As I graduated to my 40s, I was very excited to get a VIP credit card offer from my bank. While I’d prefer for my mainstream bank in Canada to offer me carbon credits on purchases made, they offered me cashback, and some astounding travel bonuses including free travel insurance, and free lounge service at a long list of international airports.

I was psyched to start drinking free champagne or many a local IPA at the airport and was already strategising increasing my connections to shorten long haul trips with my family. Covid changed everything for anyone banking on travel-backed benefits and credit cards. What are banks to do? They need to quickly start dancing in step with the times. Banks have learned that they aren’t just a service provider but by thinking ahead can help stimulate the consumer economy. 

A Canadian bank has offered benefits for buying local. With restrictions on restaurants beginning to ease across Canada, the CIBC bank is launching a new program to support business owners and help them bring back customers. (We covered the green bonds idea last month)

Double the rewards for buying local

Through their Revival Rewards program, people who use their CIBC rewards credit cards called Aventura to dine in, order take-out (including curbside pickup), or order delivery from local restaurants will receive double the rewards on their purchase. Oh yeah.

Over the last three months, credit card spending at restaurants has declined over 60% and was down more than 70% during the peak of the pandemic, according to CIBC data, highlighting that restaurants were some of the hardest hit businesses during the pandemic. I know that my credit card bill was down to about nothing, except for grocery food bills. I didn’t order anything online either because I wasn’t sure when the post offices would open again. 

And Canada’s summer suffered hard, while patio nights will be bleak into the cold winter. But the marketing team at CIBC want to reward you when you reward restaurants with your business.

“Our Revival Rewards program is designed to help restaurant owners get back on their feet and underscores our commitment to providing support for small business owners,” said Laura Dottori-Attanasio, Group Head, Personal and Business Banking at CIBC. 

I like this response because it meets the needs of people and enables them to support their local communities. That’s something very important to us and our societal circles as we slowly pull our heads out of the plague. 

The post CIBC Aventura card awards you for eating local appeared first on Green Prophet.

Major health institutions, restaurants, and company canteens in Israel now opt for a vegetarian Monday.

Proud of its environmental initiatives, Israel created an interactive map showing Israeli green influence around the globe. Israelis can legitimately talk about grass-roots projects like turning a huge landfill into an ecology park, too.

Now Israel has embraced the Meatless Monday movement with enthusiasm. Established in Israel only a few months ago in November 2012, it’s taking off like wildfire.

The Meatless Monday movement began in the U.S. in 2003, at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Monday Campaigns.  It gained more popularity when promoted by celebrities Sir Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono in 2009.  Tel Aviv University caught on to the meatless day as far back as April 2010, and late in 2013, three women and a few volunteers formally launched the movement  in Israel.

Miki Haimovich, Maya Zuriel and Liat Zvi  are  development and managing partners of the Meatless Monday campaign in Israel and strategic consultants by profession. They are pictured above. Their efforts have had an amazing success in a short period of time.

So far, the Bnei Zion hospital, the Israeli Dieticians Society, and the Israeli Cardiology Foundation have turned their lunchrooms meatless on Mondays, while over 24  restaurants and catering companies have done the same. Large companies like Intel Israel, with over 8000 employees, the national electric company, and Motorola Israel serve meatless Monday meals in their cafeterias. The influential foodie magazine, Al HaShulchan, promotes meatless eating on the second day of the week, reporting many positive responses from readers and restauranteurs.

But it’s hardly surprising.The culture of big, meaty meals never had much of a chance in Israel. Meat was an expensive luxury  up until recent years, a splurge for the holidays or weddings. And Israelis of all ethnic streams love their vegetables.  A festive meal must always start with at least six, if not a dozen, mezze salads. Falafels and other street food sandwiches are always packed with tomatoes and cucumbers. Salad makes a regular appearance at the breakfast table, something that raises Western eyebrows but is one of the healthiest and most delicious ways to start the day.

Cutting meat out once weekly may not seem to make a great difference, but if enough people do it, the difference in world health and food security, not to mention slowing down the pace of climate change, will be great.

You can find out more about Meatless Monday in Israel here, on the movement’s website (Hebrew), or follow them on Facebook. The video below explains the Meatless Monday movement’s reason for being, in English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bXbJ1err5zw

More sustainable, meatless eating on Green Prophet:

• Eat Less Meat And Save The Planet
• 7 Sustainable Food Books
• A Living Wall of Herbs Within Your Reach

The post Meatless Monday Takes Off In Israel appeared first on Green Prophet.

Dig in.

1. Eating Animals (Penguin, 2011)

Part memoir, part science: novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’s takes a philosophical look at how we justify what we eat . Prepare yourself for an epiphany.

2. Manifestos on the Future of Food & Seed (South End Press, 2007)

Food activist Vandana Shiva edits a collection of papers from advocates of the slow food movement, organic farming and local eating.  A choppy ride, but in the end these varied views (from the likes of Prince Charles and Michael Pollan) make a solid case for food deindustrialization.

3. Animal Vegetable Miracle: Miracle of Our Year of Sustainable Eating (Faber & Faber, 2007)

A chronicle of the year that author Barbara Kingsolver and family went to the woods, unlike Thoreau, to eat deliberately. Their radical experiment to “go locavore” explores my mom’s old gem “you are what you eat”.

4. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press, 2006)

Michael Pollan explores modern American eating: dubious trends with far-reaching influence. If you like your wake-up calls loud and clear, crack this binding.

5. New Book of Middle Eastern Food (Alfred E. Knopf, 2000)

Claudia Roden’s original 1973 classic updated and expanded.  Culled from 30 years of extensive Middle East travel, she’s concocted simple prep methods for over 800+ regional recipes from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.  Read it for the recipes, but also for the riveting stories behind this extraordinary food.

6.  Book of Jewish Food (Alfred E. Knopf, 1996)

Oy, Claudia, again with the 800+ recipes?

Here’s the story of the Jews told through the story of their cooking, with emphasis on development of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic cuisine. Ms. Roden’s stories are as delicious as her recipes.

7. Appetites (Counterpoint Press, 2003)

It’s sad to tag this as an “anorexia” book.  Sadder still that its author died before publishing more of her sagacious take on the modern female experience. Caroline Knapp’s memoir of her war with self-image expands to explore wider cultural messages.  It’s a powerful call to all women to learn what it is to “feed both the body and the soul”.

The post 7 Books for New Year’s Resolutions on Sustainable Food! appeared first on Green Prophet.