Wallet Mouth

Amuse-bouche: Apple gets greener

2009-11-05T14:15:36-08:00

Just got a note from Greenpeace that Apple has eliminated brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride from its new iMac and Macbook. Furthermore, earlier last month, it joined other companies in leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of its opposition to climate-change legislation. Unlike many of its compatriots, though, Apple publicly stated why it left. Nice!

'Smart Choices' food labels thrown to the dumb-ideas heap

2009-10-26T16:41:58-07:00

I've got nothing against the occasional sugary-cereal splurge, but if you saw an official-looking seal on the front of a box of Fruit Loops that said, "Smart Choice," wouldn't you find that a bit ... loopy? Me too. That's why I was happy to hear, via Change.org, that the FDA recently wised up to the so-called Smart Choices labeling scheme and slapped it upside the head before the program's doublespeak could gain much traction.

The initiative—sponsored by such food-industry giants as ConAgra, Kellogg's, Kraft Foods, and PepsiCo—characterized high-sugar, high-fat processed products (and possibly some foods that are actually healthy to eat) as "smarter" choices. "Smarter than what?" one must ask. Dining on day-old éclairs tossed in pork fat and served on a bed of fresh cotton candy? Well, OK.

Thankfully, after the FDA sent a letter to the big guys saying it would begin cracking down on inaccurate food labeling, the companies voluntarily suspended the program.

Everthing's coming up plastic

2009-10-04T22:17:06-07:00

Apparently Beth Terry is having more of an influence on me than I thought.

Last week I had a copyediting gig downtown, and since it was already a challenge to leave Mini-Mouth in the care of a babysitter (she's quite prone to separation anxiety these days) and get out of the house on time, I did not manage to pack a lunch.

When I left the office to forage for food in the early afternoon on that first day, I discovered something interesting: that I couldn't bring myself to buy certain edibles that I normally would have... because of their packaging. I had gone to a market with a deli counter offering all manner of delicious-looking salads, pastas, and the like, but I had no way of getting them without also getting their plastic tubs, and that bothered me.

It bothered me enough to make me keep looking for other options until I found something plastic-free. I ended up with a Greek wrap (encased in paper) and some tomato soup (in a compostable bowl, sans plastic lid, which got me a weird look at the cash register).

The next day I passed over a tiny Japanese place with yummy-looking noodles (they had no ceramic bowls or plates, even if you ate there) and went with a burrito from a stand across the street.

I find this fascinating because I hadn't purposefully set out to "be like Beth" and radically cut my plastic consumption. It was much more subtle than that. It was as if some new wind current had entered the atmosphere of my subconscious, without my even realizing it completely, and yet... there I was, changing my purchasing behavior.

(I should add that the tipping point was probably when Terry commented—in Facebook, not here—on my recent post about envelopes, informing me that the West Coast ships most of its plastic "recycling" to China, where it is either processed by workers laboring under often-toxic conditions or burned for energy. Not, as she said, what most of us have in mind when we think of recycling.)

Now, I know that my individual lunch choices amount to zilch in the face of, say, the huge issues associated with climate change that world leaders recently met to discuss. And I'm not saying I'll never again buy any food item that's packaged in plastic (in fact, a quick glance at our grocery bags from this weekend shows that I already have).

But it's safe to say that a new level of awareness has undeniably crept into my psyche, and it will be interesting to see how it manifests in the future.

Compost conniptions

2009-09-27T23:37:38-07:00

Here are two local items that are hotter than an aerobic biosolids compost treatment tank. (Thanks to Josh and Mr. Wallet Mouth for the tips!)

Yesterday at its second annual Eco-Fair, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission gave members of the public free bags of biosolids compost, touting the stuff as high-quality, nutrient-rich, and great for fruit and vegetable gardens.

It's safe to assume, though, that the folks at the nonprofit Center for Food Safety, based in D.C. but with an office in San Francisco, were not among those standing in line for their three free bags. As staff attorney Paige Tomaselli put it, "This is no gift. City residents could be at serious risk of poisoning" from using the compost in their gardens. The organization contends that the compost "is heavily contaminated with hazardous and toxic material" because it contains treated sewage sludge. It has petitioned the city to stop the compost giveaways. [Link.]

At issue seems to be whether the SFPUC tests its compost for nasty things like heavy metals, flame retardants, pharmaceuticals, and endocrine disruptors. The SFPUC says it does (and that levels of the concerning materials are low enough to pass muster in Europe); the Center for Food Safety says it doesn't.

Who's right? I asked that question in a comment on the Center for Food Safety's webpage, linked to above.

(The EPA, by the way, does not require publicly owned treatment works to conduct such tests. It did, however, this year release a survey detailing the chemicals it found in sludge from across the nation, which the Center for Food Safety points to in its reasoning about S.F.'s sludge. But I can't tell from the overview document whether our facility was one of the 74 tested.)

...

On a related note, as this article details, three and a half years ago, San Francisco was poised to become the first city in the nation to turn a common urban annoyance, dog poo, into something useful: natural gas.

Unfortunately, the pilot project never got adequate funding, and now Ithaca, N.Y., has (poop)-scooped us and San Francisco has its tail between its legs.

And now for a bit of enveloping minutia

2009-09-20T08:32:00-07:00

Ever wonder about the recyclability of envelopes with plastic windows in them? I know some people throw them in the trash because they think the plastic renders them useless for paper recycling. I don't do that, because my understanding is that the envelopes are still recyclable, but I have always wondered why.

In her blog Fake Plastic Fish, Beth Terry sheds some light on the subject: recyclers "accept the plastic windows because they are easily separated from the paper during the pulping process, and the plastic washes away." (Of course, then, as she notes, there is that niggling little question about where "away" is.)

Another thing I didn't know is that some of those plastic windows aren't actually plastic, but specially processed paper called glassine, and that some envelope makers nowadays offer windows made of corn-based PLA, which is compostable in certain (limited) facilities but still problematic.

Government publishes list of child- and slave-made goods

2009-09-14T07:00:00-07:00

Not that anyone's about to curl up in an armchair and read this thing cover to cover, but pages 37 through 44 of the U.S. Department of Labor's recently issued report on child labor and forced labor could make for some interesting browsing. That's the product-by-product list of which countries use which of the two types of labor.

Change.org (which pointed me to the report) highlights some of the worst offenders here, and notes the need for more analysis. To whit, what specific companies source problematic goods and sell them in the U.S.?

Carrot Mob event in San Francisco tomorrow!

2009-09-09T14:46:22-07:00

To all my Bay Area readers: Want to do something fun and social that will also make you feel good about harnessing your economic power?

Tomorrow, Sept. 10, 2009, from 5 to 10 p.m., the pocketbook activists at Carrot Mob invite anyone and everyone to show up at Epicenter Café, at 764 Harrison between Third and Fourth streets in SOMA, and spend some money there as part of a group effort to help the café earn some extra bucks to improve its already quite laudable green credentials. More details can be found here.

I'm going to try to make it on the early side with Mini Mouth. Maybe see you there!

Why Italian olive oil isn't always best

2009-09-02T09:00:00-07:00

I was talking to the olive-oil guy at the farmers market the other day, and he told me something shocking: that just because a bottle of the green stuff says "extra virgin" doesn't mean it's even pure olive oil. What?! He said regulations are in the works but that currently it's a labeling free-for-all.

Then comes this post from Grist. Apparently olive oil production is big business in southern Europe (makes sense, given how popular it is), and that it's "drawing down the water table, squeezing out biodiversity, and drenching the earth in chemicals." Meanwhile, the small-scale artisans responsible for the world's embrace of olive oil in the first place are getting their prices undercut by the big bad guys.

The piece goes on to echo what my local olive-oil maker told me: that a huge percentage of the product that appears on our supermarket shelves as extra-virgin olive oil "is actually cut with cheap sunflower and hazelnut oil, as this 2007 New Yorker exposé shows. These counterfeit oils, too, are no doubt grown under ecologically devastating circumstances."

So buy local if you have the option!

Sigg-nificantly disappointing

2009-08-23T23:59:22-07:00

The internet is abuzz with consumers pissed off about bottle maker Sigg's admission that until recently its liners contained bisphenol A (BPA). The sad thing is, it dissembled about that fact for a looong time, carefully crafting language to imply the bottles were BPA-free and thereby capitalize on the scads of people getting rid of their polycarbonate vessels. Read Z Recommends' excellent reporting about it (as well as how to tell if your liner is old or new) here. Notably, some consumers who have bought Sigg bottles as recently as this month have still gotten the old liners—a testament to how long the supply-chain process can be.

The blog's follow-up post on the subject is also troubling: the supposedly better new Sigg liners have been found to chip away from the necks of the bottles, which are aluminum (cue alarm bells going off).

I have to agree with Real Green Girl: While it's good to be assured that known bad things are missing from a given product, the important issue is what's in the thing. (And frankly, if it's chipping off the inside of my bottle, I don't care what it is—I don't want it!)

The "no poo" movement: it's not what you think

2009-08-18T12:27:23-07:00

As the mother of a toddler, I think diapers and toilet training when I see the letter "p" followed by a couple of "o"s. But the "poo" in "no poo" isn't Number Two; it's shampoo!

As I recently learned, there's a movement afoot to forgo lathering up your locks with store-bought stuff in favor of using various combinations of things like baking soda, vinegar, and lemon juice. The advantages? You keep the nasty chemicals found in numerous shampoos away from your body and the environment, you use less plastic, and you save money.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Gross!" But here are three women who swear by it: link, link, link (though this woman had less success). And here's an Instructables how-to.

I'm already a member of the Church of Not Shampooing Every Day, and I'm considering going "no poo," but I think I'll use up my current bottle first. I'll let you know what happens!

But in the meantime, if you do decide to say adios to your shampoo, don't use Arm & Hammer baking soda—apparently the company conducts some rather regrettable animal testing related to this product. (I have an email in to the company to get confirmation of this, but it seems fairly well established, as far as I can tell.) Bob's Red Mill makes a cruelty-free alternative, though for some reason it doesn't trumpet this fact.