With all the concern about salmonella contamination of tomatoes and more, it's making a whole lot more sense to keep tabs on where your food is coming from. And what better way to do that than buy it from the farmer?

The region is full of farmers' markets, and never have I seen a more complete list than the one at www.PhillyHealthInfo.org. It lists 27 in Philadelphia alone. I wouldn't have even guessed there WERE that many.

The list is being promoted by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which runs the website, and White Dog Community Enterprises, the city coordinator of the "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" campaign.

The College's Andrea Kenyon says that while buying local isn't fail-safe, it's a good start and helps support local farmers.

Judy Wicks, founder of White Dog, said in a statement that self-reliance -- or, I suppose, a reliance as close to yourself as you can get -- is "urgent as we face the uncertainties brought on by climate change and rising oil prices." Also check out the White Dog local food site, www.localfoodPhilly.org. A goldmine.

Mayor Nutter has proclaimed this week "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" week.

Want to see the guy I wrote about in this morning's column, Jim Crater, in action? Want to see another, albeit closely related, side to his recycling work?

On Thursday, from 7 to 9 p.m. in northern Chester County, Crater will lead an energy-saving workshop, “How To Do What You Do, But Better!”

Crater, who finds creative re-uses for things like fishing line and wine corks and every kind of plastic imaginable, also is an expert on on heating, cooling, electric and automotive issues pertaining to the environment.

Crater says he’s hoping to use the forum as a community-building tool. “Many may now be asking themselves, ‘Will I eat this winter and buy fuel?’ If we act together and share ideas while jointly buying products, we can not only do both but eat and heat better.”

For instance, if ten neighbors, say, got together to ask a company to do energy audits of their homes, all on the same day, it would be cheaper. How come we aren’t already doing things like that?

“I think the biggest thing we have to get across to people,” he told me, is that “I don’t believe there are any big fixes” when it comes to the environment. But there are a multitude of small efforts that add up.

And there are ways to do things more creatively. “There is no shortage of energy,” he said. “There is a shortage of understanding energy.”

The event will be held at the Norco Fire Company, 144 West Schuylkill Road — just east of Route 100 — in North Coventry Township. It is being sponsored by Crater’s nonprofit,  Recycling Services, Inc., plus the Chester County Sierra Club, and the North Coventry environmental action committee.

And the BYOM? Bring Your Own Mug. No disposable drink containers will be available.

For more information, please Recycling Services’ website.

Many of us have pet peeves about energy-wasting devices and practices.

Arlene Goldman of Newtown, in Bucks County, is irate about the television screens a local grocery store installed over each register.

They’re on constantly, she told me in an email. “The offerings seem to be ‘infomercials’ and this seems to me to be a waste of electricity. I said as much to the ‘customer service’ person and she informed me it was ‘entertainment for the customer while waiting in line.’  I told her it was certainly not entertainment.”

In fact, Goldman wrote, “I resent electricity resources being consumed in this manner.”

I’ve seen them, too, mostly at service stations. Having music piped into the air while I fill up my car with fuel apparently isn’t enough. Now I have to badgered  by a voice and pictures on a small TV screen, trying to get me to buy a doughnut or cup of coffee or some such.

Not only are these companies wasting energy that could be better used elsewhere, in the final calculations,  I’m probably paying for this “service” to boot.

Do you have an energy-wasting pet peeve? Comment here, or send me an email and let me know.

In this morning's column, I wrote about the high energy toll of air conditioning.

I’ve been carrying around a digital thermometer, and have logged some goosebump-raising temps.

The lowest was at an energy meeting of all things — 68 degrees.

Lately, my own office here in the Inquirer newsroom has hovered at or below 72 degrees.  I also sit in the draft from a vent, so I’m often cold enough to wear a jacket. A woman who sits nearby keeps a winter sweater at her desk.

Another woman I know occupies an office that’s so cold she sometimes turns on a small space heater — in summer!!!
Way too many of us are having to overdress for overcooled buildings. Am I the only one who thinks this doesn’t make sense?

PECO’s Michael Wood has a 15-degree rule of thumb: Your inside temperature should never be more than 15 degrees colder than outdoors. That’s because the hotter it gets outside, the more your air-conditioning works. And the more it works, the more humidity it removes. So you can have it be warmer and still FEEL cooler.

Works for me.

Looking to green your home?

Two principals of a local architecture firm focusing on sustainable design practices are teaching a course this summer at the Engineering and Design Institute of Philadelphia in Manayunk.

The course, Green Home Basics, is four sessions, 6 to 9 p.m., on July 15, 17, 22 and 24.

It will include lectures, case studies and hands-on work sessions, like analyzing your energy bill, which the professionals, Laura A. Blau and Paul A. Thompson, promise will get lower!

A teaser tip: “Insulate, insulate, insulate,” says Blau.

Blau and Thompson’ are the principals at BluPath Design, Inc. Their own home in South Philadelphia has won several awards for sustainable design and energy efficiency.

The cost is $200, which includes dinner at the first session.

For more curriculum details, call Blau: 215-467-0885.

To register, call Philadelphia University:  215-951-2900.

The UK's transport secretary has just rolled out a program aimed at luring people out of their greenhouse gas-producing cars and onto zero-emissions bicycles.

A story today by the Environmental News Service says the Brits will spend the equivalent of $197.4 million U.S. dollars to do things such as add cycling lanes to roads, increase bicycle parking, teach cycling to children and promote the benefits of cycling.

She named Bristol at the UK's first Cycling City, to be joined by 11 other "Cycling Demonstration Towns."

For more about bicycling in this region, check out the website of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, which also is promoting cycling as a healthy and eco-friendly form of transportation.

Today, Home Depot announced a recycling program for compact fluorescent light bulbs.

The bulbs, which are considered environmentally friendly because they use 75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs, nevertheless need to be recycled because they contain small amounts of mercury.

Ikea has been accepting the bulbs, but beyond that, recycling options have been few and far between.

Now, customers can bring any expired, unbroken CFL bulbs to any of the nation’s 1,973 Home Depot stores and give them to the store associate behind the returns desk.

The company said in a statement that the bulbs “will then be managed responsibly by an environmental management company who will coordinate CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.”

Senior vice president Ron Jarvis termed the effort “the first national solution to providing Americans with a convenient way to recycle CFLs.”

The Home Depot sold over 75 million CFLs in 2007, which saved Americans approximately $4.8 billion in energy costs and 51.8 billion pounds in CO2 greenhouse gases over the life of the bulbs, according to the company.

Dissent over the eco-friendliness of bottled water has reached the boiling point, if you will, in recent months.

Americans sure love the stuff. We swigged 8.25 billion gallons in 2006 - an average of 28 gallons per person.

But some decry the energy consumed in transporting it long distances — like from Fiji.

And the petroleum that goes into the plastic.

And the litter that results when too many of us just toss the bottles in the trash.

And so on.

Bottlers point to the convenience of water in a bottle. They say its leads to healthier drink choices and a healthier population.

And the plastic in the bottles has been drastically used.

And so on.

Lately, America’s mayors have begun to look at the issue. After all, hefty funding goes into public water systems. How does it look if cities diss the very stuff coming from their taps by buying bottled? Not to mention the landfill costs when their citizenry litters or tosses.

Now, the august U.S. Conference of Mayors has spoken.

Today in Miami, at the annual national meeting, they passed a resolution.

Did they endorse bottled water and take their lumps with enviros?

Did they decry bottled water and take their lumps with the bottlers?

I guess this is what politics is all about. It was a resolution “supporting municipal water systems.”

And it concludes: The US Conference of Mayors encourages cities to phase out, where feasible, government use of bottled water and promote the importance of municipal water.

Encourages? Where feasible? Phase out? Promote?

Which stikes me as kind of watered down, if you will, from either side of the debate.

I’ve been so pleased with my front-loading washer because it saves so much water.

Until I read this article in the British Daily Mail.

It’s about a British inventors who have developed a washer that uses about a cup of water. Somehow, the addition of plastic chips (wouldn’t it be nice if they were ground up recycled bottles?) to the cycle helps get rid of the dirt.

It not only saves water (and a lot of it, enough in a single day to fill 145 Olympic sized swimming pools).  It also means the clothes dry faster.

Xeros Ltd, a company created to develop and market the machine, says it could be on the market next year.