Is it true, as one of the leading fabric distributors says of its “green” fabrics made of recycled polyester, that after “years of enjoyable use, these fabrics are recyclable?”   Does buying that fabric really help reduce our dependence on a non renewable resource  and lessen the burden that plastic is inflicting on our environment?

I’d like to show you how this is a misleading statement.  It’s a bit complicated, but stick with me because the industry is depending on your confusion.  If you know what they’re really foisting on us, you might want to demand a better, cleaner, altogether different product!

But first I have to back up and point out that “recyclable” is one of those amorphous words that have no accepted definition.  We can “recycle” our fabrics by repurposing them, donating them, use them for quilting or in other ways…but somehow I think they really meant for us to believe that the plastic yarns could be recycled into new and equally beautiful new fabrics:  the ultimate “infinite closed loop”.

So, the first thing you must understand in order to grasp why this is a disingenuous statement is that there are two ways plastic can be recycled:  Mechanically and chemically.

Mechanical recycling is the kind that almost all recycling facilities use today. The first step in the process is to collect the plastics and then separate all the different types of plastic (“feedstock”) to avoid contamination – different plastics have different melting points and other characteristics; if they were thrown into the pot together the result would be an unuseable mess.  (Remember this fact: the recycling of plastics must always be done with like resins – this will come up later in textiles.)   So after separation, each type is melted down and then  re-formed into small “chips” or “pellets”.  These chips are what a widget manufacturer buys from the recycling facility to make its product – or what a yarn manufacturer buys to make the yarns to weave into cloth.

Common misconception about recycling:  you might think that if you throw your used drink bottle into the recycling container that it will be recycled into another new drink container.  Nope.  The melted resin contains contaminants and would not meet food grade requirements, so it is instead destined to go into a secondary product, such as yarn for the fabric we started talking about at the beginning of this blog.  A better name for the “recycling container” would be “collection container”.

From  Help me! – the earth by Memo

A fabric made of “recycled material” has a certain percentage of polyester which comes from these chips that the recycling facility has manufactured.  Using these chips has several issues which are exclusive to the textile industry:

• The base color of the recycled polyester chips vary from white to creamy yellow, making color consistency difficult to achieve, particularly for the pale shades.  Some dyers find it hard to get a white, so they’re using chlorine-based bleaches to whiten the base.
• Inconsistency of dye uptake makes it difficult to get good batch-to-batch color consistency and this can lead to high levels of re-dyeing, another very high energy process.  Re-dyeing contributes to high levels of water, energy and chemical use.
• Unsubstantiated reports claim that some recycled yarns take almost 30% more dye to achieve the same depth of shade as equivalent virgin polyesters.[1]
• Another consideration is the introduction of PVC into the polymer from bottle labels and wrappers.
• Many yarns made from recycled polyester are used in forgiving constructions such as polar fleece, where the construction of the fabric hides slight yarn variations.  For fabrics such as satins, there are concerns over streaks and stripes.

Most of the plastics in use today can be recycled but, because mechanical recycling produces a less stable polymer, the products which can be made from this recycled plastic are of “less value” than the original.  The products made from the “chips” must be a bit forgiving, such as carpet, plastic lumber, roadside curbs, truck cargo liners, waste receptacles (you get the idea).  William McDonough calls this “downcycling”.  No matter how many smiling people you see throwing their bottles into a recycling container and “preventing the plastic from entering our waste stream” as the media likes to put it – the reality is that the recycling can only be done mechanically a few times before the polymers break down and the plastic is no longer useful or useable – every time plastic is melted down, its molecular composition changes, its quality degrades, and the range of its usefulness shrinks.   So after going from a virgin PET bottle, to carpet fibers, to plastic lumber, to a speed bump – that’s when it enters our waste stream.  So recycling plastic doesn’t prevent this occurrence – it just postpones it.  Read more about “the seduction of plastic”  here.

To add insult to injury, if you had bought the fabric mentioned above and hoped the fabric would be recyclable as claimed:  probably not gonna happen, because remember how the recycling facility had to separate bottles to make sure each resin was melted with similar types?  Think of the fabric as similar to bottles with different plastic resins:  many fabrics are woven of different types of plastic (60% polyester, 40% nylon for example), or there is a chemical backing of some sort on the fabric.  These different chemicals, with different molecular weights, renders the fabric non-recyclable.  Period.

And even if the fabric we’re talking about is 100% polyester with NO chemical backings or finishes, there is a problem with recycling in the system itself.  Although bottles, tins and newspapers are now routinely collected for recycling, furniture and carpets still usually end up in landfill or incinerators, even if they have been designed to be recycled [2] because the fabric must be separated from other components if it’s part of an upholstered piece of furniture, for example.

Chemical recycling is the alternative technology and it does exist.  During chemical recycling, the materials are chemically dissolved into their precursor chemicals.  Polyester, for example, would be broken down into DMT (dimethyl terephthalate) and EG (ethylene glycol).  These chemicals are then purified and used to make new polyester fiber.  But the reality is that this is difficult and expensive to do.  Patagonia has made using recycled plastics a priority and gives a good overview of the process with interesting comments about the unique problems they’re encountering; read about it here.

Currently, fabrics identified as being “recyclable” really are not  - because the technology to recycle the fibers is either too expensive (chemical) or doesn’t exist (mechanical) and the infrastructure to collect the fabric is not in place.    Few manufacturers, such as Designtex (with their line of EL fabrics designed to be used without backings) and Victor Innovatex (who has pioneered EcoIntelligent™ polyester made without antimony),  have taken the time, effort and money needed to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices in the industry so we can one day have synthetic fabrics that are not only recycled, but recyclable.

So when you buy a fabric made of recycled polyester, remember it’s at the end of its useful life as a plastic  – and you are contributing to our dependence on non renewable resources and to the overwhelming burden of non-degradeable plastic in our environment.

And lest you forget – or choose to ignore -  what that kind of degradation entails, Chris Jordan, a photographer based in Seattle, has documented it for us.   In a series of photographs entitled “Message from the Gyre”, he has documented what pieces of plastic are doing to albatross chicks on Midway Island.  In the interest of a faithful representation of their plight, not a single piece of plastic in any of the pictures was moved, placed or arranged in any way.  The images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.  See all the images and more of Chris Jordan’s work on his web site, www.chrisjordan.com

[2] “Taking Landfill out of the Loop”, Sarah Scott, Azure, 2006

We’ll be at Greenbuild next week, booth 910, with our good friends from LIVE Textiles.  Please stop by to see us if you’re there.

We are introducing a new organic wool upholstery fabric at Greenbuild  (we’re hoping it will be GOTS certified, though it is touch and go as to whether the certificate will be in place by then – there are so many hoops!).    So for the past six months or so we’ve been learning lots about wool – and wool is a complicated subject!  It’s a gorgeous fiber, but it has, as we say, issues.  Not unsolvable, but like everything you have to know your suppliers and what questions are important to ask.  We talked about wool and animal husbandry in two previous posts (“What does organic wool mean?” 8.11.09 and “Why does wool get such high embodied energy ratings?” 8.4.09);  some of the issues surrounding wool are enumerated in those posts.

I’m always a sucker for soft and luxurious, so naturally when talking about wool I began hinting I’d like a cashmere fabric – or wool/cashmere blend.  But we looked into cashmere, and what we found is startling and unexpected: a story of how your cashmere sweater pollutes the air you breathe.    There is an improbable connection, according to Evan Osnos of the Chicago Tribune, “between cheap sweaters, Asia’s prairies and America’s air, (which) captures how the most ordinary shifts in the global economy are triggering extraordinary change.”  Please read Mr. Osnos’ article, “China’s Great Grab”, from which most of the information in this blog is taken.   He won the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize for distinguished journalism for this series.

Cashmere has recently become ubiquitous –  cashmere sweaters, for example, once so very high priced that the very word “cashmere” became synonymous with luxury,  are suddenly “affordable”.  Coincidentally, Saks Fifth Avenue ran a full page ad in Sunday’s  New York Times touting their low priced cashmere goods – and telling you to “Shop Smart”.   We’ll help you to shop smart – please read this post!

What happened to bring down the price of cashmere?  Behind this new affordable price tag is something the consumer rarely sees or thinks about: the cascade of consequences around the world when the might of Chinese production and western consumption converge on a scarce natural resource.

Cashmere comes from the downy underhair of special goats, the majority of which live in the coldest regions of China and Mongolia.  In fact, the world’s best and most expensive cashmere comes from the Alashan Plateau, an area in China’s north straddling the Mongolian border,  boiling hot in summer and way below zero in winter.  This area is part of China’s mythic grasslands, where Genghis Khan and his horde rode the limitless horizon.  The fiber itself, known as “diamond fiber” in China,  sells for 6 times the cost of ordinary wool.

This rare and wonderful fiber is remarkably soft, silky and warm.  Side by side under a microscope a single cashmere strand makes a human hair look like a rope.  And it was also synonymous with high price.  European spinning mills have sourced the best cashmere yarns from this region for years.

The combination of demand and high prices led to China’s rapid increase in production to meet that demand,  and  conditions were in place to create an almost perfect storm – with money to be earned from “diamond fiber”, herders rapidly increased their goat populations and caused severe overgrazing.  In  Inner Mongolia, for example, the livestock population increased from 2 million in 1949 to 28.5 million in 2004.(1)

The goats are eating the grasslands bare:  Goats consume over 10% of their body weight daily in roughage, eating not just the grass but also their roots and stripping bark from seedlings, preventing the regrowth of trees.  The land is so barren that herders buy cut grass and corn by the truckload to keep their animals alive.  Overgrazing is so severe that the health of the goats is at risk: their birthrate is sinking and even the cashmere has begun to suffer from these stressed goats, with shorter, coarser, less valuable fiber.

In addition to stripping the land of all vegetation, the feet of these goats have been compared to stiletto heels, vs. the big soft pads of camel’s feet, which have a far lesser impact on the ground.  These “stiletto heel” hooves  pierce the crust formed on the land, and the fine sand beneath it takes flight.  So the animals remove the vegetation, and the winds finish the job by blowing away the top soil, transforming the grasslands into desert.

In this perfect storm, the rapid increase in the number of goats has occurred at the same time the area is undergoing a severe drought due to climate change.  The goats require water, which also leads to overuse of that resource.  So many cashmere plants and other industries have opened in Alashan that authorities must ration water, forcing each factory to close for days at a time. (2)

And without grass and shrubs to hold the dunes in place, the deserts in Alashan are expanding by nearly 400 square miles each year. The World Bank warned of grave consequences for the environment and for farmers.

Already desertification is causing millions of rural Chinese to migrate from their villages –  a migration on the scale of the Dust Bowl in the United States is taking place in China today. A study by the Asian Development Bank found 4,000 villages at risk of being swallowed by drifting sand (3)

But the environmental degredation doesn’t stop in Alashan.  Eroding grasslands means that silt is deposited into the headwaters of rivers that flow all across Asia: to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia.  And the dust storms, which have been a fact of life in this area of the world since before Genghis Kahn, are becoming increasingly common:  in the 1950s, China suffered an average of five dust and sand storms per year; in the 1990s storms struck 23 times each year.  (4)  These storms do a lot of damage:  A storm in 2002 forced 1.8 million South Koreans to seek medical help and cost the country $7.8 billion in damage to industries such as airlines and semiconductors, said the state-run Korea Environment Institute. (5)

And added to the damage the storms cause in China, they also act as a high altitude conveyor belt for pollution.  Think of it like this:  the dust and sand generated in Alashan  is sent east by the winds, where China’s coal powered industry adds pollution.  Together the noxious brew reaches the U.S. within five days, where it can combine with local pollution to exceed the limits of healthy air, according to Rudolf Husar, an atmospheric chemist at Washington University in St. Louis.(6)

According to Eric Osnos’ article, “Of most concern are ultra tiny particles that lodge deep in the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer. One storm that began in China and Mongolia in spring 1998 caused a spike in air pollution that prompted health officials in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia to issue warnings to the public.”

The situation has become so bad that herders are moving off the land to try their hand at trades in the cities, and the government is putting many new programs into place to help stem the damage which has been done (including banning grazing on some lands).  The price of cashmere has begun to climb.  But with ads such as the one from Saks, promoting yet another cheap product, these problems will continue to persist.

(1)  Osnos, Evan;  “China’s Great Grab: Your cheap sweather’s real cost”, The Chicago Tribune, December 16, 2006.

(2) Ibid.

(3) http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=389&catid=10&subcatid=66#07)

(4) Osnos, op cit.

(5) Ibid.

(6) Ibid.

Have you ever heard of the Easterlin Paradox?  It is a theory developed in 1974, which goes something like this:  Money makes you happier until you reach about an average income.  After that, money’s affect on happiness is greatly reduced.  But there are those who argue that “happiness” is a very imprecise science, so maybe  Senator Bobby Kennedy (who might have known what he was talking about) might have gotten closer to the problem:  “Gross Domestic Product measures everything…except that which makes life worthwhile.”

The government of Bhutan has been following a policy of Gross National Happiness since 1972, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently announced that happiness levels would be taken into account when measuring the country’s economic performance.  Whether this happiness component is taken into consideration or not, there seems to be a paradigm shift from neoclassical to ecological economics now underway.  Is it possible that  there is a direct correlation between economics, ecology and happiness?

This new shift is  typified by Tim Jackson and his new book, Prosperity Without Growth, which is a completely revised and updated version of the Sustainable Development Commission report of the same name.  Tim Jackson is a Professor of Sustainable Development in the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) at the University of Surrey.  Since January 2003, Tim has been employed at CES under a research fellowship on the ‘social psychology’ of consumer behavior.   In the last twelve years he has pioneered the development of an ‘adjusted’ measure of economic growth – a ‘green GDP’ – for the UK. He is also an advisor to the UK government as a Commissioner on the Sustainable Development Commission and  is an Associate of the New Economics Foundation.  In other words, no lightweight.

Tim  wrote an article last summer which appeared in Adbusters  (and if you don’t know about Adbusters please check them out – they are working to change the “ way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society”.  It’s entitled “Thinking the Unthinkable”,  based on Prosperity without Growth;  it explores the point at which economic growth becomes uneconomic growth.  The conclusions are disturbing.   Charles Siegel of The Sierra Club says it should be  required reading for everyone working to avoid ecological collapse (click here to read the review) . The article from Adbusters is reproduced below; the entire book will be available November 2 through Earthscan (www.earthscan.co.uk/pwg) or you can read the original report online at http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=914:

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate, the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.

This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology we depend on for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems.

For the most part, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. The default assumption is that – financial crises aside – growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries where a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our well-being.

The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find. The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.

But question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems we depend on for survival. It has failed spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people’s livelihoods.

Today we find ourselves faced with the imminent end of the era of cheap oil; the prospect (beyond the recent bubble) of steadily rising commodity prices; the degradation of forests, lakes and soils; conflicts over land use, water quality and fishing rights; and the momentous challenge of stabilizing concentrations of carbon in the global atmosphere. And we face these tasks with an economy that is fundamentally broken, in desperate need of renewal.

In these circumstances, a return to business as usual is not an option. Prosperity for the few founded on ecological destruction and persistent social injustice is no foundation for a civilized society. Economic recovery is vital. Protecting people’s jobs – and creating new ones – is absolutely essential. But we also stand in urgent need of a renewed sense of shared prosperity. A commitment to fairness and flourishing in a finite world.

Delivering these goals may seem an unfamiliar or even incongruous task for policy in the modern age. The role of government has been framed so narrowly by material aims and hollowed out by a misguided vision of unbounded consumer freedoms. The concept of governance itself stands in urgent need of renewal.

But the current economic crisis presents us with a unique opportunity to invest in change. To sweep away the short-term thinking that has plagued society for decades. To replace it with policy capable of addressing the enormous challenge of delivering a lasting prosperity.

For at the end of the day, prosperity goes beyond material pleasures. It transcends material concerns. It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families. It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose. It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society.

Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological limits of a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible. It is the most urgent task of our times.

Hi folks:  I heard from Josh Jacobs, Technical Information Manager at GreenGuard about what they feel is misleading information in last weeks post about the fees charged by GreenGuard.  I told them I’d publish their clarification, so here it is:

“Fees charged to participating manufacturer’s in the GREENGUARD Certification Program^SM vary depending upon a couple of reasons; certification and testing. The certification fee takes into account company size and administrative, application and licensing fees. Testing, which is not conducted by the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute, but is required for certification, will also vary depending on the number of products a manufacturer is looking to have certified and the amount of testing that is needed. The fee that was mentioned in the prior blog post would typically include anywhere from five to more than 25 products and they would come from multiple manufacturing locations/facilities. Additionally, this would in most instances encompass tests that help categorize numerous products into similar product groupings and manufacturing reviews which are not applicable following the first year of certification.

We appreciate being mentioned alongside other credible third-party certification programs and standards and wanted to make sure that the textile industry understood that the entry fee for attaining GREENGUARD Certification is not as steep as has been published in other venues. We value O Ecotextiles efforts to distribute accurate information and their support of true third-party certifications. We thank them for the opportunity to speak with them regarding this misunderstanding in the marketplace.”

A new study focused on global water issues, commissioned by an  international network of  scientists,   found that people around the world view water issues as the planet’s top environmental problem -  greater than air pollution, depletion of natural resources, loss of habitat or climate change. (click here to read more on this study).  That shouldn’t be too surprising, given the alarming statistics we’ve been hearing recently:

From World Water Day:  “The world water crisis is one of the largest public health issues of our time. Nearly 1.1 billion people (roughly 20% of the world’s population) lack access to safe drinking water. Water is essential to the treatment of diseases, something especially critical for children.  This problem isn’t confined to a particular region of the world. A third of the Earth’s population lives in “water stressed” countries and that number is expected to rise dramatically over the next two decades.”

From Water.org:

• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
• An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day

Given that the textile industry uses vast quantities of water – and is the #1 industrial polluter of fresh water on Earth – it is necessary that the industry at the very least institute water treatment at each and every mill so that the water returned to the ecosystem is safe and doesn’t cause harm.  Currently the industry is adopting voluntary certifications which demonstrate to consumers what they are doing to protect the environment.    Some certifications include standards for water treatment (such as GOTS, C2C, SMaRT) and some do not (such as Oeko-Tex, GreenGuard).  But these certifications are voluntary, and water treatment is expensive.  The market doesn’t yet know enough to demand safe fabrics, let alone better processing procedures.  The industry is not adopting these standards quickly nor is there much discussion about water treatment by American textile mills.  It is not enough.  We are calling for a government mandate for water treatment (pH, temperature and COD and BOD content) at each mill in the United States with standards that really have teeth.

We recognize that industrial water pollution is only part of the problem – that the consumer piece of the equation (laundering) is important also.  But the government cannot mandate how you launder your clothes  -  while it does have the power to change and monitor effluent levels from industry.

We  have a made a Faustian bargain:  we have exploited our natural resources and given up long term conservation for short term gain.  I know it’s easy to point fingers after the fact, and it would have been unusual for anybody (including myself) to point out the folly of using up our limited resources when the gains from doing so were so great.  But time is change, and we’re now facing different circumstances.  It is not really even a question of whether we should do this or not,  because our ability to act has been taken away – the water is simply disappearing.  It’s not being replaced.  We have to adapt to circumstances – and now the only question is “how”?  Let me tell you a story.

There are generally two images of the Great Plains that most Americans of my generation keep in their minds.  The first is that iconic black and white photograph by Arthur Rothstein of the 30’s Dust Bowl:

The second is of a swath of verdant farmland, ripe with wheat, corn, sorghum, soybeans and cotton –   field after verdant field stretching to the horizon:

This startling change can be attributed to the Ogalala Aquifer, one of the largest aquifer systems in the world.  Total water storage in the aquifer is about equal to that of Lake Huron, and it is the single most important source of water in the High Plains region, providing nearly all the water for residential, industrial and agricultural use.   It is this water that transformed the Great Plains from a region of subsistence farming into one of the richest agricultural areas of the world – $20 billion per year in food and fiber depends on this aquifer.   It stretches across all or portions of eight states and underlies 174,000 square miles.  It lies relatively near the land surface in most of this area, and could almost always be counted on to yield water to a well drilled into it.

In the 1930s, people began to realize the potential of the vast water supply that lay beneath them.  Irrigation of cropland began in earnest.   And very little water conservation technology was available:  lots of water was lost to evaporation and deep percolation; open, unlined ditches were used to transport the water to the fields; it wasn’t uncommon to have evaporation losses of 50%. Early settlers thought the water was inexhaustible.

It was not.  And today we risk having the first image above superimposed again on the second.   That is because  the Ogalala Aquifer is being sucked dry.

Today, the Ogalala Aquifer  is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic metres a year – amounting to a total depletion to date of a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers.(1)  Although precipitation and river systems are recharging a few parts of the aquifer, in most places “nature cannot keep up with human demands.” (2)

According to a major study just completed by Camp Dresser & McKee, a Boston engineering firm, 5.1 million acres of irrigated land (an area the size of Massachusetts) in six Great Plains states will dry up by the year 2020 ( that’s 10 years!), and millions of acres of irrigated acres will be lost across a 5-state area.  Yet this drastic estimate, declares Herbert Grubb of the Texas department of water resources, is  “20% too optimistic.”(3)

Ship Bright is a blog concerned with fresh water issues, and the post on October 12, 2009 (read it here) features a great description of the current situation, including what they call the “planned bankruptcy”  caused by current water management strategies.

Farmers in the area are waking up to the fact that they will have to use less water – and this in the face of global warming predictions that the area served largely by the Ogalala Aquifer is predicted to be hotter and drier.(4)

One way to conserve water is to use more efficient irrigation systems, another way is to grow crops that require less water.    Then there is “going dryland” – meaning using no irrigation at all.  That requires using some techniques such as leaving stubble in the ground and planting a new crop in the residue.  This not only reduces soil erosion but also decreases evaporation and catches more blowing snow than bare ground.  It also reduces moisture loss by the equivalent of an inch or more of rainfall annually, and in an area that averages only 18 inches of rainfall per year that’s a lot.

These techniques have long been part of organic agriculture  – growing what is appropriate for an area, using what is available.  Many organic crops which do not use artificial fertilizers also have lower water requirements.  There is some research going on into the suitability of cotton as a replacement for corn in this area, because cotton crops use less water than corn.

In addition, some farmers are looking into converting their land back to grasslands, which would provide wildlife habitat, and grazing land for cattle or even buffalo.  (See our blog “Organic Agriculture and Climate Change” 7.29.09 and “Why does wool get such high embodied energy ratings”, 8.4.09).   And once a national carbon market is established, farmers could sell credits for storing carbon in grassland soil.  But the government doesn’t provide lucrative financial incentives for grassland conversion as it does for the production of corn or other commodities.

Once again, organic agriculture proves to be important, perhaps crucial, in our fight modify our water use and perhaps allow the Ogalala Aquifer to recharge.

(1)  Little, J.B., “Saving the Ogalala Aquifer”, Scientific American “Earth 3.0″, Vol 19, No. 1, 2009

(2) Ibid.

(3) Stengel, Woodbury, Allis, “Environment: Ebbing of the Ogalala”, Time, May 10, 1982

(4)Bock, J., Bowman, W., Bock, C, “Global Change in the High Plains of North America”, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Great Plains Research, Vol.1, No. 2

Apparently Good Housekeeping now has a green seal of approval.  UL laboratories, the safety test lab, also has it’s own green seal of approval.  In fact, according to the new 2009 Conscious Consumer Report from BBMG, there are now over 400 different certifications  related to “green” and environmental attributes of products and services.  So many that such marks risk losing their effectiveness.    Steven Colbert  said that they now had a “Green Colbert Report”  – they’re reducing their emissions by jumping on the bandwagon.

And like all comedy, it only hurts when we laugh.  Since we’re all about textiles, let’s focus here.   Do you even know what certifications pertain to textiles?

The market is absolutely rife with claims about organic cotton – and believe me, I have absolutely nothing against organic cotton.  But the focus (by marketers and consumers alike) is that if it’s made of organic cotton, then the product is sustainable.  That’s far from the truth.  We like to use the analogy of “organic applesauce” – that is, if you take organic apples, then cook them with preservatives, emulsifiers, Red Dye #2, stabilizers and any number of other additives – do you end up with organic applesauce?  Just like bread – which is made from wheat which is grown (maybe organically), harvested, ground into flour, mixed with milk, yeast, salt and maybe other things, then baked – fabric undergoes the same type of transformation.  I mean, really, do you actually think that the cotton boll which you see in the picture is transformed into your blouse without some kind of serious work?  What about oil?  Think of crude oil and and your new sheets – what do you think has to have happened to that crude to make it acceptable for your bedroom?

So the certifications which are often used for fabrics have only to do with the FIBER, and not with the processing.  The processing is environmentally damaging and results in fabric that contains many chemicals that seriously jeopardize our health.  And often a product is advertised as being an “organic fabric” when what they mean is the fabric started out with organic fibers – but the processing, like the organic applesauce mentioned above, results in fabric that contains a high proportion, by weight, of synthetic chemicals (such as lead or mercury, formaldehyde, chlorine, or phthalates).

Besides the proliferation of certifications, further muddying of the waters happens because some of the certification agencies which can certify fabric ALSO certify fiber.  In other words, each end product can be certified.  So if we deconstruct a piece of fabric, we can have certification at each stage:   (1) growing and harvesting of organic fibers  (2) ginning or other preparation of the fibers to make them suitable for use in spinning;  (3)  spinning of the fibers into yarns; (4) weaving of the yarns into fabric and (5) final product (i.e., blouse, tablecloth, etc.).  Makes you dizzy doesn’t it?

It’s quite common to find  “organic cotton” fabrics  in the market – in other words, fabrics made of organic fibers.  Or at least,  the claim is that the fibers are organic.   Unless they are certified organic fibers, the claim is meaningless:    there are no standards for calling a natural fiber “organic” since by definition  they are organic – because the definition of “organic” is  “of, relating to, or derived from living organisms.”  There is a big difference between a fabric or product which claims to be “organic” and one that claims to be “certified organic”.  So it is important to look for the certification and ask who certified the fibers (if they don’t display that information).  Believe me, if a company has gone to the trouble and expense of certifying their fibers, they will definitely have the information of who did the certification!

Common certification agencies for fibers include:

• United States Department of Agriculture, National Organic Program
• Soil Association Certification Limited (SA Certification) is the UK’s largest organic certification body. It’s also the only certification body linked to a committed charity, promoting organic food and farming.
• OneCert:  OneCert provides organic certification worldwide. Certification and inspection programs include the US National Organic Program (NOP), European Organic Regulations (EU 2092/91), Quebec Organic Standards (CAQ), Japan Agricultural Standards (JAS), IFOAM, and Bio Suisse. Services include organic certification, organic inspection, export certificates, transaction certificates, on-line record keeping, answers to certification questions, and presentations of organic topics.
• Control Union (Skal):  Control Union is a global one-stop-shop for a range of certification programs, including organic fibers.  It certifies to the standards of
  • AB logo
  • Bio Suisse
  • Canada Organic Regime
  • EU organic
  • Japanese Agricultural Standards
  • Naturland inspections
  • NPOP
  • Polish EU organic
  • USDS/NOP
• The Institute for Marketcology (IMO): IMO is one of the first and most renowned international agencies for inspection, certification and quality assurance of eco-friendly products. Its world-wide activities are accredited by the Swiss Accreditation Service (SAS) according to EN 45011 (ISO 65), which is the international standard for certification. IMO offers certification for organic production and handling according to the European Regulation (EU) Nr. 2092/91.

The certifications  above verify that the fibers have been grown and harvested to organic standards set forth by the various standards.  But they do not deal in any way with the processing of the fibers into fabric.

There exist several third party certifications which we think every conscious consumer of fabric should be aware.  We  should all know what the certification does – and doesn’t – cover:  Oeko-Tex, GOTS, C2C, GreenGuard, Global  Recycle Standard and SMART.

Before giving a summary of the main points of each of the certifications which deal with fiber processing (i.e., weaving), it’s important to note that these certifications are all in business – it costs money to achieve the certification -  sometimes it costs a LOT of money.    Like organic designations in food, some farmers, for example, grow hemp sustainably (because they can).  But  because there isn’t a robust market yet for hemp they don’t want to spend the money for the certification to show it as organic.  Cradle to Cradle and GreenGuard can cost up to $30,000 per product for certification, so when you look on the web sites for these certifications,  you see only large, well established companies who can afford to pay the certification costs.  In addition to these certifications, there are many new “green guides” on the internet which purport to list green products.  A basic listing may be free, but any additional bells and whistles costs money.  So prominently featured green products may be specially featured because the manufacturer has paid for the spotlight.

List of certifications:

GreenGuard (www.greenguard.org). GreenGuard is not designed specifically for fabrics, but it is often advertised that a fabric is GreenGuard certified. GreenGuard has developed proprietary indoor air-quality pollutant guidelines based on government and industrial bodies.  Those products that pay the testing fee and pass muster earn the right to call themselves GreenGuard certified.  It was launched in 2000 by Atlanta-based for profit Air Quality Sciences (AQS), which is now a separate not for profit organization.

GreenGuard tests for the emitting chemicals coming from a product; that means it tests only for evaporating chemicals, chemicals which are a gas at room temperature.   And that is all GreenGuard does – it does not look at the production of the fabric, or any social justice issues nor does it look at carbon footprint.

And GreenGuard, by measuring only emitting chemicals, is significant for what it does not measure:

• It does not measure any of the heavy metals (lead, mercury, copper, etc.)
• It does not measure PVC, which is a polymer and therefore not volatile
• It does not measure phthalates (except in the Children and Schools certification); phthalates are semi volatile, and don’t begin to evaporate until approximately 7 days after exposure to the air.

Oeko Tex (www.oeko-tex.com) :  founded to provide an objective and reliable product label for consumers and a uniform safety standard for the assessment of harmful substances in fabrics.  Its aim is to ensure products are free of harmful substances.

The Oeko-Tex Standard 100 excludes harmful substances or limits their use. The following parameters form part of the Oeko-Tex list of criteria:

Specifically banned

• AZO dyes*
• Carcinogenic and allergy-inducing dyes
• Formaldehyde*
• Pesticides
• Chlorinated phenols
• Chloro-organic benzenes and toluenes
• Extractable heavy metals
• Phthalates* in baby articles
• Organotin compounds (TBT and DBT
• Emissions of volatile components

Biologically active products and flame-retardant products are regulated separately.  Oeko Tex is a registered trademark.  Make sure that the test number is quoted and the test institute is named as shown on the logo above.

This certification does not look at the processing or manufacturing (whether wastewater is treated, for example, or renewable energy is used to power the mill) – it is solely concerned with the final product.  There are also no social requirements.

Cradle to Cradle (www.c2ccertified.com) : primarily it certifies that the product uses environmentally safe and healthy materials – however the list of what is considered safe is proprietary so we have to take their word for it.  In other words: they’re not transparent. C2C certifies just the product, without looking at how it is installed or used.   It has an energy, water and social responsibility component.

Cradle to Cradle’s strength is in material chemistry.  All ingredients in a product are identified down to 100 parts per million (ppm) and assessed according to 19 human and environmental health criteria:

All ingredients are rated: green, yellow, red (which has been ascertained to be toxic) or grey (incomplete data, handled like a red).   To achieve Gold and Platinum levels, a product cannot contain any ingredients classified as RED – unless there are no existing substitutes.  MBDC developed this database and it is not available to outsiders.

All ingredients are classified as either a technical or biological nutrient: published C2C literature doesn’t define “recyclable” or “compostable” but MBDC uses European Union guidelines for biodegradability, and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for recyclability.  FTC guidelines require an established recycling pathway.

For the energy component, it  focuses on the manufacturer’s use of renewable energy in production.  Manufacturers need to use renewable energy for the product’s manufacture to achieve Gold certification, and for the energy used in the product’s entire supply chain to achieve Platinum.  Renewable energy may be purchased on site or purchased thru energy credits.

Certification requires that companies work to preserve the quality and supply of water resources; implementation of these guidelines is required for Platinum.

Manufacturers must adopt corporate ethics and fair labor statements

However,  it’s easy to confuse the ideals and philosophy of the founders with the actual requirements for certification.  For example, a C2C Silver doesn’t guarantee that a product is free of all red ingredients; the only “knockout” chemical at Silver is PVC.  There is no report card for consumers that details what a certified product does or does not include.

In addition,  nutrients may not be returned to technical or biological cycles as described:  the minimum requirement for certification is that a product be 67% recyclable or biodegradeable.   But even a 100% recyclable product may not be able to return to either the technical or biological nutrient cycle.

MBDC certifies just the product, without looking at how it is installed or used.  HYCRETE (an additive to make concrete waterproof) is an example of how misleading this can be – when used as intended, HYCRETE is not biodegradeable and cannot be recycled by any established process.  Yet the product can degrade -  if you accidentally spill a five gallon bucket into a local stream, it’s going to degrade and isn’t going to do any harm.  Yet if used as intended it can neither biodegrade nor be recycled.

C2C criteria does not  refer to manufacturing byproducts or the waste and energy use associated with resource extraction (such as is the case with polyester).  Also the energy and water use standards focus on manufacturing, leaving out the energy and water consumption that results from use of the product.

EXAMPLE: Kynar (coating on Formawall panels): uses fluoropolymer in mfring process which releases PFOA (bioaccumulative and likely carcinogen).  But the PFOA slips thru the C2C assessment since it’s not a  product ingredient.

Finally, some say that C2C is not true third party certification,  but rather a second party program  since MBDCs primary business is consulting with manufacturers,

IN SUMMARY: C2C is distinguished by inspiring ecological thinking,  affiliation with respected thought leaders and idealism.  But it is complicated by a  lack of transparency and gaps in underlying criteria; lack of boundaries between the C2C standards developing body, C2C certification body and the MBDC consulting body.

They’re revising it now, but historically they have not looked at carbon footprint.

For more on C2C, see the article “Cradle to Cradle Certification: A Peek Inside MBDC’s Black Box”, which appeared in Environmental Building News, February 2007

The Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) ( www.global-standard.com;  see also: www.organic-textile-services.com) is a collaborative effort between the United States Organic Trade Association, Soil Association, International Association Natural Textile Industry (IVN) and Japan Organic Cotton Association (JOCA) to codify textile standards so consumers and manufacturers have one certification – an important step toward harmonization and transparency in textile labels. Since work began on codifying the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) in 2002, it has evolved into the leading set of criteria in the field of organic textile processing.

GOTS aims to define a universal standard for organic fibers—from harvesting the raw materials, through environmentally and socially responsible manufacturing, to labeling—in order to provide credible assurance to consumers. Standards apply to fiber products, yarns, fabrics and clothes and cover the production, processing, manufacturing, packaging, labeling, exportation, importation and distribution of all natural fiber products,   GOTS provides a continuous quality control and certification system from field to shelf.  There are also social responsibility components (i.e., fair wages, no forced or bonded labor, etc.)  All parameters are listed and accessible. The GOTS parameters for materials include prohibitions or restrictions on:

• Aromatic solvents
• Chloro Phenols (TCP, PCP)
• Complexing agents (APEO)
• Formaldehyde and short chain aldehydes
• Fungicides and biocides
• Halogenated solvents
• Heavy metals
• Ammonia treatment

There are detailed social criteria:  no forced or bonded labor; workers are not required to lodge “deposits” or identity papers with employer; no child labor; workers are free to leave after reasonable notice; working conditions are safe and hygenic.

Wastewater treatment includes measurement  and monitoring sediment quantities, waste water temperature and waste water pH. Wastewater from wet-processing sites (except greasy wool scouring sites and flax retting sites) must, when discharged to surface waters after treatment, have a COD content of less than 25 g/kg of textile output expressed as an annual average.   If the effluent is treated on site and discharged directly to surface waters, it must also have an pH between 6 and 9 (unless the pH of the receiving water is outside this range) and a temperature of less than 40C° (unless the temperature of the receiving water is above this value). The COD/BOD ratio must be ≤ 5. The copper content must not exceed 0,5 mg/l.

The GOTS certification applies to only natural fibers, it cannot be applied to polyester or other synthetic fibers.

SMaRT Sustainable Products Standard (www.sustainableproducts.com):  based on transparency, using consensus based metrics and life-cycle analysis. They also have in place rules which prevent industry trade association dominance so they can move substantially beyond the status quo.  Renewable energy and conventional energy reduction are specified.

Environmental, social and economic performance criteria are defined and quantified In areas such as:

• Acid Rain
• Smog
• Climate change
• Habitat alteration
• Ozone depletion
• Fossil fuel depletion
• Criteria and indoor air pollutants
• Water pollutants water intake
• Solid and hazardous waste

The Sustainable Textile Standard incorporates procedures and protocols established in the following sustainability standards, thereby eliminating both redundancies and potential inconsistencies:

• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Social Indicators http://www.globalreporting.org/GRIGuidelines/index.htm
• Stockholm Toxic Chemicals List  http://www.chem.unep.ch/publications.htm
• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) ISO General Principles Standard http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.CatalogueDetail?CSNUMBER=23151
• General Product Life Cycle Diagram (Figure 1, p. 15)
• Federal Trade Commission Environmental Marketing Guides http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/greenguides.htm
• US Green Building Council LEED Rating System http://www.usgbc.org/LEED/existing/leed_existing.asp
• FSC Certified Wood Practices  http://www.certifiedwood.org/
• Green-e Power http://www.resource-solutions.org/Green-epage.htm

SMART has a certification specifically for textiles called the Smart Sustainable Textile Standard.  For textiles it requires 1300 chemicals be tracked and addressed; it is also transparent (i.e., nothing is proprietary or hidden in their requirements or in decision making).  Confers multiple achievement levels.

The Global Recycle Standard (www.certification.controlunion.com):   This  brand new standard was developed to help verify claims regarding recycled products.  The Gold level requires products to contain 95 – 100% recycled material; Silver requires 70 – 95% and Bronze contains a minimum of 30%.  The definition of “recycled” under this standard is based on criteria already laid down by Scientific Certification Systems.  In addition,  the standard contains environmental processing criteria and strick raw material specification (water treatment and chemical use is based on GOTS and Oeko-Tex 100)  and social responsibility is incorporated – which ensures workers health and safety and upholds workers  rights  in accordance with International Labor Organisation (ILO) criteria.

Paul Hawken gave the commencement address to the University of Portland graduates this past June.   I think it’s pretty special.    Please take the time to read it, posted below:

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

From last week’s post, you’ll remember we explained that GMO crops (to date) do not fulfill their promise:

1. They do not decrease hunger and poverty;
2. Data shows that GMO crops actually increase pesticide and herbicide use;
3. They do not yield more; in a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Failure to Yield, data shows that despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields.   In fact data points to possibly lower yields than would have been achieved by NOT using GMO seed.

But I still didn’t understand  what the fuss is all about.  After all, companies have been making claims for products forever.  Shouldn’t the product just die by way of non-purchase?  Why should governments get involved and prohibit the use of GMO seeds?  Why are the organic trade associations around the world in such an uproar?

After all, the promise of genetic engineering  is very powerful -  to be able to feed the world as populations increase and agricultural land gets squeezed.   James McWilliams, an associate professor at Texas State University, says that genetic engineering is “a hidden realm of opportunity to feed the world’s impending 9 billion a diet produced in an environmentally responsible way.” Time Magazine reported in September, 2009 that a scientist at Texas A & M University has discovered a way to remove the gossypol (a naturally occurring toxic chemical that protects the plant from infestation) from cottonseeds.  Today cottonseeds can be used for humans only after an extensive refining process to remove the gossypol.  Also in the works are crops that can produce higher yields with less water; a dust from genetically modified ferns that can remove heavy metals from the soil;  crops that can withstand drought or high salt content in soil; and other GM technologies that “have the potential not only to streamline production, but to play a meaningful role in reducing their carbon footprint.”(1)  Sounds pretty good to me.

In the United States, we haven’t heard much about genetic engineering, because in 1992, the
FDA unilaterally decided (in its opinion) that as long as a GM food is no more toxic, allergenic, or any less “substantially equivalent” than its standard counterpart, it need not be labeled to show the process that created it. That is quite different from the European labeling laws, introduced in 1997, which required that any food containing residues of engineered DNA or protein must be recorded as GM.

So what is it about genetic engineering that has these other governments and organizations so concerned?  Part of the problem may be that the scientific community does not like the unknown, and it seems to have not reached a consensus on the safety of these products for our health or for the environment, although it’s hard to determine what interests are behind which studies.

These areas of concern, in addition to those of the plants developing increasing tolerances to pesticides and herbicides, include :

1. The concept of “drift”:   that is,  pollen from genetically engineered plants will spread by insects and the winds to affect non-GMO plants.  (After all, a bee can travel up to 30 km or more.)  This contaminates both conventional and organic fields.  And farmers or food processors lose money because of unwanted contamination.   The  Organic Trade Association of Canada recently reported the discovery of contaminated flax seed in some German food products;  native corn in Mexico (where it is illegal to plant genetically engineered corn) was reported to have new GM genes found in the genome, where they could interfere with the plant’s normal genes.(2)   “It’s time for biotech companies to be good parents and take responsibility for their children. The owners of GE crops need to assume the liability for loss of market access due to their technologies appearing in countries or products in which they are not wanted. As GE products are not permitted under organic standards, the organic sector in Canada is extremely concerned by the prospect of losing access to its essential markets in Europe, Asia and around the world,” said Matthew Holmes, managing director of OTA in Canada.  According to the U.S. Organic Trade Association,  “Bt contamination is  a trespass, a nuisance, unwanted, and can lead to significant economic losses for organic farmers.  This is a clear example of potentially disastrous environmental degradation, with the added problem that consumers seeking products that contain no genetically engineered materials may be denied this choice because of inadvertent contamination.”
2. Concerns regarding human health: These are classed into those that fall under “unknown effect on human health” and allergenicity.   With regard to unknown effects, a study published by the Austrian government found that mice fed a type of genetically engineered corn produced fewer offspring and more females with no offspring, than mice fed conventional corn.  The effects were particularly pronounced in the third and fourth litters, after the mice had eaten the GE corn for a longer period of time.  Another study published in Lancet claimed that there are appreciable differences in the intestines of rats fed genetically engineered potatoes and those fed unmodified potatoes.(3)  The milk from cows injected with genetically engineered  bovine growth hormone rBGH  (sometimes called rBST)  has been found to have much higher levels of IGF-1, a hormone considered to be a high risk factor for breast, prostate, colon, lung and other cancers – and the milk has lowered nutritional value! (4). “This … should serve as a wake-up call to governments around the world that genetically engineered foods could cause long-term health damage,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety.       With regard to allergenicity, there is the possibility that introducing a gene into a plant may cause a new allergen or cause an allergic reaction in susceptible individuals. When DNA from one organism is spliced into another, can it turn a non-allergenic food into one that will cause an allergic reaction in some people?
3. Concerns regarding agricultural diversity:  The 1st conference on animal and plant breeding of the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) was held in August, 2009.  Speakers at the conference made it clear that we are in a battle to save the diversity of today’s food in order to have future food.  According to Vandana Shivam,  who spoke at the conference, unprecendented weather is occurring in India with the disruption of life-giving monsoons which used to appear as regularly as clockwork.  Farmers growing GMO rice could not plant their seedlings because of lack of rain, while farmers who had access to heirloom drought-tolerant varieties were able to plant and get a crop.  Traditional farming used to include over 250 crops.  Now there are a mere 2 crops.  Community seed banks are springing up around India to preserve traditional varieities, and “freedom villages” are forming to prohibit GMOs because of their threat to traditional seeds.  You can learn more about the situation in India by reading “Stop the Biopiracy of Climate Resilient Crops” by clicking here. The Wall Street Journal ran an article on how organic farming, even with reduced yields, is more profitable for Indian farmers than conventional crops, because the farmers  no longer are subjected to high up front costs for chemical fertilizers and insecticides, and they can save  seeds from year to year.
4. Concerns regarding the safety of wildlife in the surrounding areas of GM crops: A major study performed by the British government and published by the Royal Society,   found that GM crops had 33% fewer seeds for birds to eat at the end of the season, and even two years later there were still 25% fewer seeds.  As the study puts it: “While reduction or removal of the visible flora temporarily reduces the food available to farmland animals, the key to longer-term impacts is the ‘seed rain’ (seeds falling from weeds) and its contribution to the seedbank (weed seeds left in soil).” (5)  They concluded that over time this would have a dramatic impact on the bird populations which are dependent on these seeds.  There are also fewer bees, beetles, butterflies and other insects in the GM crops. Such invertebrates are food for mammals, birds and other animals, and many are important for controlling pests or recycling nutrients within the soil.
5. Concerns regarding the use of Bt crops and organic agriculture:  Bt is often used in organic agriculture;  it is an excellent biological control for corn and cotton insect pests.  It is the most widely used biological control in organic agriculture.    But Bt engineered plants will lead quickly to significant insect resistance, depriving organic farmers of one of their most useful tools.
6. Concerns regarding the business of corporate agriculture: Many are concerned that farmers are turning dependent on large multinational corporations (MNCs) for seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs while also becoming more vulnerable to pressures to produce genetically engineered crops.   They fear the predatory nature of corporate agriculture and its attempts to corner the entire chain of food production from seeds to sales of food products.  Three companies — Cargill, Archer Daniels and Bunge — control nearly 90 per cent of global grain trade while DuPont and Monsanto dominate the global seed market. Eleven firms account for about half the world sales of seeds, of which about a quarter are sales of genetically engineered seeds. (6)  And agrichemical sales are concentrated in 6 firms which together control 85% of the annual pesticide market. (7)   The research into GMO crops is very expensive, meaning only large, well funded companies can afford the research.  It’s this last concern, that of “vertical integration” (i.e., a corporation taking over the entire food production cycle from the development of proprietary strains of DNA and the sales of seeds to farmers down to contracts with farmers that determine what is produced, how and for whom, and at what price and quality), that I want to focus on.

In an equity research paper done by Deutsche Banc of DuPont in 1999, they stated that they were willing to believe that GMOs were safe and “may provide a benefit for the environment” but that the perception wars are being lost by the industry.     “Not a day goes by lately where concerns and/or rebuttals are not in the press somewhere in the world. Domestic concerns regarding agbiotechnology are clearly on the rise, with the Monarch butterfly but one example of negative press causing a rethink of the future. For the most part, though, it has not yet gotten the attention of the ordinary U.S. citizen, but when it does – look out.”

The corporations which have so much at stake here know that they need a more aggressive marketing technique to promote the impression that GMOs are good and safe to use.  Agrichemical lobbyists are trying to convince the public that the industry is “science-based”.  A new global federation of agrichemical multinational corporations, Crop Life International, is the new representative of the “plant science industry”.  Crop Life’s annual report for 2007 makes the breathtaking claim that pesticides are actually good for the environment for a host of reasons, including “lower carbon dioxide emissions associated with the switch to no-till/reduced tillage farming systems, and less frequent pesticide applications made possible by biotech crops fuel savings.”

The agrichemical companies are vertically integrated, based on the law of efficiency similar to economies of scale which favors big corporations.  Antonio Tujan, Jr., international director of the Ibon Foundation Inc. (a research and educational institution specializing in socio-economic issues) says that “integration destroys the free market as it becomes increasingly dominated by the giants, which are able to dictate profits and what is produced.”  This turns the market into a sellers’ market, and farmers have little or no choice.  Farmers are forced to accept whatever they are asked to use such as seeds and pesticides.  A democratic market, in contrast, is a consumers’ market.

The big companies have a lot at stake, and the squabbling and double dealing – not to mention lawsuits and counter suits -  are worthy of a good thriller.   Monsanto, after years of acquiring seed companies while trying to become the major seed producer in the world,  filed a lawsuit in the spring accusing DuPont of patent infringement; DuPont countersued saying Monsanto wanted to protect its franchise at the expense of giving farmers access to better technology.   But in June, DuPont sued BASF over the same kind of alleged violations Monsanto sued it for in the spring – and of course, BASF countersued!

A more disturbing set of statistics is the number of lawsuits that Monsanto has filed against farmers who are accused of violating its patents.  It has built a department of 75 employees and set aside an annual budget of $10 million for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting farmers for patent infringement. For cases with recorded judgments, farmers have paid a mean of $412,259.54.  (Click here to read the entire report.) The table below gives the number of cases by year:

Number of Lawsuits by Year

Source:  The Center for Food Safety,  January 2005

According to Tom Wiley, a North Dakota farmer, farmers are being sued for having GMOs on their property that they “did not buy, do not want,  will not use and cannot sell.”

This just in:   Monsanto announced on  August 13 that it would be raising prices for its genetically modifed seeds from 17% to 42% – saying that these new seeds will boost yields; this is part of the company’s drive to double profits by 2012. (8)

(1) Brandon, Hembree, “GMO rejection – ‘Fatal rush to judgment’”, June 3, 2009, Southeast Farm Press

(2) “Chapala Vindicated”, Organic Consumers Association, March 5, 2009, http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17133.cfm

(3) “Effect of diets containing genetically mofidied potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine”, Lancet, Vol 354, No 9187, pp 1353-1354, Oct 1999

(4) http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/general/milk.htm

(5) http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMCHW.php

(6) Netto, Anil, “GMO Seeds:  “MNCs Gaining Total Control Over Farming”, December 12, 2007, Center for Research on Globalization

(7) Ibid.

(8) “A Seed Company Some Love to Hate”, Jim Jubak blog on MSN Money, http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2009/08/14/a-seed-company-some-love-to-hate.aspx

The Global Organic Textiles Standard (GOTS) prohibits all “genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) and their derivatives”.  According to the Organic Exchange, none of the organic growing standards established by any government allows for GMO crops.  In April, 2009, Germany announced a plan to ban all GMO crops in the country, citing concerns of the environmental impact, making Germany the latest in a string of EU countries to outlaw GMO crops.  And during a public comment period in 2000, the Organic Trade Association generated 275,000 letters against GMOs being included in the National Organic Program (NOP).

Why the fuss?  After all, GMO crops were developed to help us meet the demands our burgeoning population makes on our limited resources.  How can that be bad?

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are plants, animals and microorganisms which have been altered genetically.  Here’s how the National Orgtanic Standards Board puts it:  “Genetically engineered is defined as:  made with techniques that alter the molecular or cell biology of an organism by means that are not possible under natural conditions or processes.   Genetic engineering includes recombinant DNA, cell fusion, micro-and macro-encapsulation, gene deletion and doubling, introducing a foreign gene, and changing the positions of genes.”(1)

The benefits of genetic engineering in the agriculture sector is great, according to its proponents.  GMO crops have been hailed as a way to increase yields by protecting against pests, drought and disease.  The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has put forward the arguments for GMOs in agriculture, (such as increased yields and better resistance to pests and other stresses – which reduces dependence on chemicals needed for crop protection.   They also list the arguments against GMO crops. There is great debate about the pros and cons of this relatively new product.

But before looking at some of the reasons so many are opposed to genetic engineering,  let’s look at the issues pertaining to fiber crops only – and to cotton specifically:

Shortly after GMO cotton was introduced, GMO cotton producers, citing advances based on new GMO cotton  and supported by a series of Cotton Incorporated conferences on sustainable cotton,  portrayed conventional cotton as the new “sustainable” choice and organic cotton as an old and inadequate solution that is “as out-dated as last year’s fashions.”  (Editor’s note:  They also redefined the term “sustainable” to include “growing profitability.”)

GMO cotton was quickly adopted by cotton farmers, and millions of hectares of GMO modified cotton has been planted worldwide since its introduction in 1996.

Why did so many farmers pay for GMO seed – which cost more – and plant this new crop?  Bottom line: they were told that there was more money to be made from GMO cotton.    GMO cotton was supposed to have higher yields at the same time it was helping to reduce costs.  Cost savings in chemicals and manual labor was estimated at between 15 – 30%.   How did it reduce dependence on chemicals:

• GMO cotton was engineered to reduce insect pests so farmers could reduce their chemical dependence on pesticides, and buy less of them.  The gene coding for Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) was inserted into the cotton.  Bt is a protein that acts as a natural toxin to the larvae of certain moths, butterflies, beetles and flies (including the dred bollworm) and is harmless to other forms of life.  When the larvae feed on the cotton they are killed by the Bt protein – thereby eliminating the need for a broad spectrum insecticide.
• GMO cotton was designed to be resistant to herbicides so that weed killers could be liberally sprayed on crops without worrying about killing the cotton plants.  It was genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate (marketed as Roundup in the USA and manufactured by Monsanto – remember this fact) which is a broad-spectrum herbicide, and toxic to humans at concentrations far below the recommended agricultural use levels. (2)  Studies link glyphosate to spontaneous abortions, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.

Not only could they make more money, but  GMO cotton crops were also promoted as helping tackle world hunger and poverty, and helping small farmers. If you were a cotton farmer, how could you resist?  They didn’t:  Today 86% of all United States cotton, 68% of all Chinese cotton, and 76% of all Indian cotton (three of the major cotton growing countries) is now GMO cotton. (3)

Initial results seemed that all they promised was true – early studies in 2002/2003 reported that pesticide and herbicide use was down and yields were up (by as much as 80%)  for GMO cotton (4).  But these results were short lived.   Recent reports are full of data on GMO crops requiring ever more doses of chemical pesticides and herbicides to control pests which are mutating faster than even their worse case scenarios had envisioned,  and becoming resistant to the genetic modifications found in GMO cotton.  A study published by the Institute for Science in Society reports that Bt cotton fields rarely have studies done on what the crops do to the soil itself; they found that soil growing Bt cotton had significantly fewer beneficial soil enzymes in the soil (which makes nutrients available to plants) and total biomass was reduced 8.9%.  This, they conclude, could even lead to dead soils, unable to produce food.

What about the promise of reduced chemical dependence on pesticides and herbicides?

It was always thought that pests would eventually evolve and develop a resistance to Bt.  It wasn’t a question of whether resistance would happen, but how quickly it would evolve.  The Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR) in India published the (then currently held) opinion that, “with the current rate of increase in the area under Bt cotton, it is likely to take about 11 – 12 years for the pest to develop resistance to Bt cotton.  However, with implementation of proper strageties as suggested by CICR, it is possible to delay resistance by at least 30 – 40 years if not more.”  Worse case scenario was thought to be three years.

Yet in 2008 the University of Arizona published some of the first documented cases of bollworm resistance to Bt. Professor Bruce Tabashnik, a renowed insect researcher and the primary researcher of this study, said “our results contradict the worse-case scenarios of some experts under which resistance to Bt plants was expected in three years.  It is no surprise that, after a while, pests can develop biological strategies against insecticidal agents and become thereby insensitive:  as  a rule, even advantages that have been established in a plant by conventioinal breeding methods only have a limited time span of effectiveness.”

According to a 2008 study  by Friends of the Earth, independent studies have demonstrated not only that pesticide reduction claims are unfounded, but that GM crops have substantially increased pesticide use, particularly since 1999.  Dr. Charles Benbrook, a leading U.S. agricultural sicentist, conducted an “exhaustive analysis of USDA data on pesticide use in agriculture from 1996 to 2004.  His conclusion is that over this 9 year period, adoption of GM soy, corn and cotton crops has led to use of 122 million more pounds of pesticides than would have been used had GM crops not been introduced.”(4)

With regard to herbicides, GM cotton crops were engineered to have a resistance to glyphosate – the primary component in Monsanto’s patented week killer called Roundup.  Roundup is Montsanto’s biggest product, accounting for about 40% of their estimated 2002 revenue of $4.6 billion.  Monsanto sold its GMO seeds under the brand name, “Roundup Ready” because farmers could spray the herbicide directly onto their fields and not have to worry about killing their crop.  The popularity of Roundup Ready crops skyrocketed, and the use of Roundup also skyrocketed.  In the U.S. alone, glyphosate use jumped by a factor of 15 between 1994 and 2005, according to the Center for Food Safety.  That led to a host of  “superweeds” developing a resistance to Roundup.   Farmers were told that in order to combat glyphosate-resistant weeds they’d have to apply other chemicals, often in combination with higher rates of glyphosate.   In 2005, Monsanto recommended farmers use several additional herbicides with Roundup, including Prowl (pendimethalin), metolachlor, diuron and others.    In fact, recent data shows resistance to herbicides in general, and herbicides used in GMO crops in particular, has escalated at exponential rates, according to the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds.

According to the Friends of the Earth study, cited above: ” When forced to admit that herbicide-tolerant crops increase overall pesticide use, biotech industry apologists quickly fall back on a second claim: the increasing use of glyphosate has reduced use of more toxic herbicides, and so is a benefit to the environment. While this was true in the first few years of Roundup Ready crops, a look at recent trends in herbicide use undermines this claim.”  For instance, 2,4-D is the second most heavily used herbicide on soybeans; it is a herbicide that formed part of the defoliant Agent Orange, and has been associated with health risks such as increased risk of  both cancer and birth defects – and use of 2,4-D more than doubled from 2002 to 2006.  Likewise, use of atrazine (which is linked to endocrine disruption, neuropathy, breast and prostate cancer and low sperm counts) rose by nearly 7 million lbs (a 12% increase).

And according to the Friends of the Earth study,  “It is important to understand two key facts about weed  resistance. First, resistance is defined as a weed’s ability to  survive more than the normal dose of a given herbicide rather than absolute immunity. Higher doses of the herbicide will often still kill the resistant weed, at least in the short term. The  second fact follows from the first. Weed resistance is not only the result of using an herbicide excessively, it often leads to still
greater use of that herbicide.”

And the promised yield increases?  Often, the answer depends on weather and growing conditions rather than types of seed planted.  Average cotton yields in the United States  were stagnant from 1996 (when GM cotton was introduced) to 2002 (when it made up 76% of cotton acerage);  there was a record yield in 2004 and 2005 but these increases were chiefly attributable to excellent weather conditions. (5)   In fact the question is really whether the yield for U.S. cotton is lower than it would have been had it not been Roundup Ready seed! (6)  Other parts of the world had similar or worse results.

Another facet of this discussion should include the fact that GMO seeds are expensive:  in India, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready cotton seed was selling  for twice the price of non-GMO seeds.    GMO seeds cannot be saved and used for next season’s crop.   The high price for the seed led to farmers in India often having to take out loans from moneylenders who charged exorbitant interest rates.  In a poignant article in the New York Times,  Somini Sengupta published a discussion about the rash of suicides by Indian farmers – 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003 – and lays the blame on a combination of rural despair and American multinational companies peddling costly, genetically modified seeds.

According to the Friends of the Earth, GM crops do not fulfill their promise.

1. GM crops do not tackle hunger or poverty.
2. GM crops increase pesticide use and foster the spread of resistant “superweeds”.
3. GM crops do not yield more and often yield less than other crops. (7)
4. GM crops benefit the biotech industry and some large growers, but not small farmers.

But why is the Organic Trade Association and GOTS so adamantly opposed to GMO crops?  Why are European countries like Germany banning the sale and planting of GMO crop?  And why did the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) release a position  paper calling for a moratorium on genetically modified foods?  That’s next week’s post.

(1) Organic Materials Review Institute, http://www.omri.org/OMRI_GMO_policy.html

(2) Benachour N and Séralini G-E.. Glyphosate formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells Chem. Res. Toxicol. , 2009, 22 (1), pp 97–105

(3)  GMO Compass; http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/agri_biotechnology/gmo_planting/343.genetically_modified_cotton_global_area_under_cultivation.html

(4)  Qaim, Matin and Zilberman, David, “Yield Effects of Genetically Modified Croops in Dveloping Countries”, Science, 2.7.03

(4) “Who Benefits From GM Crops?”, Friends of the Earth,  issue 112 Agriculture and Food; January 2008, page 7.

(5) Meyer, L., S., MacDonald & L. Foreman, March 2007.  Cotton Backgrounder.  USDA Economic Research Service Outlook Report.

(6) Friends of the Earth, op cit.

(7) “Corn, Soy Yields Gain Little From Genetic Engineering”, Agence France Presse, April 14, 2009

I had a blog post about genetically modified organisims (GMOs) all ready to go,  but then I got  Sunday’s New York Times (September 13, 2009) with a front page story about rising incidences of  violations of the Clean Water Act in the U.S.:  more than half a million violations in the last five years alone.  I had been keeping track of reports of various types of pollution which come to my attention – every week on average, sometimes daily,  there is at least one article in my local paper which gets my blood boiling. Today’s article is about the widespread feminization of fish in American waters, a situation experts see as a wider problem of endocrine disruptive chemicals in our environment.  A few weeks ago I was tempted to write about the 60 Minutes segment that appeared on August 27, 2009.  As 60 Minutes says,  “this is a story about recycling – about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the United States and into the wasteland.”   You can read the story here about a place in China “where you can’t breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead”.

But it was today’s article that pushed me over the edge, because we have been working so hard  to remind  people why treating the water used in textile processing is critically important!  People still think using “organic cotton” or “organic anything” results in an organic fabric, when the difference is as much as that between crude oil and silky microfiber.  The textile industry remains the number 1 industrial polluter of fresh water on the planet, and water is a precious resource that we’re having to spread among more and more people.  We can’t afford to keep discharging effluent filled with toxic chemicals that may cause grave damage to us years down the line.  The Clean Water Act regulates 100 pollutants and the Safe Drinking Water Act limits 91 chemicals in our tap water – that’s  191 chemicals in all.  Small potatoes when the list of chemicals used routinely by industry tops 100,000 – but it’s better than nothing.  Now we find even that protection may be illusory.

The article in question is part of a series that the New York Times is running called “Toxic Waters”, which examines the worsening pollution in American waters, and the response by regulators.  Today’s article, “Clean Water Laws Neglected, at a Cost”, by Charles Duhigg, is based on the hundreds of thousands of water pollution records which the Times obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and the national database of violations they compiled from that information.   This database is more comprehensive than those maintained by any state or the E.P.A.  Click here to see the entire report online (where you can also find any violations which may have occurred in your community).

They found:

• that an estimated 1 in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet federal health benchmarks.
• that 40% of the nation’s community water systems violated the Safe Drinking Water Act at least once during the past year – violations that ranged from failing to maintain paperwork to allowing carcinogens into tap water.
• that more than 23 million people received drinking water that violated a health-based standard.
• that the number of violations is growing significantly.
• and that only 3% of Clean Water Act violations resulted in fines or other significant punishments.

Critics say that the E.P.A. and the states have dropped the ball.  “Without oversight and enforcement, companies will use our lakes and rivers as dumping grounds – and that’s exactly what is apparently going on,” says Representative James L. Oberstar, from Minnesota.  But regulators say they’re overwhelmed, citing the increase in workloads and dwindling resources.

And there are those who say nothing will happen until there is some public outrage.  So please read the story and let’s have some outrage!

We need to take care of the scare resources we have.  We’re running out of water for everybody, and can’t afford to squander it.  Does anybody else get uneasy when you read something like this investor’s recommendation:   “A world that’s running out of clean, dependable supplies of water located where and when farmers need it makes irrigation one of the trends I’d like to invest in.”

So when you read about the jeans factory in Lesotho which supplies denim to Levi’s and the Gap which is leaking untreated wastewater, dyed deep blue and polluted with chemicals, into the  local river – and when you read that most of the children living there have chest infections and skin irritations – don’t think it’s a world away and you’re safely protected by municipal water treatment facilities.  The New York Times findings give us scant reason to depend on our local water treatment facilities to protect us from these insults to our ecosystem.  That factory in Lesotho is spewing the effluent into your groundwater and it circulates in your water system.  Apparently that kind of egregious flaunting of the law is going on in West Virginia (and other states) too.

Note:  I live in Seattle, where the Seattle Times gets a feed from the New York Times; often a prominent story in the New York Times is displayed on the first page (or at least in the first section) of the  Seattle Times.  But this article was not carried by the Seattle Times in any section, let alone the front page.