About eight years ago, Glenn Albrecht began receiving frantic calls from residents of the Upper Hunter Valley, a 6,000-square-mile region in southeastern Australia. For generations the Upper Hunter was known as the “Tuscany of the South” — an oasis of alfalfa fields, dairy farms and lush English-style shires on a notoriously hot, parched continent. “The calls were like desperate pleas,” Albrecht, a philosopher and professor of sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, recalled in June. “They said: ‘Can you help us? We’ve tried everyone else. Is there anything you can do about this?’ ”

To read the rest of this article from the New York Time Magazine, click here.

I found this interesting article on the Slate site, which talks about where all of the plastic 3-D glasses wind up after each showing of James Cameron’s Avatar. It’s food for thought, especially considering that, as of January 25th, Avatar has grossed $552.8 million dollars in this country alone. That, my friends, is a lot of plastic.

The good news is that Slate found that many of the glasses are washed and reused or sent to recycling facilities. Click here to read the full article.

The first time I heard about a raw diet was about 15 years ago. I was watching a television program that featured a model strolling through the aisles of a grocery store. She was explaining that she doesn’t cook any of her food and said that her diet alone was responsible for her glowing skin and youthful exuberance.

I am paraphrasing here but the gist of it was this, “Before this I switched over to raw foods my skin was terrible, I was gaining weight and I had no energy.”

All I could think was, Yeah, right Super Model. Puuuhhhleeease!

In the last couple of years, though, I have read a lot about raw diets and am starting to believe that there is something to them. Look, I still don’t believe that a raw diet is going to transform me into a genetically perfect fashion model but I do believe in the body’s ability to heal from and prevent disease using diet. What I know is that adding more of the good stuff and subtracting more of the bad can only do this body good.

The best book I have come across on the subject is The Raw Food Detox Diet: The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Lossby Natalia Rose. The book breaks down making the transition to raw foods really clearly. Whether you want to make a complete change to a raw lifestyle or just add some new dishes to your repertoire, the book is really inspiring. The best part is that Rose doesn’t expect militant perfection. In fact her book offers a variety of ways that raw foods can be incorporated into the average lifestyle. I like the idea of eating “raw ’til dinner,” which is just as it sounds. Raw foods, smoothies and juices all day until your evening meal when you are allowed to have cooked food. It sounds doable to me.

I’ll be thumbing through the book a lot in the upcoming weeks, having just agreed to do a 21 day cleanse with my friend Nancy. Wish me luck!

Throw in a cupcake and I would have spontaneously orgasmed.

Brilliant Earth is a jewelry company dedicated to creating baubles that are as sustainable as they are gorgeous. Not only are the metals used in the rings recycled, the gems the company uses are culled from sustainable sources.

So you might be wondering: Uh, Heather? What does that mean? And why should I give a rat’s ass?

Here is why Brilliant Earth rocks:

It is a pretty well known fact that diamond diggers in regions like West Africa face dangerous working conditions, brutal violence, and famine, working their butts off only to make less than $1 a day. The money from the diamonds we purchase in this country (or any other) don’t trickle down to the diamond-mining communities. In fact, the mining regions of West Africa are among the poorest in their respective countries, despite their diamond resources.

Based on the success of fair trade practices in other industries, like coffee, Brilliant Earth has determined that the same can be done for the corrupt diamond industry. Brilliant Earth believes that diamond consumers can help diggers attain a fair price for their labor, safe working conditions, clean water, and basic health care by demanding a fair trade diamond alternative.

The majority of Brilliant Earth diamonds come from Canada. These diamonds are carefully tracked from two mines in Canada through the cutting, polishing, and transport processes. The company is certain that its Canadian diamonds are conflict-free, according to its website, because each diamond is tracked from mine to customer.

Brilliant Earth also purchases diamonds from PRIDE Diamonds, a socially responsible Sierra Leone diamond mining organization that aids workers and their communities through their fair trade diamond mining practices. PRIDE Diamonds pays its workers several times the average gross national income of Sierra Leone, reinvesting money into the surrounding communities, and rehabilitating land mined into productive farming.

Additionally, according to the website, Brilliant Earth has recently begun acquiring Namibian diamonds, which are mined according to strict standards of environmental and social responsibility. These diamonds help to promote sustainable development in the impoverished southwest African country by providing much-needed jobs, health care and education opportunities for Namibia’s people. Because Namibia’s ecology has suffered from irresponsible mining practices in the past, the diamond mining regions are now closely monitored for environmental impacts with special care to rehabilitate the land after use, according to Brilliant Earth.

To add to the good will, Brilliant Earth donates 5 percent of its profits to help communities who have suffered from unethical practices in the jewelry industry.

I feel sparkly inside just thinking about it all.

Valentine Day gift set:  Treat yourself or your lover like a goddess with this gift set of soaps inspired by Aphrodite and Astarte, sensual goddesses of love and beauty, and by Fire, the element of passion. This gift set, shown above, includes 3 soaps (Aphrodite, Astarte, and Fire), and a wooden soap dish, all for $20.

Love & Beauty gift set:  This gift set of 2 soaps includes our Aphrodite, Goddess of love & beauty soap (“Awaken your inner goddess”), our Asherah milk & honey soap (“Pamper yourself”), and a wooden soap dish.  The set retails for $15.

Custom gift set:  Put your own personalized selection of soaps together!  Choose any two or three soaps, and choose to add a soap dish at a discounted price if you’d like.  If you are a shopping for a man, the Cernunnos and Ares soaps would be excellent masculine choices for Valentine’s day.  The custom gift set retails for $13.

I had to chuckle while reading a recent article in the New York Times on how environmental awareness is driving couples to the therapist’s office. It made me laugh, not because I find it funny when couples have problems, but because I have bickered with my significant other about these issues more than once.

All in all, my boyfriend and I are on the same page, but we have had our differences. He could give a rip about organic cotton bedding and clothing, while I would spend a fortune on it. He doesn’t always understand why I refuse to buy products produced by especially villainous companies. (“Why? Because Kraft is evil. End of story,” has had to suffice more than once.) And he has occasionally raised an eyebrow at the grocery bill, especially that time that he noticed I paid $13 for a few pounds of organic cucumber and $7 for a single Java-Log.

I am lucky; having grown up in Hawaii where resources can be scarce, Byron is in many ways innately more environmentally conscious than I am. It is rare but when we argue it is about household shopping and the extra money being spent on eco-friendly items. The few times we have seriously disagreed about purchases I have played the “I have to walk the walk if I’m gonna talk to talk” card, and that is usually enough to end the disagreement. Luckily he respects what I do here on Eco to the People.

Apparently some couples are having more serious disagreements about lifestyle choices and how money is spent, especially when the cost  is related to green living choices. Has committing to living a green lifestyle caused problems in your relationship? And, if the answer is yes, how so?

Read the New York Times article “Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes” here and weigh in on the subject.

Apparently environmental standards go downhill at some ski resorts. I’ve never thought about it before, but the way in which the resorts are constructed can be detrimental to the environment.

Read this recent article in the New York Times. I’ll help all of you eco ski bunnies make better choices about where to spend your money this season.

The New Yorker  recently ran a great profile of John Mackey, the quirky CEO of Whole Foods. The article explores the chain’s role in the organic foods industry and the argument of some food writers, Michael Pollan among them, that Whole Foods has denigrated the true spirit of the organic movement.

Read the article here and chime in on the debate. Do you think that Whole Foods has pushed the organic food movement forward by making it accessible to more people, or do you think that it has transformed nothing more than how yuppies buy their food?

But I digress.

It is through that lens this lens I found myself trolling the Internet a few months back, looking for some cute items to write about here on Eco to the People. And that is when I stumbled across First Step Organic and its line of sustainable baby clothes.

The line is small with just a handful of items, all of which are made of 100 percent organic cotton. My favorite is the Funny Alien t-shirt, which retails for $19.50. The only thing that could make this shirt cuter is if it was worn with a tutu.

But we decided it would be best not to talk about that, right?

My inner nerd is deeply in love with Michael Pollan. Whenever I see a new book of his on the shelves at Green Apple Books I flip through it longingly, waiting for a used copy to rotate back through the store. His latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, is one that I am really looking forward to reading.

A quick hit compared to Pollan’s normal tomes about food and nutrition, Food Rules promises to be an Eating for Dummies guide for savvy foodies. Check out this Q&A with Pollan in this week’s New York Times Magazine for inspiration of your own.

Michael Pollan Offers 64 Ways to Eat Food by Tara Parker-Pope