Part 1... About Burning Man

Each year at the end of August a community of 45,000 artists, musicians, eco-warriors, children, bankers, drag queens, inventors, locksmiths, bakers, candlestick makers (anyone with a heart to share and spirit to play), descends on a quiet Nevada playa* to build Black Rock City... and then tear it down 1 week later (*a playa is the desert earth we doeth tread; a prehistoric alkaline lake bed to be precise).

The Black Rock Desert of Nevada, USA is where my six-month travelling odyssey down the Americas begins. Why Nevada? Why the desert? Two words: Burning Man - the global mother of all festivals.

Now the name doesn't do wonders for witches or those with a rampant fear of fire, I agree, but let me tell you, when I hear those two words I'm filled with utter joy and a comforting bliss no other place on earth has done for me yet. It's a reminder of home, a place where money has no value and running free is the name of the game.

Art installations spotted around a fairly barren desert landscape take you both back to your childhood and into the future at the same time. The thing is, trying to describe this festival is somewhat of a futile endeavour; anyone who's ever been has sprouted the words ‘it's hard to explain' and almost as many have said ‘it's a life changing' experience. Burning Man is just one of those magical places that you have to see and live, in order to believe and appreciate.

The spirit of Burning Man lies in its gifting economy; participation and volunteering are a part of your every day play. Cash doesn't count here. You have got to bring your week long supplies of food and water if you want to survive. It has been said if you were to walk into the Nevada Desert with nothing more than the hair on your head near the end of August you will come out trumps from the generosity and survival skills of ‘burners' - people ‘dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance'.

One of the best things in life is good food. One of the best things about Organic Fortnight is the Organic Food Festival in Bristol. Not only is it a chance to taste the best of organic mouth watering creations but also a chance to learn more about the ways we can all help to build a sustainable global community.

Hundreds of delicious samples will be on offer in the street market and food pavilions. Riverford Organic Vegetables, The Village Bakery, Doves Farm Foods and The Chocolate Alchemist are some of the food vendors who will be exhibiting and offering their tasty treats at the festival. There is also an Organic Bar (stocked with plenty of organic wines, ales and ciders) and the Bordeaux Quay Cooking Demonstrations where the UKs best chefs will be showing us how to make easy, affordable organic dishes.

The Organic Gardening Pavilion will provide tips on how to create and then get the best out of you very own organic veggie patch. If you don't have a garden at home allotment networks will also be there to offer help on finding and working your own plot of land.

The festival also a dedicated area to organic and eco living. From the best organic skin care and cosmetic brands (Green People, Madara, Spiezia) to the most beautiful ethical clothes and home ware products (Greenfibres, Luma and Abaca Organic).

Date: Saturday 12th September (10am-6pm) and Sunday 13th September (10am-5pm)
Where: Bristol Harbourside
Cost: £5 entry, free for Soil Association members and children under 16.

I'm about to embark on a 6-month odyssey down the Americas. With two other eco advocates we plan to work in and visit a number of sustainable communities and organic farms to enhance our understanding of what's best for the earth from the ground roots up from the cultures of the Americas.

Avoiding air travel where possible (CO2 emissions alert) we'll be travelling extremely light but we'll need all the tips and advice we can get to fit 6 months worth of luggage into our wee backpacks.

Doing a little wondering today I stumbled across this great little eco travel blog called One Bag, which was voted best blog in the Tripbase eco travel awards category.

One Bag is the perfect resource for all travellers who want to have minimum impact on the environment on their journeys. ‘Overpacking tops the list of biggest travel mistakes' says One Bag. Travelling light is an art and science, one of the best travel skill one can obtain. It can make for a much more relaxed, productive and stress-free experience the blog points out.

The site aims to help convert more people to expert one-bag traveller status. They do this by giving tips on what to pack, what to pack it in and how to pack it (wrinkles are avoidable even in a backpack). One good tip I noted which may be useful given me and my travel partners are covering two continents and 8 countries is to split our luggage up ie half my stuff and half my friends stuff in my bag in case one does get lost in transition.

One Bag also has a Travel Letters page with comments from people who have put its ideas into action (which will hopefully convince even the biggest luggage travellers to slim down.

If you're keen to hear updates of my eco experiences I'll be posting blogs of right here on the So Organic site from September onwards.

An article in the Independent caught my eye this week. It challenged the food mile philosophy of that which is transported over distance is more damaging to the environment than more locally grown varieties.

Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has released findings on research into the food mile philosophy to test if measuring on transport alone is a fair indication of ecological impact or whether we should be focusing more on the amount of energy used to produce them. A fair point to consider; many UK consumers now are savvy enough (or at least we thought) to choose a Kentish apple over a Brazilian one.

But this new report highlights a few hard to avoid facts. In energy use and carbon emissions British grown strawberries and tomatoes fare worse than Spanish grown varieties which utilise the country's constant sunlight to ripen. Lamb from New Zealand is more sustainable than British lamb because the kiwis use less feed supplements and don't need to heat farm buildings. A few fruit and veg we came out on tops with were Israeli potatoes and New Zealand apples.

Jeanette Longfield, co-ordinator of the food and farming pressure group Sustain, told the Independent: ‘My worry is that people will throw the baby out with the bathwater, and say we thought local was better and now it's not. It is complicated, and it's the job of government and industry to plough through the complexity to ensure that we don't have unsustainable products in our shops, irrespective of where they happen to come from.'

Defra is set to release a set of sustainability indicators for food at the end of 2009 in an effort to reduce our nation's emissions from food production. We'll all be waiting to hear what they have to say with bated breath I'm sure!

Are you Green? Eco-friendly? Passionate about the environment? Generally a savvy earth-conscious consumer? And do you practice what you preach?

We're not all perfect (that's a given) and we're still all learning how we can improve our lifestyles with the planet in mind. But there are some who appear to talk the good green talk and fail to walk their talk. When we're talking green business this is called Green Washing. When it comes to individuals it's called useless environmentalism.

Jumping on the bandwagon is all well and good if we're actually contributing to the cause (in whatever small way we're able) but turning green for no other purpose than to change shade is not cool - for the planet or your reputation. The cartoon creatives at Supernews have shed a little comedic light on this message in one of their short animations (see below) called Going Green.