CNN reports that the project, called Rimbunan Kaseh, is the result of a public-private partnership. Residents there have access to educational, training and recreational facilities, as well as an aquaculture system that provides the community with food, jobs and water to irrigate trees, flowers and crops. The homes are powered by a combination of solar, biomass and hydro power.

Its creators hope the community will be duplicated in impoverished areas around the world. Developers are already planning to build a dozen more smart villages across Malaysia with hopes that they will breed prosperity.

“It is a complete loop; a modern farm — one that could even exist on the rooftop of a building,” said Tan Say Jim, managing director of Malaysia’s IRIS Corporation Berhad, in a statement. “With this project we stimulate rural growth with modern agriculture activities, we balance development and economic activities between the urban and rural areas, we provide income and we improve living standards.”

Featured photo credit: Shutterstock; video credit: UP Multimedia

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Rosie Boycott, chair of Mayor Boris Johnson’s London Food directive, said the Olympic food service organizers hope the strategies they’re using to bring fresh, eco-conscious food to the mouths of millions will be replicated throughout the U.K. and across the globe after the Games end.

“Back in 2007 the organizers determined that this was an unprecedented opportunity to look at our diets and our health, at our catering industry, at the state of our farms, and to commit to a long-term plan for good food and environmental stewardship,” she told The Daily Beast.

Among the locally sourced Olympic menu items are Welsh lamb, Leicestershire Stilton pie, Isle of Wight tomatoes and sourdough bread from the London borough of Tower Hamlets.

Even big name Olympic food providers are on board. McDonald’s, for example, has agreed to serve chicken and potatoes grown in the U.K.

“The thing that nobody knows yet is, will McDonald’s continue to follow the Olympic food standards afterward?” Boycott told The Daily Beast. “We’re waiting to hear, and hoping.”

Main photo credit: Shutterstock

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Roberts is the brains behind Lyfe Kitchen, a new American dining experience that serves dairy-less cookies and beef from grass-fed, humanely raised cows. There’s no butter, cream, white sugar, white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, additives or trans fats in any of the menu items, which include grilled barramundi and fish tacos, according to a feature on the company published in Wired magazine.

Lyfe Kitchen (Lyfe stands for Love Your Food Everyday) opened less than a year ago in Palo Alto, Calif. But Roberts has big plans for his fledgling eatery. He aims to open hundreds of locations across the nation within five years. Lyfe, he hopes, will become America’s new and improved McDonald’s.

Lyfe isn’t just committed to serving healthy meals — though Roberts hopes to serve brussels sprouts like McDonald’s sells french fries — it’s also committed to eco-conscious culinary practices.

Take this example: The poultry industry typically cools slaughtered chickens in chlorine water baths. But Wired reports that Lyfe’s poultry supplier, Mary’s Chickens, uses chilled air to cool its birds, which runs a lower risk of food contamination and saves gallons of water each day.

“It’s better for food safety,”Jim Campbell of Synergy Restaurant Consultants, the company Roberts has hired to source many of Lyfe’s ingredients, told Wired in an interview. “You’re not mixing all these chickens in a bath of water, where contamination can occur. And you’re saving 30,000 gallons of water a day.”

Main photo credit: Lyfe Kitchen

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Carrefour’s ECOPlanet cooking oil is made only from oil palms grown in Indonesia. The RSPO certification covers a range of issues: protecting rare or endangered species like orangutans, preserving water quality, reducing pollution and waste, and respecting indigenous rights, among other factors.

Palm plantations have posed serious environmental and social challenges in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Though laws on the books are intended to protect against deforestation, some companies have tried to break the rules. One major corporation is now accused of illegally clearing tens of thousands of acres of protected rainforest. For the Sumatran tiger and the orangutan, palm oil production could ultimately lead to extinction. Deforestation also has serious impacts on climate change.

With increasing consumer pressure to protect rainforests, several corporations began working on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in 2004. By 2009, the group had developed a system for certifying palm oil production, and by 2011, over 1 million hectares of production area had been certified around the world.

Several U.S. companies, including Cargill, Colgate-Palmolive and Seventh Generation, are members of the RSPO and have made commitments to source certified palm oil. Unilever has announced that it will reach its target of sourcing 100 percent certified palm oil by the end of this year — three years ahead of schedule.

Main photo credit: a_rabin/Flickr

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Finding a way around the use of man-made fertilizer while keeping agricultural productivity high could be the key to a new green revolution, which explains why the National Science Foundation has given a $6.5 million grant to researchers at The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation to study legumes.

Nitrogen is all around us, making up most of the Earth’s atmosphere, but plants can only make use of it when it’s been converted into certain forms. For the past 100 years, humans have been capturing nitrogen from the air and using it to make ammonia-based synthetic fertilizers. The process of making the stuff starts with fossil fuels and ends with agricultural runoff that kills water life, creates smog and makes people sick.

Beans know a better way. Legumes have an evolutionary alliance with bacteria, growing root nodules that provide a safe home for microorganisms known as rhizobia that are able to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. Organic farmers since pretty much the dawn of agriculture have known something about this, leading to practices like planting corn and beans together, and rotating crops to take advantage of the nitrogen that legumes build into the soil.

The Noble researchers hope to gain a deeper understanding of the way legumes do their work. Along with fellow scientists from other institutions, they will try to determine the genes responsible for legumes’ ability to pull nitrogen from the air and into the soil. They’ll also study how fungi in the soil work with plant roots to improve the uptake of phosphorus — another crucial element for plants that is typically supplied through synthetic fertilizer.

Ultimately, the researchers say they hope to find ways to improve plants’ ability to use their symbiotic relationships so that more food can be produced with sustainable practices.

Main photo credit: thebaron03/Flickr

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The company’s dossier includes over 60 wine brands made with grapes from California vineyards, including Beringer Vineyards, Etude and Stags’ Leap Winery, and all are now certified as 100 percent “sustainable.” The certification is provided by the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance and the Sustainability in Practice program.

To meet the standards set by these organizations, TWE’s California vineyards have adopted practices to conserve energy and water, protect wildlife and habitats, protect natural resources, create equitable and safe work environments, and practice sustainable agriculture. Each vineyard implements different practices to meet the standards and their needs, ranging from installing solar panels to meet energy needs and using clean fuel to provide frost protection.

“At Treasury Wine Estates, sustainability is integral to our company culture and long-term success,” said Michael Kluczko, senior vice president of Americas Supply. “We have a long-running commitment to embedding sustainability throughout every part of our business. Today’s announcement is affirmation of our sustainable farming practices and specifically to the actions our supply and viticulture teams have taken over the last three years to achieve this recognition. We rely on the environment to grow our grapes and to make our wine. It’s our responsibility to look after it.”

TWE’s California vineyards are not its first sustainably certified operations. The company’s Australian labels meet the standards of the country’s Entwine program, and in New Zealand, its brands are certified by the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand program.

Main photo credit: Anne Pollitt/Geograph.org

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