Food Tank co-founder Danielle Nierenberg returns to Green is Good to discuss the importance of cultivating the next generation of farmers. 2014 is the International Year of Family Farming, and Food Tank is helping to spread awareness. Five hundred million farmers around the world farm on 5 acres or less. These farmers are the tasked with feeding approximately 2 billion people across the world, yet they are often ignored. Since the 1980s, the number of family farms has dramatically decreased in the U.S. while average farmer age has spiked.

“One of the biggest steps we can make is recognizing that our food comes from not only farms, but from people, and really putting a human face to the food that we eat,” Nierenberg says. “Those farmers are part of your community. The more you can support them, the better. Our country was built on farming, and we really need to recognize that it’s an important part of our history.”

Johnson & Johnson has always had a focus on how consumers use its products and ultimately how those products are disposed, but the company’s Vice President of Sustainability, Paulette Frank, was interested to see just how much gets recycled. Most consumers report that they are good recyclers, but Johnson & Johnson took it a step further by sponsoring a research study on recycling habits and how they can change depending on one’s location in the home. The findings: Seven out of 10 Americans reported consistent recycling, but only one in five did so in the bathroom. Amazingly, 40% of respondents recycled nothing from the bathroom at all. In response, Johnson & Johnson’s Care to Recycle program was launched in October 2013 as a way to help consumers make eco-minded decisions.

“Caring is at the heart of everything we do at Johnson & Johnson, and the act of recycling is an act of caring for our planet,” Frank explains. “We look at Care to Recycle as a gentle reminder that there are items in your bathroom that can be recycled. Twenty percent [of respondents] reported that they didn’t know what items are recyclable in the bathroom.”

Ro Kumar had just finished college at UC – Berkeley and was watching the documentary Plastic Planet when he came upon a stunning fact: Every piece of plastic ever created still exists today. Even worse, every human has plastic and BPA in his or her bloodstream. Upon brushing his teeth with a conventional toothbrush shortly thereafter, he had an epiphany. In 2012, Brush with Bamboo‘s first bamboo toothbrush hit the market. Using sustainable, mold-resistant bamboo seemed like the natural alternative to the typical 4.7 billion landfill-clogging plastic toothbrushes that are tossed annually around the globe.

“We’re dealing with a product of accumulation,” Kumar explains. “Wherever you see plastic waste in this world, you will find plastic toothbrushes. You could throw this toothbrush — even its packaging — in your green waste bin.”