Toutelabio.com is a pleasant and fun website which help you find online nearly 5 000 fresh and organic products. Many fruits and vegetables are offered, but also meat and different kinds of bread. It’s an interactive market where you can simply register and place orders to receive, at home, the ingredients of your meal. Toutelabio.com also offers a multitude of choices in terms of non-food products: clothing, hardware, entertainment, books and even cosmetics. Everything is natural. The website also provides food supplements, essential oils and food without gluten. The user is guided in the purchase process and the categories are well detailed. Shop on the Internet becomes a real pleasure, simple and fast.

The biodynamic, such as organic farming, is to get healthy plants with optimum performance, while avoiding the depletion of soil by a highly intensified. In bio-dynamic, as well as farming, soils are fertilized using organic fertilizer, compost. The use of soluble fertilizers, natural or not, and that of synthetic pesticides are banned of course. The basis for these farmers is the use of compost produced, in essence, from manure, vegetable waste and soil, in fact any natural substance of plant or animal capable of being decomposed by microorganisms and beings living in the compost.
The bio-dynamic agriculture, like organic farming, possibly using the technique of companion plants, ie plants that are mutually reinforcing in their vicinity. Similarly in the fight against parasites, it also uses infusions, decoctions, liquid, or preparations of plants such as wormwood, the tansy, the leaf phacelia tanaisie, horseradish, chives, powdered root Ferns, pyrethrum, Quassia wood and minerals such as lime powder or powder calcified seaweed. Some fertilizers are used incidentally, as the basalt powder, feather powder or pig bristles, powdered copper ore and other rocks that are mainly used to regenerate the soil exhausted by the very chemical intensive culture.
What is the specificity of the bio-dynamic agriculture, mainly the use of auxiliary or “preparations”. These preparations have been developed from the indications given by Rudolf Steiner.
There are six preparations to add compost and two preparations to spray on crops. Four of them are used to invigorate and enliven the compost to make it. One of the other two is to spray directly on the soil and the last directly on plants during growth.

In search of information on ecofriendly or fair trade? Visit the blog Mon Panier Bio.com which distils information in serious and less serious articles. Organic food products, social problems, new modes of consumption, pesticides, AMAPs or sustainable development, all issues are addressed by the blogger.
It is also pleasant to find among the serious articles, other less serious ones including Organic Humor, to laugh a little besides major environmental problems.

The association of Greenpeace GMOs detectives has made a list with almost 180 stores (large, medium and small stores) that sell products containing GMOs, listed by French department. Major brands such as Leclerc, Carrefour, Auchan and Monoprix are mentioned, but there are also grocery stores and supermarkets such as Tang Freres.

Each visitor is invited to identify a new contaminated store which is not yet part of the list compiled by Greenpeace. A letter is downloadable to encourage the stores to remove all GMO products from their shelves.

A lengthy process but that works. The website offers a second list, this time, decontaminated stores, where products containing GMOs have been withdrawn from sale. A small victory but it may expand if everyone works at his level.

“The one who moves mountains is the one who starts removing small stones”, Confucius. It is with this quote that the website Ecotours welcomes you. A situation which speaks volumes about the purpose of this fair and sustainable travel website. Specialized in Latin America (Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic), Ecotours performs many actions in each destination for tourists. With a background in development, Ecotours improves primary schools and buy school supplies in Peru, or assist the NGOs in Venezuela. The development fund is financed very simply: just 3% is charged on each trip, which represents from 60 to 85€ depending on destination and rates.
Ecotours leaders also encourage travellers to respect their values once at their arrival destination: adaptation to living conditions, respect for customs, valuation of crops, promoting the local economy and so on.
Appreciating nature without disturbing is the theme of ecotourism, a rule easy to respect but that still seems to some, difficult to implement.

Released on February 2009, this thoughtful horticulture guide, richly illustrated with drawings and diagrams, gives you tips and tricks for beautiful vegetables, tasty and untreated, on your terrace or your balcony! Living in the city is more synonymous with alienation from nature, but the opportunity just get closer.
Josep Maria Vallès, the author of the book, is an agronomist, and cultivated for more than ten years, vegetables on the terrace. In his guide, he explains the installation, maintenance, and comprehensive planning of the garden.
To take into account: the sun, seasons and temperatures. All topics are addressed to support experts in their ideas, and help novices: parasites and diseases, vegetables best suited to a culture on a balcony, compost etc.
“An organic vegetable garden on my balcony … the guide for the urban gardener!

An organic vegetable garden on my balcony, Josep Maria Vallès. Rouergue editions. 22 €.

AB: Agriculture Biologique. Includes a method of environment-friendly production. The plants must be grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides and GMOs. Animals must be fed with organic feed or grass, and cured by herbal medicine and homeopathy, unless an exception.
In contrast to the Red Label, which implies an obligation of result, the sign AB responds to an obligation of means. An organic product is not necessarily better in terms of taste, but in principle it does not contain traces of pesticide residue, unless it has been contaminated by the chemical treatment of its neighbor.
Each year, it is monitored. In fact, it focuses on the production system (farming plots, places of storage, processing, accounting …) and little on the analysis of foods.
As for products, they can not bear the words resulting from organic agriculture if they contain at least 95% of ingredients.
Contrary to popular belief, the wine is not recognized as an organic product, as there is no official specification for vinification. The certification focuses solely on organic cultivation of grapes used.
As for imports, or they meet the French standards and thus the sign AB, or they have an organic label, European or overseas.
Since 1 July 2006, the regulation prohibits the use of the prefix “bio” for a product that is not derived from organic agriculture. If you have any doubt, remember the words of the certifying body must be included on labels.
This label guarantees 100% against GMOs and almost 100% against pesticides, hormones and antibiotics, except for outside contamination. In fact, sometimes minute traces of residues are detected.

European AB: established in 1991 to unify the different label that does not replace, it is less demanding than some of them (such as AB French label).
A new regulation was passed in 2007 and will enter into force on 1 January 2010, after much controversy due to less strict rules in particular on GMOs and pesticides.
It reinforces the previous regulation of 1991 (the finished product must contain at least 95% – in mass – organic ingredients to qualify for this designation, instead of 70% previously) and it requires that organic products imported from countries outside the EU are subject to the same rules as the European product, it establishes a tolerance for the presence of GMOs.
Now, up to 0.9%, the producer does not have to mention the presence of GMOs if contamination is unintentional.
Thus, unfortunately, this new label (a new logo will be designed for its introduction), loses much of its usefulness, because the doors to the bio are obviously those who are least able to accept the presence of GMOs was is less than 0.9%.

Nature et Progres: Founded in 1964, he has the peculiarity to gather professionals and consumers. It covers both agriculture and cosmetics.
Nature & the words progress is attributed to producers who comply with a charter and technical specifications more stringent than those of traditional farming.
Instead of 95% of ingredients required by the label AB, Nature et Progrès requires 100%. It forbids the use of antibiotics, without any exceptions, and requires that the entire farm is organic.

Lovers of chocolate and sweets of all kinds, stop at this fair trade chocolate bar, founded by Guillaume Hermitte, a gourmet who after a trip abroad, where he discovered a bewitching chocolate factory, decided to do it as his job. Puerto Cacao is a cool chocolate bar. It is here where you meet your friends to enjoy a hot chocolate on the long winter’s evenings or to have brunch on weekends in the summer.
To try: the original home made jams (chocolate banana, pear with chocolate and pineapple with chocolate!), chocolate chips and cocoa granite, the inevitable molten chocolate or a fondant that will drive yourself crazy!

Open Tuesday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 7.30 p.m, Saturdays from 10.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in winter and from 11a.m. to 2 p.m. in summer.

Puerto Cacao
53, rue de Tocqueville
75017 Paris
France
T. : +33.1.42.67.28.51

Two interactive websites, FemininBio and MademoiselleBio offer advice and tips on the world of organic cosmetics. Nutrition, beauty, fashion, health, decoration, all issues are addressed in the form of articles, blog or forum. Created by professionals of the beauty or ecology, these two websites are a mine of information for women of the twenty-first century, who wish to preserve their health, beauty and the environment.

Mademoiselle Bio
A website founded by Violette Watine. From the traditional cosmetics, she started in the beauty business with the urge to draw a new world. Very well designed, Mademoiselle Bio is nice and your researches are simplified through the choice of different themes: symptoms, trademarks etc.

Feminin Bio
This website is defined as the “community of women who want to change the everyday world.” Created by the authors of two guides on organic cosmetics (“The guide of organic cosmetics” and “Let’s buy organic cosmetics”), the objective is “to share with other women a healthier environmental and respectful lifestyle to protect the world around us”, says Anne, founder of the website.

Because it is often more telling than long speeches …

1.5 kg of pesticide absorbed through our food per person per year in France
5 times less energy consumed by a light bulb energy saving compared to an incandescent bulb
8% of fish in the world (7.3 million tonnes) are unwanted and thus directly discharged into the sea with the impact that one imagines on the marine ecosystem
10: ocean biomass (total quantity of species) was divided by 10 to 50 years
20% of wood imported into the EU is illegally cut timber (source: WWF)
22% of homes in France have a rate of formaldehyde (found in glues, carpets, disinfectants, wood, synthetic materials …) dangerous to their occupants (CERTAIN classified carcinogen by WHO, also responsible for respiratory diseases, the the most widespread pollutant in the home … without knowing it and without talking about …)
23% of animal species are threatened around the world (source: WWF)
25% of vertebrates have disappeared since 1970
27 chemical treatments on average over a non-organic apples sold in France
30% of colonies of bees are lost every year in France since 1995
35% of cancers are caused by our food (too rich, too fatty, too sweet, too much meat, too many pesticides and chemical additives …)
40% of organic fruit and vegetables consumed in France are imported
50% decrease in the quantity of sperm in human semen, in 50 years
50 times less CO2 emissions when you eat a vegetable grown locally in season, open field, compared to a vegetable imported by air, out of season
60 new species per year (about 1 per week) join the list of species threatened with extinction. Today, 25% of mammals, 12% of birds, 30% of amphibians and 70% of plants are endangered
65% fruit and 45% of non-organic vegetables contain pesticides, with 6% of the maximum residue levels (DGCCRF source)
75% of televisions, computers and other mobile phones are not recycled in Europe, the USA 80% and 99% in India (source Echobio)
90% of rivers and 50% of groundwater are not contaminated by pesticides France
100% of table grapes organic not sold in France have revealed the presence of pesticide residues (out of 25 samples tested) and 16% even exceeded the permitted limit (MDRGF source)
140 liters is the amount of water used to produce a cup of coffee (source: Water Footprint Network)
450 years, the time required for a plastic breaks down in nature
1000 liters, the quantity of water used to produce brick of 1 liter of milk (source: Water Footprint Network)
16 000 liters is the amount of water used to produce a kilo of beef (source: Water Footprint Network)
80 000 tonnes of pesticides are released into the wild every year in France (of which 6 to 7% by home gardeners in the garden)
100 000 chemical molecules are currently used in products of everyday use (household cleaners, perfumes …) without ever having been tested!
The time you read this article (2 min), approximately 50 hectares of forest have disappeared in the world, the size of 68 football fields. In one year more than 13 million hectares, or 131 000 km2, disappear, or a quarter of the size of France.

Source Chacunsonbio.fr