When we think about Valentine’s Day, roses come to mind, and we’re not alone: In the first few weeks of February, 110 million roses (mostly red) will be sold in the United States. Because it’s wintertime, 80 percent of these roses were grown in the warmer climes of South America (mostly Columbia and Ecuador), and then shipped in refrigerated containers to U.S. florists. It’s estimated that these Valentine’s Day roses produce about 9,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions as they make their way from the sunny flower farms to our Valentine vases.

In addition to cut flowers’ heavy carbon footprint, consider that the pesticide residue on imported roses is 50 times the amount allowed on food imports, according to Environmental Working Group. And then there are the flower workers, who are exposed to more than 100 different pesticides and, as a result, often suffer from headaches, nausea, rashes, asthma, miscarriages and other pesticide-related illnesses. Finally, when you consider the polluted and depleted groundwater stores — another byproduct of flower farms — well, the rose just doesn’t smell as sweet anymore.

More than 70 percent of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported to help meet our seemingly insatiable floral needs: Last year, Americans spent $1.7 billion on Valentine’s Day flowers alone. It seems like a preposterous amount of money, but science says that we bestow flowers upon our loved ones for good reason. Researchers from Rutgers University set out to discover why humans have cultivated flowers for 5,000 years — even though there didn’t seem to be a survival payoff for this labor-intensive behavior. In a study published in Evolutionary Psychology, the authors found that receiving flowers had a positive effect on emotions, moods and social behaviors in both women and men both immediately and long-term (with improved moods lasting at least three days).

So what is an environmentally and socially conscious person supposed to do when Feb. 14 rolls around? “You have several greener alternatives for Valentine’s Day,” says Cynthia McKenney, Ed.D., associate department chair and professor of plant and soil science at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. “Cut flowers can be grown sustainably so that they have less of an impact on the environment and floral crop workers.”

Below are a few other ecologically sound options.

Buy local. Visit Local Harvest to find farmers markets and other sources of sustainably grown flowers in your area. (Don’t forget there are winter farmers markets!)

Look for certification. For buds grown with the least environmental impact, choose organic or Veriflora certification. VeriFlora flowers are available at Flowerbud.com and OrganicStyle.com as well as retailers around the country.

Grow your own. Visit local nurseries for organic plants and seeds. City dwellers can set up a window box planter.

Get your love a flowering indoor plant. A blooming plant is a gift that keeps on giving — for years. FTD.com, Proflowers.com and even Amazon.com sell potted flowers.

Consider unconventional blooms and plants. Bonsai Specimen Gardens ($30, available with Japanese black pine, Japanese elm or gardenia) from Uncommon Goods arrive with bonsai scissors, recycled steel planting boxes and tied with ribbon made from recycled plastic bottles. The Moss Terrarium Bottle ($38) is made with a recycled wine bottle — plus Terrarium Creatures ($34) can add a whimsical touch. We love the adorable pre-made Twig Terrarium tableaux ($25–$300) — though with a week delivery time, ordering today is cutting it close. Want to give your valentine the world? Consider a world, of sorts: an EcoSphere closed aquatic ecosystem ($54.95–$395), complete with shrimp, algae and microbes in handblown glass (and they’re self-sustaining for those who don’t have luck with houseplants).

If you’re considering the chocolate or diamonds route, first read “The Ethical Valentine: Cruelty-Free Diamonds and Chocolate” to find the most socially conscious choices.

If ethical and green gifts are important to you, how will you tactfully pass along the hint to your valentine?

Photo credit: Courtesy EcoSphere

Debra Messing returns to television as Julia Houston in the hour-long NBC drama "Smash."

We’ll watch Debra Messing and Anjelica Huston in anything, so we’re especially excited to see them in Smash, the highly anticipated (and heavily promoted) NBC midseason series about the making of a Broadway musical. With a great cast, fabulous musical numbers, irresistible backstage drama, and stellar creative pedigree that boasts Steven Spielberg, Broadway veterans Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, and composer-lyricists Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman, this one just might live up to its name when it premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET.

Messing believed that from the start. “When I got the script I read it, I put it down, I called my representatives and said, ‘I must be a part of this,’” recalls the Will & Grace Emmy winner, adding that she hadn’t felt that way about any project since The Starter Wife miniseries two years before. “I feel like my personal life is so rich that for me to step away from it, it has to be something that my soul cannot say no to. If you’re working that many hours, I feel you have to love it,” she explains, noting that her vow never to do an hour-long drama “went out the window.”

She immediately identified with the character of lyricist Julia Houston, “a woman who is very passionate about her creative life and needs that part of her life fulfilled, but also really is a proud mother and wants that home life and wants that balance,” she says. “And I love that nothing is simple.” Taking the role meant relocating to New York, which, she admits, was an adjustment for her and for her 7-year-old son, Roman. “A whole new school, whole new city, friends, the whole thing. It was very hard, but thank God he’s very resilient. We moved into a building with our best friends, and he has a built-in playmate.”

Oscar winner Huston wasn’t looking to do TV when she was approached to play producer Eileen Rand, but loved the fact that “she’s a real woman working in a man’s world. It’s not just a black-and-white character. There’s a lot of gray area with her,” she says, adding that with all the talent in front of the camera and behind the scenes, “I’d be a fool not to participate.”

The plot of Smash involves the creation of a musical about Marilyn Monroe, with experienced chorine Ivy (Megan Hilty) and newbie Karen (Katharine McPhee, of American Idol fame) vying for the lead role. The first season will follow its progress from workshop to out-of-town tryout, and will feature such guest stars as Bernadette Peters, Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep’s daughter Grace Gummer, who plays Rand’s daughter.

Will you tune in to Smash?

Photo credit: Patrick Rendak/NBC

Created by two musicians — Eytan Oren of Eytan and the Embassy and Andy Ross of OK Go (you know, the treadmill dance band) — inBloom was originally conceived as a tool to help touring musicians live more sustainably (and no doubt eat better) while on the road. However, the first version of inBloom has been built for a broader audience: New York City. Its database is loaded with more than 500 listings of eco-friendly restaurants and grocery stores, farmers markets, CSAs, green hotels, biodiesel stations, and other sustainably sourced businesses throughout the five boroughs. While the focus of the app is on organic and locavore food, inBloom’s team has also gathered information on business practices like water and energy efficiency, recycling and green building design. And being a location-based app, inBloom helps you “buy what you believe in” no matter where you are in the city.

While the first iteration of inBloom is for the iPhone (it will run on iPads, but may look a little wonky), an Android version has been in the works and should launch within the next few months. The app will be expanding into other locales and will unveil an Austin, TX, edition in time for this year’s South By Southwest Festival (SXSW). For more information and to download the app free, visit inBloom’s iTunes page, where it is already receiving rave reviews.

Do you use smartphone apps to help find and support eco-friendly businesses?

Actor Katie Finneran, who graces our latest issue's cover, is pregnant with her second child.

When we interviewed Katie Finneran for the January/February cover of VIVmag last fall, the star of Fox’s I Hate My Teenage Daughter — mother in real life to son Ty, who celebrates his first birthday Feb. 3 — told us that she and her husband, actor Darren Goldstein, hoped to have a second child. Well, she didn’t have to wait for long. She’s pregnant with her second boy, due in June, and she’s thrilled.

“I’m 40 years old so any children at this point are a blessing,” she says. “We were very much open to having a bigger family and it happened sooner than we thought it would.” She loves that her sons will be close in age and will share a room in the family’s New York apartment, where Finneran has returned now that the sitcom has wrapped production for the season.

She kept the pregnancy secret while shooting the last few episodes, “until I knew that everything would be OK,” says Finneran, who has since reverted from her character’s red locks to her natural blond hair color. One of the first people she told was co-star Jaime Pressly; both actors play former high school outcasts raising popular teen queens. “She jumped on me like a baby koala,” relates Finneran. “She was so excited.”

While she had first-trimester nausea and fatigue that she didn’t experience when pregnant with Ty, Finneran says she feels more relaxed and calm this time. She eats lots of healthy apples and yogurt, but indulges in cupcakes as well. “I believe your body tells you what it wants,” she says.  Although she was disappointed when she had to have a Caesarean section instead of the natural childbirth she’d planned for her first delivery, she’s realized she has “to be open to it being whatever it will be. As long as the baby is healthy, that’s all that matters.”

At 11 months, Ty is too young to understand he’s getting a sibling, but she thinks he’ll adjust just fine. “He loves people and being out in the world,” she says. “His smile lights up a room. I’m lucky I have such a happy baby.” She hasn’t chosen a name for his brother yet, but hopes to find something with “simplicity and strength.”

At the moment, with Goldstein working on location in New Orleans on the USA summer series Common Law, Finneran is concentrating on caring for Ty solo, walking three to five miles daily to keep fit — but trying to avoid navigating subways and buses with 45 pounds of baby and stroller. Doing so in winter has given her appreciation for pioneer women who made do with far less. “At least I have heat!” she exclaims, glad to be back in her small-but-cozy Big Apple abode. “If we had a bigger one,” she says of her apartment, “I’d just have more room to lose my keys.”

Read more about Finneran — from her determination to be an actor at a young age to why she loves being 40 — in “Do What You Love” in the latest issue of VIVmag. Do you think it’s important to do something you love every day?

Photo credit: John Russo

Proceeds from the yoga event benefit the Somaly Mam Foundation. Mam (pictured) has decicated her life to helping end sex slavery after being sold to a brothel as a girl.

While removing our shoes before yoga class one day, we noticed a poster for the Yoga Freedom Project, created by Off the Mat NYC and the Somaly Mam Foundation (SMF) to bring attention throughout the month of January to the issue of sex trafficking. The project culminates with a two-hour yoga class on Jan. 31 at Twelve21, 12 West 21 St. in the Flatiron District, with a lineup of nine of New York City’s top yoga teachers. For those not in New York, we also found ways you can help bring awareness to this important — and often overlooked — global issue. An estimated 27 million people currently are enslaved throughout the world, and one to two million children will be sold into slavery within the next year.

The Somaly Mam Foundation is dedicated to ending slavery, rescuing and empowering survivors and lending support to shelter and rehabilitation programs globally. Namesake and co-founder Somaly Mam was sold to a brothel as a 14-year-old girl in Cambodia by a man posing as her grandfather. After being forced to watch her best friend brutally murdered, Mam escaped and dedicated her new life to helping others. Her full story can be found in her memoir, The Road of Lost Innocence (Spiegel & Grau, 2008); a portion of the proceeds benefit the foundation.

Participating yoga studios have been selling Mam’s book as well as tank tops ($25) commemorating the upcoming yoga event. The tops are available with or without the list of participating studios and instructors, who will lead the two-hour class in about 10-minute intervals, according to Heather Snyder, co-creator and organizer of the Yoga Freedom Project. The teachers include Elena Brower of Virayoga, Tricia Donegan of Bikram Yoga Lower East Side, Sri Dharma Mittra of Dharma Yoga, Dana Flynn of Laughing Lotus, Cyndi Lee of OM Yoga, Alan Finger of Ishta Yoga, Suzanne Sterling, Jodie Rufty and Sierra Bender. Tickets are $50, plus a small service fee if you purchase them online, and benefit the Somaly Mam Foundation. The class starts at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30).

Raffle tickets will be sold for $5 at the door for a chance to win the following prizes: a certificate for Deep Root Massage, a Bikram Yoga Lower East Side monthly unlimited pass, a Dharma Yoga poster, private yoga with Eric Stoneberg, Karma Warrior Clothes, a Sierra Bender workshop, Virayoga T-shirts, an Ishta 10-class card and signed book, a Yoga Vida monthly unlimited pass, private instruction with Marjorie Nass, Electric Yoga clothing and mat and a Hyde Off the Mat tank top. After the class, there will be a reception with light snacks.

No plans to be in New York City that day? Check out the SMF events page and PROJECT FUTURES events listings, or find out how you can take action, from participating in online campaigns to hosting an event. Donate online to SMF or visit the Empowerment Store and purchase an item made by a slavery survivor, such as the silk Empowerment Necklace ($25) or Freedom Scarves ($50).

Mam’s story has opened our eyes to modern day slavery, and we’re inspired to see so many styles of yoga unite for a worthy cause! Are you inspired to raise awareness about human trafficking?

Photo credit: Courtesy Yoga Freedom Project

Jewel hosts the new season of' "The Incurables," a Veria Living show about people who overcame diagnoses of chronic ailments with alternative treatments.

We’re always fascinated by real-life medical mysteries and stories of survivors who beat the odds. So we’re not surprised that singer-songwriter Jewel wanted to host The Incurables, Veria Living’s TV series that delves into the real-life journeys of patients dealing with chronic — and often life-threatening — illnesses, especially since she has dealt with a few health problems of her own.

“Since I was about 16, I’ve had kidney problems and began researching and getting hold of experts in the field, and was lucky enough to come across some really great doctors in my life,” Jewel says. “When this show came along, I was really excited to be a part of helping and sharing information that I think will be helpful for people. It’s something I’m really passionate about.”

The show tells the stories of people who were told there was no cure for their illness, and how these patients, determined to find solutions, turned to alternative methods. Jewel recalls that a doctor she visited for a hair-loss problem told her to change shampoos. “It ended up being a thyroid issue,” says Jewel, emphasizing the importance of being a tenacious self-advocate. “If you think something is wrong with you, keep digging and finding solutions even if somebody tells you nothing is wrong, even if your blood work comes back normal. You’ve got to be dogged about it. I think The Incurables shows that,” she says of the series, which has its third season premiere tonight at 9 p.m. ET.

Jewel was able to tape her segments for the series at her Texas home, where she’s been sticking close since the birth of her son, Kase, last July. She recorded her children’s album, The Merry Goes ’Round, in her studio there, and wrote a children’s book that she expects to be out this later year.

She also devotes time to the charity she founded, Project Clean Water, which was inspired by her kidney illness; as a homeless teenager, she couldn’t buy the bottled water necessary for her condition. The nonprofit aims to bring safe water to those in need nationally and internationally.

Having enjoyed mentoring songwriters on Bravo’s Platinum Hit last year, she eagerly signed on to play a similar role on NBC’s The Voice this season, guiding Christina Aguilera’s contestants — especially since she was able to tape all her parts in a single day. “I got to do something I love, without being away from the baby — the best of both worlds!” she says.

While life off the road is new for the singer, she’s enjoyed being in mommy mode and tells husband Ty Murray that their son is “the best present that will take the rest of our lives to unwrap.” At 37, she’s not sure if she’ll have another child. “If it happens, it happens, we won’t go to any great lengths to make it happen,” she says. But she’s less laid back about making her marriage work. “I sort of tackle it like an art project, something you have to put creativity into every day for it to live and thrive and do well,” she confides. “It’s a living thing. You can’t just put it on autopilot and expect it to do well.”

We’re looking forward to the inspiring stories in the 13 new episodes of The Incurables. Do you have your own story of patient advocacy to share?

Photo credit: Courtesy Veria Living

Parminder Nagra plays lab tech Lucy Banerjee in the new FOX drama about prisoners mysteriously returning from Alcatraz's past.

A decade since she first came onto our radar in the delightful Bend It Like Beckham and two years since she hung up her ER hospital scrubs, Parminder Nagra is back on TV in Alcatraz, an intriguing new series from Lost creator J.J. Abrams that premieres on FOX tonight at 8 p.m. ET with two back-to-back episodes.

The premise of the supernatural thriller is that former guards and prisoners housed at the infamous island lockup — all supposedly transferred out when the facility closed in 1963 — have turned up in modern-day San Francisco, not having aged a day. A secret task force is  assembled to apprehend the criminals who are posing very real threats, with revenge and murder on their agendas. Nagra plays Lucy Banerjee, the lab technician assistant to the group’s leader, Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill).

“She’s quite a mysterious character, a tough nut to crack,” says Nagra, and that mystery will deepen with a twist that occurs at the very end of the second hour that definitely took us by surprise. Nagra was drawn to the script, character, and people involved — enough pluses to outweigh the one drawback: she’d have to relocate to Vancouver from Los Angeles. “It sort of reminds me of L.A., with English weather — the perfect combination,” laughs Nagra, a native of Leicester, England.

Alcatraz is the first series she’s been in since the very beginning. “I’d come into ER when it was already established,” she notes, adding that she misses the long-running hospital drama. Over the last two years, she’s gotten married, to longtime boyfriend photographer James Stenson and gave birth to a son, Kai David Singh Stenson. The adjustment to being a working mother is hard, admits the 36-year-old actor, but she’s adapting. “The advice I’ve been given by other people who’ve been doing it is you just have to get on with it, and do what you have to do,” she says.

Before going to work on Alcatraz, Nagra had the chance to spend time with family and friends in England for two months while filming the independent movie Twenty8k in London’s East End. “I play a fashion executive who works in Paris and gets called back to London because her brother’s been charged with a killing,” she explains of her role. “It all gets kind of dark.”

The cast of Alcatraz also includes Sarah Jones and Lost alum Jorge Garcia. Do you plan on tuning into Alcatraz?

Photo credit: Kharen Hill/FOX

Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman show about health and human resilience airs on PBS.

We’re familiar with Anna Deavere Smith from her work on The West Wing and as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in Showtime’s Nurse Jackie, and were aware of her accomplishments as a playwright (Fires in the Mirror and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992). So we were excited to hear that she’s bringing her acclaimed one-woman play Let Me Down Easy — an exploration of the modern healthcare system and the way we deal with illness — to Great Performances on PBS Jan. 13 at 9 p.m. ET.

Smith plays 19 characters based on conversations with real people about their experiences with the healthcare system, including patients, caregivers, and a few celebrities, among them cyclist Lance Armstrong, Texas governor Ann Richards, supermodel Lauren Hutton and the late journalist Joel Siegel. It’s the end result of 320 interviews on three continents, numerous revisions and workshops and four productions, including six months at New York’s Public Theater and nine months on the road. The project began in the late ’90s, when Smith was a visiting professor at the Yale School of Medicine, “long before healthcare became part of the so-called national conversation,” she says.

Smith was commissioned “to make a piece about doctors and patients and perform it at medical grand rounds,” where actors or patients present medical issues to an audience of students, residents and doctors as a teaching tool. As she performed at Yale and other medical schools, the piece evolved as she met and interviewed people like a young New Orleans doctor relating her desperate experiences during Hurricane Katrina and a woman who runs a South African orphanage for AIDS babies. All the stories she describes as having a common thread of “compassion, kindness and grace.”

In contrast to the all-consuming focus and energy that creating, writing and performing a play like Let Me Down Easy requires, Smith often doesn’t know what’s going to happen on Nurse Jackie “until the table read,” or know her shooting schedule till the night before, and she’s fine with that. “I can go to work in my pajamas,” she explains, noting that the series’ fourth season will premiere this spring.

Down the line, she says she’d love to write the book for a musical or an opera libretto, and find more time for activities like working out, meditation, and enjoying the ocean. “I like water,” she says. “That’s my way of getting away.”

Will you tune in to PBS to watch?

Photo credit: Mary Ellen Mark

Tom Mueller takes an in-depth look into the highs and lows of the olive oil industry and its rich history.

For Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011) author Tom Mueller talked to numerous experts about the history, cultural significance, growing methods and health benefits of olive oil — plus corruption within the industry itself. Among the politicians, chemists, growers and historians, he notes a magic quality about this food. “Even shady characters who’d grown rich making fake oil by the tanker-load spoke wistfully of their childhood spent at the olive mill, and of the life lessons they learned there,” he notes.

As we read, our thoughts kept drifting back to our own first view of olive groves. Although we were only 4 years old at the time, some of our most vivid memories of a trip to Portugal were the sight of olive trees planted in neat rows throughout the countryside — and the fruit on the table at meals and the oil seasoning the fresh fish dishes. Since then, when we’ve seen olive groves in Israel, Spain, Italy and Tunisia, we knew immediately that we’re someplace where the local cuisine is as delightful as the landscape.

Though he offers a wealth of information, Mueller is never dry — appropriately enough, considering the oleaginous subject at hand. The book begins with Mueller’s own conversion from cynic to olive-oil-obsessed. Along his path to greater knowledge, he paints vivid portraits of the people involved, from the family in Puglia who lovingly makes quality extra virgin olive oil to the aforementioned shady characters involved in fake oil schemes. Whether you’re a foodie or simply enjoy a good cooking show now and then, Extra Virginity will give you a new appreciation of olive oil.

Fascinating historical pieces are woven through the book, demonstrating this ancient product’s importance, tracing back domesticated olives to at least the fourth millennium B.C., noting their place in pagan offerings as well as Jewish, Christian and Muslim texts and their importance in ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian civilizations. In fact, Mueller visits Testaccio, a hill in Rome comprised of ancient discarded olive oil bottles — the contents of which were regulated by the Romans. Corruption within the olive-oil industry seems as old as the trade itself, since olive oil was (and is) a critical commodity. “Petroleum,” in fact, is from the Latin petra and oleum, meaning “olive oil from a stone.”

But the new effects of current corruption are examined in the book, such as the threat to honest olive oil merchants and growers, and the larger potential danger of the loss of quality extra virgin olive oil altogether, as adulterated oil becomes the norm.

And it’s not just the flavor that’s being compromised; the health benefits could be lost as well. Flavio Zaramella, president of Corporazione Mastri Oleari, a respected private olive-oil association, claims, “Great oil is the essence of the Mediterranean diet. Bad oil isn’t just a deception, it’s a crime against public health.”

In spite of the grim realities, there’s always a beacon of hope that shines through the pages, in the words of the passionate olive-oil growers and enthusiasts — or perhaps in the tales of the hearty olive oil trees, sprouting green shoots after near-destruction from war or fires.

Do you have a favorite type of olive oil?

Elizabeth McGovern plays Lady Cora, Countess of Grantham, in the historical drama "Downton Abbey."

Nobody does a high-class serial drama quite like the British, which is why we were totally hooked on the first season of Downton Abbey last year. Its mix of historical fiction, romance and intrigue earned six Emmys and 5 million weekly viewers, and left us eagerly anticipating season two, which returns to PBS’ Masterpiece Classic on Jan. 8.

“My expectation was that there would be a coterie of Americans who would really respond,” says American actor Elizabeth McGovern, 50, who plays Lady Cora, Countess of Grantham, adding, “I didn’t really expect it to be that big.” She easily sums up the show’s appeal. “It’s historically accurate, emotionally true and it’s a lot of fun to watch.”

Set in North Yorkshire, England, the fictional Downton Abbey is the backdrop for the drama of the Crawley family and their servants in the early part of the 20th century. As the second season begins in 1916, World War I is raging, Downton Abbey is turned into a convalescent hospital for soldiers, and the lives of all who live there are affected by the war in some way. Before the finale airs in February, there will be births, weddings and deaths, the latter caused both by the war and the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic.

“The end of this season brings the story more to a close than it did in the first season, and a lot of the stories find resolution, but it isn’t over,” says McGovern, who starts filming again in February. “There’s room for a chapter three.” She finds Cora, the American heiress who married into her title, “more and more fascinating to me as the story goes on. She works the system to her advantage and works it well, but does it with dignity and grace.”

As for the sumptuous costumes her character wears, McGovern says they’re gorgeous, but painful. “I find it fascinating that women in that era would constrict themselves so profoundly in the wearing of these very, very tight corsets,” she says. “But here I am tottering around on incredibly high heels, so I realize nothing has actually changed!” she laughs.

McGovern says she loves the feeling of peace and quiet she gets when filming on location at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, but doesn’t have the run of the manor. “The family that lives there is very clear about what’s out of bounds,” she says.

Married to British producer/director Simon Curtis, with whom she has two daughters, McGovern lives in London and performs with her band Sadie and the Hotheads when she’s not busy acting on either side of the Atlantic. Although she says London “suits my temperament,” being surrounded by Brits has its consequences. “I’m trying to get my American accent back,” she says.

Will you be tuning in to the new season of Downton Abbey?

Photo credit: Carnival Film & Television Ltd.