Earth Friendly Shopping

One of the most Orwellian actions of the conventional food industry has been the drive to prevent organic food manufacturers from fully labeling food. One of the latest salvos in the ongoing food war comes in Ohio, which has recently instituted new regulations that prevent organic farms from labeling their milk as rbgh (recombinant bovine growth hormone) free. The Organic Trade Association (OTA) has filed suit to prevent these regulations from being implemented. According to the OTA

In order to qualify for the organic label, organic farmers already are prohibited from using synthetic growth hormones such as recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBST or rBGH) on their livestock. The statements organic dairy farmers make about non-use of synthetic growth hormones refer to mandated production and handling obligations. Congress enacted the Organic Foods Production Act to establish national standards for marketing of all organic products.

This is an ongoing and concerted effort that we have seen from producers of conventional food and “factory farm” agriculture. The goal is simple, to prevent consumers from getting truthful information.

An example of the effort comes from the Ohio Farm Bureau which states

Labels with claims such as “hormone-free, antibiotic-free, pesticide-free, and rbST-free” are misleading consumers to believe that there is a compositional or safety difference in dairy products where none exist. OFBF policy (Food Labeling 422.1) opposes all use of false and misleading labels, promotional materials or other advertising for food products.

OK – so let me get this straight – providing truthful information to consumers is misleading, yeah, and up is down.    Yeah,   contact the Organic Trade Association and help fight this.

We like 2 things more than anything else.  Promoting green businesses and building community.  So how cool was it when we found a web site that does both.

Izzitgreen.com  is based in Boston.  Members of the Izzitgreen community can  rate local businesses on the quality of their product or service, AND how green it is.  At first, I was a little concerned about the second part,  I mean, how  would most people really be able to measure a company’s greenness.  There are a lot of factors, and it is really easy for a company to market themselves as green without doing a whole lot to actually be green.

One of the ways that IZZITGREEN helps to solve this problem is by providing guides with a list of questions to ask. For example, from the restaurant guide:

What Goes In?

Where does the food come from? What kinds of chemicals or drugs are already in the food? Are there steroids, antibiotics, or hormones in the meat? Is the food fresh or did it come from a can? How is the food prepared? What kinds of pots and pans are being used?

What Comes Out?

Does the food taste good? Are the portions too big? How much food is wasted? What do they do with that wasted food? Throw it away? How is the food being served – are they served on plastic, paper, or real dishes? Do they use paper or linens for tablecloths, napkins, and place mats? Do they recycle? Are they encouraging you to recycle?

What They Care About

Do they understand the interest in organic and local foods and do they know why that’s important? Have they researched local suppliers and do they think about meeting the farmers or fishermen who provide them with food? Are they thinking of ways to offer more natural choices, or do they just care about making a buck?

 While there is no guarantee that you will get answers, these are great questions to ask.  Izzitgreen also provides a list of resources for more information.

If you live in Boston, we definitely recommend taking a look at Izzitgreen and participating.  But even if you don’t we recommend looking at the guides and learning.

Here is a great video from the Santa Clara Valley Water District site

We have talked before about the evils of the plastic shopping bag. The one, simple thing that people can do that will have a major impact on the environment is to use a reusable cloth bag for shopping.

But just as important is to stop using disposable water bottles, and buying bottled water. Some quick facts:

• American Consumed 31.2 Billion liters of bottled water in 2006
• 900,000 Tons of Plastic were used for bottled water
• Making those bottles required more than 17 million barrels of oil.
• The manufacture of these bottles released 2.5 million tons of carbon into the environment
• 86% of plastic bottles are not recycled, but wind up as litter or landfill
• 40% of the bottles that were recycled were exported. Sometimes as far away as China

In addtion to all that, chemicals from the plastic bottles can leach into the water you are drinking.

We think the best alternative is stainless steel water bottles from Klean Kanteen. Klean Kanteen bottles are long lasting. We have had one for other three years. They are safe, and keep your water pure and tasting good. Best of all, because you can reuse them again and again, Klean Kanteen water bottles help us to use less petrochemicals, and produce less waste.

Klean Kanteens are healthier for us and healthier for the planet.

I have been thinking about Al Gore’s renewable energy challenge recently. On July 17, he challenged this country to commit to producing 100% of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon free sources within 10 years. I have asked myself what the purpose of the speech was. Now, maybe it is exactly what he said, maybe he was laying out a vision for an achievable goal.

But he may have been doing something else. It is possible that he is trying to shift the Overton Window on energy policy. The Overton Window is a conept developed by Joseph P. Overton of the Mackanic Center. Essentially, the Overton window says that for any given policy issue, there are a range of solutions that can be expressed as a continuum, with extreme positions on either end, and the range of “practical possibilities” in the middle. This range of practical possibilities is referred to as the “Overton Window” Politicians who choose policies outside the window, risk losing elections, Think tanks, that often want to promote policies that are outside the window, have to “shift the window”. One method that has been promoted for shifting the window is to have some individuals take an extreme position, if possible beyond the current set of what is considered extreme.

The theory is that by presenting these extreme points of view, you extend the continuum, and the window will shift in the direction you want, as some people start to find views that were once extreme to be acceptable. Conservatives have used multiple approaches to extend the continuum and shift the window. Think tanks produce studies, while militants such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Michael Savage, popularize the extreme messages.

Over the past several decades, conservatives have been able to shift the window significantly on a range of issues, and progressives have sought to emulate this success with mixed results at best. Critics of the Overton Window, such as Joe at the Rockridge Institute have stated that the assumptions behind the Overton Window concept are fallacious, and that it is not an effective way for progressives to win policy debates.

While I disagree with a good portion of what Joe has to say, I was intrigued by his suggested strategy for moving public discourse in a more progresive direction

Present a Positive Moral Mission – with a moral problem, a solution, heros, and villans.

Joe uses the example of Ronald Reagan’s attack on welfare as an example of how conservatives successfully shifted the debate:

The positive moral mission:  Encourage people to work hard and earn a living.

The moral problem:  There are people who take advantage of hard workers and threaten the system that rewards effort and discipline. This challenges the moral mission.

The solution:  Dismantle the program that encourages this immoral behavior by getting rid of the welfare program.

The heroes:  The Reagan Administration and hard working Americans

The villains:  Free-loaders who use welfare and the people who support them

Let’s take a look at how this same format fits Gore’s speech

The positive moral mission:  Improve both the economy and security of the United States, while protecting the environment.
The moral problem: In Gore’s words: “We are borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Middle East to burn it in ways that are destroying the environment.  Every bit of that has to change.”

The heroes:  Entrepreneurs,  scientists, and citizens who pressure the politicians into action.

The villians: Defenders of the status quo. Those “with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay.”

The entire speech was positive and forward looking.  At the same time what Gore proposed was radical enough that any proposal to actually come from our next president will seem almost conservative by comparison.

It seems to me that Gore combined the best of both strategies.  He did present a more radical proposal than what is generally considered to be in the realm of the possible.  Previously, the most radical plan that I had seen presented was the Solar Grand Plan published in Scientific American in December 2007 which laid out a plan to supply 70% of US electricity supply from solar by 2050.

Yet, in spite of the radical nature of the challenge, it was positive and patriotic.   In many ways, this was a model of how to frame and move the debate for the future

Simple facts that speak volumes:

Access to safe drinking water is the first step out of poverty. In many parts of the world, the simple gathering of water for daily life consumes a significant amount of the day for women and children. The task of gathering water precludes other activities, including education, or other economic activities. Without access to adequate, safe water, millions of the worlds poorest will remain trapped in poverty.

The people at the Blue Planet Run Foundation are doing something about the global water crisis.

The Blue Planet Run Foundation has helped to fund NGOs that have implemented 142 sustainable water projects, impacting 137,000 lives.

And now, Blue Planet Run has published an extraordinary book.

Blue Planet Run provides readers with an extraordinary look at the water problems facing humanity and some of the hopeful solutions being pursued by large and small companies, by entrepreneurs and activists, and by nongovernmental organizations and foundations. By the end of the book, readers are left to form their own conclusions as to whether the human race is capable of taking the steps necessary to solve this global crisis before it’s too late.

Blue Planet Run is actually two books in one: the first is about an inspiring 15,000-mile relay race— the longest relay race in human history—in which 20 athletes spent 95 days running around the globe to spread awareness of the global water crisis.

The second is a showcase of powerful, inspiring, disturbing and hopeful images captured by leading photojournalists around the world who documented the human face of the crisis and its possible solutions. The result of these two parallel projects is this new book.

In addition to the world class photographs, this book includes insightful essays from a passionate group of writers, environmentalists, inventors and journalists including Robert Redford, Diane Ackerman, Fred Pearce, Bill McKibben, Jeffrey Rothfeder, Michael Specter, Dean Kamen, Michael Malone, Paul Hawken,
and Mike Cerre.

The coffee table edition $45.00 and well worth it. This is a stunning book. 100% of royaltees goes to solving the water crisis. If you want to see more before buying, the PDF is available for free download. here.

Lord knows, Al Gore doesn’t need my help to promote his message. Even so, this speech, this challenge, is too good not to mention.

In 2000, Al Gore said that the greatest security threat facing the United State was the internal combustion engine. He was roundly criticized and of course, the right wing blow hards went nuts, but events have proved that he was right.

And he is still right, as he challenges us to end our reliance on carbon fuels. America missed a great opportunity 2000. Watch the speeh, then go to We Can Solve the Climate Crises for more information.

While we love our dog,  in summer time she can get a little, well, stinky.   At the same time, we really don’t want to use anything on our pets that has chemicals we wouldn’t want on ourselves.  After all,  giving our dog a shampoo with a chemical laden shampoo gets the chemicals on us, and that isn’t a good thing.

So we were really pleased to find this line of Pal Dog and Pal Kitty Natural Pet Care Products.    Pal Dog Shampoos are gentle, ph balanced, and all natural, with an inviting, natural lavender scent. You can also find Natural Pal Dog conditioners and freshen up spray for cats with catnip and calendula.

One of the big hits with us this summer was Pal Dog Soothing Spot Spray. Our sweet old dog (15 years) developed a couple of hot spots this summer, and she doesn’t heal as fast as she used to. This gentle healing spray contains oils of organic Calendula, Lavender, Eucalyptus and Witch Hazel, blend with organic Aloe Vera and skin-loving herbal extracts to soothe allergy-prone skin.  

As we have written before, one of the easiest things you can do to help the environment is to use a reusable cloth bag when shopping, instead of either paper or plastic.  Still, every time we get more information,  our resolve in this area increases.  Over the past couple of years, we have seen this issue become more mainstream.    Last December I chided my 83 year old parents for not using the cloth bags they had in their garage.  Now, not only do they remember to put them in the car, but they have urged others in their community to do the same.

Still the problem is huge, and this slideshow shows us why.