Photos by Paradis Found Designs

I found these darling baby hats when we dropped by the Bryant Park Fêtes de Noël market last evening. Handmade from vintage chenille blankets by Dana Paradis in New York City, these hats are one of a kind and can be made to order. You can check them out, alongside some equally adorable kids’ clothing, in person at Bryant Park till Sunday, Dec. 31, near the giant Christmas tree, or by visiting Paradis’ Manhattan studio (by appointment only). The photos here really don’t do the hats justice. (From $34, Hats4Kids)

Another eco-friendly shop we found at the park (besides the myriad natural soap purveyors): The Long Island Candle Factory, which sells hand-poured aromatherapy candles made with soy wax and 100 percent cotton wicks.

From The Littlest Snowman by Charles Tazewell, with art by George De Santis. Originally published in the December 1955 issue of Coronet Magazine.

We’ll be taking a wee break for the holidays. See you in the new year!

Today’s Google image. More here. Do you think the kangaroos are knitting jumpers (hur, hur)?

Photo by Martha Stewart Living

The January 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living has an extremely comprehensive feature on how to clean your kitchen, from oven racks to your toaster’s crumb tray, chemical-free, with such household staples as baking soda and lemon juice. I like the fact that this story isn’t being touted as being particularly “green” or “eco” but is just what it is—the best way of keeping your home clean and healthy for the people (and critters) you love … or at least tolerate. (Treehugger blogged about Shaklee’s Get Clean starter kit of concentrated, nontoxic, biodegradable cleaning supplies that might be of further interest to some, as well.)

Also in the issue is a look at photographer Bill Abranowicz and family’s environmentally friendly ski house in the Catskill Mountains, built with sustainable building materials and with energy-saving features in mind. Take an online video tour of their home on MarthaStewart.com, and the explore some ideas you can use to make your home more energy-efficient.

Related articles:
1. Chemical Pollution Harms Kids’ Brains
2. Hub’s Guest Review: Seventh Generation Laundry Liquid Detergent
3. Eco-Me Home
4. Vinegar: Disinfectant of Champions
5. Test Kitchen Witch
6. Eulogy for Swiffer
7. Maybe Baby: Chemicals & Kids

Illo by Stuart Bradford/Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports has just released the findings of its analysis of 525 fresh, whole broiler chickens purchased in 23 states last spring—83 percent harbored campylobacter or salmonella, which colonize the birds’ intestines and are the leading bacterial causes of foodborne disease that sickens 1.1 million or more Americans each year. (Interestingly, this was a “stunning increase” from its 2003 findings, where 49 percent tested positive for one or both pathogens.)

The spiral-shape campylobacter has seemingly wriggled onto more chickens than ever, because although the U.S. Department of Agriculture tests chickens for salmonella against a federal standard, no such standard exists for campylobacter. (CR insists that there now should be.)

The biggest surprise: Overall, chickens labeled organic or raised without antibiotics (and costing $3 to $5 per pound) were more likely to harbor salmonella than were conventionally produced broilers that cost around $1 per pound¹. (Tested were 10 organic and 12 nonorganic no-antibiotics brands, including three that are “air chilled” in a newer slaughterhouse process supposedly designed to reduce contamination.)

Most of the bacteria CR tested from contaminated chicken (both conventional and no-antibiotics) showed resistance to one or more antibiotics, including some fed to cluckers to speed their growth, as well as those we’re prescribed to treat infections. This wasn’t unexpected even in the no-antibiotics birds, says CR, because “those germs are widespread and can persist in the environment.”

Without knowing more about the magazine’s methodology, there’s not much I can say about its results, which seem to run counter to what we’d expect from organic animal husbandry. (Should we blame big-box organics for the dilution of stricter standards; who knows?) I mean, it’s no skin off my nose personally since I’m vegetarian, a position that’s proving increasingly merited in light of news that cows, pigs, sheep, and poultry are the world’s greatest environmental threats.

But even CR concedes that you should purchase any meat directly from small farmers, via farmers’ markets and Community Supported Agriculture programs, so you can engage in a dialogue with the farmer about how the animals are raised, what they eat, and so forth. And of course, CR’s analysis doesn’t take into account the fact that organically raised livestock isn’t force-fed pesticide-soaked, genetically modified corn feed mixed in with ground animal parts, or kept so tightly confined that they are unable to shuffle more than a few feet for their entire lives. (More reasons for eating organic meat here.)

Alright, I’m going to rip out the ol’ bleeding heart here: Organic animals are raised more humanely—with a species-appropriate environment to roam—and are fed well-rounded and nutritious diets that boost their health (and by that same token, yours) significantly. Smaller farms also means less manure, which is a human-health risk because any overspill can contaminate our water sources with E. coli and other pathogens. In just one region of North Carolina, for instance, hog farms produce 10 million metric tons of waste annually. That’s A LOT of poop to scoop.

And organic meat? Well, as far as I can tell, it’s not just a load of crap—which is more than I can say for some of the health and environmental policies in this country.

¹One exception was Ranger, a no-antibiotics premium brand sold only in the Northwest, which CR found to be “extremely clean.” Of the 10 samples it analyzed, none had salmonella, and only two had campylobacter.

More proof the government is trying to kill us: Shrubya’s (I just came up with that, you like?) brain trust, in its infinite, God-kissed wisdom, wants to take lead off the list of toxic air pollutants. Lead exposure, if you didn’t know already, can severly harm the nervous system, damage the brain and kidneys, and cause miscarriages in pregnant women. Fill out and send an online letter to the EPA to let them know this is a TERRIBLE IDEA. Like electing-George-W.-Bush-president terrible.

Photo by Karie Hamilton/USA Today

Small-coffeehouse owner Penny Stafford sued Starbucks in September, charging that the Mermaid illegally maintains its “predatory monopoly” by barring other coffeehouses from occupying prime downtown high-rises in Seattle and Bellevue through exclusive leases with property owners. Since the federal antitrust lawsuit was initiated, Stafford has been plagued by hostile and anonymous telephone calls and e-mails, warning her to drop the lawsuit and slamming her for daring to attack Starbucks. “It’s as if I had insulted apple pie and America,” says Stafford, owner of the Belvi Coffee and Tea Exchange in Bellevue, Wash.

From USA Today: “Owner of small coffee shop takes on java titan Starbucks.”

Starbucks also drove Stafford and other coffeehouses out of business by buying coffee sellers and flooding neighborhoods with new Starbucks stores that even cannibalized the sales of existing Starbucks shops, the lawsuit alleges. “This is wrong, period,” Stafford says. “I’m not willing to leave the specialty coffee business because of Starbucks shutting me or anyone else down.”

Starbucks spokeswoman Sanja Gould says, “Starbucks denies that we have done anything improper, and we intend to rightfully defend ourselves. As Starbucks has grown, so has the industry, all of which benefits coffee consumers and the competitors of Starbucks.”

If you’re new to the Starbucks’ controversy, USA Today boils it down for you:

Starbucks is widely admired by Wall Street and other businesses as a well-run corporation, a mighty marketing machine and, until recently, a highflying stock. …

Starbucks also has been praised for its social and environmental acts, from donating millions of dollars to charities, to promoting “fair trade” export practices with Third World coffee bean producers.¹

But Stafford’s lawsuit symbolizes the distaste that critics have toward Starbucks. Few retail chains have been the target of such a long-brewing backlash from neighborhood activists, anti-globalization protesters, labor organizers and some consumers and small-business owners. Starbucks has been accused of being a corporate bully whose tactics hurt small businesses, erode the character of local communities and exploit the coffee bean economies of Third World countries.

Starbucks’ vast size and “aggressive real estate grabs” clearly alienate some people, says Bryant Simon, a Temple University historian and author of Consuming Starbucks, to be published in 2008.

“By being everywhere, they create markets,” Simon says. “But they also narrow the markets and limit opportunities for companies.”

The $11 billion U.S. market for specialty coffee keeps growing, with about 23,000 coffeehouses, reports the Specialty Coffee Association of America trade group. Spokesman Mike Ferguson says sales won’t peak “until there’s an espresso bar in every neighborhood.”

(Emphases are mine.)

Shop organic, fair-trade, and indie. To locate an independent coffeehouse near you, check out Delocator. (Also works for bookstores and movie theaters.) If you live in New York City or Jersey City, I have a not-yet-comprehensive list of shops here.

¹HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…

Related articles:
1. Starbucks Keeps Ethiopian Growers Humble
2. Hub’s Guest Review: Black Gold
3. Good Cup, Bad Cup
4. Fast Food Planet
5. Wake Up and Smell the Fair-Trade Coffee

From the December issue of “The Organic Report,” put out by The Organic Trade Association:

• The Organic Center has found that on organic farms, it takes about 30 percent less energy to produce a bushel of corn.
• A three-year study in the United Kingdom found organic milk contained 68 percent more omega-3 fatty acids, on average, than conventional milk.
• Research conducted in central India has shown that variable production costs for organic cotton were 13 to 20 percent lower than for growing conventional cotton and that the average cotton yields were 4 to 6 percent higher in the organic fields.
• A study of satisfaction among dairy farmers in Wisconsin found that 75 percent of organic dairy farmers reported being “somewhat satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their family’s quality of life, compared to 46 percent of graziers and 42 percent of conventional dairy farmers.

[via I’m Organic]

Image by Mad Gabs

I love Mad Gabs, not just because it’s a small, woman-owned business, but also because it makes the BEST lip balm EVER for my über-dry, chapped winter lips. And okay, I think the moose lips are a hoot and a half, too. Who doesn’t love moose lips? The company is based in Maine, which is where my sister found the blackberry-flavored Moose Smooch lip balm—in a recyclable tin, no less—that she got me. Mad Gabs products are free of petroleum or petroleum derivatives, synthetics, artificial flavors, or fragrance oils. (The lip balm contains only olive oil, beeswax, Vitamin E oil, and natural flavor, so pucker up, buttercup.) And ever since owner Gab discovered the “horrors of paraffin” (more in a future post), she started making 100-percent-soywax candles scented with essential-oil blends.

The Holiday Moose collection, with sugar-cookie- and candy-cane-flavored body balms and lip smoochers, make fun yet practical stocking stuffers for your mistletoe close-up. (From $3, Mad Gabs)

Photo by Stephen Toner/Getty Images

From the Chicago Tribune: “The demand for cheap Chinese goods is driving destructive logging around the world, threatening livelihoods and dividing fragile nations.”

Night and day, the timber ships reach this Yangtze River port, one of the world’s busiest clearinghouses for logs from every corner of the globe: Southeast Asia, the Amazon, Russia, the Congo.

Soon, this wood will be yours.

It will be your hardwood floor and your coffee table, your bedroom dresser and your plywood—all stamped with the most successful label of our time: Made in China.

In less than a decade, China has transformed the global timber trade, importing more wood each year than any country in history and quadrupling the amount of wood products it ships around the globe.

And no one is consuming more of it than Americans. U.S. shoppers have become the world’s best customers of low-cost Chinese flooring, furniture and plywood, buying 10 times as much as a decade ago.

You can trace just one log’s journey to the port at Zhangjiagang from 3,000 miles of the Pacific across to Papua New Guinea, which “nearly abandoned logging until China came along.” The article tracks the log to the nation’s remote northwest province of Sanduan, where “millions in timber profits and payments have left children without shoes and schools without plumbing.” Then the log’s trail ends at its origin: a specific patch of forest where “the torn landscape of logging has left a tribal leader unsure [of] where to hunt for food and fearful for the future.” (And this is in addition to landslides due to soil erosion, as well as greenhouse gases from deforestation and the loss of our “carbon sinks,” both of which further contribute to global warming.)

Besides the socio-economic reasons for why we should care about where our wood comes from—and how responsibly it was harvested—is the fact that forests are our planet’s richest stores of biodiversity. The article continues:

Such tropical rain forests cover barely 6 percent of the planet but hold 50 percent of all the known organisms on Earth. Half of the world’s tropical forests have been felled already, leaving researchers to speculate how many species are going extinct before they are discovered.

That prospect makes New Guinea even more of a treasure in the lucrative world of biomedical research. Tropical forests hold unique value for researchers who rely on new genetic ingredients for cures and vaccines. By one count, no less than 40 percent of all prescriptions written in the U.S. are for drugs derived from plants, animals and microorganisms.

Loggers in Papua New Guinea are cutting so fast that experts calculate that the rest of its accessible forests will be cut down within 16 years.

“Those are some of the finest remaining forests in the tropical world,” said American biologist Bruce Beehler, who has made more than 40 research trips to New Guinea.

“If you take just 1 hectare [2 1/2 acres] of it, it probably has thousands of species living there—plants, animals and other life-forms—that haven’t been described by science. So we don’t even know what’s in that box that is being meddled with.”

Related articles:
1. Logging Decimates Africa’s Forests
2. Mail Call: Toxic Wood
3. Bring Your Ever-Lovin’ Own
4. It’s Getting Hot in Here: Act Now

Further resources:
1. Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC certification assures you that your product was made with wood from sustainably managed forests)
2. Sustainable Forestry Initiative
3. Co-op America’s Woodwise program

Image from Wishing Fish

Need an idea for a last-minute, waste-free gift? What about cocktail-making, vegetarian cooking, or DJ classes? Or a creative-writing workshop so your pal can finally get down the memoir she keeps talking about? Do the research yourself online or pick from one of Wishing Fish’s list of 100 classes and workshops, in metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle. For an extra $40, Great-aunt Maud could be deep-sea fishing in Florida or hang-gliding in Ohio. Carpe diem! ($49, Wishing Fish)

33 Grand St. (between Kent & Wythe)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
11-8pm