Eating local seems to be getting easier every day. Several weeks ago, Buster Benson blogged for us about his new iPhone app Locavore, designed to make finding local, seasonal fruits and veggies just a click away. The “locavore” trend he mentioned has many of us looking to lessen the miles our food racks up in travel. Enter: Chef’s Collaborative.

Encouraging food sustainability from the top down, Chef’s Collaborative links local farmers with chefs who use their ingredients to feed and educate the public. Founded in 1993, the food-savvy nonprofit was a bit ahead of the curve. According to Chef’s Collaborative Executive Director Melissa Kogut, a group of visionary chefs started the organization to make local, sustainable food more accessible, and in turn, more mainstream. Since then, the movement has really picked up. As Kogut put it when I spoke to her last week by phone, “We always have to remind ourselves, ‘Okay, we are focused on chefs.’ There’s so many things to work on, and that’s our piece of the pie.”

Though chefs are its target community, the organization is friendly to anyone who’s interested in sustainable eating. Just plug a zip code into their Local Food Search engine to find restaurants near you that serve sustainable dining options.

Chef’s Collaborative is also big on seafood sustainability (an organization after TakePart’s heart!). A new online educational program they’re creating with Blue Ocean Institute teaches chefs–free of charge–what they need to know about seafood sustainability, from how it’s sourced to the health of the fishery to putting seafood on the menu. Kogut explains, “Most consumers are used to eating their favorites–salmon, shrimp, or tuna–but those are not always the most sustainable options, and so we really encourage chefs to try serving lesser-known fish. And that takes some education and learning from one another.”

Most inspiring is their latest pilot project, Grow Out, an effort to celebrate and promote awareness of biodiversity while bolstering local food economies. Twenty-eight farmers have agreed to grow heirloom vegetables native to the New England area, and they’ve partnered up with thirty-five chefs who plan to buy the vegetables once they’re grown. The chefs will feature the veggies in their menus, then use their cuisine as an opportunity to talk to the public about growing locally. It’s truly a team effort; even the seeds were donated. Says Kogut, “It’s a really rich project full of great outcomes…forming partnerships, educating the public, growing more vegetables that maybe are at risk of not being grown.” Of the heirloom vegetables, she says, “We’ll lose them, eventually, if they don’t get planted and grown.”