Earth Friendly Shopping

This is the time of year when we always go just a little nuts trying to find those last minute gifts for everyone. While we decided on some of the earth friendly toys a while ago, and almost everyone is getting organic fair trade chocolate, organic fair trade coffee, or organic, fair trade tea, stocking stuffers always seem to be the extreme last minute. Plus, this year we really want sustainable gifts all around, so we don’t want to do any of those nasty, dollar store stuff made in China. So we are on a quest to find Eco-Friendly, Sustainable, Stocking Stuffers.

That’s why we were really thrilled to find these cool earth friendly stocking stuffers. Our favorite is the Planet Earth Art from Shasta Vision. Made from Recycled Glass, these cool little items make great eco-friendly gifts, and don’t cost a lot.

Our favorite is the Peace on Earth Key chain. This lovely blue Earth Marble is made from recycled glass. The natural color continents are shown in amazingly accurate detail including over 50 rivers.

Next on our favorite list is the Planet Earth Marble Zipper Pull. Also made with a recycled glass marble, this cool little gift goes great on backpacks or jackets. The Earth Marble is geographically accurate.

Finally, for something a little different, and very inexpensive. We have always loved Ganache for Lips all Natural Lip Balm. Made with real Scharffen Berger Chocolate, these cool lip balms are only $3.95 each, or three for $10.50. They are available in 9 outstanding flavors including Chocolate raspberry, Mocha Latte, or our favorite, Chocolate Mousse.

This outstanding super dark organic chocolate is our new favorite. Available for a limited time, this super dark organic chocolate is available for a limited time only, but check it out, it will change the way you think about dark chocolate! The limited edition organic dark chocolate bar features the delicate flavors of a blend of cacao from Barinas, Merida and Tachiras, the remote western regions of Venezuela, and offers 91% cacao content WITHOUT any of the bitterness typically associated with such a high percentage dark chocolate. Our dedicated chocolate taster was totally amazed by the smoothness and lack of bitterness!

Made by independent chocolate company Theo Chocolate, a true bean to bar maker of organic, Fair Trade(TM) Certified chocolate in the United States. As true chocolate makers they carefully steward the cacao (cocoa beans) through the process of roasting, milling, blending and conching in order to coax out the distinctive flavor imparted by each unique growing region. Similarly, Theo has carefully selected European certified organic sugar grown in Sweden to balance the flavors of the cacao.

Oh yeah.

It is always our preference to buy organic whenever we can. Organic agriculture is better for the environment the food is healthier, and it tastes better. So we were really pleased to find this Organic Spicy Roasted Garlic Salsa. The combination of flavors blend perfectly, it adds a little zest, without being too spicy. Great on its own for dipping and terrific as a compliment for other foods. So far, I have used it to make a really nice (and well received) guacamole, and poured it over plates of rice and beans (both black and red beans) with cheese. My wife poured it into a grilled vegetable wrap.

In each case, the flavors complimented the dish, without overwhelming it. We give this delicious and earth friendly organic salsa a hearty thumbs up.

Update – Hat tip to a Siegal at Daily Kos for turning me on to this video

I know that this isn’t a new subject, and I have written about it before, but I think it deserves repeating, and recent events brought it back to the top of my thoughts.Some background. I am the leader of my son’s Cub Scout den. Now, I don’t agree with everything the scouts do, but it is something that my son really loves, and, as a leader, I have the opportunity to shape which parts of scouting we engage in.So I have the boys in the meeting, and I start talking about our upcoming “Scouting For Food” drive. This single event gathers half the private donations for the Alameda County Food Bank. In years past, we tied plastic shopping bags on peoples doors one week, and then the following week we went back and collected the bags full of food. This year, the Scouts are not using the bags. We are putting up “door hangers” and asking people to use their own bags or boxes. I told the boys that this was a good thing, and started talking about the evils of plastic shopping bags. I told them, that if there was one simple thing that they could do to help the environment, it would be to convince their parents to use cloth shopping bags instead. The boys looked at me blankly, and said that they had never heard of such a thing (well, all except my son, who has seen us using cloth bags for his entire life)

So, this launched me into my tirade about plastic shopping bags, and while it is still fresh in my mind, and while I am still feeling somewhat emotional about it, here goes:

• The problem is huge 500 Billion bags are used around the world every year.
• The EPA has estimated at only 1% of plastic shopping bags are recycled.
• Plastic shopping bags can last up to 1,000 years in landfill

But worse, many plastic bags don’t even end up in landfill. they litter the streets, end up getting washed into our sewers, and ultimately find their way into the ocean. Currently, there is a “plastic patch” in the Pacific Ocean, TWICE THE SIZE OF TEXAS. The plastic patch contains 3.5 million tons of garbage, mostly plastic. It is in an area of ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii, where circular currents act like a trap. The patch has been growing. Increasing 10 fold in size each decade since the 1950s.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is particularly dangerous for birds and marine life, said Warner Chabot, vice president of the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group.

Sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Birds swoop down and swallow indigestible shards of plastic. The petroleum-based plastics take decades to break down, and as long as they float on the ocean’s surface, they can appear as feeding grounds.

“These animals die because the plastic eventually fills their stomachs,” Chabot said. “It doesn’t pass, and they literally starve to death.”

The Greenpeace report found that at least 267 marine species had suffered from some kind of ingestion or entanglement with marine debris.

While we have always dumped trash into the sea, for most of our history, the trash has been able to biodegrade in a relatively short period of time. But plastic does not biodegrade. It photodegrades.

a process whereby sunlight breaks them into progressively smaller pieces, all of which are still plastic polymers. In fact, the degradation eventually yields individual molecules of plastic, but these are still too tough for most anything—even such indiscriminate consumers as bacteria—to digest. And for the past fifty years or so, plastics that have made their way into the Pacific Ocean have been fragmenting and accumulating as a kind of swirling sewer in the North Pacific subtropical gyre.

Possibly worse, the degrading can become concentrators for other toxic chemicals which then find their way into the foodstream

Thus an astronomical number of vectors for some of the most toxic pollutants known are being released into an ecosystem dominated by the most efficient natural vacuum cleaners nature ever invented: the jellies and salps living in the ocean. After those organisms ingest the toxins, they are eaten in turn by fish, and so the poisons pass into the food web that leads, in some cases, to human beings. Farmers can grow pesticide-free organic produce, but can nature still produce a pollutant-free organic fish? After what I have seen firsthand in the Pacific, I have my doubts.

And don’t think paper bags are any better. Using paper bags kill trees, and paper bags last a long time in landfill.

The answer is reusable cloth bags. It has been estimated that

In New York City alone, one less grocery bag per person per year would reduce waste by five million pounds and save $250,000 in disposal costs

Nobody is perfect. There are times I get and use plastic bags. Like when I need to pick up something to feed the kids that night, and I don’t have a cloth bag in the car. But every time you use a cloth bag instead you are saving energy, reducing landfill and protecting oceans. Even if you only use one cloth bag each shopping trip, you are helping.

Lots of people doing little things, can help.

Our friends at Cool Mom Picks have posted a safer toy guide for 2007. While we wouldn’t classify every one of the selections as “Earth Friendly”, we do think that they have done a good job researching safer toys.