Vermont catches up

It was good to see that Maine had already passed a law requiring it's public clothing purchases are sweat-shop free.

With the adoption of the sweatfree purchasing law, Vermont joins six other states (California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Jersey and New York). In addition, dozens of cities, counties, and school districts have sweatfree policies, totaling 180 in all.

The bill requires companies selling uniforms and apparel purchased with our tax dollars to respect workers' rights in their supply chains. Suppliers must follow applicable labor laws and respect workers' freedom of association. For transparency's sake, in order to qualify for a bid, companies must disclose the locations of the cut-and-sew factories.

- Sweat-Free Communities

We Are All Made of Corn

On Friday night we went to go see King Corn at Space Gallery. Unfortunately we got there about 3 minutes before start time and had to stand... for 2.5 hours. That sucked. But at least I was in the first row of standing people.

Anyways... on to the movie. King Corn is about 2 friends from Boston who move to Iowa, rent 1 acre of land, grow corn for a year, and see where it goes. At the start of the movie, they get their hair analyzed and find that their hair is essentially made of corn protein-- through eating high fructose corn syrup, corn-fed beef, food fried in corn oil, and everything else corn gets into (which is essentially ANYTHING processed).

So they find a farmer in Greene, Iowa to rent them the acre. They grow the type of corn that is not for human consumption-- it goes to livestock feed, ethanol production, and high fructose corn syrup. Mmmm! During the course of their experiment the boys find out all about farm subsidies and how they encourage detrimental farming practices (over-farming, use of fertilizers, etc.) and how farm subsidies, at the end of the day, subsidize the American diet of cheap CRAP food. We wouldn't get cheap soda, oil, and beef otherwise.

After the movie there was a Q&A session with one of the guys. He revealed that there were 400 hours of footage and many storylines/issues they had to abandon for the sake of time and flow. One was that the wife of the family they were staying with actually died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma during their stay, and they suspect it has to do with agricultural chemicals seeping into their well water supply. They also visited pig, cattle, and fish "CAFOs" to observe them firsthand. At the end of the day they focused on mainly on the farm subsidy issue, which has become a pet project of theirs. Overall, a great movie that exposes the disconnect Americans have between farm and food, and also the converse-- the disconnect farmers have with where their produce goes. I have to recommend you watch it seated though.

Start Making Sense, People

Elliott alerted me to this story a while back about truckers planning a convoy to DC to protest fuel prices. Well, apparently it's happening on Monday.

Chief organizer Mark Kirsch said, "We're now looking at participation from at least 26 states, with an estimated five thousand trucks and an additional two to five thousand protesters."

The planned convoy and protest is scheduled to begin Sunday night in Maine, where trucks will assemble and begin their trip to Washington, DC. As they roll, other convoys will approach from the West and South, until they converge on RFK Stadium. From there the protest will continue on foot to the Reflecting Pool area, where the protest is scheduled to take place.

What I didn't know was that Maine had the "honor" of being the start of the convoy route. Oh, and that "Requests to speak have been received from Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, among others."

Scary. I mean, it'd make sense to me if these truckers took buses down to DC. Or maybe even rented cars, riding 4 per car. But driving 5,000 trucks to protest fuel prices?!?! Surely they aren't hurting that bad. According to the Press-Herald, 15 trucks are heading out of Maine. With some googling I found that big rigs get 5-6 mpg with freight. I can't seem to find the mpg without freight, so let's quadruple it, let's say they get 25 mpg. A straight trip from Lincoln, ME (where the route begins) to Washington, DC is 725 miles. So that means the Maine convoy is spending 435 gallons of diesel. At $4.34/gal, that's almost $2,000 just in fuel costs. For 15 trucks to drive to DC for a protest. That's 15 out of the predicted "five thousand" trucks.

You know what makes a lot more sense? Truckers slowing down to save fuel.

More quizzes.... yaaaaayyyyy!!!

As an Asian female I feel the need to constantly assess my abilities through online quizzes. Not like the Cosmo kind, those are too subjective, but the MSNBC kind... the real kind.

Here's a Are You a Green Consumer? quiz from MSNBC. I only scored a 60% (some of my wrong answers were technicalities, I swear).

On a completely unrelated note, this whole eating food from the US thing is really wearing on me, and the sad thing is that most of my diet is still probably not from the US anyways. Like the chocolate in my Stonyfield Farm yogurt. Or the can of seitan that's been sitting in the cupboard since December that we ate the other day. Or anytime we get food from a restaurant. I mean, we've been checking for "product of USA" labels but I'm pretty sure this means that the item was "assembled"/cooked/frozen/packaged in the US, not that the raw materials are from the US. I got this email from Hain Celestial today (they own Arrowhead Mills, Ethnic Gourmet, Rice/Soy Dream, Imagine Foods, Bearitos, Garden of Eatin', and TONS of other brands):

Dear Ms. Tham,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding our Ethnic Gourmet Product. We apologize for the delay in our reply and appreciate your patience. We strive to maintain the highest quality products and we appreciate your patronage.

All of our Ethnic Gourmet products are made at one of our Facilites located in the United States.

The Hain Celestial Group purchases ingredients based on requirements designed to meet rigid specifications, food safety, and compliance with applicable regulations and certifications. The Company works with known suppliers who assure the quality and safety of their ingredients which are supported by signed affidavits, certificates of analysis, and analytical testing. Additionally, many of our food products receive independent certification from organic and kosher certification third parties.

Although there are no regulations requiring country of origin declarations at present in the United Sates, The Hain Celestial Group is diligently working with our suppliers to identify country of origin for all raw materials.

Based on information gathered to date we know that a limited number of our ingredients are sourced from China. Although ingredients are predominantly sourced domestically, it is sometimes necessary to source globally. This is due to the fact that some ingredients are not available domestically or the domestic sources are limited based on market demand.

We understand your concern and greatly appreciate your continued business and trust that we have outlined the measures that The Hain Celestial Group is taking to ensure that the ingredients used in our products are safe and comply with our specifications and overall quality standards. We also want to assure you that we are closely monitoring all FDA information and alerts on this matter.

Thank you for your continued support. If we can be of further assistance, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-434-4246, Monday through Friday from 7AM - 5PM Mountain Time.

Sincerely,

Gabe
Consumer Relations Representative

Happy Earth Day!

I'm not against Earth Day, but it is just another one of those holidays that celebrates doing something on one day that you should be doing every day, like loving your spouse... or Jesus... or presents. Of course, you know what they say-- "Every day is Earth Day...blah blah blah..."

Anywho, Slate has this Q&A with Newt Gingrich (yay Georgia connection!) who apparently now thinks that the conservatives are not doing enough to stop global warming. Slate seems to take him at face value-- he honestly believes in anthropogenic global warming and wants the US to do more the curb our carbon emissions. However, I smell a wolf in sheep's clothing. Key phrases like,

"I prefer incentives to punishments because they work faster and with less distortion of the economy. For instance, I favor tax credits for dramatically reducing carbon emissions. I favor a tax credit for trading in old cars that are the most polluting. I favor a tax credit for nuclear power, solar, and wind."

Of course, an economic incentive is the EXACT SAME as a punishment, a tax break on the good guy is the same thing as a tax on the bad guy-- either way, parties pay more to pollute. At the end of the day, the government just gets less money with tax "breaks" over tax "penalties." Ahhhhh-- that's the trick. Less money for the government = smaller government = no resources to catch the polluters. Oh, Newt, when will you just GO AWAY.

On another note I can't remember if I've posted this before, but here's The Daily Green's "How Green Are You?" Quiz. Personally I think it's a little flawed-- like isn't someone actually greener if they keep their old car instead of buying new hybrid? I think so. That and I don't buy things, I don't eat meat, I compost my kitchen waste, I don't drive. Well, this is where I fall, although I don't necessarily agree:


I'm feeling very negative today and I think it's solely because on the way to work this morning I passed by Starbucks, which had a sandwich board outside proclaiming that they were donating 5 cents for every drink to Conservation International, which I guess is better than donating nothing but I really hate Starbucks for being the epitome of corporate greenwashing. See here.

Nalgene to phase out hard-plastic bottles

I have used these bottles for years, only recently switching to a glass jar to take to work. Also have tried avoid microwaving anything in plastic - though again, have been doing it for years, er, decades?

Hard-plastic Nalgene water bottles made with bisphenol A will be pulled from stores over the next few months because of growing consumer concern over whether the chemical poses a health risk.

Nalge Nunc International, a division of Waltham, Mass.-based Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., said Friday it will substitute its Nalgene Outdoor line of polycarbonate plastic containers with BPA-free alternatives.
...
Citing multiple studies in the United States, Europe and Japan, the chemicals industry maintains that polycarbonate bottles contain little BPA and leach traces considered too low to harm humans.

But critics point to an influx of animal studies linking low doses to a wide variety of ailments — from breast and prostate cancer, obesity and hyperactivity, to miscarriages and other reproductive failures.

An expert panel of 38 academic and government researchers who attended a National Institutes of Health-sponsored conference said in a study in August that “the potential for BPA to impact human health is a concern, and more research is clearly needed.”

- msnbc.com

"6 Myths About Organic Food"

Yesterday Elliott took something that looked like a wrinkly potato out the fridge and asked me what it was. It was an organic mango I had bought at Whole Foods, no doubt spending extra for organic. Why did it look like a potato? Because all of the times I've bought organic mangoes, they're always rock hard when I get them, then I wait for them to ripen, and then they turn a little brown, and I think "crap-- I waited to long; I'll carve around the bad parts." And when I cut them open, they're rock hard and unripe, YET rotting. Somehow. Doesn't happen with un-organic mangos... just sayin'...

So this article on MSN caught my eye. Here's a summary of the "myths about organic food" and the evidence:

MYTH #1: ORGANIC FOOD IS ALWAYS BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.
...modern high-yield farming has saved 15 million square miles of wildlife habitat, and that if the world switched to organic farming, we'd need to cut down 10 million square miles of forest. Less-productive farming could also lead to even less food for the world's undernourished.


MYTH #2: IT'S MORE NUTRITIOUS.
...Studies keep flip-flopping on this...what makes the biggest difference in nutrients is how long produce sits on the shelf. Spinach, for instance, loses about half of its folate within a week.

MYTH #3: IT TASTES BETTER.
Nobody has been able to tell the difference except in one study of apples, where organics came out ahead....Nothing is at its best when it's flown halfway around the world and waxed, then has to spend a week in the grocery store.

MYTH #4: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE AS CAREFUL ABOUT WASHING IT.
All produce, whether purchased from a grocery megachain or your local organic farm, is susceptible to nasty bacteria.

MYTH #5: YOU'RE SUPPORTING SMALL FARMS OR ECO-COMPANIES.
General Mills owns the Cascadian Farms brand, Kraft owns Back to Nature and Boca Burger, and Kellogg's owns Morningstar Farms, to name a few conglomerates basking in organics' glow (and dough). And with such high demand (in the past year, the market for organic milk outstripped the supply by 10 percent), these giant companies are importing organic ingredients as cheaply as possible — often from other countries. Whole Foods sold roughly $1 billion in produce last year; only about 16 percent was locally grown. So with all the CO2 spent in transport, some organics have questionable eco-virtues. [this part makes me doubt the author's knowledge because Morningstar Farm and Boca are big on "veggie," NOT "organic" food, so I fail to see the relevance to the article]

MYTH #6: IT'S BETTER FOR YOU.
Not if it's organic chips, organic soda, or organic cookies. Cane sugar is still sugar and fried chips are still fried, no matter what kind of compost was or wasn't heaped onto the potatoes. Sorry!

OMG, this is (was) so me!

MSN has this article entitled "When bargain hunting is an addiction." I can't really say this article describes me to a T because the women (and 1 man) described in the article are certifiably crazy. Like, buying "full-figured adult size 16 uniform pants... for her tiny 12-year-old daughter simply because they were 80% off" CRAZY. But it does get at the reason I shop-- I get no joy out of spending money or even possessing new things unless I feel like I got a good bargain. Otherwise, I hate spending money. It doesn't matter if something is marked way up just to be marked down-- as long as it's some % off the "original" price, I'm happy. Or even if there's no percent off, I will comparison shop for something I already have in mind, which is why I love(d) Froogle (now less cleverly "Google Product Search") and Amazon because they allow you to compare prices from different sellers.

This whole not shopping thing has thankfully weaned me off of the high I get from a good bargain. Now it's like "yay, I have money!" instead of "yay, I have stuff I don't really need but got a REALLY good deal on!"

I had this (brilliant? crazy? crazy brilliant?) idea this morning that may or may not work: at the beginning of every year, I'm allowed to buy what I've already decided I need during the previous year. For instance, this year, I've decided I still need: a mini muffin pan, a black sweater to wear around the office, and a new formal dress, among other things. So come January 2009, I am allowed to buy only those things. Come January 2010, I am allowed to buy things I listed during 2009. That way, I don't impulse-buy things because they're a "bargain."

A Little Encouragement

Chris sent me this story a week ago and I've been meaning to blog on it since. It's got a completely non-accusatory title: "Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?"

Basically it's about how food from south of the border is grown using pesticides that are either illegal or restricted in the US. Consequently, North American songbirds are being poisoned as they winter down south and populations in the US have plummeted. Two crops it notes as the worst offenders: coffee and bananas. So buy them organic if you care about the majestic bobolink.

It's a little scary to think if these chemicals are (a) banned/restricted in the US and (b) known to be killing off birds, what are they doing to us? I mean, this isn't like DDT where the chemical was weakening the shell of birds' eggs and their baby birds got squashed. These birds are actually being neurologically poisoned. Just something to think about...

I liked this article not because I really care about songbirds (they're nice, I guess) but because it supports the US/non-US line that we drew, although lately we've been including Canada as the 51st state. And Puerto Rico as the 52nd (rum).

One week without power?

Here is a girl who tries to go a week without power. Perhaps she could have planned things out a bit better - or planned at all.

"Which brings me to my first major predicament: can you be a journalist any more without power? Even if I could revive an old-fashioned typewriter (not a fancy electric model from the 70s), there ain’t no typesetter sitting around NOW willing to manually process my copy, no steam-powered flatbed press to churn it into a living, breathing newspaper. And even if I could afford 600 bucks for the kind of solar panel that can power a laptop, my battery will only run for two hours tops. Hardly a workday."- NOW Magazine

And no, we did not participate in the Earth Hour, though this Phoenix writer did, and wants to keep it up.