Graphics by the Environmental Working Group

Going organic is a bit of a no-brainer. Even low amounts of pesticides can, over time, accumulate steadily in the fats and tissue of our bodies, resulting in adverse effects ranging from acute poisoning to the long-term potential for cancer. Children, infants, and fetuses are especially vulnerable because pesticides can affect their developing nervous, endocrine, immune, and reproductive systems, resulting in a higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, birth defects, infertility, asthma, weakened immune systems, nerve and neurological damage, emotional disorders, and more. Zooming out for a sec, pesticide-run-off from fields and crop-dusting planes, dissolving into adjacent rivers, lakes, wetlands, and ground water, can result in the loss and fragmentation of ecosystems. (Pesticides unintentionally kill at least 67 million birds in the U.S. each year, for instance. In 1995, pesticide-contaminated run-off from cotton fields killed at least 240,000 fish in Alabama.)

If you want to know how persistent and pernicious pesticides are, you only have to look at DDT. Banned in 1972, this badass insecticide has been detected in human breast milk in the U.S., along with a chockload of industrial contaminants and known carcinogens such as PCBs, carbon tetrachloride, and benzene.

Even washing and peeling conventionally grown fruits and vegetables like you were Lady MacBeth after a really bad day at the office only reduces the level of pesticides but does not eliminate them. Because a 100 percent organic diet may not be practical or financially feasible, however, our best bet is to avoid conventional produce with the highest pesticide loads in order to minimize our exposure.

To help us along, the not-for-profit Environmental Working Group has developed a pocket guide—based on the results of nearly 43,000 tests for pesticides on produce collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—you can print out and keep in your wallet. The worst offenders include peaches, apples, and strawberries. Conventional produce you can make do with, on the other hand, include onions, bananas, and broccoli. Download your own guide here to take with you the next time you weave your shopping cart down the supermarket aisles. (And if you’re a numbers nerd, you can find the complete data set here.)

Related articles:
1. The Pesticide-Parkinson’s Equation
2. Grass! On! The! Loose! (Chekhov’s Eco Tip)
3. Lawn & Order
4. Vinegar: Disinfectant of Champions
5. Eco-Me Home: Green Cleaning Solutions
6. Pollution in People
7. Eulogy for Swiffer
8. Maybe Baby: Chemicals & Kids
9. Why Pesticides Suck Reason #785

Raspberries, Rubus ideaus L, after passive self-pollination (left and middle) and open insect pollination (right). Photo by Jim Cane/Bee Research Institute

Reject the Sisphyean ideal of the well-manicured, pesticide-soaked lawn and let native plants and flowers flourish organically to attract and sustain beneficial pollinators such as honey bees. (Considering that the uptick in global warming also heralds crop-damaging storms and droughts, food production needs all the help it can get.) Bee-lovin’ herbals, such as lemon balm, by the tangential by, also make a mean iced tea.

From ScienceDaily: “Pollinators help one-third of the world’s food crop production.”

Pollinators such as bees, birds and bats affect 35 percent of the world’s crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide, finds a new study published today (Wednesday, Oct. 25), in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and co-authored by a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study is the first global estimate of crop production that is reliant upon animal pollination. It comes one week after a National Research Council (NRC) report detailed the troubling decline in populations of key North American pollinators, which help spread the pollen needed for fertilization of such crops as fruits, vegetables, nuts, spices and oilseed. …

What the researchers found fell in line with the dictum to which Kremen referred. Out of the 115 crops studied, 87 depend to some degree upon animal pollination, accounting for one-third of crop production globally. Of those crops, 13 are entirely reliant upon animal pollinators, 30 are greatly dependent and 27 are moderately dependent. The crops that did not rely upon animal pollination were mainly staple crops such as wheat, corn and rice.

The NRC report notes that honey bees in North America have been decimated by infestations of parasitic mites that were inadvertently introduced to the United States. In addition, honey bees are battling antibiotic-resistant pathogens and competition from Africanized honey bees.

Kremen added that honey bees, particularly ones in the wild versus those in managed hives, are negatively impacted by habitat loss and a variety of non-sustainable farming practices. These impacts also affect native species of wild bees. There are 4,000 species of native bees in North America alone.

“We’ve replaced pollination services formerly provided by diverse groups of wild bees with domesticated honey bees,” said Kremen, who recently co-authored another study showing that wild bees interacting with honey bees can lead to a five-fold increase in pollination efficiency. “The problem is, if we don’t protect the wild pollinators, we don’t have a backup plan.”
Kremen suggested an approach to a more sustainable form of agriculture, one that de-emphasizes the use of synthetic fertilizers and builds in more of a reliance on natural ecosystems.

Some changes may involve mere tweaks to current practices, such as allowing weeds and native plants to grow and prosper along the border of the primary crop, she said. Such non-crop plants, which are currently killed off by herbicides, can sustain a variety of wild bee species when the primary crops are not in bloom.

(Emphases are mine.)

Related article:
1. Lawn & Order

Further resources:
1. Create a Bee Garden
2. Plants for Bumblebees
3. Urban Bee Gardens

Art by Mark Fiore/Sierra Club

This Nov. 7, vote for wildlife. Watch the Sierra Club’s cartoon here to get some opinions straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.

Photo by Berroco

Berocco has free patterns for felted knitting needle and crochet hook organizers (in knitting and crochet versions, respectively) on its Web site. The center panels that hold down your tools are quite ingenious, not to mention a great use of scrap yarn.

I think I’m in denial about the fact I should have started working on my Christmas gifts last month. I’d enlist Chekhov if he wasn’t so mouthy. (If all you get this year from me is a bag of fair-trade, organic coffee beans and a compact-fluorescent light bulb, know that they come from a place of DEEP EMOTION.)

Postcard from Environmental Defense

Give friends and family a real good scare this Halloween by sending them one of Environmental Defense’s ghoulish e-cards, because “nothing is scarier than old, inefficient light bulbs.”

Then, shoo them over to the non-profit’s guide to energy-efficient light bulbs for all types of fixtures. Just plug in your search criteria and the Web site will draw up a list of light bulbs to match your needs, along with user reviews from staff members.

I was planning to paint my pile of burnt-out incandescents (replaced with compact-fluorescent bulbs, of course) and make little jack-o-lantern ornaments ala Glitterville, but the only non-toxic acrylic paint I’ve been able to find in the right colors so far come in vinyl squeeze bottles OF DEATH. You could almost hear the violin soundtrack from Psycho zinging as I turned a bottle over to find the tell-tale plastic-code 3 and the letter “V” emblazoned on the bottom. (I had to explain to the overly chatty checkout guy why I had changed my mind about that purchase, so hopefully it wasn’t a total wash.)

Thinking WAY ahead, why not join the Holiday Lights Campaign and pledge to give out some CFLs as holiday gifts—with an explanation card so your recipients don’t think you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs—for the holidays instead of succumbing to that insatiable black hole of conspicuous consumption? You can get 18-watt (75-watt incandescent equivalent) Energy Star-rated CFLs at Taraluna, an online purveyor of eco-friendly, fair-trade goods, for only $3 a pop (regular price is usually between $6-$12). Taraluna will also throw in one for free with purchases of $50 or more.

Related articles:
1. The Unbearable Brightness of Being
2. Bulbs for Birds

Illo by Starbucks

From The Guardian: “Starbucks, the coffee beans, and the copyright row that cost Ethiopia £47m.”

Starbucks, the giant US coffee chain, has used its muscle to block an attempt by Ethiopia’s farmers to copyright their most famous coffee bean types, denying them potential earnings of up to £47m a year, said Oxfam.

The development agency said the Ethiopian government last year filed copyright applications to trademark its most famous coffee names—Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe. Securing the rights to these names would enable the impoverished African country to control their use in the market and allow farmers to receive a greater share of the retail price.

The move would have increased its annual export earnings from coffee by 25 percent. But Oxfam said Starbucks, which enjoyed a 22 percent rise in annual global turnover to £7.8bn in the year to October, has acted to block Ethiopia’s application to the US Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO has denied Ethiopia’s applications for Sidamo and Harar, creating serious obstacles for its project.

Oxfam had a one-year cooperation agreement in 2004 with Starbucks which saw both provide support to coffee farmers in Ethiopia as part of wider attempts to reduce poverty in the country. But Oxfam now feels that the Seattle-based company’s attitude is questionable.

Phil Bloomer, Oxfam’s policy director, said: “Starbucks has made some progress towards helping poor farmers in recent years, but their behaviour on this occasion is a huge backwards step, and raises serious questions about the depth of their commitment to the welfare of their suppliers. By acting responsibly, they could set an example for others by supporting Ethiopia’s plan to help the 15 million struggling Ethiopian farmers who depend on coffee for their survival.”

This bit in particular caught my eye:

Starbucks insisted, however, that it was committed to paying premium prices to producers in more than 27 countries and its purchases of Ethiopian coffee had grown by more than 400 percent in the past four years. It said it paid an average of $1.23 (65p) per pound last year, 23 percent above average market prices.

Ah, but how would you know, Starbucks? According to your own Web site, you only have economic-transparency requirements for 59 percent of all coffee purchases. This means, contractually, you have no way of knowing how much of the “premium prices” you pay actually go to the farmers—and not to voracious middlemen—41 percent of the time. (Props, as always, to Green LA Girl for pointing this out.)

Under the fair-trade model, where transparency and direct trade are key, importers are required to pay a minimum of $1.26 per pound of coffee beans (plus a 15-cent-per-pound premium if it is also certified organic). Only 3.7 percent of Starbucks’ total coffee is fair-trade-certified, yet it accounts for 25 percent of the fair-trade coffee imported into the U.S. Obviously we’re talking about a company with the wherewithal to make a significant difference but is, instead, content to pay the minimum social premium for maximum public-relations benefits in a real-time, live version of Risk: Caffeinate & Conquer, while starving African infants are crushed beneath the spiked wheels of the capitalist war machine. In other words, “socially responsible” my flat, yellow fanny.

Tadesse Meskela, head of the Oromia coffee farmers cooperative union in Ethiopia, and who was featured in Black Gold, sums up the coffee crisis small-scale coffee farmers and farm workers at the very bottom of the supply chain are facing.

“Coffee shops can sell Sidamo and Harar coffees for up to £14 a pound because of the beans’ specialty status. But Ethiopian coffee farmers only earn between 30p and 59p for their crop, barely enough to cover the cost of production.

“We sell organic coffee for less than £1 a pound but that pound can make 52 specials in coffee shops selling for £2 each, meaning the retailer is selling it for £104. The people who are producing this in Ethiopia don’t have enough food, clean water or health centres.

“Farmers are losing out while others in the chain are making huge amounts of money. That is hugely unfair.”

Additional resources:
1. Oxfam Press Release

Photo by baabaaZuzu

If you can’t tell a bobbin from a feed dog, but still want to get in on some of that recycled-wool goodness, take a gander at these polar-fleece-lined mittens made from 100 percent recycled wool and trimmed with vintage buttons. They remind me of a nursery rhyme my mom used to read us, about three juvenile felines who took pause from their crying jag to retrieve their lost mittens only AFTER they were threatened with the prospect of going without pie. So don’t lose your mittens, kiddies, because there is nothing—and I do mean NOTHING—more depressing than being stripped of your pie-noshing rights, especially when you’re freezing your hands off. ($46, baabaaZuzu) [via Great Green Goods]

Maybe I shouldn’t be one to talk, since my food pops out straight from a can, but while it’s more convenient to nuke a microwave-ready instameal, try cutting back on overprocessed and packaged foods. According to Mr. Green of the Sierra Club, food packaging accounts for 30 million tons of waste annually, much of which is made up of small individual (and nonrecyclable) packages. It’s often cheaper, and definitely greener, to simply buy products, say oatmeal, in a single container, rather than in many single-serve packets. Try cooking more often from scratch, as well, while playing around with ingredients and condiments to adjust to your own taste, sans preservatives and artificial food coloring. Your wallet, body, and piece of mind will thank you. I mean, they’re not going to write you a note or anything like that, but you get my general drift.

Gadgets like this—a USB-powered doohicky you plunge into your soil and then connect to a PC to figure out your plants’ needs—leave me ambivalent. One side of my brain thinks, “Great! I don’t have to think no more! Brainpower is SO overrated!” The other goes, “But … I can just stick my finger in the soil to tell if my plant needs water, and if it looks leggy and yellow that’s pretty much a good indication that it needs more sun.”

Then there is a little something gardeners and farmers have been using for millenia: if it’s dead, you’re screwing up, so whatever it is you’re doing, for the love of all that is good and holy, STOP IT.

I’m increasingly of the mind that personal technology is cluttering our lives, rather than being the panacea so often touted. $49.95 can’t buy common sense, y’all. In short, a fool and his money are soon parted.

Illo by Robert Neubecker/Slate

Here at Casa del Gattino Diablo¹, we’re ever-vigilant of ways we can further decrease our collective environmental footprint. Still, I feel we need to take stock of where we are now and then, because, as anyone familiar with dieting can tell you, it’s all too easy to slip up when we’re not paying attention. (Cake is the enemy of my thighs … cake is the enemy of my thighs … )

Here to help: Slate and Treehugger have joined forces to create an eight-week green challenge to “evaluate and reduce your carbon emissions between now and the end of the year.” Their reasons are compelling:

The average temperature of the Earth’s surface has risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past hundred years, and overwhelming evidence suggests that most of the increase is due to greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide released by humans. Though a 1-degree increase might not seem like much, even a small rise in global temperature significantly changes the climate, potentially resulting in major storms and droughts, disruption of the food supply, and the catastrophic spread of disease.

Human carbon-dioxide emissions come mainly from two sources: burning fossil fuels and changes in land use, such as deforestation. Americans are the climate’s worst enemy. On average, each of us is responsible for about 22 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions every year, according to the United Nations, compared with an average of six tons per person throughout the rest of the world. That means the typical U.S citizen emits the equivalent of four cars.

(Emphases are mine.)

For the next eight weeks, we’re invited to consider our own individual contribution to global warming—and tighten our belts in terms of our carbon consumption. Our dieting goal is to reduce the amount of CO₂ we release into the atmosphere by 20 percent, which is an attainable number for most of us, whether we’re “carbon glutton[s]” who leave the lights on when they’re not needed, or “svelte recycler[s] or carpooler[s]” who can trim our waists further.

Take a short quiz that will serve as your weigh-in, and then keep track of the carbon pounds you lose each week with the help of reminders and tips from the program. Every week between now and Dec. 11, you’ll be asked to assess your consumption on subjects such as transportation, food, clothing, electricity, and that mother of them all, holiday shopping.

The result should be reward enough, but as an extra bonus, if you’re successful in dropping the full 20 percent, you’ll be eligible for a Green Challenge T-shirt, which the first 500 folks to complete the challenge will receive.

According to the initial quiz, my annual carbon emissions are 27,369 lbs, which is equivalent to the emissions from 2.69 passenger cars². No cracks about spare tires, please. I’m in. Are you?

Update: Yeah, I agree that the questions in the quizzes need to be more comprehensive—I have neither a car nor a dishwasher, for instance. And we use a portable electric heater when it gets below freezing.

¹ House of the Devil Kitten

² Our annual flight to Singapore to visit my parents is likely to blame.

Related resource:
1. What’s My Environmental Footprint?

Photo by Chris Bayley/Getty Images

On Nov. 7, New Jersey residents will be asked to consider three ballot questions regarding additional funding for property-tax relief, parkland preservation, and road and mass-transit improvements. Note: None of the proposed measures will further increase existing taxes.

Question 1: Should half of the $1.2 billion earned from this year’s sales-tax increase (from 6 percent to 7 percent) be put toward property-tax reform?

Question 2: Four percent of the annual $2.8 billion collected in corporate income tax is constitutionally dedicated to funding environmental programs. Should a larger share of this fund go toward improving and preserving parkland for recreation and conservation purposes (i.e., $15 million per year till 2015 and $32 million per year thereafter)? More info, including a detailed FAQ, here. Hint: Vote yes.

Question 3: Should a bigger slice of New Jersey’s 14.5 cent per gallon gasoline tax be used to pay for road, bridge and mass-transit improvements (i.e., from 9 cents to 10.5 cents, which would raise an additional $78 million for transportation)?

My sister-in-law, knowing my yen for knitting, once very thoughtfully presented me with a yarntainer, which I love because it keeps any skein of yarn clean, tangle-free, and more important, cat-free, as I knit—I can toss it on the couch, or in the footwell of someone’s car without firing up any additional synapses. Here’s my knockoff version—all you require is a used 32oz. yogurt container, a sharp point for poking a hole in the middle of the lid, and an eyelet of sufficient diameter to snap into said hole. (The raw edges of the plastic will otherwise catch at the yarn.) I happened to find this particular eyelet on the floor while I was cleaning up one day; a scrapbooking or paper-arts friend might have an extra eyelet or two for you.

And there you have it. You find a second use for something disposable (“reuse” is, of course, a step up from “recycle”) and you get to stash $7 to $12 extra dollars in your knitting fund.

A couple of shots I took at the farmers’ market at Union Square today.

Photo by Lars Dahlstrom/Getty Images

NPR is here to help deck your halls with boughs of scary.

My picks: Donna Tartt and Anne Rice talk gothic, Edward Gorey’s tales are spun into song, and late actor Richard Bauer reads The Raven by Poe. Hub’s pick: How to defend yourself against the zombie peril. We’re the only people we know who have a detailed zombie exit strategy. You know … IN CASE.

Photo by BarnStarVintage at Etsy.com

Most picture frames you find at the store are mass-produced from unsustainably harvested virgin lumber, which contributes to deforestation. Deforestation bad. We don’t like deforestation. In fact, if deforestation had shins I’d kick them with steel-toe boots and incite passers-by to do the same. So next time you need to preserve a memory for display, consider picking up a second-hand frame at a thrift store or flea market, or give some preused (or “preloved” as the kids today are calling it) materials a second lease on life.

BarnStarVintage at Etsy.com crafts frames and mirrors from wood salvaged from old, abandoned Southern homes and estates. You can request a custom order or choose from her range of readymade antique pieces for some authentically shabby-chic conversation pieces.

Other sources for frames made from repurposed materials:
1. 3R Living
2. 4 Imprint
3. Green House Framing
4. GreenSage
5. RecycledProducts.com
6. Ten Thousand Villages
7. Uncommon Goods

Photo by Justin Pumfrey/Getty Images

Is there anything more exquisite than a well-brewed cup of tea, especially when it’s gray and inconsolable outside? Here are a few of my current faves:

Both fair-trade- and organic-certified, SerendipiTea’s loose-leaf ceylon green tea (Idulgashinna Estate, Sri Lanka) has a deep, mellow, and toasted taste, yet it manages to remain light on the tongue with no bitterness, even after it’s been steeped for longer than usual. Pair this with a pinch of dried rosemary leaf for an extra one-two-punch of flavor and antioxidants. Tip: When steeping with fresh or dried herbs, cover your mug or teapot, as the steam can carry off the beneficial oils you want. ($14 for 4 oz, SerendipiTea)

The increased chatter over the ether about yerba maté (pronounced “MAH-tay”), plus a dangerously low supply of ceylon green in my office cubicle, had me zeroing in on a bag of Guayaki’s loose-leaf traditional yerba maté (Itabo Rainforest Preserve, Eastern Paraguay) during lunch. A natural hint of sweetness, with a mild tartness reminiscent of oolong. Maté is said to contain less caffeine than regular tea (i.e., Camellia sinensis) does, containing, according to Guayaki, “24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids, and 11 polyphenols, a group of phytochemicals which act as powerful antioxidants.” Rainforest-grown, certified organic, and designated as fair trade by the Fair Trade Federation. Next, I want to Feel the Good Energy!™ with some of the company’s flavored varieties, which include Mocha Maca and Vanilla Nut. Check the Web site for a list of retailers. ($8.95 for 8oz, Guayaki)

Sympathy for the Kettle, down on St. Mark’s Place, makes a mean orange-chai latte with frothed soy milk and a touch of honey. An organic and fair-trade blend of Assam and Nigiliri teas, with orange peel, ginger, cardamon, clove, vanilla and cinnamom. Absolutely delicious if you’re in the mood for something sweet and creamy. ($15.50 for 4 oz, Sympathy for the Kettle)

What are some of your favorite teas?

Related article:
1. Eat a Bowl of Tea: Masala Chai Muffins

Photo from Oprah.com

Product Red saves African lives: “This season, you can actually feel good if your bank account is running in the red.”

[U2’s Bono] is bringing his good-faith efforts to the mass population, teaming up with the world’s largest clothing retailer, The Gap, to sell his “Product Red” clothing line. The Gap, itself a target of quite a few anti-sweatshop activist groups, is redeeming its image with Bono’s new line of t-shirts and jeans, some of which are made in factories in Africa in order to stimulate economic growth, and as much as fifty percent of the net sales of all Product Red items will go to purchase AIDS anti-retroviral drugs.

Product Red doesn’t stop at The Gap’s doors either. Apple has launched a Product Red iPod nano and Motorola a Product Red Razr phone, and Emporio Armani and Converse are also selling items under the label. Donations are made by each of these companies to provide AIDS medication.

I threw up this link partly for the crybabies who bawl about how the poor megacorporations JUST WANT TO BE LOVED. (Not that I care about them, because, trust me, I don’t.) But also mainly because my old grad-school roommate is a HUGE Bono fan of terrifying proportions and she would wallop me with a giant cannoli till I lost all consciousness if I didn’t give the man props. So this is for you, Maria. Because you’ve watched The Godfather trilogy far too many times for comfort and I’m afraid for my family.

And in case anyone thought I was getting soft in my old age …

Product Red kills African lives: “[S]pare me the fantasy that shopping till you drop somehow affects radical change.”

In the place of anything resembling citizenship we have consumer choices, “innovation” and above all brand marketing, which is even now in Product Red being cast as some sort of corporate largesse. (”Isn’t it so great that the Gap and Apple would submerge their own brand identity,” glowed many a business page article). Shopping is sharing, and the unprecedented accumulation of wealth squares entirely with “ending poverty”—just ask Gates or Warren Buffet. In their world, fighting AIDS somehow never seems to query how Europe and the US underdeveloped Africa and how the continent’s abundant resources are still exploited by the world’s wealthy.

And as this smart blogger points out, the AmEx board is stacked with former and current CEOs and directors of major Pharma companies who waged a genocidal campaign against the generic production of AIDS drugs. At 1 percent of AmEx Red profits, absolution comes cheap these days, don’t it?

Related article: Think Before You Pink

Microwave popcorn could kill you: “Want your lungs popped in a jiffy? Cook yourself a bowl of microwave popcorn.”

The chemical in question is called diacetyl. It’s naturally present in butter, and food manufacturers use a synthetic version of this compound whenever they want to endow a product with a buttery taste. Other products that contain this chemical include margarine, butter substitutes, cooking oil, lard, and countless frozen food products.

Diacetyl was widely accepted as safe and effective until dozens of workers at a microwave popcorn manufacturing plant in Jasper, Missouri, inexplicably developed a rare disease called bronchiolitis obliterans, which, as its Latin name suggests, is a condition that completely destroys the lungs.

British moms sell contraband junk food, kill kids: “Five months after the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver succeeded in cajoling, threatening and shaming the British government into banning junk food from its school cafeterias, many schools are learning that you can lead a child to a healthy lunch, but you can’t make him eat.”

“No matter how healthy it is, if kids don’t like it they’re not going to eat it,” said Julie Critchlow, a parent at Rawmarsh, a high school set between a sprawling housing project and the south Yorkshire hills. She mentioned the school’s new low-fat pizza and tagliatelle and meatballs as being particularly unappetizing to her children and said the cooks were so overworked that the baked potatoes were being served half-cooked.

The fact that Rawmarsh now bans children who do not go home for lunch from leaving school has made things worse, she said, leading to an overcrowded cafeteria and the elimination of the old fast-food-down-the-road option.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to tell the kids what to eat,” Mrs. Critchlow said of the school authorities. “They’re treating them like criminals.”

Mrs. Critchlow has become a notorious figure in Britain. In September she and another mother—alarmed, they said, because their children were going hungry—began selling contraband hamburgers, fries and sandwiches to as many as 50 students a day, passing the food through the school gates.

Related article: Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children

Accidental drug exposure causes premature puberty in kids, “feminization” in boys, but doesn’t kill … yet: “[S]ome physicians worry that children are at higher risk of early puberty as a result of the increasing prevalence of certain drugs, cosmetics and environmental contaminants, called ‘endocrine disruptors,’ that can cause breast growth, pubic hair development and other symptoms of puberty.”

Dr. Dedekian’s first patient was evaluated for possible genetic endocrine problems and a rare brain tumor before the cause of her puberty was discovered. It turned out that her testosterone level was almost 100 times normal, in the range of an adult man. The same problem affected her brother.

The doctors realized that the girl’s father was using a concentrated testosterone skin cream bought from an Internet compounding pharmacy for cosmetic and sexual performance purposes. From normal skin contact with their father, the children absorbed the testosterone, which caused pubic hair growth and genital enlargement. The boy, in particular, also developed some aggressive behavior problems.

Related news: “Could chemicals have destroyed my sons’ chances of becoming fathers?”

Photos by Martha Stewart Living

The November 2006 issue of Martha Stewart Living (shaddup) has a plump feature stuffed with easy projects you can make from unintentionally felted sweaters or thrifted woolen sweaters you’ve shrunk for that purpose, including mittens, stuffed animals, a patchwork blanket—even a knitting basket.

Complete instructions for the woolly gifts—get a headstart on your anticonsumerist yule holiday of choice—can be found online here.

The Craft: blog has even more sweateriffic ideas.

Graphic by Footprint Network

Exactly a week ago, on Oct. 9, 2006, we slammed right into World Overshoot Day (WOD), defined on its Web site (who doesn’t have a ‘net presence, these days?) as the day “we begin living beyond our ecological means.” Humanity has now swallowed up the amount of new resources nature will produce this year. Demand has now outstripped supply.

In any given year, if trees are cut down faster than they grow back, then forests become smaller than the year before. If more fish are caught each year than spawn, there will be fewer fish in the sea. The consequences of our accumulating ecological debt also include global climate change, species extinction, insecure energy supplies, water shortages, and crop failure.

Even more alarming is the fact that, as our first-world hunger to consume skyrockets, WOD makes its appearance a little earlier in the calendar. The first WOD was in December 19, 1987. By 1995, it was 21 November.

Today, with Overshoot Day on October 9, humanity’s Ecological Footprint is almost 30 percent larger than the planet’s biocapacity this year. In other words, it now takes more than one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year.

(Emphasis is mine.)

[via Con$umer Di$obedience]

Overconsumption isn’t solely an ecological issue, but a social justice one, as well. By gorging ourselves on more than our fair share of the world’s resources, we’re also diverting food, clothing, and other essentials from communities in greater need. Obviously, there is a need to seriously reexamine our patterns of consumption, buy less (or used, or recycled), and reclaim holidays and special occasions from the hollow trappings of overcommercialization. The impact of what you buy (or don’t buy) ripples far beyond a line on your credit-card statement. And how.

Related articles:
1. What is “Voluntary Simplicity”?
2. The Golden Rule
3. Simplicity and Consumption
4. I Shop, Therefore I Am

Further reading:
1. The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need by Julie B. Schor

2. Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin

3. No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs by Naomi Klein

4. Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth by Jim Merkel

5. Voluntary Simplicity, Revised Edition: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich by Duane Elgin

6. Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine

To mark four years of making mushy-face (after one false start, anyway), the hub and I went to listen to Jenny Lewis With The Watson Twins rock out at Town Hall with their Southern blend of rock-’n-roll-meets-folk-meets-the-blues, with a dash of soul and shades of magic realism for the sheer hell of it. Lewis’s honeyed vocals slip under your skin and slink down your throat like thick, summer-warmed molasses.

You can download most of their album, Rabbit Fur Coat for free here. Give “Big Guns” a special listen, my fellow malcontents.

From Allison Arieff, in her New York Times design weblog [via The Boston Globe]:

The current mantra of “living green” seems to have everything to do with increased consumption of goods and services when it should in fact be the reverse.

Related article:
1. The Good Life

Dear Chekhov,

Thanks,
Chelee

Click here for more »

Photo by David Royal/New York Times Magazine

Michael Pollan writes in today’s New York Times Magazine about “bad spinach the government will only make worse.”

If bagged salad greens are vulnerable to bacterial contamination on such a scale, industry and government would very soon come looking for a technological fix; any day now, calls to irradiate the entire food supply will be on a great many official lips. That’s exactly what happened a few years ago when we learned that E. coli from cattle feces was winding up in American hamburgers. Rather than clean up the kill floor and the feedlot diet, some meat processors simply started nuking the meat—sterilizing the manure, in other words, rather than removing it from our food. Why? Because it’s easier to find a technological fix than to address the root cause of such a problem. This has always been the genius of industrial capitalism—to take its failings and turn them into exciting new business opportunities.

He goes on to say that industrial farming and processing methods, both of which have been “industrialized and centralized over the last few decades” are putting our health at peril. The lethal 0157:H7 strain of E. coli, responsible for the latest outbreak of food poisoning, was believed to have evolved in the guts of cattle fed a diet of grain that “happens to turn a cow’s rumen into an ideal habitat for E. coli 0157:H7. (The bug can’t survive long in cattle living on grass.)”

Industrial animal agriculture produces more than a billion tons of manure every year, manure that, besides being full of nasty microbes like E. coli 0157:H7 (not to mention high concentrations of the pharmaceuticals animals must receive so they can tolerate the feedlot lifestyle), often ends up in places it shouldn’t be, rather than in pastures, where it would not only be harmless but also actually do some good. To think of animal manure as pollution rather than fertility is a relatively new (and industrial) idea.

Pollan makes a case for eating local, not just because we want to support farmers in our communities and eat seasonal fresh food at their most flavorful—or even because we want our children to recognize real food in its natural, unpackaged glory—but also for “hardheaded or pragmatic” reasons. Want to fight off a possible terrorist attack? Shop at your local farmers’ market or community-assisted-agriculture (CSA) program.

Our highly centralized food economy is a dangerously precarious system, vulnerable to accidental—and deliberate—contamination. This is something the government understands better than most of us eaters. When Tommy Thompson retired from the Department of Health and Human Services in 2004, he said something chilling at his farewell news conference: “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do.” The reason it is so easy to do was laid out in a 2003 G.A.O. report to Congress on bioterrorism. “The high concentration of our livestock industry and the centralized nature of our food-processing industry” make them “vulnerable to terrorist attack.” Today 80 percent of America’s beef is slaughtered by four companies, 75 percent of the precut salads are processed by two and 30 percent of the milk by just one company. Keeping local food economies healthy—and at the moment they are thriving—is a matter not of sentiment but of critical importance to the national security and the public health, as well as to reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy.

(Emphasis is mine)

The Food Network’s Alton Brown also fingers our not eating local for the whole spinach fiasco. [via Slowly She Turned] “21 states affected by spinach grown not only in one state but in one region of one state. Had the spinach stayed near home odds are good this would have been caught sooner,” he blasts in his blog. He continues:

Had the big chain grocers and restaurant suppliers purchased locally grown produce, this wouldn’t have happened. But don’t blame them. Nope. Blame us. By demanding fresh spinach year round (or anything else for that matter) we create the monster. It’s like Dan Akroyd thinking of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghost Busters. Our own unnatural desires and our refusal to consume locally grown foods have brought us to this sorry state.

(Emphasis is mine.)

Brown ends his post with a ominous warning. “Until we diversify and decentralize our food growing system and learn to eat locally and seasonally,” he says, “we only open up ourselves for more of the same. And let that be a lesson to us all.”

DUM DUM DUUUUUMMM …

If you’re in New York City and have a hankering for a cup of java, best head on down to the Village Cinema on 12th Street between University Place and 5th Avenue to catch Black Gold—a documentary all about the farmers who grow the beans that make your coffee.

While you’re shelling out $2 or more for a cup of Starbucks coffee, the prices netted by coffee farmers themselves are so low that in Ethiopia some have been forced to abandoned their fields¹.

Directed by Marc and Nick Francis, Black Gold chronicles the hard work of Tadesse Meskela in Ethiopia, where he manage cooperative of some 74,000 coffee farmers striving just to survive in the grossly unbalanced business of global coffee—a profitable, but skewed, $80 billion industry. (Note: Meskela will be present during screenings tonight and Friday to discuss his Oromia Coffee Union cooperative’s progress and the importance of fair trade in coffee.)

At the crux of Black Gold is the concept of fair trade, which strives to reward farmers outside government subsidies with a fair price for their crops while cutting out the middle men and big business who dip into their profits.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I have been a dedicated drinker of the coffee grown by Meskela’s farmers, which is roasted by the fair-trade-supporting Equal Exchange, since my first taste on Earth Day in April.

But that doesn’t make Black Gold any less of a film that should be mandatory for caffeine addicts—especially here in New York—who are so detached in their own daily lives that they rarely stop and think where their coffee, let alone the rest of their food, comes from.

The film is understated, with simple text narration as it follows Meskela’s work in Africa and elsewhere as he struggles to find new markets for his cooperative’s fair-trade coffee—which includes organic and non-organic varieties—overseas. In fact, it is this simple approach to presentation that makes Black Gold’s images, statistics and message all the more clear.

The film also follows individual farmers, trade talks at the World Trade Organization, while giving us a window into industrial coffee tasting and roasting industry. About the only hitch pops up during a look at a coffee roaster that seems out of joint from rest of the film, though I think it’s also aimed at filling in the chasm that seems to separate urban coffee drinkers from the distant rural fields the beans are grown in.

Fair trade isn’t just limited to coffee, but also chocolate, cherries, and a host of other crops and products made or grown in third world countries by artisans or farmers who gain little profit from their labors despite the inflated prices you and I pay at our local malls.

It’s a bit comforting to see larger markets beyond small specialty stories, like Whole Foods (in Houston, its HEB offers coffee from South American cooperatives; in Cape Canveral, Florida, look for the Green Section at Publix) carrying fair trade—and organic—coffee.

But just a couple hours and $10 for Black Gold will provide a better window into how your coffee choice affects much more than your own personal morning pick-me-up.

¹Ed.’s note: One of the more-heartrending parts of the film was watching scenes of malnourished children in one of the regions in Africa where Starbucks sources its coffee from; “semi-malnourished” children were being turned away from severely underfunded medical clinics because their conditions weren’t as life-threatening as others’. Obviously, Starbucks isn’t the socially responsible messiah it makes itself out to be.

Additional resources:
1. Locate a theater playing Black Gold near you
2. Tadesse Meskela’s Oromia Coffee Union of cooperatives

I know that this site is becoming a regular Ben & Jerry’s lovefest, but this news was too delectable to keep to myself.

From CSRWire: “Ben & Jerry’s announcement celebrates October as Fair Trade Month.”

Ben & Jerry’s announced today that it is expanding its Fair Trade Certified ice cream flavors, making it the largest ice cream and frozen food manufacturer to offer Fair Trade Certified ingredients. Ben & Jerry’s Fair Trade Certified line-up now includes: Vanilla, Chocolate, Coffee, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, and Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz. The announcement comes during Fair Trade month when TransFair USA and businesses across the country are highlighting the importance of Fair Trade Certified products to third world producers.

“Fair Trade creates stronger economic conditions, which help farmers feed and clothe their families, send their kids to school, get better health care, in general improve the quality of their lives,” said Paul Rice, founding President & CEO of TransFair USA, the only Fair Trade certification organization in the United States.

“With something as simple as choosing to purchase a Fair Trade product, people are making a powerful decision to dramatically improve the quality of life for farmers half way around the world,” Rice said.

Ben & Jerry’s is purchasing Fair Trade Certified coffee from a cooperative in Mexico; vanilla from Fair Trade Certified producers in India, with producers in Indonesia and Uganda under consideration; and Fair Trade Certified cocoa from producers in the Dominican Republic.

(Emphases are mine)

Now guys, what about fair trade and organic for the win? (Double the certification for double the fun.) Tell the company how you feel by leaving a note in its comment box.