Screenshot of Timbuk2.com

Hobnobbing with William McDonough and creating a cradle-to-cradle version of its iconic messenger bag for the TED 2006 conference must have really rubbed off on Timbuk2. The company is making good on its earlier promise to move towards “complete C2C compliance” by rethinking the way it manufactures its products in a bid to “make this world a better, safer, cleaner place for the future.”

First Timbuk2 gave vinyl, which it used to line the insides of its bags, the old heave-ho. Then, it came out with a market tote made from an undyed hemp/organic cotton blend. The Web site now has its own Sustainable category door, along with two styles of hemp/organic-cotton messenger bag, plus an urban messenger bag made from repurposed vinyl recovered from billboards by the San Francisco Vistors and Convention Bureau. Another nice touch: All its bags are made in the U.S. ($80-$135, Timbuk2)

Dear Chekhov,

Thanks,
Chelee

Click here for more »

Watch this hardboiled-detective-spoof, Sam Suds and the Case of PVC, the Poison Plastic, then take action and tell Target that you think PVC—and its birth-, developmental, and reproductive-defect-causing ways—is quack.

Related articles:
1. The Poison Plastic
2. Blue Vinyl

Photo from BTC Elements

Although this durable lunchbag uses vinyl-laminated nylon fabric, I don’t mind its materials as much because they’re salvaged from old billboards. It’s even lined with mill-end fabric, which ordinarily would be considered manufacturing waste. Relan, which is based in Minnesota rescues approximately 8 tons of billboard and banner material from landfills and incinerators annually. (Chemical additives used to stabilize PVC, such as lead, cadmium, and phthalates, along with carcinogenic dioxins, can leach into the groundwater and release toxic emissions via landfill gases. Burning PVC lets loose hydrogen chloride gas, which turns into hydrochloric acid—the stuff of acid rain. Fun times.)

I’m sticking with Cosmo and Wanda for now—the first of the 3 Rs is “reduce,” after all—but you can get the lunch sack at BTC Elements for $26. And, hey, besides shipping in used boxes, BTC Elements is also carbon neutral, so as far as online stores go, this one’s a keeper. (And not just because I think Summer’s a sweetheart.)

From the Billings Gazette: “Pink and blue are passé. The hot thing in the children’s market these days is green.”

Parents are increasingly turned on by the idea of organic products—clothing, creams and food made without chemicals that they think are too harsh to be used on their pristine and delicate children.

While organic baby food has developed a strong following over past years—a $206 million industry last year, according to the most recent figures available from the Organic Trade Association—interest in organic clothes and cleansers is growing as quickly as the kids they target.

Sales of organic fibers for infant clothes and cloth diapers rose 40 percent between 2004 and 2005 to $40 million, and fiber for the child-teen market grew 52 percent to $3 million. Meanwhile, organic personal-care products, including baby care, rose 34 percent to $26 million.

Whether organic products offer any sort of health benefits is unclear; most experts say only the most sensitive children could have a problem with conventional clothing or personal-care products. But parents seem more motivated by a desire to keep their kids untainted from some of the harshness and artificiality of the world for as long as they can.

“This is the first time—and I’ve been in business 10 years—that we’re catching up to organic food,” says Janice Masoud, founder of Under the Nile, an organic clothing company based in Milpitas, Calif., that specializes in children’s items.

Under the Nile will launch a test program in 150 Target stores this coming holiday season with towel sets, swaddle blanket sets, a sherpa two-piece cardigan set and flannel footies.

From her regular collection, the most popular items are bodysuits, buntings and baby gowns that can be worn home from the hospital. Masoud thinks that’s because they’re all pieces that are right next to a baby’s skin for long periods of time.

She says she cringes at the thought of the pesticides and insecticides used to grow some cotton rubbing against a newborn’s skin. She also notes that formaldehyde is sometimes used in fabric’s finishing process, as is polyvinyl chloride, known as PVC.

“Cotton is supposed to be a ‘natural fiber,’ ” says Masoud, who obtained fair-trade certification for her brand, meaning that the co-op of Egyptian farmers that grows her cotton she buys her cotton from are paid more—and they, in turn, put the investment into their land.

“A mother would rather spend some dollars on her baby than herself,” Masoud says. “There are so many pollutants in the society today that moms are worried about for the kids. Moms are trying not to add extra chemicals to their babies.”

(Emphases are mine.)

Photo by World of Good

I’m tempted to kick my Fairly Odd Parents lunch box, which I’ve had before I went militantly anti-vinyl, to the curb for one of these colorful and chic grown-up versions. Available in three different color schemes, the baskets are handwoven by a family in Huanchaco, Peru from reeds, which is a sustainable material, under fair-trade conditions. Maybe I shouldn’t risk lead poisoning every time I take leftovers to work, after all. ($19.95, World of Good)

Photo by World of Good

It’s the return of the recycled magazine bead! Each pretty-in-pink bracelet strings together recycled magazine beads with regular beads, and is created by homeless men and women as part of their drug rehabilitation program in Sao Paulo, Brazil, under fair-trade conditions. Also available in yellow. ($9.95, World of Good)

A response from the folks at Paper Nor Plastic:

Dear Ms. Jasmin,

Thank you for your interest in Paper Nor Plastic; and thank you for taking the time to send us your comments. Why are our bags coated with vinyl? We chose vinyl as the inner liner for the benefits it would add to our bag; which includes the water resistant qualities and stiffening of material (allowing the bag to stand alone for easy loading). But the core reason for choosing this bag is the results from our market test (which included earth-friendly material bags) that clearly showed the vinyl liner bag as the winner. Therefore, we agreed to pursue with the vinyl liner. We believe that a little bit of vinyl in each bag can save thousands of wasted plastic and paper bags and this is still helping the environment.

We appreciate your email, you have added new insights with the provided links. For our next round of shipment, we will highly consider using an alternate material for the liner (only if it doesn’t hinder the water resistant and stiffening qualities that attract people to our bags). But for now, we still have inventory and hope you can see the value our customers bring by reusing the bag.

Best Regards,
Paper Nor Plastic

PS. If you send us your contact information, we would be delighted to send you a complimentary bag; it’s quite durable and can be used for many years to come.

My reply to them below the fold.

Click here for more »

The Center for Health, Environment, and Justice has a shiny new site up for its anti-PVC campaign. Learn about vinyl’s environmental and health hazards, how to protect your family, and which companies are phasing out PVC. And while you’re there, take action and get Wal-mart to honor its sustainability pledge by wiping PVC out from its supply chain.

From shower curtains to sippy cups, PVC products are ubiquitous. The bare-bones summary:

• Polyvinyl chloride, also known as vinyl or PVC, poses risks to both the environment and human health. PVC is also the least recyclable plastic.
• Vinyl chloride workers face elevated risk of liver cancer.
• Vinyl chloride manufacturing creates air and water pollution near the factories, often located in low-income neighborhoods.
• PVC needs additives and stabilizers to make it useable. For example, lead is often added for strength, while plasticizers are added for flexibility. These toxic additives contribute to further pollution and human exposure.
• Dioxin in air emissions from PVC manufacturing and disposal or from incineration of PVC products settles on grasslands and
  accumulates in meat and dairy products and ultimately in human tissue. Dioxin is a known carcinogen. Low-level exposures are
  associated with decreased birth weight, learning and behavioral problems in children, suppressed immune function and disruption.

I got it! C.O.V.E.N: Crafters Opposing Vinyl Entirely. Yes? No? Bueller?

The bags at Paper Nor Plastic remind me a great deal of the ones I already use to bag my groceries—down to the nifty way both heavy-duty types fold to the size of a flattened brown paper bag—and I wouldn’t be surprised if they shared the same manufacturer. One notable difference, however: The ACME Earth Tote is made from Cordura nylon, while Paper Nor Plastic’s are made from vinyl-backed polyester. Both nylon and polyester are petroleum-derived, which admittedly isn’t terribly sustainable in the first place, but we all know how I feel in particular about vinyl, that most vile of textiles. (To recap: I hate it with the fury of a billion dying suns, a special brand of loathing I reserve for ex-boyfriends and Bush scions.)

I e-mailed the company a polite inquiry, with relevant links about vinyl’s noxious life-cycle, indicating that Paper Nor Plastic’s resultant impact should actually befit its plaintive plea to “Help the Environment!” instead of working against it.

Photo by Stephen Mallon/Getty Images

N.J./Lisa Jackson rocks: “State leading fight on mercury suit.”

New Jersey and 15 other states are reviving a lawsuit to force the Bush administration to adopt tougher rules against mercury pollution.

The state announced Thursday that it would lead the legal challenge, a day after the federal Environmental Protection Agency rejected a request to tighten its limits on power plant emissions.

“New Jersey has adopted tough rules to reduce in-state mercury emissions, but we are faced once again with a failure of leadership at the federal level,” said state Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson.

More N.J. rockage: “Vinyl chloride emissions cut in 3 states.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday a reduction in the emissions of vinyl chloride carcinogens in Texas, Kentucky and New Jersey.

The EPA said the reduction came under an agreement between Oxy Vinyls LP and the United States, the Louisville Metropolitan Air Pollution Control District and the State of New Jersey.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, Exxon blows chunks: “Exxon declines talks on global warming.”

Also, global warming’s deleterious impact on biodiversity is bad news all round: “Lose biodiversity and gain diseases.”

Plus, gems go fair trade: “For gem merchants, a new focus on purity.”

Tracing the path of a colored stone through the vast and largely unpoliced gem trade is a complicated affair, even for the experts. Unlike diamonds, most of which are marketed by a handful of mining juggernauts through a supply chain that is under increasing scrutiny, gems follow a haphazard and opaque route to market that lends itself to smuggling.

That has not discouraged a growing number of gem cutters, dealers, jewelry manufacturers and retailers from demanding to know that the gems they buy and sell have been handled with social and environmental integrity.

“We’re selling something nobody needs,” said Earl Allen, co- owner of 1700 Ocean, a jewelry store in Santa Monica, California, that recently started a line using Fair Trade Gems. “If you’re going to buy stones that finance terrorism or send 9-year-olds into holes, I don’t want to be a part of that.”

Ok, remind me I’m in no state to formulate thoughts even remotely approaching coherence in the early morning, pre-caffeine and pre-medication. Still, I had to say something because this post (and the subsequent comment) had me clutching my head like a stunned monkey. Even if the only wisdom I could channel via my keyboard was: “Vinyl bad. Tree pretty.”

Fire owie.

Watch out kid, carcinogenic dioxins from that vinyl bag are already working into your fatty tissues. Photo by Chickpea.

Knowing what I now know about the insidious putridity of polyvinyl chloride (alias vinyl, alias PVC)—that dozens of vinyl fabricators have succumbed to the exceedingly rare angiosarcoma of the liver over the decades, or that if your house catches on fire, you’ll die from the toxic hydrogen chloride fumes released by your vinyl siding in minutes, before the flames even have a chance to reach you—I hork up a hairball every time I see a crafting sister- or brother-in-arms make otherwise wonderful creations with PVC.

Surely these are good, decent folk who are simply ignorant of the momentous health and environmental disaster caused by PVC manufacturing. And that the vinyl industry has consistently lied to the public about the potential hazards related to its products.

We need some kind of Public Service Announcement for artists and crafters, or an organization dedicated to raising awareness in this particular close-knit, wildly creative population, especially in light of the fact that the crafting revolution has stepped up in momentum of late. C.R.A.V.E.: Crafters Revolt Against Vinyl Employment? A.D.V.E.N.T: Artists Denounce Vinyl—Evil, Noxious Textile?

You get the picture. Help me out here. What can we do?

Related addendum: I have a few yards of oilcloth (which is really fabric permeated with vinyl) that I purchased before I was tuned in to these issues. (I had aspirations of sewing knitting-needle cases and granny-chic totes.) Should I have them carted away as hazardous waste by municipal authorities or should I soldier on with my sewing machine and distribute the toxic load by making and giving away wallets and checkbook covers? As I mentioned in my first PVC-related post, you can’t recycle it, burn it, or even stick it in a conventional landfill. Ay dios mio.

This is how Chekhov feels about vinyl:

Photo by Ryan McVay/Getty Images

This deeply personal post by David at Daily Green, about his and his wife’s difficulties conceiving a child, only reaffirms my belief that corporations are fronts for aliens who are systematically wiping out the human race by steadily curtailing our fertility.

He says:

One 1992 study cited in the report showed that sperm count fell 50 percent between 1940 and 1990, while the incidence of testicular cancer progressively rose. Infertility today affects 15-20 percent of couples, compared with 7-8 percent in the early 1960s, the report said.

“On average, a typical Western man produces half the sperm his father or grandfather did,” it said.

Whether this was precipitated by extraterrestrial intervention or not, you can pin lagging fertility on our flagrant and indiscriminate use of synthetic chemicals, the production of which took off like venturesome baby bald eagles during World War II. Patriotic chemists churned out pesticides, solvents, degreasers, and other materials to bolster weapons arsenals and increase crop production to feed hungry soldiers. And because this was WAR, forsooth, safety was dismissed in favor of efficacy.

From “Bad Chemistry” by Gay Daly in the Winter 2006 issue of OnEarth:

In peacetime, these same labs helped fuel the economic boom of the second half of the twentieth century, formulating new chemicals manufacturers needed to create cheaper, smarter products.

Federal regulation was fragmentary at best, and manufacturers were allowed to provide their own proofs of safety, a situation that remains true today. There are now more than 100,000 synthetic chemicals on the market, and these chemicals are everywhere. They enter our bodies and those of other animals through every possible route of transmission. They are in our food supply, so we eat them. They drift in the air, so we breathe them. (Carried on thermal currents, they have long since reached the Arctic, so polar bears breathe them too.) Present in landfills, they leach into the water supply, so we drink them. Released as effluent into lakes and rivers by factories, they affect the habitat of fish, frogs, and all aquatic life, right down to plankton. Ubiquitous in cosmetics, they are absorbed through our skin. Pregnant women pass them to their fetuses; mothers feed them to their newborns when they breastfeed.

In 1991, a team of world-class scientists from the fields of endocrinology, biology, immunology, toxicology, psychiatry, ecology, anthropology met and concluded that man-made chemicals, which had not evolved with living organisms over millennia, had the potential to wreck havoc with hormone activity in humans and animals “by mimicking the activity of a hormone, by blocking it, or through other mechanisms.” Comparing notes, the scientists realized that many wildlife populations had already been affected.

Even more disturbing, they emphasized that the fetus and newborn are at greatest risk, and that the effects might not be manifested until the animal was mature. Perhaps the greatest bombshell was the statement that “the concentrations of a number of synthetic sex hormone [disruptors] measured in the U.S. human population today are well within the range and dosages at which effects are seen in wildlife populations.” Suddenly, this was not about cleaning up a few lakes; the health of all the creatures in our care was at stake—including the health of our unborn children.

Fifteen years later, researchers are discovering an average of 200 industrial compounds, pollutants and other chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of newborns, including seven dangerous pesticides, some of which were banned in the U.S. over 30 years ago.

Photo by Ryan McVay/Getty Images

With such odds stacked against us, what recourse do we have? Here are just some things you can do to undermine the efforts of nefarious little green men:

1. Eat organically grown or raised foods. Researchers have found that children who switched to organic diets for only a few days “dramatically and substantially lowered the amount of toxic pesticides in their bodies.”

2. Use VOC-free paints.

3. Phase out your use of household chemicals, antibacterial disinfectants, and synthetic pesticides. According to various studies, exposure to household pesticides is associated with an elevated risk of childhood leukemia and childhood brain cancer.

4. Avoid PVC/vinyl like the plague.

5. Avoid pressed wood products, such as particleboard, hardwood plywood, and medium density fiberboard (MDF), because the glues and adhesives used offgas formaldehyde even at room temperatures.

6. Don’t drink bottled water. A 2005 study found that the level of toxic plastic molecules leaching into food and beverage containers—and accumulating in our bodies—was higher than previously thought. Fetuses can be exposed while still in the womb, and babies during breast-feeding.

7. Don’t smoke! Also, try to keep your children away from second-hand smoke because endocrine-disrupting pesticides lurk within those poisonous plumes. (If paying companies to kill yourself isn’t evidence of alien mind-control, I don’t know what is.)

And, as always, vote with your dollars to keep polluters in your community, their toxic emissions, and their DASTARDLY galactic genocidal agenda at bay.

Further resources:
1. “Elements of a green nursery,” GreenHomeGuide.com
2. Raising Healthy Children in a Toxic World: 101 Smart Solutions for Every Family by Philip Landrigan et. al.
3. “Why children may be especially sensitive to pesticides,” EPA
4. “Pesticides and child safety,” EPA
5. Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Own Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival? by Theo Coburn et. al.
6. “Body burden—the pollution in newborns,” Environmental Working Group

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 help us continue our work of salvage and re-use. Come out to Astoria and enjoy good company, coffee and bagels, and a whole lot of dusty warehouse organizing and cleaning.

Build It Green Warehouse
3-17 26th Ave. (corner of 4th St.)
Astoria, Queens
www.bignyc.org
12-4 pm

This is community action at its some of its best. Pure genius! I wish I had known about this ahead of time because we’ve already made plans for tomorrow (including stopping by Earth Day New York), but I signed up for their volunteer mailing list, and I urge you to do so, too, if you’re local. Green housing should not be a privilege, but a basic human right, and we need to find ways to build healthy communities cost-effectively, especially in low-income neighborhoods. (The use of toxic PVC materials is widespread in the construction industry—including Habitat for Humanity—because of its affordability. But no matter how you spin it, it’s still class discrimination.) For the rest of us, a nonprofit store like this is a great way to build without contributing anything new to the waste stream, so this is one of those rare occasions where I tell you to GO NUTS SHOPPING. (But don’t get too loco, because I don’t know if I can rustle up your bail money without severely disrupting the space-time continuum.)

Vanity Fair is due to publish a “green” issue featuring eco-celebs such as Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, et. al. coinciding with Earth Day on April 22. One tiny hitch: The rag will not be using recycled paper like it said it would.

From Muckracked:

So, when you pick up the May issue of VF and start reading the eco-friendly articles, don’t feel too smug about your increased environmental consciousness.

That single issue involved the destruction of thousands of trees and it was printed using chlorine and other chemicals. Specifically, that issue probably used up to 2,247 tons of pulp, and produced up to 4,331,757 pounds of greenhouse gases,13,413,922 gallons of wastewater, and 1,744,060 pounds of solid waste throughout the printing process.

That’s according to our calculation of VF’s monthly circulation times the weight of its paper and then inputting that tonnage into the Paper Calculator, which was developed by Environmental Defense to calculate the environmental impacts of printing.

A spokeswoman for Vanity Fair did not return calls for comment.

Hey Ethan Hawke, what’s the definition of “ironic” again? Maybe Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter should give out these vinyl Earth balls free with every issue, too. Angiosarcoma of the liver for everyone!

Collect all the catalogs you get in the mail but don’t really need (you can always browse their stores online), clear a half hour on your calendar, and start calling the 1800 numbers listed on their back pages to get yourself taken off their mailing lists. Acres of forest will thank you. (Victoria’s Secret is the worst culprit when it comes to wanton deforestation, so if you have to pick just one company to pull the welcome mat from under, choose this one.)

Photo by Mary Wiltenburg/Grist

(Read Part 1 here.)

I really can’t do a better job than Grist of describing the insufferable conditions and ecological devastation the downtrodden have to bear for the sins of industrialization.

Take mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia used for coal extraction, for instance. From the Orion Magazine article that Grist reprinted:

[An] Eastern Kentucky University study children in Letcher County, Ky., where a great deal of strip mining takes place, suffer from an alarmingly high rate of nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and shortness of breath—symptoms of something called blue baby syndrome—that can all be traced back to sedimentation and dissolved minerals that have drained from mine sites into nearby streams. Long-term effects may include liver, kidney, and spleen failure, bone damage, and cancers of the digestive tract.

Erica Urias, who lives on Island Creek in Grapevine, Ky., told me she has to bathe her 2-year-old daughter in contaminated water because of the mining around her home.

That and more, is just part of the price they’re paying for cheap energy, “through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks.”

Large-scale poultry production is another blight for small-town communities, but this time in the rural South. Besides threats of disease outbreaks from sick animals, residents must live with health and environmental hazards from industrial chemicals, such as the arsenic and ammonia found in feed and manure.

Much like the residents of Lake Charles, La., who live adjacent to polyvinyl chloride plants and are exposed daily to toxic clouds of pollution, many of these communities are not able to voice their protests. Often already battered by poverty and unemployment, these residents see the job openings as heavensent miracles, and don’t even realize the environmental or health implications of these chemical or industrial factories. In fact, the corporations are counting on their ignorance.

We also frequently forget the struggles of low-income families who have waste incinerators, water-treatment plants, and toxic landfills in their backyards. These are the same populations who are largely unemployed and have no access to adequate healthcare when persistent exposure to pollutants makes them sick.

Practically everything we consume—for many of us much too excessively—is at someone else’s cost. Everything we don’t recycle or take steps to dispose of properly … even something as innocuous as a disposable plastic cup … has to end up somewhere downstream. The first law of thermodynamics expresses this best: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

To me, this isn’t just an environmental or human-health issue. This is a moral issue.

And this is something I think even those fighting for environmental causes should never lose sight of.

Additional resources (Don’t get depressed, get organized):
1. Center for Community Action and Evironmental Justice
2. Greenaction
3. NYC Environmental Justice Alliance
4. Sierra Club’s environmental justice index

I’m getting MUCH better at managing my anger these days, but two, three … um, maybe four … days out of the week you’ll still find me shaking my fists at the heavens, as I mentally berate the general populace for its apathy toward global warming, our dwindling biodiversity, and famine and drought in much of the developing world. (I mean, nothing depresses me more than watching my husband down a bottle of Diet Coke. Okay, maybe baby seals getting clubbed to death depresses me more. Let it be known that the day my Paxil and Effexor quit on me will be a very dark day for humanity.) Times like these, I tend to forget that there is a sizeable population that can’t afford to be environmental, or have it in their power to make greener, socially conscious choices.

These are the people we’ve been conditioned to view as invisible, whether by guilt or by unrepentant self-centeredness.

Bear with me as I get a little technical: For the have-nots of the world, a sustainable lifestyle is near the apex of Maslow’s hierachy of needs, which means that lower-order, basic needs such as food, warmth, and shelter take overwhelming precedence. In other words, you couldn’t care less about high-falutin’ ideas like mass extinction or global warming if you’re struggling to survive. Organic milk? You’re going to buy whatever is cheapest, factory farming and rBGH be damned.

This is why my younger sister, starving grad student and social activist extraordinaire, believes that the environmental and fair-trade movement is classist. And even though the hub and I are by no means rich—we’re just anti-consumerists who are crackerjacks at keeping our overheads low—I can’t say I disagree with her entirely.

Grist kicked off its mucho-excellente series on “Poverty and the Environment” by admitting the paradox of the American environmental movement. “In much of popular and political culture,” the magazine says, “the movement is dismissed as the pet cause of white, well-off Americans—people who can afford to buy organic arugula, vacation in Lake Tahoe, and worry about the fate of the Pacific pocket mouse.”

Meghan Chapple-Brown, of strategy consultancy SustainAbility, spent years working with low-income minority communities in Chicago. She tells Grist that “some environmentalists think the poor are simply waiting for a green angel to descend with organic fare and free bus tickets.”

One of the central themes of Blue Vinyl really resonated with me. (And seriously, people, I can’t tout this movie any more if the producers threatened to stab my own mother in the face.) Most of the country’s low-income, predominantly minority communities live in some of the worst polluted regions on the map. Where does environmentalism end and social justice begin?

Next: Yeah, that was a rhetorical question, but I’m going to answer it anyway.

(Read Part 2 here.)

D’OH. They have Blue Vinyl at my local library, and so I’ve placed a hold on it instead of dropping cash on a purchase. Verily, a lifetime of conditioning is hard to shake—my first impulse was to order the movie online because I belong to a generation that is used to, and lo, demands, instant gratification. (And, until I realized how much fuel and packaging went into feeding my online-shopping fix, I was so out of control that the hub was thisclose to staging an intervention. With sock puppets, because that’s the only way you can guarantee my attention.)

Then, the greenie part of me kicked in, and my next impulse was to buy it in person from a store. No packaging, right? I’d probably wouldn’t even need to whip out the canvas bag I keep folded up in my tote. But then I broke one of my cardinal rules—stopping to think if I needed to own this movie, if I couldn’t support their cause in a more direct way. And only then, like a radiant burst of sunlight after its been obscured by storm clouds—accompanied, of course, by the Singing Chorus of Dawning Realization—it hit me: You dumbass, check the library first.

(The Corporation was a loaner from my friend Nisha—thanks Nisha!—because friends don’t let friends enlarge their ecological footprint without just cause.)

Reader Ingrid turned me on to the 2002 Sundance Film Festival documentary winner, Blue Vinyl. (I was about to order it online, but will check around my local Barnes & Noble first.)

If you don’t know how EVIL PVC is already (and that’s not lower-case, sotto voce evil, it’s EEEEEV-EEEEEEL; pretend you’re Antonio Bandaras really working the bile), trust me it is. The production of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC (also commonly known as “vinyl”) releases a cancer-causing compound known as dioxin during its manufacturing process, the life of the product, all the way to its final disposal. Dioxin is very persistent carcinogen that settles in our fatty tissues and those of other animals. Besides causing cancer, exposure to dioxins can also lead to neurological damage, respiratory problems, liver and kidney failure, plus all kinds of reproductive- and immune-system damage, including birth defects.

If you have PVC flooring or the ubiquitous vinyl siding, chances are your children will develop asthma, too. Fun stuff. It’s the plant workers and low-income families living near PVC factories who have it the worst, however.

Since dioxin is a bioaccumulative toxin that doesn’t breakdown easily and can be rapidly dispersed by winds, dioxins from a PVC manufacturing plant could migrate and land up in fish, increasing in concentration as they work their way up the food chain to the top-dog predator of them all—us.

Plus, when you heat PVC, the chlorine is released as hydrogen chloride, which turns into hydrochloric acid. This is also why you shouldn’t mix PVC with your plastic recyclables.

When PVC is made, it needs to be stabilized by chemical additives such as lead, cadmium, and pthlates. This is why there was so much concern about the presence of lead in children’s vinyl lunchboxes, since these toxins can leach, flake, or outgas from PVC over time, resulting in anything from asthma to lead poisoning to cancer. (Don’t let your kids play with PVC toys especially—it will only bring you to a dark place of tears and the gnashing of teeth.)

Disposing of vinyl is tricky—you can’t burn it as I noted before, nor can you stick it in the landfill because it could leach into the groundwater and release toxic emissions in landfill gases. Trying to recycle it will only contaminate the entire plastics-recycling process. The best you can do is call your municipal waste-disposal office and have them divert your PVC waste to landfills specially marked for hazardous waste. (This is where our faketastic Christmas tree is headed soon.)

Bill Walsh, founder of the Healthy Building Network wrote in Grist that “the weight of available evidence tells us that … it may well be the single most important source of many of the worst toxic chemicals plaguing the global environment today.” The full report is here.

More about the life cycle of PVC here.

Cover of the Feb/March 2006 issue of Plenty.

The cover of the latest issue of Plenty brings to mind why being environmentally and socially progressive can put a crimp in your love life. Years ago, I had a beau who took my granola-crunching ways¹ as a personal affront—I mean, he was literally offended that I didn’t eat meat and my jacket was made of pleather. (This was before I learned about the deleterious effects of PVC², but I’m still holding out hope that the erstwhile jacket was made of polyurethane, which has less of an impact on the environment. Did I mention that being a tree-hugger can be hell on your wardrobe, too?)

Suffice to say, that relationship didn’t last very long.

Still, being married to me has at least one advantage.

(Scene: On the PATH into Manhattan)

Husband: A friend asked me what I was getting you for Valentine’s Day.
Me: Whad’ja say?
Husband: I told her you didn’t believe in Valentine’s Day and didn’t want anything. So I have it easy.
Me: Did you also tell her it’s a trumped-up holiday built on the backs of child slaves and other human-rights violations?
Husband: Uh … no. (Twitches nervously; goes back to reading paper.)

So I hear you say, “Hey Witchiquita, where are you getting all these facts and figures from, yo?” If my master’s in bio-journalism isn’t enough to convince you of my research-fu, i.e., I know, at the very least, to get independent verification from myriad credible sources and I’m not just downing the Kool-Aid, would that fine publication known as Time and their legion of fact-checkers hold enough sway?

Watch this HILARIOUS Flash animation, as well. It had me LOL’ing like a hyena doped up on nitrous oxide.

And don’t let my grinchiness spoil your day if it’s a calendar date that has meaning for you. After all, love is stronger than witchcraft.

Yeah, GET A ROOM why dont’cha? (Waves cane.)

Crazy kids.

¹Although admittedly back then I was lukewarm and mostly lazy. BUT I’VE SEEN THE LIGHT (AGAIN)!

² Bill Walsh, founder of the Healthy Building Network wrote in Grist that “the weight of available evidence tells us that … it may well be the single most important source of many of the worst toxic chemicals plaguing the global environment today.”