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A new month brings a fresh start for those who decided to join in on the Bird-a-Day Challenge. The official challenge, taking place on birdaday.net began on New Year's Day. Since then I have been trying to play along, just for fun, counting how many days in a row I can find a “new” bird. (New = recorded for the first time in this game.) So far, I’ve lasted five weeks. Making it this far has already been tough, and it’s only going to get harder.

Plenty of people are playing along, some from as far away as the UK. And a number of new people recently started counting from Feb 1.

When we were putting together our special food issue earlier this year, I was struck by the wide range of topics that we covered: factory farms, technology, pollution, nutrition, agricultural traditions, labor conditions, poverty, and so much more. That interconnectedness is being celebrated across the nation today, the first annual Food Day. Modeled on Earth Day, it’s a grassroots drive to improve our food system, sponsored by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. There’s plenty that needs fixing.

Courtesy of Etsy Earth

Think shopping and saving the planet can’t go hand in hand? Etsy Earth is out to prove wrong all the naysayers.

"Free Range”
“Fair Trade”
“Bird Friendly”
“Natural.”
“USDA Organic”

It can be confusing trying to make sense of all the environmental claims plastered on food products lining grocery store aisles these days.

“There’s a reason for all this green branding,” writes Gretel Schueller in Audubon’s special Food issue. “Since 2003 U.S. organic food sales have more than doubled, to roughly $25 billion. The booming demand for organic foods is making greenwashing more tempting—and more lucrative—than ever before. One study found that about a third of all new food products launched in 2008 claimed to be “natural.””

With all the different green food labels—there are about 100, depending on how you choose to define them—figuring out which ones are the most meaningful can be challenging. Click here to find the truth behind the print.

The largest electricity hog in your home may be that little cable, satellite, or DVR box that plugs into your TV. Some typical set-top box setups are serious energy draws—they use more power than a new refrigeratorThe innocuous-seeming gadgets suck up a mind-boggling $2 billion of electricity a year when they're turned "off," according to a report released by the NRDC this month.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Cjp24

It’s national Don’t Fry Day—which at first I thought was some kind of healthy food campaign, but is actually the National Council on Skin Cancer Prevention’s way to encourage sun safety awareness by reminding everyone to protect their skin while enjoying the outdoors.
  
Here are tips to avoid burning this Memorial Day Weekend, as well as Environmental Working Group's suggestions for the best sunscreens, and those to avoid.

Researcher Alex Caddell with one of the lobster-shell balls. Photo courtesy of University of Maine.

If Cosmo Kramer had been swinging his golf clubs today (instead of in a 1994 Seinfeld episode) his water-bound balls could’ve biodegraded. No more balls irretrievable from the ocean floor—or in the case of the “Marine Biologist” episode, stuck in the blowhole of a whale. What Kramer needed was the University of Maine’s new innovation: golf balls made from lobster shells.

Green ID Pack - LG Optimus S Home Screen with widget
So many cell phone apps, so many ways to waste time. Or maybe not, depending on what you’re downloading. Sprint has recently added an eco-themed option to what it refers to as “ID packs"--and Audubon plays a part.

Spore-producing fungi served in tony restaurants grow in a number of mediums—including coffee grounds. That tidbit of knowledge started two guys on a business venture that diverts 10,000 pounds of coffee grounds a week from the landfill so that it can be turned into soil for the ‘shrooms. And they’re just getting started.