Summer is here and the 4th of July is just around the corner. That means outdoor barbecues, family getaways, camping and the like. It can also mean that your carbon footprint gets bigger, what with things like increased air and car travel, trash from all those cookouts and air conditioning. So what can you do over the holiday weekend to stay eco-friendly? Here are a few ideas: 1. First, Grill Smart. If you can, use a natural gas grill, or to be even greener, an infrared one. Either is better than burning charcoal. Charcoal briquettes contain coal dust and sodium…

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We’re pretty bike-crazy here at Clif Bar & Company. After all, our owner/founder Gary dreamed up the idea for a better-tasting energy bar on a long bike ride. Plus, he designed bike seats, raced bikes and has attracted a lot of bike-types to our company over the years. If you’re even a bit like us, you can’t help but turn your thoughts to bikes in May, which is National Bike Month and home to Bike to Work Week and Bike to Work Day (Phew!). As we were scrolling around that big Internet thing this week, we found some pretty cool…

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We’re hardly bashful here about digging into food. Anyone who’s been to Clif Bar knows that we love good food and a good time. But we’re also conscious about the bigger food picture and the importance of understanding where our food comes—including the social and environmental impacts of agriculture. For many farm workers, bringing food to our tables is no picnic. We’d like to see that change—and one way we’re doing that is by lending our support to grassroots organizations committed to creating a more healthy, just and sustainable food system through the Clif Bar Family Foundation. Our staff ecologist,…

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Just when the challenge of global warming starts to feel a bit overwhelming, the annual Green Festival comes around as it did again this past weekend in San Francisco. Some 45,000 people—including a friend, my brother and me—dropped by the Green Festival to immerse ourselves in a sea of sustainability, social justice, workshops, music, food and fun. Clif Bar, as we have for years, had a booth where attendees could sample some of our goodies. The festival draws a wonderfully diverse crowd—young, old, urban, suburban, singles and families—all of whom care about green issues and living a more eco-conscious life.…

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Some may see it as a sign of the Apocalypse. Others may think it’s awesome. Most of us found it just plain amusing that Clif Bar got a mention the other night in an episode of Family Guy, the irreverent, animated TV sitcom on Fox. In case you’ve never watched it, Family Guy centers on the dysfunctional Griffin family and pokes a lot of fun at American culture. Check out the footrace at 50 seconds into the link below (“Brian’s Got a Brand New Bag”—Season 8: Episode 5). Good thing we can laugh at ourselves! Watch it here. Oh, and…

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Every Thursday at our company meeting, we share an Eco Minute—a little inspiring nugget that keeps us on our toes on ways to keep our lives earth friendly. It’s been freakishly warm around here lately but before we hit the hot spell, we were knee deep in frost. These ups and downs in the weather inspired the latest Eco Minute. So, here goes… With more cold winter days ahead of us, it’s time to think about how to keep warm in a green way. You can easily save energy and money in winter by setting your thermostat to 68 degrees…

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If you’ve got an ounce of “green” in you, or simply want to be inspired, mark your calendars now for October 2009 in San Francisco. That’s the next time the Brower Youth Awards will be held—just as they were earlier this month in SF before a raucous, adoring crowd of 1,000 people at the beautiful Herbst Theatre. Of course, if you’re between the ages of 13 and 22 and are doing something cool in the way of environmental and social justice advocacy, go one step better and actually apply for a Brower Youth Award yourself ($3,000, national honors and a…

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It's April 22nd, and you know what that means? Earth Day! This last weekend, there were so many different celebrations happening around town, it's only natural that we have an entry documenting the festivities—and what better town to feature than Berkeley itself? Dean, our trusty PR guy and enviro guru shares a little something from the weekend. For the first time in years, I thought I'd check out an official Earth Day celebration, what with global climate change putting the environment back on front pages. So I dropped in this past weekend on Berkeley's Earth Day celebration, likely the largest…

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A whole bunch of us Clifsters just returned from Natural Products Expo West, an annual trade show in Anaheim, Calif., but certainly no Mickey Mouse gathering. It’s now the nation’s largest natural, organic and healthy products trade show (52,000 industry people). Best-selling author Michael Pollan was a keynote speaker. If I may be so bold, Clif Bar & Company had a cool booth—a backyard theme that invited visitors to mingle and taste our food. While it was tiring standing 10-plus hours a day to share our latest products with the industry, we had fun, too. We brought our 2 Mile…

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