Screenshot from Zerofootprint Kids Calculator

Look Ma, kids can figure out what their environmental footprints are, too, with this handy online calculator. Easy-to-understand categories include “Transportation,” “What You Eat,” and “What You Throw Away.” Like Whitney Houston wailed a lifetime ago, “I believe that children are our future …”

Now aren’t you glad this site doesn’t have audio?

(Also available through the Meet the Greens Web site.)

Photo by The Land of Nod

I’ve written twice now to The Land of Nod to try and ferret out if its furniture is made with wood from sustainably managed forests. Both times, no response was forthcoming, which is usually corporate code for “No, now go away and leave us alone.” This is a pity because even The Land of Nod’s parent company, Crate&Barrel, has dipped its toe into bamboo construction and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified woods.

Still, whoever sources goods for The Land of Nod—even if they use PVC oilcloth and never mention a product’s country of origin, which I find frustrating—has exquisite taste, and I like browsing the toothsome, candy-colored Web site to fill my mental inspiration silos.

The above I’m Not Bored Anymore art jar is a great example of this—it’s jammed full of art supplies and various odds and ends, such as googly eyes, pom poms, pipe cleaners, construction paper, buttons, spools, and beads. After all, rainy days don’t have to be excuses for parking child-size tushies in front of the television, passively receiving information and being advertised to.

For some creative recycling, you can make your own jar out of a used container and whatever bits and bobs you already have lying around the house—cut-up egg cartons, scrap yarn, pieces of fabric too small to sew with, bottle caps, sparkly candy wrappers, a toilet-paper roll, leftover wrapping paper, empty matchboxes, and old snipped-off buttons, just for starters. It makes a pretty swell gift for someone else’s kid, too, without adding any new garbage to the waste stream.

Photo by Old Navy

Wendy Richardson needs to blog more often. How else would I have found the U.K.-based Environmental Justice Foundation’s 2007 report, The Deadly Chemicals in Cotton? It’s a 40-pager, which may require more dedication than you currently have, but here is a sampling of the salient points, as outlined in the report’s Executive Summary. (Those two pages very worth a read-through in their entirety.) Global consumption of cotton, by the by, has doubled in the past 30 years.

• Cotton is the world’s most important non-food agricultural commodity, yet it is responsible for the release of US$2 billion of chemical pesticides each year, within which at least US$819 million are considered toxic enough to be classified as hazardous by the World Health Organisation. Cotton accounts for 16% of global insecticide releases—more than any other single crop. Almost 1.0 kilogram of hazardous pesticides is applied for every hectare under cotton.

• Between 1 and 3% of agricultural workers worldwide suffer from acute pesticide poisoning with at least 1 million requiring hospitalization each year, according to a report prepared jointly for the FAO, UNEP, and WHO. These figures equate to between 25 million and 77 million agricultural workers worldwide.

• A single drop of the pesticide aldicarb, absorbed through the skin can kill an adult. Aldicarb is commonly used in cotton production and in 2003 almost 1 million kilos was applied to cotton grown in the USA. Aldicarb is also applied to cotton in 25 other countries worldwide.

• Despite being particularly vulnerable to poisoning, child labourers throughout the world risk exposure to hazardous pesticides through participation in cotton production. In India and Uzbekistan children are directly involved in cotton pesticide application. While in Pakistan, Egypt, and Central Asia child labourers work in cotton fields either during or following the spraying season. Children are also often the first victims of pesticide poisonings, even if they do not participate to spraying, due to the proximity of their homes to cotton fields, or because of the re-use of empty pesticide containers.

• Hazardous pesticides associated with global cotton production represent a substantial threat to global freshwater resources. Hazardous cotton pesticides are now known to contaminate rivers in USA, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Australia, Greece and West Africa. In Brazil, the world’s 4th largest consumer of agrochemicals, researchers tested rainwater for the presence of pesticides. 19 different chemicals were identified of which 12 were applied to cotton within the study area.

(Emphasis is mine.)

Click here for more »

Screenshot from the Tap Project

For World Water Day—an international day of observance to draw attention to the plight of 1 billion people who lack access to clean, safe drinking water—a new UNICEF initiative known as the Tap Project has rallied together New York City restaurants to help raise money for clean-water projects.

And so today, at hundreds of participating restaurants across the city, patrons will be invited to pay $1 for tap water usually offered gratis. But whether you’re dining in New York, NY or Sebeak, Minn. (population 710), you’re free to make an online donation directly through the Web site.

For a blast from the past, read what I wrote about World Water Day, a year ago.

Related articles:
1. Charity: Water
2. On the (New York) Waterfront

Help out:
1. EWG’s Project Bottled Water

Photo by Andrea Chu/Getty Images

From BBC News: “New parents who choose eco-friendly or ethical goods for their babies can pay as much as £700 a year extra, according to new research.”

John Reeve, Chief Executive of Family Investments [which commissioned the study] said: “The cost of being a parent is growing and the added pressure now of choosing ethical or organic products can overwhelm parents living on stretched budgets, especially as families learn to cope with the cost of a new baby.”

What this story doesn’t add is that it’s possible to live frugally and consciously—buying gently used, for instance, won’t wallop your wallet. You can also make your own green cleaning supplies, and even skincare products. Fresh organic produce can also be affordable if you try growing your own, or by joining a co-op or a community-supported agriculture (CSA) group. (You can also just avoid the conventional produce that have the highest pesticide loads if money is truly tight.)

Live simply, but also live richly.

Photos from Mahar Dry Goods

Won’t these soapsicles make fantastic baby-shower favors? A great deal more practical than some random doodad you won’t know what to do with the next day. (Yes, I’m turning into an irascible scold in my old age.) Tip: If you have more time than money, sudsy dinosaurs or rubber duckies are also easy to make with some glycerin, natural coloring, and the right candy mold. ($6 each, Mahar Dry Goods)

Photo by Aantonin Kratochvil/OnEarth

California’s San Pedro Bay hosts a sprawling metropolis of polluting cargo ships, trucks, and locomotives filled with bulk cargo and cheap Asian consumer goods. Massive refineries stretch for nearly a half a mile toward the water.

The twin ports spew more pollution than the top 300 industrial sources and refineries in the Los Angeles Basin combined, most of it from ships and boats—themselves many times more polluting than all the power plants in Southern California put together. They form a “diesel death zone” that sets off allergies and asthma attacks in children, while sending the risk of developing cancer from air pollution skyrocketing. Welcome to the New Economy.

From the latest issue of OnEarth:

The off-shoring of manufacturing has moved some of the smokestacks away, but it has stoked countless new ones in the breakneck industrialization and urbanization of the developing world. And all that stuff made abroad has to be brought back to us, on demand, satisfying our ever-greater desire for speed and low cost. We click off our wishes on Web sites, setting in motion diesel engines by the tens of thousands: trucks, loaders, cranes, and locomotives, armadas of little smokestacks toiling to deliver us the goods. Ninety percent of international trade still moves by ship, as it has since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

What makes diesel exhaust different from ordinary exhaust is the soot particles typical disesel engines emit. Fine particulates that make up 94 percent of diesel emissions can penetrate lung tissue and cause genetic and cellular damage. You also get volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene and formaldehyde, along with smog-causing nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides. Add to that arsenic, cadmium, dioxin, mercury, and nearly 40 other cancer-causing substances, and you can see why diesel exhaust is responsible for 71 percent of the cancer risk from air pollution in the state of California. (The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach contribute more than 25 percent of the diesel exhaust in the region; emissions have gone up at least 20 percent since 2001.)

The article quotes Noel Park, a long-time San Pedro resident and a community activist who has finally decided to leave town after years of trying to convince officials that public health was a greater concern than “economic growth”:

“I swore to God I was going to live my life out in that house,” he said. “I’ve lived here 38 years.” Most of all, he was saddened by the implications of his own departure: “Anyone who takes the trouble to understand the issues leaves. And who’s left behind? The people who can’t leave. Well, God have mercy on them. If that’s not environmental injustice, I don’t know what is.”

Read the entire article here.

Before you check into your favorite online store and start clicking frenetically on your mouse button like a famished woodpecker, click over to a virtual swap meet such as Freecycle or Craig’s List, instead. Chances are, you’ll find what you need at only a fraction of what you’d have paid for something brand new, without sending your carbon emissions whizzing into the stratosphere. We recently snagged a like-new Ikea craft table (with a solid-wood top and steel legs) for $20 because the previous owner didn’t have room in his new apartment. Because the guy lived only 2 blocks from a PATH station, I made my humans haul it back home via mass tranist and their own God-given pedal power.

Photo by Tamara Muth-King/Natural Home Magazine

Natural Home Magazine has a fantastic feature on how to create a nontoxic nursery in its Nov. 2006 issue. A hardwood floor finished with nontoxic sealant (such as such AFM Safecoat’s Polyureseal BP), for ince, is safer than conventional carpet, which outgases harmful chemicals. Use natural-fiber area rugs, instead. (Check out LifeKind’s organic cotton throw rug or pick up a recycled rag rug.)

Also available online: Five nursery-decorating tips that help your kidling snooze and how to choose the best nursery colors.

Further resources:
1. Earth Mama Angel Baby
2. EcoChoices
3. Harvest Moon Boutique
4. Kushtush Organics
5. LifeKind
6. Mama’s Baby
7. Our Green House
8. Sage Baby NYC
9. Sage Creek Naturals
10. Tiny Birds Organics

Related posts:
1. EllaRoo Baby Carriers
2. Mail Call: Used Baby Bottles
3. An Eco-Friendly Nursery is a Healthy Nursery
4. Chemical Pollution Harms Kids’ Brains
5. Maybe Baby: Chemicals & Kids
6. Color Me Bad and Color Me Better: Eco-Friendly Paint

Photo by EllaRoo

Snigger maniacally as you and your bambino breeze past the Sunday morning stroller gridlock. EllaRoo makes a range of baby carriers, including the Mei Hip pictured above, using organic cotton canvas, hemp/tencil twill, and organic cotton batting. While conventional cotton is still used for some of the decorative accent fabrics, the company wants to transition as many of its products as it can to sustainable fibers, despite some complications that owner Vesta Garcia details frankly in a recent blog entry. (I don’t impress easily but her principles? Impressive.)

Some benefits of “babywearing,” (you kooky parents, you) according to SimpleSlings.com—which, incidentally, also has its own baby carriers made with organic-cotton fabric from Harmony Art:

• Parent has hands free to accomplish unlimited tasks.
• Sibling jealously of a newborn is greatly reduced because parents are still able to play with and tend to older children while simultaneously caring for the newborn.
• Breastfeeding can be easy and discreet while wearing a baby in a sling.
• There is no need to be tied to home for nap-time when your baby is used to being in a sling. Babies sleep comfortably in slings.
• Slings distribute the baby’s weight evenly across your shoulders, back, and/or hip and are worn comfortably for many hours at a time.
• Toddlers who were carried in slings are not as clingy as those who were not regularly worn. They are securely attached to their caregivers, and experience less separation anxiety.

The Wrap is handwoven by a co-op of weavers in Guatemala; all other carriers are made in the U.S. (From $59, Peppermint)

I’ve just updated my post on low- or zero-VOC paints to include Green Planet Paints and YOLO Colorhouse’s new baby line. Because the times, I like to keep up with.