(Part of my Green This House program.)

We picked up a few spray bottles from The Container Store to start mixing up our own green cleaning fluids. The decorative labels were printed off MarthaStewart.com, while the text itself was inspired by B_E_E’s cleverness.

Besides diluting Ecover’s Floor Soap according to directions for the floor cleaner, I’ll be using Care2’s recipe for an all-purpose cleaner made from washing soda, a dab of liquid soap, and hot tap water (plus a few drops of papaya essential oil someone gave me).

Our homemade air freshener is basically water with a few drops of green-tea and lavender essential oils. Quite scrumptious, and as good as any $15 “home fragrance spray” from Crabtree & Evelyn. (You need to give the bottle a good shake before you spray to redisperse the oils, natch.)

Photo by Craig Lee/San Francisco Chronicle

From the San Francisco Chronicle: “Green Giants: Mega-producers tip scales as organic goes mainstream.”

Consumers who think they’re buying from a small local farm may actually be buying from a company moving up to half-a-million pounds of lettuce a day. Their organic milk might come from cows grazing on lush spring grass near Bodega Bay—or it might come from a barren 5,000-cow feedlot dairy in Colorado.

Organic convenience foods and snacks might be manufactured by Northern California companies from local ingredients. But, increasingly, they’re being made from ingredients bought cheaply from as far away as South America or China.

“I think organic is not quite what people think at this point,” said Michael Pollan, a UC Berkeley journalism professor whose new book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” takes a hard—and ultimately critical—look at what he calls “industrial organic.”

Whether it’s salad—or milk, or eggs, or cookies—these kinds of differences come into play up and down the organic food chain. And with stores like Safeway and now Wal-Mart packing their shelves with organic products, which style consumers buy—the yin or the yang—may determine what organic will look like in the future.

The differences don’t mean the food isn’t organic. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s green organic seal means that it’s certified—that it was grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides and processed without forbidden chemicals.

However, critics of large-scale organics say that while mega-producers follow the letter of the law, not all follow its spirit. They worry that the movement is sacrificing its soul, that it’s strayed from its original ideals of creating a new food system that helps small farms, connects consumers with producers, and cleans up the environment.

Related stories:
1. “Organic Milk Goes Corporate,” Mother Jones

2. “Western Montana Growers Go Beyond Organics & Get Local,” New West Missoula [via the Organic Consumers Association]

Photo by Jutta Klee/Getty Images

From PlanetSave.com: “Sludge recycling sends antiseptic soap ingredient to agriculture.”

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health measured levels of an antibacterial hand soap ingredient, triclocarban, as it passed through a wastewater treatment facility. They determined that approximately 75 percent of the ingredient washed down the drain by consumers persists during wastewater treatment and accumulates in municipal sludge, which later is used as fertilizer for crops. Their findings are presented in a study appearing in the online and print editions of the journal Environmental Science & Technology. More studies are underway to determine if triclocarban, which is toxic when ingested, can migrate from sludge into foods, thereby potentially posing a human health risk.

[via Path to Freedom]

In other words, 75 percent of the antibacterial toxicant you get in sanitizing hand soap sloshes down the pipes, only to survive wastewater treatment essentially unchanged. The municipal sludge that results is recycled as fertilizer for crops, and so, like the stalker ex-boyfriend you can’t get rid of, the synthetic toxin finds a way around that restraining order to get REALLY up close and personal. Like, in-your-gut personal. “Following its intended use as a topical antiseptic, we are effectively and inadvertently using it as an agricultural pesticide that is neither regulated nor monitored,” says senior author Rolf U. Halden, PhD, assistant professor and co-founder of the Johns Hopkins Center for Water and Health.

Plus, the Center for Disease Control is concerned that our casual use of antibacterial products is breeding drug-resistant bacteria that’s also cross-resistant to antibiotics, especially since we don’t have evidence that antibacterial soap is any more effective than plain, old fashioned soap.

(A related post on antibacterial sponges can be found here.)

Get next to godliness with bars of soap instead of liquid shower gel you have to pump out of a plastic bottle. Soap bars, especially the handmade artisan variety, use significantly less packaging than their liquid brethren. Remember to check your potential purchase against the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep site for hazard scores of popular brands before you buy, while examining the fine print to determine if your soap’s made of all-natural ingredients that won’t pollute your body or our rivers and streams.

Jerome a Paris of the DailyKos waxes lyrical about the Vanity Fair “green” issue, something I never picked up because I figured it would make me hork up my spleen.

Jerome, you’re a snarker after my own withered melon-seed of a heart. Brava:

Plenty of snarky, snide, vicious little jabs at Birkenstocks, lentils, tie dye, tree hugging, and any critique of capitalism—just so yesterday, m’dear. Trying to make it clear that Pretty Wealthy People Green-ness is a whole new, fashionable, stylish and above all upper-crusty thing, not some dreary shtick about, you know, serious ideas discussed by nonphotogenic vegetarian anoraks who drive old cars or godforbid ride a bike. Token third world activist—just one—Wangari Maathai. Everyone else seems white and 80 percent male. Feature pages: nifty expensive gifts to buy that are green or pseudo-green—how to Keep Consuming Pointlessly with a Clear Conscience. …

Every pathology of the overripe zenith of American hyperconsumerism and narcissism, proudly flaunted in one shiny, garishly overcoloured, borderline-porno, pretty-shiny-toxic package. What an experience.

[via Gristmill]

Then, oh frabjous day! I read David Roberts’ tirade on Wired. My cup overfloweth:

And speaking of hippies: the “Rise of the Neo-Greens” practically bursts a blood vessel admiring the clever young fashionistas “triangulating between the hippies and the hip.” …

Anyway, this post is probably bitchier than strictly necessary. But as environmental consciousness becomes cool, I’d really prefer it not also become faddish and vain, and I’d prefer not too much crap be dumped on the caricatured heads of the activists who came before us and laid the groundwork for this resurgence. All the glossy-magazine coverage is uncomfortably redolent of late-90s tech hype. To paraphrase ex-Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, let’s keep our exuberance rational. This is one bubble we can’t afford to have burst.

We bitch because we love. Ah well, no time for bile, Dr. Jones. The sun is out and the day is young, so let’s enjoy what we can while we can.

I didn’t know SustainLane had an animation studio, but, hey, there’s no time like the present to check out the trailer for its seven-part webepisode, The Golden Ocean, an eco-fable about “a young woman who sets out on a quest to find a mystical ocean.” The voice-over narration is somewhat tinny and grating, but the accompanying music is as lovely as the artwork.

Of course I had to find out who did the gorgeous animation, and it turns out to be illustrator Kai-Hua Cheng, one of SustainLane’s lead artists. Cheng interned at FableVision, which, if you haven’t already heard of, is truly the Happiest Place on Earth. (I charmed the hub by reading him The Blue Shoe when we were still a-courtin’.)

And some days, the universe throws you a bone.

Graphic by The 100-mile Diet

“Eat local” is a mantra I’ll never tire of pimpin’ for a myriad reasons, the principal of which is the concept of “food miles,” a measure of the distance your food travels to get from the farm to your plate. (The minimum distance that North American produce typically travels is 1,500 miles. Grapes can clock 2,143 miles to get from vineyards in California to markets in Chicago.) Because of the proportional increase in oil consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions, the higher the mileage on your food’s odometer, the greater its (and by extension, your) negative impact on the environment. Factor in the fuel needed to process, package, and preserve your food, and the plot thickens like molten molasses in a steel vat. Blame industrialization, world travel, and increasingly sophisticated taste buds. Or finger cheap overseas labor costs. However we got into this mess, the fact is that mounting food miles, in the face of a global peak-oil crisis, is an issue we ALL need to address.

A gent by the name of Chad Heeter considered the amount of crude oil hidden in his breakfast one morning in his small Berkeley, Calif. apartment. Using some numbers crunched out by eggheads from the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Heeter calculated that in eating his 400-calorie breakfast of oatmeal, frozen raspberries, and coffee, he had effectively consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. Or more than 2 quarts of crude oil. Yowza!

Hetter concludes:

What I eat for breakfast connects me to the planet, deep into its past with the fossilized remains of plants and animals which are now fuel, as well as into its future, when these non-renewable resources will likely be in scant supply. Maybe these thoughts are too grand to be having over breakfast, but I’m not the only one on the planet eating this morning. My meal traveled thousands of miles around the world to reach my plate. But then there’s the rise of perhaps 600 million middle-class Indians and Chinese. They’re already demanding the convenience of packaged meals and the taste of foreign flavors. What happens when middle-class families in India or China decide they want their Irish oats for breakfast, topped by organic raspberries from Chile? They’ll dip more and more into the planet’s communal oil well. And someday soon, we’ll all suck it dry.

Slashing food miles by eating locally produced, seasonal produce not only burns less fossil fuel, it can also cut emissions by as much as 90 percent, helping forestall the global climate change already in progress.

Putting their green sensibilities where their mouths were, Canadians Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon took on a “100-mile diet” by only eating food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius for an entire year. They’ve also launched 100MileDiet.org with the goal of turning “an idea into a movement.”

Meanwhile, Jennifer Maiser of Life Begins at 30 and the Bay Area Locavores are hosting the May 2006 Eat Local Challenge, which allows varying tiers of commitment, from going all out gung-ho native to planning a weekend picnic with local foods during the month.

Of course, joining a Community-Supported Agriculture program in your neighborhood is one of the best ways to get your hands on local fruits and veggies. Another favorite resource of mine is LocalHarvest.org, which helps you locate restaurants, farmers’ markets, CSAs, grocery/co-ops that offer sustainably grown food in your area.

Changing the way we eat requires personal fortitude and persistence, but the rewards are incalculable¹. Now get down with your bad self and chow down!

¹And if you can’t buy local, buy fair trade.

Karen Stewart and Howard Brown of Stewart + Brown (with daughter Hazel and dog Bridger)/Photo by Wired

From Wired: “Solar panels on the roof. Hybrid car in the garage. Organic-cotton clothes in the closet. Today’s eco-radicals are voting with their dollars.”

The surging popularity of organic material—fibers grown without pesticides or herbicides—demonstrates that the neo-greens want to know the source of what they buy. They associate organics with not just healthy eating but low-impact, earth-friendly, sustainable farming. For a generation of shoppers, the certified-organic label has become a Garanimals tag for grown-ups. According to the Organic Trade Association, sales of organic clothing were projected to reach $88 million in 2004—up 30 percent in two years.

Web sites have begun popping up to help consumers appear fashionable and still be environmentally defensible. Every month, more than 430,000 people visit Treehugger.com, which caters to “design-obsessed undercover bleeding hearts.” Launched in July 2004, this site is produced by a far-flung group of bloggers on four continents who earn $10 to $15 per post. Now the tastemaker of the green aesthetic, Treehugger postings help readers price-check sorghum ottomans or find that perfect pair of recycled tire-valve earrings. “We’re trying to make it easy by aggregating the sexy green stuff,” says Graham Hill, the affable 35-year-old Canadian who founded the site. Ventures like these, as well as self-described “organic pioneers” like Stewart + Brown, are finding opportunity by pushing back against both the high-style chic crowd and the high-doom environmentalists.

To the fashionistas, the neo-greens say: Fashion is a dirty business; wake up and see the consequences of what you’re doing. Stewart’s awakening occurred when she was working for Patagonia, one of the first clothiers to move to organic cotton. For a decade, she had been designing countless cotton garments without thinking about the source of the fiber. Then she toured a conventional cotton farm in central California. “It was so toxic we had to shower afterward to wash away the chemicals,” she recalls with a wince. To grow the cotton needed to make one T-shirt, she learned, farmers use one-third of a pound of pesticide. The bug killer can contain cyanide, dicofol, naled, propargite, trifluralin, and other carcinogens, traces of which can seep into the soil, infiltrate the cotton seeds, and cascade into the food supply. “Cotton is marketed as this pure white American commodity,” says Scott Hahn, a cofounder of Loomstate. “That’s deceiving.”

Also from Wired, its idea of an archetypal greenie who is “changing the world one purchase at a time.” (Um, okaaaaaayyy.)

My younger sister Adelin posts about the flip side of going loco for local:

Should I feel guilty that my ecological footprint would make Big Foot blush because while I try to be local in upstate New York, ultimately, I am not and I hop on a plane in order to see the people I love? Isn’t there an inherent anti-diversity slant to the movement for localization when advocating for solely local and seasonal produce? Should I feel unwelcome when people tell me I should eat this or eat that locally when physiologically I am predisposed to consuming a rice-based rather than a wheat-based diet, culturally I eat wontons, not pierogies, and so if I choose to eat locally, I am depriving my body of certain foods that sustain the self and the soul? Is the movement for localization an argument for the same kind of homogenization that globalization is creating, represented in those Golden Arches of unattainable diversity, except that this homogenization will appear in pocketed communities?

As much as I love to be local, my world is tactile, is breathing, is moving, is dynamic, is full of sensations and I cannot learn about how beautiful and how wonderful it is through a screen, a book, a film, or any other secondary filter because learning for me is about experience. Should I feel guilty about my wanderlust, my desire to touch the earth wherever it is from one end of the universe to the other because when I do so, I’m expanding my ecological footprint and jeopardizing Mother Earth? I know the cliche, the overabused answer is balance, balance and balance.

Photo by Slice

Yesterday we toasted the hub’s last 20-something birthday by indulging in his favorite food, pizza, but in a healthier, organic fashion without the grease or the guilt (I’m such a party pooper, huh?) We swung by Slice on the chichi Upper East Side after work for slices of toasted honey-whole-wheat crust adorned with organic arugula and goat cheese. You can also choose between soy, rice, and organic mozzarella, or opt to have homemade basil pesto, sautéed mushrooms, or crumbled tofu on a bed of caramelized onions. (Gluten- and lactose-free slices are also available. Take that, Ray’s!)

Slices cost between $3.50 to $5 ($18 to $24 for whole pies). Our entire meal, which consisted of three different slices, drinks by Teany, and ready-to-bake dough to lug home for our own DIY pizza, came up to less than $25, a bill that was significantly lower than this girl’s b-day hootenanny.

So OK, we had to go without the Moulin-Rouge can-can dancers—entertainment was the precocious three-year-old at the next table—but hub and I savored every flavor-packed bite. Verdict: Schmancy vittles that won’t burn a schmancy hole in your pocket. (And look Ma, no carb coma!)

Slice
1413 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-249-4353
www.sliceperfect.com

If you’re a vegan, or even a vegetarian who balks at the idea of factory-farmed moo juice, you probably douse your morning bowl of granola with Silk Soymilk. After all, according to the Organic Trade Association, White Wave’s USDA-certified-organic Silk is the No. 1-selling soy milk in the U.S., securing a prodigious 75 percent share of the growing soy-milk market.

You may even have heard murmurs that Silk started importing organic soybeans from China, Brazil, and Argentina to supplement local beans because of shortages in 2003. What you may not know (and I was until recently blissfully unaware of) is that the practice continues today, likely because imported soybeans cost as much as $4 less per bushel than those obtained domestically. (We have no idea if these beans are traded fairly, either, so don’t look for consolation there.)

Most of us know that buying local is one of the linchpins of sustainable living, not only because of the tremendous amounts of fossil fuel it takes to transport food vast distances, but also because of the pollution fuel combustion releases into the environment. So why import what we already have? Doug Radi, marketing director for Silk, said in a statement that the majority of the soybeans Silk buys are domestic. “We are committed to making practical decisions that are consistent with sustainable business principles,” he said. I don’t pretend to know very much about soy farming, but I’m guessing Doug here didn’t exactly assuage the concerns of organic soybean farmers in the Midwest.

The plot sickens …

A little online spelunking revealed that White Wave operates under the auspices of Dean Foods, one of the not-quite-benign corporations represented by the Organic Trade Association, which successfully lobbied to attach a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill to allow certain synthetic food substances in the preparation, processing, and packaging of organic foods, thereby weakening existing organic standards. (The bill passed into law in November and will go into effect later this year.)

I also came across a release which celebrated the fact White Wave buys green tags to offset its own carbon emissions. This is, of course, commendable, but wouldn’t it be far better not to contribute to those same emissions by shipping soybeans from overseas in the first place? Something about this smells like poopy diapers, if you ask me.

So until I figure out how to grow and crush my own soybeans so I don’t have to second-guess where my soymilk comes from, I’ve temporarily switched allegiances to soy milk from Organic Valley, which, as far as I can tell, buys all its soybeans domestically. How much stock you wish to place in that assertion after your heart has been ripped apart, stomped on, and flattened out by a relationship you thought would LAST FOREVER is a matter I leave to your own discretion.

Photo by Elizabeth C. Gonzalez/The Washington Post

This is, by far, one of the most delightful news stories I’ve ever come across, but then I was the sort of child who laid out my pint-size china and empty jam jars for tea and called out for fairies to join me¹. From The Washington Post, “Someone—real or magical—in Ann Arbor is building what locals are calling ‘fairy doors.’”

Since last spring, the pint-size doors have been mysteriously appearing on structures around the University of Michigan college town: inside a coffeehouse, beside a grocer’s steps, beneath a toy store window. The entryways are Thumbelina small and are so subtle and incongruent that they’re easy to overlook—or dismiss. At first glance, you might mistake one of the eight doors for an electric socket or a mismatched brick. But look closely and you’ll see evidence that, yes indeed, something very little could live in there.

Some of you may remember the Minneapolis elf who answers children’s letters. Now if only I could convince my landlord to let me take a hacksaw to the side of our building.

[via Inspireco]

¹Same odd duck who was convinced that if she concentrated really, really hard, her parents’ closet would transform into a gateway into Narnia. Boy, was Mom pissed off.

Hub took this shot of the Equal Exchange booth outside Grand Central Station when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know why I look so pained (Plight! Of! Coffee! Farmers!) but damn, my hair looks cute from this angle (or at least slightly less like Yoko Ono’s Bad Hair Day). We must have given out 342,031 cups of organic, fair-trade coffee by this point and the natives were getting restless for dark chocolate minis.

Props and thanks to Scott, Megan, Zach, and Julia for being totally awesome. (And of course to my supertrooper, who didn’t complain when we stayed an extra hour.)

Update: Scott just e-mailed me to say we gave away 5 GALLONS of fair-trade, organic java!

Organic-wool scarf from LoooLo Textiles

I know stories about eco-fashion (with the same tired, dead-in-the-water ledes about hippies, Birkenstocks, and hemp) have been sprouting up all over the mainstream media like foreign-relations snafus at the White House, but I found this quote by LoooLo Textiles designer Joanna Notkin hysterical. I hope her green design sensibilities are catching.

From Fashion Wire Daily: “It seems that environmental awareness is in fashion these days. Literally.”

“The architects who developed Climatex use dyes that have all the heavy metals and really toxic chemicals taken out of them, but they can still come up with some really interesting colors,” she adds. “They can’t come up with every color—like, I’m never going to get a bright hot pink, because it takes a lot of toxic chemicals to make any really vivid, vibrant color. But not using hot pink is a sacrifice I’m willing to accept to know that I’m not pouring chemicals out into the rivers and waterways.”

Hot pink is so early ’90s anyway.

Hey sportsfans, the hub and I will be at the NYC Fair Trade Coalition booth tomorrow from 11-1pm at EarthFair Outside Grand Central (42nd and Vanderbilt). The whole event runs till 5pm, so if you happen to be in the area, drop by for some free fair-trade coffee even if you miss us!

Another table will be outside the Park Slope Co-op in Brooklyn tomorrow, so you can get your free fair-trade java there, too.

DID I MENTION IT WAS FREE?

Husband: Man, the Chinese are pissed off. First you have that Falun Gong protestor getting through, then we called them the “Republic of China,” which is actually Taiwan …
Me: (with accent) Also still no Jack Bauer.

Organic wool jacket from the Delano Collection at a staggering introductory price of $595. It throws in free shipping, for what it’s worth.

Something I don’t quite get about the environmental movement is the way some self-purported tree-huggers take the market trend toward eco-friendly, socially conscious goods as a kind of carte blanche to splurge unnecessarily. In essence, their modus operandi hasn’t changed—the only difference is that their habits have become, in the words of William McDonough and Michael Braungart, “less bad.” But is it enough to just be less bad? If sustainable living is about treading lightly and leaving behind as small an ecologic footprint as possible, doesn’t that also include rethinking the role material and hedonistic excess play in our lives?

Despite the socialist bent of many of my stances, I do believe in the power of the consumer—that conscious consumption by those of us who can afford to can fuel changes in industry practices to make sustainability affordable for everyone. But when I hear about women decked out in Linda Loudermilk couture and Loomstate jeans traipsing off to high-end “lifestyle” salons to get their highlights done ( “but it’s environmentally friendly henna, dah-ling”), it sounds disquietingly discordant. No wonder the current movement has been accused of being classist and patrician. In many ways, it is. And there’s a disconnect.

So not to get too kumbaya-ya on you, but lately I’ve been contemplating the idea of sufficiency—of having “enough” in a “more-is-better” world. In Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-first Century, an essay by Vickie Robin expounds on the idea of inner fulfillment vs. material accumulation, while asserting that so much of our needs (”fun, play, love, imagination”) can be met nonmaterially:

There are some people who simply cannot imagine further frugality. They don’t have enough. These are the two billion living on one dollar a day, the low-income single parents who economize, pinch pennies, and still can’t meet needs without greater income. A truly sustainable future requires systemic changes to address the genuine material and financial needs of the poor. But for many, frugality can be a path to liberation.

When you put together personal frugality with the vast array of tools and mechanisms for meeting one’s needs, through informal trade, social networks, and public consumption slows down enough to let a lot of people off. Money is not such a mystery. It might not even be the insurmountable barrier to having the life you want. There is wealth beyond money. Riches are interior and interpersonal as well as material. Assets include character and community as well as property. Knowing this, you are strong in ways that the economy can’t touch. You have enough.

Chekhov has a sizeable collection of cat toys, including an expensive motorized, motion-sensitive mouse my sister-in-law bought him last Christmas. He eschews all these. In fact, nothing makes him more delirious with kittenish glee than the little piece of plastic that comes off a carton of milk. What does he know that us hairless bipeds don’t?

I admit to being a tad obsessed with cupcakes (understatement of the century), so I was instantly smitten and inspired by this ingenious way of recycling your old wool sweaters. These winsome cupcake pincushions are made from preloved woollies by Betz White, who should be cordoned off with velvet and declared a national treasure. (Check out her site for more recycled-sweater goodness.) You can get your hands on these mighty-delectable darlings at Cut + Paste for $28 each.

When baking cupcakes or muffins, choose unbleached paper liners. (Paper is commonly bleached with chlorine or chlorine derivatives, which release dioxins and other organochlorides into the environment.) You can also go the tree-free route and cut down on waste at the same time by spooning your batter into reusable silicone baking cups. Better yet (and this is what we now do at home), spray some butter on your muffin pan and let ‘em go commando!

The cover story of the latest issue of Rolling Stone makes for quite a riveting read (but then I relish anything that asserts that Dubya is a twat, so your mileage may vary). This is what the writer had to say on the Bush administration’s take on science and the environment, in particular:

Bush’s faith-based conception of his mission, which stands above and beyond reasoned inquiry, jibes well with his administration’s pro-business dogma on global warming and other urgent environmental issues. While forcing federally funded agencies to remove from their Web sites scientific information about reproductive health and the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV/AIDS, and while peremptorily overruling staff scientists at the Food and Drug Administration on making emergency contraception available over the counter, Bush officials have censored and suppressed research findings they don’t like by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture. Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science—dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to “the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends.”

The Bush White House’s indifference to domestic problems and science alike culminated in the catastrophic responses to Hurricane Katrina. Scientists had long warned that global warming was intensifying hurricanes, but Bush ignored them—much as he and his administration sloughed off warnings from the director of the National Hurricane Center before Katrina hit. Reorganized under the Department of Homeland Security, the once efficient Federal Emergency Management Agency turned out, under Bush, to have become a nest of cronyism and incompetence. During the months immediately after the storm, Bush traveled to New Orleans eight times to promise massive rebuilding aid from the federal government. On March 30th, however, Bush’s Gulf Coast recovery coordinator admitted that it could take as long as twenty-five years for the city to recover

And I’m highlighting this number-crunching morsel because it completely threw me, just when I thought I couldn’t be shocked by anything anymore:

According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever—with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush—sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that “prosperity is just around the corner”—insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!

I’ve been a bit wrung out at the day job, which explains the copious cutting-and-pasting, but stick with me, regular content will resume as soon as the torrent of work abates, or I figure out how to clone myself, whichever comes first. (Do you think my co-workers would be fooled if I stuck a wig on Chekhov and made him sit at my desk? I think it’s at least worth a shot.)

Good is a new magazine that wants to talk about everything “from the pop status of hybrid cars to the future of energy, from the mass appeal of sweatshop-free clothing to the near obsession with organic everything, from the blurred line between celebrity and activism to the merger of capitalism and idealism, the world is just waking up to a new good.” Be a part of its launch party on Earth Day (April 22, 2006).

Sin-é
150 Attorney St. (between Houston and Stanton Sts.)
New York, NY 10002
212-388-0077
www.sin-e.com
From 9pm

To RSVP, visit www.goodmagazine.com and subscribe (entire $20 goes to a charity/non-profit of your choosing), then email audrey-at-goodmagazine-dot-com with the subject line: NYC.

A postscript to my previous post on conventionally grown cotton. From the Organic Consumers Association, quoting The Non-GMO Report:

Superweeds spreading in genetically engineered cotton fields
Pesticide-resistant weeds are introducing a new problem to cotton farmers. Traditionally, herbicide resistance is dealt with by simply changing the herbicide. But according to North Carolina State weed scientist Alan York, farmers are running out of options: there are no more effective pesticides to switch to. The majority of farmers in the Cotton Belt are now growing Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup Ready cotton, which is resistant to glyphosate pesticides. As a result of the heavy use of glyphosate in the area, varieties of pigweed have developed an immunity to it. Tests at the University of Georgia showed that the pigweed Palmer Amaranth has developed amazing resistance to glyphosate. Scientists doused the weeds three times with a quadruple concentrated dose of glyphosate, but the pigweed continued to grow and multiply. “If you grow cotton in the Southeast, and you have Palmer amaranth in your fields, looking at side-by-side comparisons of resistant and non-resistant pigweed should scare you to death,” York says.

Remember our friend Monsanto? (And when I say “friend” I mean “AGENTS OF THEIR DARK LORD SATAN.”) It’s the brain trust behind the Terminator technology that renders seeds sterile after harvest so that farmers remain beholden to the company every year. It’s also responsible for the highly controversial, genetically engineered version of Bovine Growth Hormone, known as Posilac, used to increase milk production in cows, which would be just dandy if it didn’t also give the cows mastitis while increasing our risk of colon and breast cancer when we drink their milk. Oh, Monsanto was also the leading producer of a little something known as Agent Orange during the Vietnam War in the ’60s and ’70s.

And if you needed another reason not to knit with petroleum-derived acrylic, most yarn manufacturers use acrylic fibers from a company known as Solutia. The parent company behind Solutia? That’s right, kids: Monsanto.

I always get giddy when my love of sustainability and aesthetics collide like one BIG, ‘SPLODY COLLIDEY THING. Portland, Oregon-based art collective Tenth and Grant has a gorgeous line of note cards printed by Pinball Publishing on 100 percent, unbleached recycled paper using soy-based inks. (Available at BuyOlympia.com for $2.50 a pop.)

Carson Ellis, whose lovely and poignant illustrations grace the Web site and album covers of The Decemberists is responsible for the monkey business above.

Oh, Google.

Maybe it was the organic wine or the crispy tofu slaw, or the way you eloquently related ways I could clean my hairbrush, but for once I let my guard slip and actually entertained the notion that a megacorp could be ethical. That’s SO not me!

You even charmed my husband at Earth Day at Grand Central, tossing in his direction free Google Earth Day tote bags.

WHAT. A. FOOL. I. WAS.

I tugged at the fabric tag inside: 100 percent cotton. Made in China. Dear Google, I thought you knew better!

Where did we go wrong?

I’m a huge fan of the work of Juliet B. Schor, the author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need and Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, so of course I devoured her piece on consumerism, “Cleaning the Closet: Toward a New Fashion Ethic,” in Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-first Century (which, quite ironically, I’m now tempted to purchase because its writers sum up the state of our planet so plainly, accessibly, and stirringly that you want to have all of their hemp- and organic cotton-diapered babies.)

OK, how do I quote the choice parts of her essay without regurgitating it in its entirety (it’s that good!) After discussing the environmental and social impact of our disposable culture (in part due to a system of low prices and high volume), Schor describes another extreme found in the developed world:

At the high-end, thousand-dollar handbags, dresses running to the many thousands, even undergarments costing a hundred dollars are the rule. A look at the nation’s distribution of wealth provides one clue to why high-priced clothing is flying off the shelves: The top 10 percent of the population now own a record 71 percent of the nation’s total net worth, and 78 percent of all financial wealth. (The top one percent alone own 38 and 47 percent of net worth and financial wealth.) The existence of such an upscale market is a troubling symptom of a world in which some people have far too much money and far too little moral or social accountability in terms of what they do with it.

But the high-priced venues serve another purpose as well. Designer merchanidse becomes available at discount stores at a fraction of its top retail price. This affordable exclusivity is part of what keeps middle-class consumers enmeshed in the system. Clothes cascade through a chain of retail outlets, prices falling at each stage. The system has led many consumers to purchase almost mindlessly when confronted with irresistible “bargain basement” prices of highly regarded designers and to spend much more on clothes than they intend or even realize.

(Emphases are mine.)

Seasonal fashion cycles based on climatic needs now turn over far more rapidly, so that “new” may only last for a couple of months, or even weeks (think of athletic shoes, for instance.)

The exclusivity that is relentlessly pushed by marketers also contributes to high levels of spending—the product is valued because it is expensive. As it becomes more affordable, its value declines. Similarly, when the consumer aspires to be a fashion pioneer, she seeks rarity. The impacts of these core features of the fashion industry are profound. Many middle- and lower-middle class youth are working long hours to buy clothes. For poor youth, with limited access to money and jobs, the designer imperative has been linked to dropping out of school (because of an inadequate wardrobe), stealing, dealing, even violence. Failing to keep up with the dizzying pace of fashion innovation undermines self-esteem and social status.

But it is not only fashion-orientation that accounts for the enormous volume of clothing that is sold in this country. Shopping for clothes, footwear, and apparel have become habits, even addictions, especially for women. Just something to do because we do it.

Schor doesn’t advocate we all start pulling on grey sweatsuits, however, and she admits that dressing and adornment are vital to the human experience, and can be both utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing. “This is why any attempt to push them into a minimalist, utilitarian box will fail,” she says. “Clothes embody far more than our physical bodies; they are also a measure of our basic values and culture. So, while we may not all take great pleasure in what we wear, we should all recognize that clothes do matter.”

What she proposes are the basic principles of “ecology and frugality” that prior generations maintained: “take only what you need, use it until it is no longer useable, repair rather than replace, refashion to provide variety.” By valuing “quality over quantity, longevity over novelty, and versatility over specialty,” we can be satisfied with a smaller, less varied, closet, but one for which we can spend more per garment so that our clothes are better constructed, will last longer, and have less of an impact on our environment.

Paying more per piece could also support a new structure of labor costs. Workers would work less, produce fewer but higher-quality items, and be paid more per hour. Such a change would help make ecologically clean technologies economically feasible.

Invest, then, in classic items of clothing that will never go out of style—and are in it for the long haul— instead of cheap, ill-made, sweatshop-produced apparel that only last a few washes. When you turn the idea of consumption on its head, $48 for this top doesn’t seem so bad if you’re spending judiciously only when the need arises.

And on that note, this semi-related nugget, by the by, makes me want to hurl. C’mon society, at least pretend to work with me here.

Photo by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Grown in more than 70 countries, cotton fibers account for almost 50 percent of textiles worldwide. Conventional cotton, however, remains the most toxic crop in the world, using 3 to 5 percent of the world’s farmland but consuming 25 percent of all chemical pesticides and fertilizers. (Around 10 percent of all agricultural chemicals in the U.S. are used to farm cotton on 1 percent of all major agricultural land. To give us a context, cotton crops conventionally grown in six California counties alone are sprayed with 57 million pounds of chemicals per year. Jumpin’ Jehosaphat!) To get a leg up on crop management, we’ve even developed a genetically engineered cotton that exudes its own potent brew of insecticides, indiscriminating killing beneficial insects alongside pests, which, in turn, develop resistance at an equally feverish pace. The mono-crop cultivation of commercial white cotton (original varieties of au naturale cotton come in myriad colors) has its own sticky quagmire, too.

Other fun cotton factoids from the Sustainable Cotton Project:

In the United States, it takes about a third of a pound of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to grow enough cotton for a T-shirt.

In California, five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton are cancer-causing chemicals (cyanazine, dicofol, naled, propargite, and trifluralin).

All of the top nine cotton pesticides in California are labeled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as Category I or Category II materials, the most toxic classifications.

Even when agricultural chemicals are properly applied by experienced workers who adhere to regulations, the run-off from fields and crop-dusting planes still dissolve into adjacent rivers, lakes, wetlands, and ground water, which can result in the loss and fragmentation of ecosystems. (In 1995, pesticide-contaminated run-off from cotton fields killed at least 240,000 fish in Alabama. Pesticides also unintentionally kill at least 67 million birds in the U.S. each year.) Because cottonseed oil is a common ingredient in baked food, snacks, and salad dressing, not to mention a major source of feed for meat and dairy cows, those noxious carcinogens also end up creeping into our food chain.

The World Health Organization estimates that at least 3 million people are poisoned by pesticides every year, resulting in 220,000 deaths worldwide annually. Cases of pesticides poisoning are especially prevalent in rural communities where poverty prevents small-scale workers from taking the necessary precautions. Miscarriages, premature births, and sickly children are par for the course.

Don’t count on the EPA to protect us from toxic chemicals that get buffeted by winds from cotton fields into wildlife habitats and our lungs, either. Or from errant crop-dusters. (Championing human health and the environment is HARD, y’all.)

Meanwhile, “in the San Joaquin’s cotton fields, for miles around no birds sing or insects hum; the air stinks, the eyes burn, toxins stain the irrigation ditches. Hired men with shotguns sit in lawn chairs by the ‘lakes’ in order to scare off waterfowl and shorebirds before they land in the toxic soup.”

Next: Is organic cotton all cracked up to be, then?

Further resources:
1. “Agriculture problems: cotton,” World Wildlife Foundation
2. “Agrochemicals, health, and environment,” World Health Organization
3. More cotton statistics, EcoChoices.com
4. NSW Legislative Council Hansard on cotton pesticides, Parliament of New South Wales
5. “Organic cotton: a case study,” Patagonia [via FiftyRX3]

Me: I wish I had super powers so I could vaporize smokers off the streets.
Husband: I didn’t sign on to be married to a supervillain.

From Nonsense NYC:

Build It Green, is New York City’s only nonprofit retail outlet for salvaged and surplus building materials; it is co-sponsored by Habitat-NYC and the Community Environmental Center (CEC). The ReStore Warehouse sells salvaged and surplus building materials and helps keep perfectly useful material out of the landfill. Volunteers are needed to keep the warehouse at its best and to