.
The wildlife highlights just how important it is to keep waterways debris-free so they don’t mistakenly ingest bits of polystyrene foam or micro plastics or become entangled in marine debris such as fishing line, rope or nets.

If you missed the cleanup but would still like to support the Litter Gitter’s mission, you can make a donation.  If you’d like to organize a private cleanup for friends, family or co-workers, email jessica@matanzasriverkepper.org.

A big “thank you” to all of the volunteers who came out and to the Litter Gitter group for being so awesome! 

We raised a ruckus at River Ruckus Aug. 24! The festival is an annual event presented by the St. Johns Riverkeeper and Riverside Arts Market to celebrate the St. Johns River. 

The Girls Gone Green had a huge presence as we spread out to include a make your own t-shirt bag and grain bag sewing demo area. Reusable bags for the win! There are so many options for reusable shopping bags out there. Interested  in making your own t-shirt bag? It's super easy and best of all, no sew! Here's a tutorial. We decided to sew some grain bags on site to raise awareness for our Riverside Arts Market bag share program and using reusable shopping bags. 

There were several river-related activities throughout the day including free boat rides and a cleanup of the Riverwalk. 

​The St. Johns Riverkeeper once again this year had sweet reusable silicone cups for sale. Sweetwater Brewing Company, based in Atlanta, GA, was the featured brewery for the day. Sweetwater teams up with riverkeeper and water alliance groups to help raise funds. After all, you can't make beer without water, the brewery states. They even have a seasonal beer, Costa Kick Plastic Pilsner, a collaboration with Costa Sunglasses to raise awareness about plastic pollution!

The mission of the St. Johns Riverkeeper is to be an independent voice that defends, advocates, and activates others for the protection and restoration of the St. Johns River. The nonprofit organization is making strides in raising awareness about critical issues facing the river, including toxic algae and fertilizers to the threat of stormwater flooding. 

The St. Johns river is a brackish river, meaning it's a mixture of salt and freshwater. It's not unusual to see dolphins or jellyfish swimming in the river. It's also the largest river in Florida and one of the few rivers in the United States that flows South to North. ​

We love our volunteers! Are you interested in volunteering at one of our upcoming events? We'd love to have you!

We have several opportunities available depending on your interest. We will be setting up another grain bag sewing night soon! Even if you don't sew, we could use help prepping the bags. Come table an event with us and learn more about our organization!

We have some upcoming clean ups on the first Saturday of the month at Riverside Arts Market (715 Riverside Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32233) or at one of Keep Jacksonville Beautiful's International Coastal Cleanup sites. The annual Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup is Saturday, Sept. 21. The GGG will once again be site captains  at Riverside Park, located at 753 Park St., Jacksonville, FL 32204. The cleanup will take place from 9-11 a.m.

If you don't live in the area, see if there's an existing ICC cleanup near you, or start one and join people from around the world as we clean up litter Sept. 21!
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Email the GGG volunteer coordinator, Alicia Smith, at alicia@thegirlsgonegreen.com for volunteer opportunities. 
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Good times! We had a fabulous night turning grain bags into reusable shopping bags Aug. 13 at Tabula Rasa Brewing!! Thank you to the brewery for letting us use their space for this event again. They’ve been so supportive of our project and we always have tons of fun!

Shoutout to all the volunteers who donated their time and skills to making these bags that will be donated to the Riverside Arts Market for The Girls Gone Green/RAM bag share program. We couldn’t make this happen without YOU! The bag share program encourages consumers to use reusable bags over plastic. 

If you would like your own grain bag bag, it's time to get crafty! Ask your local brewery if they have any grain bags they'd be willing to donate to you for your project. (another tip: we also like to use discarded grain bags for cleanups in place of trash bags) You could even use a pet food bag. There are tons of instructions online! Here's the one we ended up using: www.communitychickens.com/diy-chicken-feed-sack-tote

Make a bag for yourself or a friend, or if you'd like to donate your handmade bags to the Riverside Arts Market, we'd be thrilled to have them! Just drop them (or any unwanted reusable bag – new or used) in one of the bag share bins any Saturday during market hours (10 a.m.-3 p.m.) or consider donating them to your local farmers market.

We will keep you posted on our next sewing night. We are always looking for volunteers. You don't need to know how to sew; we are looking for bag preppers and awesome people to hang out with, too! Don't worry, we'll put you to work!

​Together we can and will make a difference! 💚🛍🛍🤗

We kicked off our first much-needed cleanup in and around the parking lot where the Riverside Arts Market takes place on Saturdays in Jacksonville, FL!

Our first cleanup took place Aug. 3 and we collected tons of cigarette butts, straws, bottles, cups, a beanbag, signs and even a pair of undies. We will be holding cleanups on the first Saturday of every month. Our next cleanup will be Sept. 7. Volunteers needed! We will provide all supplies. Just swing by The Girls Gone Green tent to pick up a bucket, gloves and a grabber. 

Buckets and grain bags have been donated by local breweries and eateries. After the trash is collected in buckets, it's dumped into grain bags. By using grain bags instead of garbage bags, we are reusing an item that would normally be trashed – much better than using a fresh, clean garbage bag! Thank you to The Cleanup Cruiser for lending us their cleanup supplies. We even had little grabbers for the kiddos and loved seeing their excited faces as they helped pick up trash. Get youth involved whenever you can – they truly want to help and they are our future!

All litter has the potential to make it into our waterways. Remember, trash travels! Here in Jacksonville, we are lucky to have our beautiful St. Johns River​, and the Riverside Arts Market is situated on it. We want to catch trash before it collects on the coastline or floats out to sea. 

Would you like to get involved? Plan on coming to the next cleanup! You don't have to dedicate a huge portion of your day – every little bit helps. RAM takes place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. but we will be set up early. You can come cleanup before the market starts or stop by throughout the day. 

RAM is located at 715 Riverside Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32204. The next cleanup will be Saturday, Sept. 7. Questions? Email alicia@thegirlsgonegreen.com.