Earth Friendly Shopping

A company in Vancouver is recovering fishing boats from Indonesia that were damaged by the Tsunami, and using the seasoned teak wood to make fancy furniture.

The company  called BeachBums

was founded more than six years ago by Heather Beach and Jeff Bumstead, who import building materials such as hand-collected beach stones and old roofing tiles to be made into their Nusantara Stone Mosaics.

Maury Mason, environment director for Beachbums Import Co. describes the program

Mason says turning the teak into furniture has enabled more Indonesians to recover economically.

“Our view is that the most important environmental benefit is the alleviation of poverty,” says Mason

We love it

Update – You can see other Earth Friendly building materials by the same company at Nusantara

These are so darn cute, we can hardly stand it .  But Sjaak’s makes some of the best organic fair trade  vegan chocolate we have ever tasted.

Check out the Organic Chocolate Snowman Box of Winter Wonderfuls

This beautiful detailed handmade box is filled with nine cute little dark chocolate peanut butter snowmen. These organic fair trade Winter Wonderfuls are a great holiday gift! These chocolate treats are also Vegan; made with no animal products.

The lovely gift box is handmade using mulberry, banana, and mango fiber by a women’s co-operative in Thailand.

Absolute Earth Friendly Yum!

When it comes to toys, simpler is better.  Having survived years of cheap plastic toys that beeped, flashed and made all kinds of noises,  we really wanted to get back to basics.  And that’s why we find Maple Landmark wood toys so appealing.

These toys are made in the U.S. from  sustainably harvested maple wood.  No paints, no varnishes. No chemicals except for a little wood glue. The detailing is laser etched into the wood.  These toys are made with old fashioned quality, to outlast rambunctious little ones, and an awareness of sustainability.  And, they are really inexpensive.  Available as Racer, Firetruck, or hybrid (looks like a Prius) they are only $5.50 each.

Even cooler is the Made By Me box set. Kids can make 4 different wood vehicles, a train, a truck, a tractor, and a boat.  Decorate them however they want, and them play with them for hours.

We think that this is an awesome activity for kids and parents, and it is only $15.80

We’ve written  about  the global safe drinking water crisis before,  and about the Blue Planet Run Foundation’s efforts to provide safe drinking water throughout the world.

Now Blue Planet Run is making a suggestion for a different kind of gift.  Make a donation as a gift

When you make a donation of any amount to the Blue Planet Run Water Fund, you can assign it in honor of a family member, friend or colleague, and we’ll send them an evocative photo montage about water, personalized by you.

Recipients will receive your message embedded in a large, beautiful photo slide show. It will let them know that you care about them, and the billion people in need of safe drinking water.

$30 gets one person clean drinking water for life.

Recently, I have been thinking and reading more about the honey bee, and the interconnectedness of our world.  Frankly, it has me a little worried.   Honeybees have been suffering a rapid population decline in the U.S. and Europe,  the causes and implications of which are not widely understood.

Colony Collapse Disorder – Some background

In another sign of the massive stresses our environment is undergoing,  honey bee colonies in the United States and Europe have been collapsing since 2006.  Termed Colony Collapse disorder, (CCD) this collapse threatens a $15 Billion segment of the agriculture industry.  Some crops such as almonds, other nuts, and certain vegetables, are dependent on bees for pollination.  With the collapse of bee populations, there is concern that there will not be enough colonies to support polination of these crops in a few years.

Bee Keepers first noticed a dramatic decrease in hive populations in the fall of 2006

During October-December 2006, beekeepers became alarmed that honey bee colonies were dying suddenly across the continental United States.  Beekeepers reported losses of 30-90%.  Subsequent investigations suggested that these outbreaks of unexplained colony collapse may have been occurring for 3 or more years. 

 What’s causing CCD?

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a single cause to CCD.  Many researchers believe that an external parasite called the verroa mite has a major part to play in the decline.

Varroa mites are external honeybee parasites that attack both the adults and the brood, with a distinct preference for drone brood. They suck the blood from both the adults and the developing brood, weakening and shortening the life span of the ones on which they feed. Emerging brood may be deformed with missing legs or wings. Untreated infestations of varroa mites that are allowed to increase will kill honeybee colonies. Losses due to these parasitic mites are often confused with causes such as winter mortality and queenlessness if the colonies are not examined for mites.

The presence of the mites, and the damage that they have caused to colonies have led to the widespread use of chemicals to stop the mites. The most common pesticide used is a form of fluvalinate.   There have recently been studies to suggest that the mites are becoming resistant to fluvalinate, and so the formulation was recently changed, making it more toxic.

In addition to  fluvalinate,  cocktail of different pesticides can be found in the honey and wax of many colonies. This is particularly true of colonies that are trucked from farm to farm, sometimes long distances.  In each of the farms, the bees can pick up additional pesticides.  While each pesticide on its own might be at a low enough level that it is not a problem, the buildup and combination of multiple pesticides may be adding another stress level.   In addition, studies have shown that non-lethal levels of pesticides can impede learning, which may account for bees not being able to find the way back to the hive.

The very act of transporting the bees to long distances on flatbed trucks, often in crowded conditions, may add anonther level of stress, further weakening the bee’s immune system.

Commercial honeybee operations have uncomfortable parallels to modern factory livestock, or confined animal feed operations.  

The combinations of these stresses has left colonies more vulnerable to pathogens such as the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus.  which has been found in CCD affected colonies.

What are the implications?

First, we should make a couple of things clear.  1)Honeybees are not in danger of becoming extinct.  2) The vast majority of our food, mostly grains, are wind pollinated, and so are not affected by CCD.  It is unlikely that CCD could lead to mass starvation.

But, there is real danger than bees simply won’t be able to perform all the pollination we are asking from them. This will mean a decline in the amount of fruits and nuts available,  and could make these products more expensive. with negative impacts on nutrition.

And, as we know that the natural world is interconnected in so many ways,  we simply don’t know where this could lead in the future.

What can be done?

The department of agriculture and several universities have been actively studying CCD since 2006.  So far, they have not determined either a cause or a cure.  But, the most common advice is for bee keepers to reduce the stresses on their colonies, lower chemical use, and improve nutrition.   Using organic  methods seems to lower or eliminate the incidence of CCD

 I’m on an organic beekeeping email list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with commercial operations is that pesticides used in hives to fumigate for varroa mites, while antibiotics are fed to the bees to prevent disease. Hives are hauled long distances by truck, often several times during the growing season, to provide pollination services to industrial agriculture crops, which further stresses the colonies and exposes them to agricultural pesticides and GMOs.

Rowan Jacobsen, the author of Fruitless Fall, told the story of a bee keeper named Kirk Webster

Kirk Webster practices holistic beekeeping in Vermont. His specialty is queen breeding, so he wanted no part of the mite treatments, which destroy the fertility of drones (male bees) and queens. He understood that the more we used chemicals to try to treat bees’ ills, the less the bees were going to have to come up with their own solutions, which would be more sustainable (and cheaper!) in the long run. So he simply stopped using chemical treatments of any kind and let 90+ percent of his bees die. Then he took the few survivors, who happened to have some genetic resistance to the mites, and bred them together. Basically, he did to the mites exactly what the mites had done to the beekeepers. After the better part of a decade he had developed lines of bees with strong natural mite resistance. They also seemed to be more resilient toward other factors. They are supremely good survivors, and they are wildly in demand. And all Kirk had to do was go without income for a decade to get there! This is just one area where we can find the answers to problems within natural systems, or impose them from without, which is always a short-term fix.

And the Natural Resources Defense Council has some suggestions about things we can do to help.  Among them to plant native plants and flowers, plant diverse, and be wary of pesticides.

Combining old tech and new, Bookswim is the first online book rental service that delivers to your door, with no late fees.

Basically, Bookswim uses the Netflix model.  You sign up, and choose a plan based on the  number of books you want to read each month.  Plans start at $9.95.

You make some book selections.  They send you a book, and when you return it, you get the next book on your list.  Shipping is prepaid in both directions.

If you are a voracious reader, Bookswim has a lot of advantages.  It keeps you supplied with new books, and doesn’t clutter your house.   The focus here is on Reuse, which is usually better than buying new.

Kate reviews a Solar Powered Backpack over at Greenertrends

Few things in life bring us more comfort than a truly rich, decadent fudge.   We’ve been searching for a really good organic fudge for years. Well, our search has finally been rewarded, and it was worth the wait.  One taste of Earth’s Sweet Pleasures Organic, Fair Trade Gourmet Fudge brought us to instantaneous comforting bliss.

The Rich Rainforest Dark fudge recipe was developed with dark chocolate because of its antioxidant qualities. After an extensive search and many experiments, Earth’s Sweet Pleasures found a fair-trade, organic 65% bittersweet chocolate that won an award in a San Francisco Chronicle Chocolate festival recently. The flavor is rich and intense. The result was beyond expectations; and many dark chocolate lovers have made this their favorite!   

It has quickly become ours

In today’s NY Times, Al Gore suggested a 5 point plan for achieving energy independence.  He points out that, as every president since Richard Nixon has proposed a plan for achieving energy independence in some time frame (after they are out of office)

Meanwhile,   our dependence on foriegn oil has grown from 1/3 to 2/3  of oil use.

Gore focuses on the problem that the use of fossil fuels causes in the environment.   He calls on us to

begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis.

…

To those who are still tempted to dismiss the increasingly urgent alarms from scientists around the world, ignore the melting of the north polar ice cap and all of the other apocalyptic warnings from the planet itself, and who roll their eyes at the very mention of this existential threat to the future of the human species, please wake up. Our children and grandchildren need you to hear and recognize the truth of our situation, before it is too late.

But even if you put the environmental issue to the side,  we need a large scale switch to renewable energy for both the security and economic health of this country.  The steps needed to reduce the role of carbon emissions in global warming are exactly the same steps we need to revive our economy and improve our security.

Gore’s 5 steps

1. Incentives for large scale concentrated solar energy production in the SW deserts

2.  A unified national smart grid using low power loss technologies

3.  Help for the auto industries  – the big 3 and start ups, to build plug in hybrids.

4.  A nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation and more efficient heating, cooling, and lighting

5.  Putting a price on carbon

There is one major initiative that I would like to added to the list. The resolarization of our nation’s food supply.

For those of you who are still unsure about prop 2.  in CA – here is a video – yes, prop 2 passed, now is the time to take it national

This video is not for the faint of heart. It shows the animals being subjected to cruel, painful, and frankly disgusting conditions. It is not suitable for young children.  Still, it is an important video to watch