Examine Green

Conscious Consumerism

March 18th, 2010

Grocery shopping can get mighty confusing and tedious once you start scrutinizing your purchases. Between organic, all-natural, healthy, hormone-free, and the ubiquitous “pure”, it can seem almost impossible to find the responsible, wholesome products that you want to stock your pantry and home with. Here are three things to keep in mind as you navigate the grocery aisle.

Shop Local

image courtesy: BeckyKP flikr.com

When you shop at local stores, chances are they’ve done a lot of the legwork and research for you already. They are more likely to carry brands that originate closer to home, and many carry substantial organic sections. Food co-ops are the cream of this crop, but even small grocers are becoming more receptive to the demands of organically-minded consumers and stocking those items in greater quantity. You can shop local at big stores, too–flip the cracker box over and check to see where they were manufactured. Buying from closer sources can cut the amount of gasoline you indirectly consume drastically.

Avoid Packaging

Products and food that are double and triple packaged, with twisty-ties, bags, and boxes, not only create a lot of garbage to get at what you want inside, but they almost certainly traveled from far away to get to you. What possible circumstance requires all those little screws and twisty ties to secure a toy to its cardboard display box? Traveling the Atlantic by ship, and then the continent by truck, of course. Stick to less packaged purchases whenever you can, and 9 times out of 10 you’ll be choosing the more sustainable option. If you get a choice between bagged lettuce and loose lettuce, go for the loose. Buy bulk almonds instead of jarred ones. Bringing a supply of your own bags, whether they’re washable cloth or just reused plastic, is even better than using the bags the store supplies for bulk foods!

Ignore Vague Marketing Language

When you do buy products that come packaged (and we all do), beware of getting hoodwinked by what’s written on them. Personal and home products are the trickiest to judge because there are so many misleading ways for companies to label things. Not all companies intend to trick you into buying their product–but sadly, some do. Beware of green buzz-words like “pure”, “natural”, and “fresh”; they are generally not much better than conventional products. What do these vague adjectives mean to you? Pure petroleum jelly still originates from petroleum. Natural palm oil still contributes to rain forest degradation (read more on that here, at The Scientific American). Any product that has something better to say, will say it. If it contains organic ingredients, you can be darn sure they’ll point that out to you in plain lettering. If the palm oil was farmed sustainably, you can bet that the product’s manufacturer will have put that on the box. Be suspicious of marketing language, and read the back of the label, keeping an eye open for the most toxic additives (see a list here, at the Organic Consumers Association). When in doubt about the safety of a particular ingredient, check the Skin Deep database before you buy.

Of course, you can always find ways to refine your shopping habits more and more as you become more comfortable with conscious consumerism–buy recycled plastic toothbrushes, seek out fair-trade cocoa powder, pick up milk in a glass bottle from a local dairy–but if you start out by focusing on those three principals, you can guarantee that your products will be safer, your food will be healthier, and your dollars will go to companies and producers who deserve them.

Tags: bulk, conscious, consumer, local, organic, personal care, shopping
Posted in Tread Lightly, Wise Up | No Comments »

Organic Meats– worth the price?

March 11th, 2010

Organic foods come at a higher ticket price for lots of different reasons– because they protect farmlands, accommodate for labor-intensive practices like weeding (as opposed to spraying), and are not typically made with low-cost, subsidized commodity crop fillers like corn syrup. Most consumers are aware of the benefits of these facts, and can mentally justify the 1.49 head of cabbage over the .79 cent one.

But when it comes to organic meats, the price gap jumps drastically; try a package of organic chicken breast for 8.99 a pound, as opposed to its conventional counterpart at just 5.79. It strikes some folks as difficult to justify such a boutique price for a basic ingredient.

I’ve thought a lot about how to justify this price gap in my grocery budget. When I pay more for something, I want to know that it’s healthier for my family, supports my community, and causes no harm to the world at large. How does an organic meat product benefit the customer, the producer, the environment, and the animal? Is it a price worth paying at the register? And if not, is there an alternative?

Here are some of the pros and cons of grocery store organic meat for each of the participants down the line.

Consumers

Pros: No synthetic growth hormones (very important for families with kids), no antibiotics, animals are fed organic diets.

Cons: Not likely to be nutritionally different, as large-scale organic growers (even so-called “free-range” operations) do not typically allow their animals access to pasture.

Producers

Pros: Farm workers avoid contact with chemical contaminants used in sterilization of conventional facilities.

Cons: Large scale organic operations are typically corporations, which compete with and crowd out small family farms without supporting the local economy.

Environment

Pros: Feeding animals organic diets supports organic grain farms, which prevent the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.

Cons: Packaging, shipping, and preserving meat across the nation creates plastic and styrofoam waste, and uses fossil fuels in transport; large-scale operations often pollute waterways with excess nitrogen from the manure of thousands of confined animals.

Animals

Pros: No cannibalism–animals are not fed the waste bone, tissue, and blood that conventionally raised animals typically get as a supplement.

Cons: Confinement, a grain-only diet, and lack of exercise are still the norm in organic operations.

In the end, the high price of organic meat might seem too high a price to pay for relatively little benefit. To me, the true ideal for organic meat is the picture that most of us have in our minds of happy cows grazing on grass, happy chickens clucking about a pasture eating bugs, and happy pigs with curly pink tails munching veggie scraps from a trough. The sad truth is that large-scale operations function nothing like that ideal.

There are, however, still some small family farms that raise animals this way. More and more these days, you can find grass-fed, pastured operations that provide healthy, truly free-range meat directly from a farm. The caveat is that the products they sell are seasonal, and that (according to state laws) you must typically buy a portion of or whole animal, rather than a cut of meat at a time, i.e. a quarter share of a cow, half a pig, or whole chickens. Of course, it’s up to you as the consumer to go out of your way to find these farms, but it may be as easy as googling “free-range”, “pastured meat”, and your county name, or checking local craigslist ads. You may even find a producer face to face at a farmer’s market this summer.

Finding family-owned meat farms does take more time than picking up organic meat at the grocery store. But as far as I’m concerned, if I’m paying nearly twice as much, I want to be twice as good, or better.

Pastured meat

Pros: Supports family farms; prevents nitrogen pollution from manure run-off; meat is nutritionally superior thanks to exercise and a grass-heavy diet; animals are less vulnerable to disease, and spread sicknesses less rapidly through their population; workers enjoy autonomy and live on or near pastureland, encouraging environmental stewardship; local farms ensure stability of the local food chain; face-to-face transactions encourage strong community relationships; buying local keeps three times the amount of money you spend in your own community.

Cons: You may end up having to drive out to the farm to pick up your order and see all the happy animals in person. This is a real bummer, especially if you have kids, who will probably want to stay for hours, petting farm dogs and peeking in on baby chicks.

Tags: beef, conventional, family farms, free-range, grass-fed, industrial, local, organic, pastured meat, pork, poultry
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FRESH the movie

February 14th, 2010

I am a documentary lover. I’ll watch almost anything if the subject matter is handled in an interesting and thorough way– the history of feudal England, comic book conventions, the study of a font, I love it all. But there is almost nothing that gets to me in as emotional a way as a good film about our American food systems. Show me a montage of free range chickens and smiling faces at a farmer’s market, set it to plucked fiddle music, and voice it over with inspirational quotes by the likes of Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan, and I’ll burst into tears.

I haven’t had a chance to see the film FRESH yet, partly because its makers have chosen to distribute it in an interesting way. They have not sold it to theaters, but they will lease it to be screened to anyone who pays a license fee– including your local theater if you demand it! If things go our way, we at Examine Green hope to bring it to the theater on Main Street in our hometown soon. You can too! From the FRESH website:

Please help us reach 1 million people (to start with that is.) Organize a home screening or a community screening. Get in touch with us, let us know what we can do more and better. We’re open!

Ana Joanes & The FRESH Team

If you haven’t already, also check out the films Food, Inc., The Future of Food, and King Corn for inspiration, information, and plain old documentary fun.

Tags: film, food system, fresh, local, organic
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It works!

May 10th, 2009

Good news! The petition I posted here for you all to help by signing about the misleading rBGH labels has worked its magic, and the bill has been vetoed!

Read about it at the Civil Eats blog, here.

Thanks to everyone who signed!

Tags: consumer action, petition, rBGH
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Take a Fair Trade Coffee Break!

May 9th, 2009

Tomorrow is World Fair Trade Coffee Break Day (long name for a cup o’ joe, I know), and I’m going to be at the Mount Vernon Co-op to promote it! Read about the official event at the Fair Trade Resource Network here, and if you’re so inclined, take part by drinking some fair trade coffee with friends! Hopefully the FTRN will break their record from last year’s, of 55,000 participants.

Surely you’ve seen the fair trade logo on things like coffee, chocolate, and bananas, but if you’d like some specifics about what it is, check out these videos on the FTRN and this guide provided by Green America. In a nutshell, fair trade is a certification that lets consumers know that the farmers or producers behind a product is being reasonably compensated for their efforts.

Why fair trade, you ask? Well, as a consumer, every dollar you spend is a vote for the product you purchase. It tells the producer that you approve and want more of what they have to offer. If we all vote with our dollars and approve fair wages for farmers and producers in developing countries, you can bet that sleazy, predatory practices like child labor, indentured servitude, and slavery will cease. Farmers will be allowed to take care of their land rather than deforest it in an attempt to make ends meet for a particular year. Fewer drug crops will be planted as safer and more traditional food crops can pay the bills.

We may not realize it all the time, but everything that comes in to our lives came from someone else’s. When we buy fair trade products, we are thanking the people all over the world who contribute to our health and happiness. I am thankful for the farmer in Madagascar who made the decision to plant his coffee among the trees of the forest, instead of cutting it down. I am thankful for the farmer in Mexico who cut my banana down by hand. I am so thankful, in fact, that I want to make sure I pay them well enough for what they have given me that they can afford the things they need. They scratched my back, so I’m scratchin’ theirs.

So join us tomorrow, at the WFTD Back Sratch–I mean Coffee Break–as people all around the world come together to celebrate fair trade!

Tags: co-op, coffee, fair trade, global
Posted in Green in the News, Tread Lightly, What's Up with Us | No Comments »

Sign the Petition!

April 14th, 2009

No doubt you’ve heard of rBGH and its use in the commercial dairy industry. I’m not sure anyone’s jury is still out on whether or not rBGH has negative consequences for human health–not to mention the health of dairy farms. Even the FDA has concluded that it’s not quite as savory as was once initially hoped.

Well, apparently the debate isn’t quite dead and gone yet. The folks at Rootstock by Organic Valley sent me a newsletter letting me know that rBGH and it’s cheerleaders are after those frivolous, show-off organic dairy farmers again, promoting a bill in the Kansas State Legislature stating that milk sold as “rBGH-free” should also carry a disclaimer saying that rGBH-free milk is the same as milk containing rGBH and that no evidence to the contrary exists. (Gee, what was all that fuss about, then? Thanks, pharmaceutical lobbyists!)

If you think that’s bologney (yeah, I know, but it’s pronounced baloney and I can’t bring myself to type it correctly), then sign the petition at Food and Water Watch or send the Governor of Kansas a message urging her to veto the bill through the Center for Food Safety. If this bill passes in Kansas, not only would it give other states’ lobbyists a leg up on the fight, but it would force nationwide brands to decide whether to manufacture separate labels for Kansas-bound products or allow all of their products in every state to carry the same misleading label.

Keep fightin’ the good fight, organic farmers–we love ya!

Tags: dairy, Kansas, label, lobbyist, organic, petition, rBGH, rBGH-free
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Seattle’s Green Festival 2009

March 29th, 2009

If you’ve been following my tweets today, you know that I have been at the Green Festival in Seattle all day! I have been looking forward to it all year, and it certainly did not disappoint! Those Seattle-ites with the mind to do so can still make their way to the eco-friendly convention tomorrow, Sunday the 29th. There will also be future festivals in Denver, Washington D.C., and San Francisco. Check out the Green Festival’s webpage for upcoming events here.

Well, well, where to begin? I knew from the outset that I wanted to renew a few magazine subscriptions, sip some fair trade coffee, and get some bargains on organic kids’ clothing, but I ended up seeing and learning so much more. It’s a good thing I had my camera with me, or I might not have been able to remember half of what I saw. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose.

The first things we saw when we came in were: compostable buddies!

L to R; Audrey, Apple Core, Samantha, Leaf Buddy

My daughter, Tegan, who is a year and a half old, became fast friends with Leaf and lost interest in much of anything else. “Go see Leaf, high five Leaf!” was all she said the rest of the morning. (Did I mention we took our 3 under 3 with us? Moms, you know what I mean. Yikes.)

Anyhow, compost your organic matter, folks! Even things that typically break down quickly can sit in landfills for decades because they get buried in trash mountains and lack the exposure to oxygen needed to decompose. Most cities collect food compostables in yard waste bins. If you don’t live in a city, then compost it yourself! I’ll try to find some useful links about how to do this later, but for now– google it!

Meandering in, we were both drawn to the Earthlust booth. We’ve all heard about how great stainless-steel bottles are; they’re BPA- and pthalate-free, and last much longer than plastic bottles. Earthlust offers all the health and conservation benefits of other stainless-steel bottles like Kleen Kanteen and New Wave Enviro do, but these bottles stand out from the pack.

Earthlust's Stainless-Steel Bottles

They are lovely, edgy, modern, and, well, cute. We bought too many. (Mine has poppies on it!)

A few booths down from Earthlust was a booth containing the most delicious tortilla chips I have ever tasted. Organic does not mean boring, people. R. W. Garcia’s Thai Chips– they are getting 5 stars from both of us; I can tell you that right now.

Audrey Devouring K. G.s Delicious Thai Chips

Audrey Devouring R.W. Garcia's Delicious Thai Chips

If our local grocery store doesn’t carry these uncommonly-good snacks yet, they are getting harassed until they do.

Next up: Washington Tilth supplied me with a free bag of cover-crop seeds (plus “Buy Washington Organic” stickers for the kids, which they liked more).

Tilth Producers of Washington--if they don't do it, who will?

Buy local, buy organic! The Tilth Producers of Washington do the kind of work I believe in, and they provide the kind of food that will nourish our economy just as much as our bodies. Find some near you here!

The kids were excited to hear story time at the Organic Valley Kid-Zone.

Tegan and Audrey's son, Caden, in storytime chairs!

And they both took a liking to the Smith Brothers Farms‘ little cow.

My cow! No, my cow!

What’s a tiny cow between friends, though, right?

This next booth was really exciting to me. I’ll definitely have to write more about it later, in its own blog. Local currencies protect everyone from the arbitrary decisions and questionable motives of those who are far away from us, both in distance and philosophy.

Indestructible Currencies

Fourth Corner Exchange is a local currency already flourishing around the area.

Books to read about local currencies

My library will be hearing from me soon about each of these books!

I also stopped and renewed my Mother Earth News Magazine subscription for ten (woohoo!) bucks. The folks at Mother Earth News are always doing the legwork on valuable product research and saving me from the hassle of trial-and-error experience. I mostly consult their articles for wisdom in the garden, but they frequently have great articles encouraging me to delve deeper into sustainablity and all things DIY. Plus, I love looking at those full-page Yurt ads. So cozy.

And next: sprouted almonds by Sproutalicious. I’m not kidding, you guys, this picture cannot describe the deliciousness of these nuts. These are another 5-star reviews.

Sprouted Almonds by Sproutalicious--so yum!

Their booth-master told us that the nuts are soaked and allowed to almost sprout, then dehydrated. I think. I can’t remember because my ears were full of the sound of crunching nuts. Whatever it is they do, it works. They’re a really new company so you may not be able to find these in the store nearest you yet, but I for one am petitioning my local co-op to pick them up!

Santa Cruz and Knudsen’s were both giving out juice and snacks, so their booths were pretty crowded. Notice my off-center, sticking-my-camera-through-a-crowd-of-thirsty-people photo. Did manage to snag some juice, and it was indeed tasty.

High demand for sweet refreshments!

Here’s a company I had never heard of before: Organic Essence. The most interesting thing about their products was that the containers they came in were not plastic. Chapstick came in paper tubes, like a toothpaste kind of arrangement, and lotion came in biodegradable, 100% post-consumer recycled cardboard tubs. The hand cream smelled nice, too, if that matters to you. (wink)

Organic Essence uses all recycled, biodegradable containers

Another body care product booth we spent a lot of time at was Bella di Terra’s. Audrey had the good fortune of being offerred a sample of their Stress-Free Headache and Temple Rub while we chatted with the owner, Kelly. She told us about her experience in chemical engineering and how it propelled her towards the safety of natural ingredients like essential oils, and how she realized that nature has to offer everything we need to look and feel our best. Meanwhile, Audrey’s little dab of Stress Rub warmed and tingled at the base of her neck, relieving her head- and neck-ache, naturally. Remarkable stuff!

Kelly of Bella di Terra

Seeing the face of a company in person and hearing first-hand about her committment to safe, natural products made both of us feel great about what we bought from her. The fact that she is local and that she crafts everything by hand were great icing on the cake!

Pangaea Organics was a bustling booth, with a guess-how-many-chapsticks-are-in-the-jar raffle and free samples!

Pangaea Organics' display o' loveliness

Another booth that caught our attention was OnlyGreen. Entrepreneur George Kantos gave us the run-down on what he thinks will be the future of green buying, and we were certainly optimistic about his vision. OnlyGreen is the first company to make responsible use of the direct-selling model in order to connect people to green products. What really won us over was George’s personal expression of commitment to consumers’ interests, and not to brand loyalty. “If a product comes along that works better or is more ecofriendly than the one I’m carrying, I’ll pick it up and drop the one that doesn’t work as well,” he promised. OnlyGreen hopes that the advantages of getting all your hard-to-find green needs from one place will offset the costs of shipping.

Who wouldnt trust such a great, Canadian grin?

Who wouldn't trust such great, Canadian grins?

You might not know an OnlyGreen EcoAdvisor that you can order through yet, but we for one (for two?) are definitely keeping our eyes on OnlyGreen to see where the future takes them.

Eek! A bag monster!

Sign on back: "You made me--Now try to stop me!"

She had a very friendly face, but I got her mid-turn, so she kind of looks like a bag rack. But there was, indeed, a real person buried underneath all that plastic waste!

And that was about the time that Tegan conked out on her daddy’s shoulder and we knew it was time to bid our farewells!

Tegan improvises a nap

I wish we were able to attend again tomorrow, but our kids will thank us to drag them around only one day of the weekend. Tomorrow, though I won’t be at the Green Festival, I’ll be poring through my massive library of handouts from the hundreds of other booths I attended and sharing more of what I saw with you.

Did you attend the Green Festival and fall in love with a product that you want us to add to the Examine Green review site? Submit a comment and let me know!

Tags: biodegradable, chapstick, fair trade, green, green festival, hand-crafted, local, local currency, lotion, organic, recycle, seattle, stainless-steel water bottles, tilth
Posted in Laugh a Little, What's Up with Us, Wise Up | 1 Comment »

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

March 24th, 2009

You may have heard of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics before: it’s a coalition of concerned consumers and scientists that urge for more regulation in the personal products industry. It is not limited to cosmetics, however. The campaign covers toothpaste, deodorant, baby wash, and more. The following excerpt comes from the CSC’s “Not Too Pretty” report:

“Major loopholes in federal law allow the $20-billion-a-year cosmetics industry to put unlimited amounts of phthalates into many personal care products with no required testing, no required monitoring of health effects, and no required labeling.”

I attended the baby shower of a close friend yesterday, and it reminded me of the importance of this campaign. Every person who brought a gift for the new mom and her little one had only the baby’s interests at heart, and yet it is the unfortunate truth that some of the products gifted may well contain toxic ingredients. Among the brightly-colored tissue paper, stuffed elephants, and tiny booties were bottles of baby wash containing formaldehyde, creams containing dioxane impurtites, and fragrances made with pthalates– all of which are carcinogenic. No one would intentionally buy something unsafe for a newborn, and that is exactly why the campaign was started. As consumers, we assume that what makes it to the shelf has been through rigorous testing, but that’s not the case with personal products. The public needs to know, and we need to learn how to protect ourselves and those who depend on us.

Luckily, there are people out there who are willing to do the science-y stuff for those of us who couldn’t spot a pthalate if it walked down the end of our noses. Go to Skin Deep, the campaign’s database of products, to search out the products you use and see how they rate in terms of safety. I, personally, was astounded at the level of toxins I frequently surrounded myself with. And we’re not talking mild toxins or maybe toxins– we’re talking serious, stay-the-heck-away-from-me toxins.

I know that we can never be in complete control of our environment and that some of what we come in contact with in our lives will inevitably be unhealthy, and for that I am thankful for my strong immune system. But I certainly don’t want to take that healthy barrier for granted by slathering things on myself that have the potential to cause real damage. Do you?

Tags: baby, beauty, campaign for safe cosmetics, carcinogens, dioxane, personal, products, pthalates, skin deep
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We’re going to the Green Festival!

March 17th, 2009

That’s right, the Green Festival being held in Seattle next weekend, the 28th and 29th of March. It’s being hosted by Green America, which is an organization that promotes the causes of conservation and social justice. We loved last year’s festival, and let me tell you, we can hardly keep our grass-fed horses held and our organic cotton panties untwisted at the thought of all those conservationists in one room. Plus, last year we got tons of free swag.

You can come with us! Well, I mean, it’s open to the public, so you can go without us, too, but– the point is, I’ve discovered (read: been forced to acknowledge) Twitter! I’ll be, uhm, tweeting all day from the festival, along with my sister, Audrey. We’re hoping to discover some great, new products to upload to the site, but also we’re looking forward to some of the great speakers that will be presenting. Tune in on Saturday for a stream of sneaky peeks at the US’s first Green Festival of the year, and check back on the blog after the weekend is up, because I’ll be full of great stuff to share here as well!

Tags: green america, green festival, seattle, twitter
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Green America’s Green Festival Getaway!

February 26th, 2009

Green America (formerly Coop America) held a Green Festival in Seattle last year, and my family and I went. I had an amazing time. It was so invigorating to be surrounded by tens of thousands of people who had all come together in the hopes of making a difference in the global and social climate today. There was more information than I could have possibly soaked in, but I came home with enough literature and handouts to keep my mind in active C O N S E R V E mode for weeks after it was over. I’m really looking forward to this year’s festival.

When I went to the website for the upcoming festival, I discovered this: a contest to win a free trip to one of the upcoming festivals in either Denver or Chicago! Submit to Green America your best idea for going green on a budget, and if your story is chosen to be featured in their upcoming newsletter, you win!

The contest ends on the 28th, so hurry and get your tips in! Telling three friends about the contest will win you three extra chances to win!

Tags: contest, green festival
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