The Slow Food Movement began in Italy in 1986 to preserve regional cultural cuisine within an eco region. Some of its objectives include:

• forming and sustaining seed banks to preserve heirloom varieties in cooperation with local food systems
• developing an “ark of taste” for each ecoregion, where local culinary traditions and foods are celebrated
• preserving and promoting local and traditional food products, along with their lore and preparation
• organizing small-scale processing (including facilities for slaughtering and short run products)
• organizing celebrations of local cuisine within regions (for example, the Feast of Fields held in some cities in Canada)
• promoting “taste education“
• educating consumers about the risks of fast food
• educating citizens about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness and factory farms
• educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on too few genomes or varieties
• developing various political programs to preserve family farms
• lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy
• lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering
• lobbying against the use of pesticides
• teaching gardening skills to students and prisoners
• encouraging ethical buying in local marketplaces

The Dwell on Design (DOD) conference in LA going on this weekend has some interesting content, including how the Slow Food Movement is influencing kitchen design.

Discovery is launching the first 24 hour green living network, called Planet Green. There are several shows in the network, starting with the sneak preview of ‘Renovation Nation’ on June 4 at 9:30pm Eastern. (The official premiere is June 6, 8:00pm.)

Renovation – as opposed to new construction from the ground up, or worse, demolition – is one of the greenest ways to live. Not only is it recycling and reuse of space and structure itself, it’s a great way to introduce eco-friendly products into an existing space. That’s a better way to stay in sync with the environment than adding to the landfill by tearing the whole thing down. And as they say, YMMV (your mileage may vary) – it’s a case-by-case decision.

99% of the time I design with frameless type cabinet box construction. Also called accessible or euro (european) style, it allows for more storage with less obstacles to reach around to store and retrieve contents. The lines are cleaner, construction is much simpler, and if you ever wanted to switch out the guts, say, put in drawers where there are currently doors, you can do so without switching out the entire box.