Guests:

Linda Buzzell talks about her new book - EcoTherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind.  Learn how a walk in the park can help fight depression! Ecotherapy, or applied ecopsychology, encompasses a broad range of nature-based methods of psychological healing, grounded in the crucial fact that people are inseparable from the rest of nature and nurtured by healthy interaction with the Earth. Leaders in the field, including Theodore Roszak, Robert Greenway, and Mary Watkins, contribute essays that take into account the latest scientific understandings and the deepest indigenous wisdom. Other key thinkers, from Bill McKibben to Richard Louv to Joanna Macy, explore the links between ecotherapy, spiritual development, and restoring community.

Gayle Prest is here from the City of Minneapolis to talk about their green initiatives.  The city is doing a TON of projects, programs and outreach with the community to promote everything from biking to work to installing your own rain garden.  Learn what the city is doing to combat climate change as well as all of their other great green initiatives HERE.  Did you know that the city passed a no idiling law to help improve air quality?  They are also helping business owners purchase bicycle racks for the front of their stores to encourage bike traffic.  Whether it is planting trees or improving the light rail system, Minneapolis is working hard at achieving its sustainability goals.

Green Info and Tips:

Green Tip #2871

Get Rid of Your Bug Zapper

Several studies have shown the old-fashioned blue-light bug zapper to be extremely inefficient at killing mosquitoes, while they turn beneficial bugs into crispy carcasses. There are better ways to keep biting bugs at bay.

When one Dateline NBC team took a closer look at a bug zapper, they counted only eight mosquitoes out of some 10,000 charred insects.  Your zapper is much more likely to kill innocent, and ecologically important, moths, bees and beetles.

Ironically, a study reported in Mosquito News showed that the probability of being bitten by mosquitoes increases in the vicinity of bug zappers.  Part of the problem is that traditional zappers merely emit UV light as an attractant, although mosquitoes could care less about that spectrum.  Newer technologies release CO2, which does excite the biting bugs.  They work better, but do cost hundreds of dollars.  Try some natural alternatives such as a potent garlic spray-barrier.

Green Tip #4432

Go see the new documentary movie, "Food Inc."

"Food Inc." by filmmaker Robert Kenner that aims lift the veil on our nation's food industry.  According to the film's website, "Food Inc." exposes the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

"Food Inc." features interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser from Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan from The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto,  along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Sala-tin.  "Food, Inc." reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.  CLICK HERE to check out the movie's website.