As last April’s tragic Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh illustrated, worker exploitation and abuse is still happening around the world. More than 1,200 people lost their lives, most of them women sewing clothes for US companies like Walmart. The workers had been ordered back into the building to sew, despite police warnings that it wasn’t safe.

Many Americans believe that a similar tragedy couldn’t possibly happen here in the US, and it’s indeed unlikely that any domestic company could get away with sending employees into a condemned building. That said, several US industries have workers who toil in the shadows and are subject to horrific abuse—from employees in US clothing sweatshops to workers on American farms to people toiling alone as house or hotel cleaners, child care and car wash workers, and more. One group that gets hit the hardest is US immigrants, who are often subjected to the worst workplace abuses. In the midst of very real backlash against the recent immigration reform bills (S. 744/HR 547), what gets lost in the debate is the fact that many immigrants are lured to the US by unscrupulous American employers seeking vulnerable workers to underpay and exploit.

Sweatshop Conditions at Home

When Natalicia Tracy first came to the United States from Brazil, it was under a contract to work as a nanny for two years for a family in the Boston area. Excited by the prospect of seeing a new country, learning English, and making a good living, Tracy was in for a rude awakening. 

Though she’d expected to work hard, she’d also expected a respectful relationship with her employers. But it soon became clear that that wasn’t going to happen.

Upon arrival, rather than being given her own bedroom in the family’s spacious home, she was shown to their three-season porch, where she was to sleep on a futon on the floor, even during harsh Boston winters. 

“They had told me I was just supposed to nanny [for a regular 40-hour workweek] and help out a little bit, but before I knew it, I was supposed to do everything around the house,” she says. “I worked seven days a week and until 2 a.m. on the weekends.”

In addition to caring for the children, Tracy had running errands, cooking meals, and cleaning the family’s home added to her job. When the family told her to hand-scrub their white rugs with toxic cleaning products, she began having severe asthma attacks. 
“At night, I couldn’t breathe,” she says.

Instead of taking her to the doctor, the family told her to just take some of the medicine they had on hand for their asthmatic son—after she was finished giving him his nebulizer treatment. 

They only paid her $25 a week—not even close to a living wage, and certainly not enough for her to save and pay her way back to Brazil. Not that they would have let her go anyway.

“I lived in their home and didn’t have family close by and didn’t speak any English,” she says. “I was here alone. I didn’t have a place to go or friends. They wouldn’t let me use the phone to call someone to talk about what was going on. They wouldn’t let me put mail in the mailbox. It was a very traumatic experience.”

If it sounds like modern-day slavery, that’s because it is, and it’s shockingly common here in the US. 

“People talk about sex trafficking, but they don’t talk about the very prevalent problem of labor trafficking,” says Andrea Mercado, communications director for the National Domestic Worker Alliance. “There are many cases of people who were brought [to the US from other countries] to work. They’re promised they can learn English or even be able to go to college. Often we see situations where their passports are taken away, they’re taken from their family, paid very little if at all, subjected to horrible working conditions, and have no privacy or adequate sleeping conditions. Every month we learn of new cases across the country.” 

Immigrants: A Vulnerable Population

About 23.1 million immigrants work in the US, and only eight million are undocumented. Another 240,000 come here legally as temporary guest workers. Many of the most exploited workers on American soil come from this immigrant population, both those who are undocumented and those who are legal residents or recent citizens.

Because recent immigrants may still be learning English or may be unfamiliar with US labor laws, many are taken advantage of, says Rebecca Smith of the National Employment Law Project. 
As a result, immigrant workers are frequent victims of wage theft, dangerous conditions and uncompensated workplace injuries, discrimination, and even physical assaults, according to Smith. 

Though legal status doesn’t mean a worker is immune to abuses, the situation can be worse for workers who are undocumented. “Our broken immigration system has created an underclass of vulnerable workers in our country, easy prey to employer retaliation,” says Smith. “Across the country and across low-wage industries, employers use threats to expose workers’ immigration status as a cudgel to ensure that workers can’t complain about abusive conditions.”

A System Rooted in Slavery

Forty-six percent of US domestic workers—i.e. child and elder caregivers and housecleaners—are immigrants, and they’re particularly susceptible to abuse because they often operate in isolation. But domestic workers and farmworkers are also exploited because of an archaic rule that excludes them from important federal protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938.

FLSA was signed by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt and provided basic rights to US workers—a 44-hour maximum workweek, a national minimum wage, overtime pay, and a ban on child labor. But to get it passed through a divided Congress, Democrats bowed to pressure from Southern Republicans, who wanted farmworkers and domestic workers excluded from basic protections like the right to organize to overtime pay.

Those exclusions continue to this day.

“It’s the legacy of slavery,” says Mercado. “The Southern Congresspeople didn’t want domestic workers and farmworkers—who at that time were primarily African American—to have the right to organize.”

“Domestic and farm work are forgotten professions,” adds Tracy, who is now the executive director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston, MA. “Who did this work in 1938? African Americans, who back then weren’t thought of as real people. Because of that mentality, the US developed this invisible, dehumanized workforce that still makes the rest of the economy happen.”

In absence of a federal bill that would plug the domestic- and farmworker hole in FLSA, organizations like NDWA are campaigning for state laws to do so. So far, Hawaii and New York have passed state laws, with California and Massachusetts currently moving similar bills through their state legislatures.

Sweatshops of the Field

Immigrants make up 72 percent of US farmworkers, or those who labor on farms owned by others, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health. As noted above, because of their exclusion from FLSA, they often don’t make the minimum wage—legally. 

In fact, 30 percent of all US farmworkers had total family incomes below the poverty line ($22,050 for a family of four), according to the Department of Labor. Whether working in California’s garlic fields, Florida’s tomato farms, or Carolina blueberry fields, farmworkers are often victims of wage theft, where supervisors withhold or steal their pay, and legal oversight is often lax, says the National Farm Worker Ministry.

They’re also victims of other types of abuse. A 2012 report by Human Rights Watch found that women farmworkers face a very high risk of sexual harassment or abuse, including “rape, stalking, unwanted touching, exhibitionism, or vulgar language by supervisors, employers, and others in positions of power.” Most farmworkers interviewed for the report said they had not reported the abuse, fearing reprisals, including job loss.

Farmworkers Fight Back

One group of immigrant farmworkers in Florida has had such powerful results in their fight to change abusive working conditions that the Washington Post recently called them “one of the great human rights success stories of our day.”

In 1993, a group of mainly Latino and Haitian tomato pickers in Immokalee, FL, met to discuss that their wage of 50 cents per 32-pound bucket hadn’t increased in 30 years. This meant a worker had to pick nearly 2.5 tons of tomatoes per ten-hour day to earn the Florida minimum wage, notes Guadalupe Gonzalo, an Immokalee farmworker. 

“Physical abuse and sexual harassment were common,” says Gonzalo. “There were cases of modern-day slavery on farms,” which she says, means that farm owners would force workers to work overtime, threaten them with violence, and even “lock them in a box truck.” 

And so the pickers started the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to end abuse on Florida tomato farms. Since then, the CIW has achieved several victories, including pressuring 11 major US fast food and grocery chains to sign a groundbreaking agreement with the CIW called the Fair Food Program. The program includes independent monitoring of farms and worker protections in cases of wage theft, sexual harassment, and forced labor. It also mandates a penny-per-pound wage increase, which, Gonzalo says, may seem small but does add up to make a difference in their lives. 

In 2005, Taco Bell became the first to sign the agreement. Since then, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, and others have followed suit.
 

Under the program, if a farm owner won’t take action to address worker complaints, the workers can go to the grocery and fast food companies themselves, which will pressure owners to make changes. If a farm continues to abuse workers, the corporations are legally obligated to stop purchasing from it—a significant threat that gets results. 

“Conditions [on FL farms] have changed in a major way since the Fair Food Program was enacted,” says Gonzalo. “Workers are calling it a new day for pickers in the fields.”

Today, the program has improved conditions for tomato pickers at 90 percent of Florida’s farms. CIW staff, including Gonzalo, focus on educating workers at those farms about their rights and on working to bring more retailers on board. They are currently targeting Wendy’s for its failure to sign the agreement. Wendy’s is the only prominent US fast food chain to not sign. 

“Wendy’s response is that it’s already purchasing from farms in the Fair Food Program, so it feels no need to join the program itself,” says Gonzalo. “But the program has teeth because of the companies that join—the farms know there will be market consequences if they violate the agreement. [By not joining], Wendy’s is not paying the penny-per-pound premium, and it doesn’t suspend farms that violate worker rights.” 

While the CIW has been a force for change in Florida, abuse still continues on farms in other parts of the country. But CIW workers are helping to spark change outside of their state.

“Workers in Immokalee are migrant farmworkers, so they’ll work in Florida for eight or nine months and then travel up to other states to pick other crops,” says Gonzalo. “CIW workers understand what rights they should have, and they [spread the word].”

Food for Thought

In the restaurant industry, one out of every ten workers is an immigrant, according to a 2008 study by the Pew Hispanic Center. That report found that 20 percent of cooks and 30 percent of dishwashers are undocumented immigrants.

“In many New York restaurants, the American waiters and hosts owe their jobs to the underpaid [undocumented] immigrants in the kitchen, whose low wages allow the restaurant to exist,” columnist Eduardo Porter wrote in the New York Times in 2012.

Saru Jayaruman, co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), stresses that the industry gets away with incredibly low wages across the board for immigrants and non-immigrants alike—and the ROC study Behind the Kitchen Door found that it’s race, not immigration status, that keeps most workers from moving up to higher-paying jobs in the industry. 

“But the industry uses fear to keep immigrants in the lowest-wage positions, like dishwashers,” she says, pointing out that employers can intimidate both documented and undocumented immigrant workers by threatening to use the federal eVerify system to prove whether an individual is legally able to work in the US. 

“eVerify is notoriously inaccurate, so employers can use it to keep [all immigrants] afraid and at the mercy of their employer,” she says. “This hurts all workers across the board, because they can pay low wages to immigrants, and that results in low wages for everyone.”

Cultural Exchanges Gone Wrong

Even foreign students who come to the US for a cultural exchange experience aren’t exempt from abuse. In March 2013, student guest workers at McDonald’s, who came from Latin America and Asia as part of a State Department-sponsored J-1 visa cultural exchange program, walked off the job amid allegations of wage theft and forced overtime. 

The students, who worked in central Pennsylvania, had been promised $3,000 to work full time at McDonald’s for a summer. Some received only a handful of hours, while others were forced to work 24-hour shifts with no overtime pay. They were housed in cramped basements owned by supervisors who took rent payments out of their paychecks, often bringing their net pay to zero, says the National Guestworker Alliance.

While the J-1 visa program is meant to provide foreign-born students with a meaningful cultural exchange, McDonald’s isn’t the only company to use it as a source for cheap, exploitable labor. In 2011, student guest workers at the Hershey chocolate factory in Hershey, PA, also went on strike, claiming that Hershey’s paid them only $40 to $140 per 40-hour workweek to toil in the factory. 

In 2012, the students won a settlement in which contractor companies in Hershey’s supply chain agreed to implement new labor protections and to pay $213,000 in unpaid wages and $143,000 for health and safety infractions.

“Not only is Hershey exploiting children on cocoa farms in West Africa, but it has even exploited student guests on American soil,” says Liz O’Connell, Green America’s Fair Trade director. “This is a company that really needs to clean up its act and treat all of its workers not just fairly, but humanely.”

And Then There’s Walmart

Walmart is infamous for alleged abuses against workers of all cultures across its supply chain, and its role in the Rana Plaza tragedy was only one example. It also stands accused of having sweatshop conditions in its US-based supply chain. In 2012, the National Guestworker Alliance found adult guestworkers, mainly from Mexico, being subjected to horrific abuses at CJ’s Seafood, a Walmart supplier in Breaux Bridge, LA. The workers reported that supervisors forced them to work 16- to 24-hour shifts, imprisoned them in the plant, and threatened them and their families. They were also subject to wage theft.

The Alliance’s work triggered federal investigations at CJ’s, and Walmart ultimately suspended the company. The Alliance also examined 18 more US-based Walmart seafood suppliers—and found over 200 labor and safety violations at 12 of those companies in the last five years. 

In addition, six lawsuits have been filed recently against Walmart warehouse contractors for wage theft—“workers not paid for all hours worked, not paid overtime, not paid the minimum wage, and not paid benefits they were owed,” says Leah Fried of Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ), a worker-run organization. WWJ has, to date, helped recover over $700,000 in stolen wages through the lawsuits, with more pending. 

The victims? Mainly people of color, says Fried, with an estimated one-third to one-half of them being immigrants.
 

WWJ is calling on Walmart to develop “a responsible contractor policy that allows for worker enforcement” at US warehouses doing business with Walmart, says Fried. “Its current system of monitoring has done nothing to end abuse in its US supply chain. As the largest importer of goods in the US, Walmart sets the standard for the entire distribution industry, but its layers upon layers of contractors have created an industry of poverty jobs with no job security or benefits. One thing is clear—wage theft and abuse is rampant [at Walmart-contracted warehouses].”

The US Economic Backbone

While the picture many anti-immigration pundits paint of foreign-born workers is that they’re illegally taking good jobs away from US citizens, many industries have come to rely on their labor—because they’re often more willing to accept temporary work and lower wages, often in difficult industries like farm work. 

In addition, a popular myth is that immigrant workers don’t pay taxes. A 2011 study by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy found that undocumented immigrants alone paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes in 2010. “Immigrants—even legal immigrants—are barred from most social services, meaning that they pay to support benefits they cannot receive,” notes the Center for American Progress, which points out that as a result, immigrants are a net positive to the country.

It’s important to note that while US immigrants are more likely to labor on farms, in back-of-the-restaurant jobs, and as housekeepers than native-born workers, they’re also more likely to work as physicians and surgeons, says the Brookings Institution. And studies by the George W. Bush Institute in partnership with the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce found that 40 percent of all Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or a child of an immigrant. Their research also found that although immigrants make up only 13 percent of the US population, they are 16 percent of the US labor force and in 2006 were responsible for nearly 25 percent of US patent applications.

A Richness of Experience

All of these facts only hint at the richness of experience a diverse immigrant population has to offer the country.

Natalicia Tracy is a prime example. She left the abusive Boston household when her two-year contract was up. For the next 13 years, she would take on other jobs as a caregiver for children and the elderly. 

As her confidence grew, so did her sense of social justice. She started volunteering at a homeless women’s shelter. She also put herself through college and is currently working on a Ph.D. in sociology. Her organizing abilities and passion for helping others caught the attention of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston, MA. She became the executive director of the nonprofit, whose mission is to provide support for workers from the Brazilian and broader Latino community. Under her leadership, the Center expanded to include programs for domestic workers, to co-found the Massachusetts Domestic Workers Coalition, and to advocate for a state Domestic Worker Bill of Rights. 

“Having been a domestic myself, it was a very natural thing for me to do,” she says of the expansion. “I understand the issues, and now I’m in a position where I can do something about it and support women who are marginalized and exploited.”

Tracy is only one person who gave back to the US after coming to its shores from another. There are many more who could achieve their full potential and do the same, if only they weren’t trapped in hopeless working situations. 

The immigrant rights movement is not about handouts, but about ensuring that every US immigrant’s situation is handled fairly and with compassion—and that exploitation of this vulnerable worker population comes to an end. 

“Immigrants have always contributed to our country,” says Mercado. “They make it more diverse, play really critical roles in our economy. All of us are touched in some ways by the jobs they do. In a lot of ways, many do the work that makes everything else possible. They’re putting food on the table and taking care of our homes and loved ones so we can go to work in other professions every day. They’re our neighbors and our friends. And they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Four Ways to Fight for Immigrant Worker Rights

1. Reach out to immigrant workers in your community who may be laboring under abusive conditions. If you don’t share the same language, find someone who can interpret for you. Take extra care to find out what their situation is and whether they need help.

The following organizations welcome calls from people who want advice on how to best intervene in a potential abuse situation:

• The National Domestic Worker Alliance, 646/360-5806
• The Restaurant Opportunities Center, 212/243-6900
• Coalition of Immokalee Workers, 239/657-8311
• Warehouse Workers for Justice, 888/DIGNIDAD
• National Guestworker Alliance, 504/309-5165.

2. Have a conversation. “Talk to others about treating immigrant workers in low-wage jobs with respect and making sure they get fair pay and meet basic needs. Normalize the conditions of thinking of each of these workers as a person—one who is doing a real job,” says Natalicia Tracy of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston, MA.

3. Support protections for whistleblowers. Immigrant workers may fear retaliation if they blow the whistle on abusive employers. Senator Richard Blumenthal had introduced an amendment to the Senate immigration reform bill that would have protected immigrant guest workers who alert authorities about abuse from retaliation, but the amendment didn’t make it into the final version of the bill. As the debate moves to the House, let your legislators know that you support whistleblower protections for all immigrant workers.

4. Buy green and fair. Get what you need from the truly green companies in the National Green Pages®, which are screened and certified by Green America, take extra care to ensure that all their workers earn a living wage and work in healthy conditions.

Plastic pervades all aspects of our lives – from the wrapping on the food we eat to the microfibers that wash out of the clothes we wear. We are producing nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year and more than 8 million tons end up in the ocean each year. These plastics break down into smaller pieces, which are then consumed by marine life and eventually us when we put seafood on our plates. The packaging industry is responsible for 40 percent of plastic pollution and represents one-third of all trash, most of which are one-time use items such as saran wrap, grocery bags, and plastic bottles, but there is a sustainable packaging movement on the rise.

Why plastic?

Plastic packaging is cheap, resilient, and versatile. This combination makes it appealing to businesses as it extends shelf life, is customizable, and production does not profoundly impact profits. A business’ packaging is often the first interaction a customer has with its brand, and with more customers interested in sustainable packaging practices when making purchasing choices, unsustainable packaging is simply no longer a wise option.

Sustainable packaging is the way to go

Since packaging is a large part of brand recognition, businesses that ideate green packaging solutions demonstrate that they value sustainability to every potential customer. Conscious consumerism shows that customers respond positively–52 percent of consumers willing to pay more than 10 percent more for products with sustainable packaging–so businesses that invest in sustainability goals are more likely to meet the bottom line.

These statistics show that sustainability in a business’s overall value proposition is not a trend. The Green Business Network’s certified green businesses make sustainability a crucial value in their models. With millennials twice as likely to pay more for green products than older generations, the future of businesses hinge on their green value propositions. Green America’s Green Business Certification requires our business members to account for their products and packaging beyond their end use—meaning a product does not end in a landfill, but can be returned, recycled, reused or composted. Green Business Network members like Salazar Packaging, Blue Sky Shipping, and Green Field Paper Company offer many sustainable packaging solutions.

Compared to five years ago, sustainable packaging is more important to half of all Americans, and consumers have become more interested in the life cycle of packaging than ever before. Although not all businesses package with sustainability in mind, the movement is gaining momentum as large corporations like FedEx and McDonalds transition to greener packages. It’s better for business, and better for people and the planet, too.

Thank you for joining thousands of people coast-to-coast to swarm Kroger stores the weeks surrounding Labor Day (August 26 – September 10) to urge Kroger to stop selling food grown with bee-killing pesticides.

We need your help to turn up the heat on Kroger by demonstrating how many sales they would lose if they don’t stop selling food grown with bee-killing pesticides. If Kroger doesn’t help combat pollinator decline, the retailer and its customers are going to lose the most delicious and nutritious foods that stock store shelves and make up a big chunk of Kroger’s bottom line!

We are talking about foods such as apples, strawberries, kidney beans, tomatoes, grapes (bye bye wine), and so many more. You can view the full list of foods pollinated by bees here.

We’re asking folks across the country to take two pictures of their grocery cart. One picture with all the food you’d purchase at Kroger pollinated by bees and one with only food not pollinated by bees!

This Kroger photo action is easy. Below are some tips to help. If you have any questions or need help preparing, please drop a line to our buddies at Friends of the Earth at beeaction@foe.org or call 202-222-0738 To learn more visit www.foe.org/beeaction.

I. Instructions for Kroger Photo Action:

1) Pick a day and time to go grocery shopping at one of Kroger’s supermarkets between August 26 and September 10 (work this into your Labor Day or normal weekly shopping!).

2) Find a Kroger store near you by entering your zip code into the following website:

• https://www.kroger.com/stores/storeLocator
• Note: Kroger operates under a lot of different brand names! Kroger’s brands include Delta, Dillon, Food 4 Less, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Harris Teeter, Jay C, King Soopers, QFC, Ralph’s, Roundy’s and Smith’s.

3) Download and print the sign found below. Or get creative and make your own!

4) Bring the sign on your grocery-shopping trip.

5) Take two pictures with your sign that show Kroger what your cart would look like with and without pollinators!

• Below is a list of foods that require bees for pollination
• An easy way to do this is to shop for food that does not require bees first and take a picture of your cart. Then, fill your cart up with delicious produce and other foods, courtesy of bees, and take a picture of the huge difference!
• Try to position your cart near a Kroger logo and store sign to prove you’re in a Kroger store and make sure you include your printed sign!
• We took some example pictures for you below!

6) Ask to Speak to the Store Manager and show them your pictures. Use the sample script below!

7) Send your photo(s) to gmoinside@greenamerica.org and beeaction@foe.org and tell us how it went. We’ll post all of the photos we receive on our social media pages to create a buzz about the week of action and send a strong message to Kroger that people across the country want the company to stop selling food grown with bee-killing pesticides.

II. Talking Points and Tips

A. Tips for Talking with the store manager:

• Be Polite! Thank the manager for taking time to talk with you.
• Ask if they have heard about the campaign and direct them to the www.foe.org/beeactionwebsite if they haven’t.
• Tell your story! Explain why the need to protect bees matters to you as a customer and as a concerned citizen.

B. Sample Conversation:

Hi, my name is _______. I’m shopping here today to urge Kroger-owned stores to help protect bees, butterflies and other pollinators, upon which our food supply depends, by committing to establish a pollinator protection policy that includes the phase out of pollinator-toxic pesticides, including neonicotinoids and glyphosate, in your company’s supply chain and encourage suppliers to employ alternative pest management strategies. I also urge your company to increase its offerings of USDA organic food, prioritizing domestic, regional and local producers.”I took these pictures to show you and Kroger leadership the sales you would lose if you don’t stop selling food grown with bee-killing pesticides. As you can see, we rely on pollinators for some of the most delicious and nutritious food in your store. Can you contact Kroger headquarters and request that they implement a pollinator policy that reduced pollinator-toxic pesticides and increase offerings of domestic, organic food?III. Other ways to take action this week

A. Swarm the phone lines: Call Kroger’s Corporate Headquarters and deliver the following

message: Kroger: 800-576-4377

“Hi, my name is _______ and I’m a concerned Kroger customer in xxx city. I’m calling to urge Kroger to help protect bees, butterflies and other pollinators, upon which our food supply depends, by committing to establish a pollinator protection policy that includes the phase out of pollinator-toxic pesticides, including neonicotinoids and glyphosate, in your company’s supply chain and encourage suppliers to employ alternative pest management strategies. I also urge your company to increase its offerings of USDA organic food, prioritizing domestic, regional and local producers.”

B. Spread the Buzz on social media

1) Facebook: Post the statement below, along with the picture you took with your sign or the Facebook image below (also available at www.foe.org/beeaction), on Kroger’s Facebook Wall (https://www.facebook.com/Kroger/) and spread on your own page to spread awareness! Use the following message: Kroger: Stop selling food grown with bee-killing pesticides and increase offerings of organic bee-friendly food! www.foe.org/beeaction #SavetheBees”

2) Twitter: Tweet any of these tweets at Kroger’s Twitter account. Be sure to use this hashtag on any of your tweets: #SavetheBees

• @Kroger Stop selling food grown with bee-killing pesticides and increase USDA organic offerings! #SavetheBees
• @Kroger You'll lose the most delicious & nutritious food on your shelves if you keep selling food grown with bee-killing pesticides! #SavetheBees
• @Kroger Organic farmland supports 50% more pollinator species, increase USDA organic offerings free of bee-killing pesticides! #SavetheBeesSee the sign and an example of the action below!

V. Sign for Pictures/Social Graphic

Without Bees

With Bees!

It is great to see more clean products popping up on grocery store shelves. But many companies are making bold claims and not necessarily backing them up. A popular new protein bar, RXBAR, markets itself based on its bold claim that its product is clean. But that all depends on one’s definition of “clean.” Here at GMO Inside we believe clean should mean that a product is free from exposure to toxic chemicals, is a result of high animal welfare, and without GMOs in its supply chain.

Though RXBAR claims its products are clean, as long as its eggs, nuts, and fruit are coming from the conventional food supply they are bound to be laced with toxic chemicals and a result of concerning animal welfare practices. RXBAR’s eggs likely come from chickens raised in factory farms, a far cry from organic farming.

The reality is if eggs aren’t coming from organic pasture-raised production and/or certified by a transparent third-party organization, the chickens producing those eggs are exposed to very poor unhealthy conditions and are fed GMOs. These conditions aren’t just unhealthy for the animals, they are disastrous for the environment and those that live “downstream” of chicken operations.

Concerns about Eggs and CAFOs

Corporate and Geographic Consolidation

Gone are the days of pastures, barns, field crops, and farm animals. Eggs are produced in industrial operations with hundreds of thousands of laying hens in each facility, growing by nearly 25 percent from 1997 to 2007. Nearly half of egg production is concentrated in five states: Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, California, and Pennsylvania. Egg operations have grown by 50 percent in the same ten-year period, averaging 750,000 hens per factory farm.

Animal Welfare

The way laying hens are raised directly affects their well-being and health. Egg-laying hens are subjected to mutilation, confinement, and deprivation of the ability to live their lives as the active, social beings they are. More than 90 percent of eggs in the US are produced in confinement conditions. Welfare abuses run rampant in egg CAFOs including: killing male chicks upon hatching because they have no value to the egg industry, debeaking young female chicks causing severe pain, living in battery cages with the equivalent of less than a sheet of paper of floor size, being subjected to a process called “forced molting” where hens are starved and deprived of food for up to two weeks to shock their bodies into the next egg-laying cycle, and slaughtering them after their egg production declines in 1-2 years even though the lifespan of an industry chicken would be 5-8 years.

There is growing concern about the living conditions in which food animals are raised; however, there is little oversight when it comes to product labels. Most egg labels have no official standards or oversight or enforcement mechanisms, nor much relevance to animal welfare. Labels include cage-free, free-range, free-roaming, pasture-raised, certified organic, vegetarian-fed, and more. The highest-welfare eggs come pasture-raised with certification from Animal Welfare Approved. Unfortunately, few farms are certified to this standard. Though the state of California now requires chickens sold in the state to be raised cage-free this does not guarantee animals access to the outdoors and can mean the animals spend the vast majority of their lives in crowded chicken houses.

Even certified organic is not without flaws. According to a report by Cornucopia, industrial-scale organic egg producers, with facilities holding as many as 85,000 hens each, provide 80 percent of the organic eggs on the market. This means that less than half of a percent of egg-laying hens in this country are on pasture-based farms. Therefore, it is important to dig deeper and do research into the company. Local producers offer a shorter supply chain and more transparency.

Public and Environmental Health

Poor living conditions directly impact public and environmental health. Large-scale factory farm operations produce more than just eggs; they are also breeding grounds for disease and pollution.

Large hen facilities house hundreds of thousands of animals in each structure and result in Salmonella poisoning of eggs. Due to a Salmonella outbreak in 2010 where close to 2,000 cases in three months were reported, the US experienced the largest shell egg recall in history—half a billion eggs. While Salmonella rates are higher in battery cage systems, it is still a problem for cage-free facilities due to the sheer number of hens living in such close quarters.

As seen in other factory farm operations for pigs and cows, chicken CAFOs produce higher levels of waste that can be disposed of in a timely and environmentally responsible manner. The imbalance of a large number of animals in an increasingly smaller space causes mountains of fecal matter to pile up. Ammonia levels increase, negatively impacting air quality and water quality, running off into local streams and rivers. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ammonia can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before returning to the ground and then into waterways. The nutrients in runoff from animal waste can then cause algal blooms, which use up the water’s oxygen supply killing all aquatic life, leading to “dead zones.” Dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico are growing larger every year, in addition to those along the East Coast.

In addition to having a devastating impact on aquatic life, industrial egg production also contributes to climate change. After assessing the life cycle of eggs from “cradle-to-grave” production, the Environmental Working Group reported that consuming two extra-large eggs is equivalent to driving a car more than one mile.

Concerns about GMOs

GMOs and growing herbicide resistance have increased the use of toxic chemicals on crops, polluting our soil and water and posing a significant negative environmental impact. Corporate control of GMOs hurts small farmers. The biotech and chemical corporations, such as Monsanto, spend millions to support anti-labeling efforts and keep consumers in the dark about their food. There are also health risks. Monsanto's GMOs are not yet proven safe for human health—the FDA does not require independent testing of GE foods, allowing for many of the studies on GMOs to be industry-funded and heavily biased. The vast majority of egg laying hens (egg-producing chickens) are fed Monsanto's GE corn and soy sprayed with Monsanto's Roundup.

Non-Organic Almonds & Fruit 

Conventionally grown almonds and fruit are often sprayed with toxic pesticides. Recently, nine different pesticide residues were found by the USDA Pesticide Data Program on conventionally grown almonds including one probable carcinogen, three neurotoxins, and four honeybee toxins. The most common pesticides used on dates include Roundup and Imidacloprid, a systemic neurotoxic insecticide. RXBAR's can't be considered "clean" while they continue to use non-organic ingredients.

What Next?

Eggs are part of many people’s daily lives and the choices we make around eggs and products containing eggs have a huge impact on people and the environment. We can all help by making informed and conscious choices when purchasing your eggs. Companies like RXBAR can make a difference by living up to their marketing claims and pushing the egg industry to change its ways, working to provide truly “clean” products for its customers.

Green America launched a new campaign Thursday urging AT&T and Verizon to publicly commit to fuel their operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025. "AT&T and Verizon both recognize the urgency of climate change and the need for action, now we need to see that concern translate into commitments to purchase of wind and solar power,” Beth Porter, climate campaigns director at Green America, said in a statement. Both companies are currently using less than two percent renewable energy to power their massive servers, according to Green America.

University Testimonials for Recycled Paper

"When it came time to re-brand Berkeley Law's collateral, we re-strategized our thinking in regards to how each piece will be used, as well as how it will impact our environment, with much attention paid to minimizing waste. This thinking also enabled us to further align with the long-term sustainability goals of the UC. We revisited format, size, page counts, quantities, and of course, paper. New Leaf [Paper] was at the forefront of our minds when it came to selecting paper that was a perfect match to our objectives. Through making more thoughtful decisions around our choices, we felt that it was a no brainer and win-win all the way around."

"With the turn of each page, we wanted our viewbook not only to inform, but also to impart a full sense of the UT Tyler experience, including the park-like beauty of campus, which wraps around two lakes, surrounded by pine and oak forests. We chose bright-colored, uncoated New Leaf Ingenuity [100% post-consumer waste] paper, which holds the ink brilliantly and provides a rich look ant feel."

"At first, I thought it would take too much time and money to get the look right on recycled stock. Our printer was also worried - they thought it would rip on the press and be a nightmare - but the scenario couldn't have been better! We ended up having to make fewer adjustments than we did with our old stock. The printer was also very pleased with the outcome." 

Larry Clarke, Editor, Washington State University Magazine
on using Rolland paper
(see the full interview here)

"The Baylor Business Review (BBR) magazine is the flagship communication of Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business. The 100 percent post-consumer waste recycled paper selection allows the BBR to be environmentally friendly without sacrificing the high quality look and feel readers have come to expect from the award-winning magazine."

Scott Pruitt’s EPA is taking aim at yet another Obama-era policy - the Clean Water Rule of 2015. This rule addressed the term "waters of the United States" as used in 1972’s Clean Water Act, and broadened the definition to include rivers, streams, and other small waterways which originally weren’t explicitly addressed in the Act. In fact, it protects about 60 percent of bodies of water in the country. 

When the Clean Water Rule was brought to public comment in 2015, 87 percent of the million people who commented showed support for the Rule. Clean water in big waterways and small, of course, is in everyone’s best interest. At a time when more and more people are concerned about the toxins in their drinking water, loosening regulations on polluters is clearly dangerous to human health. 

Now Pruitt wants to return to the 1972 terms of what the Clean Water Act and explicitly exclude the small waterways that had been protected in 2015. Large businesses, especially in the agriculture industry, argue that the rules constitute government overreach and cause economic harm. If the EPA leaves enforcement of environmental protections to individual State’s discretion, we will inevitably have less and less protection from polluting industries.  

This is just the first step in a large-scale assault on the Clean Water Act. We cannot allow this repeal of the Clean Water Rule to go through. Take action by submitting your comment to the EPA until Aug. 28th, 2017. Use this example comment if you like.

Dear Administrator Pruitt, 

I ___(name) stand firmly by the EPA's Clean Water Rule of 2015. In its current form, streams, rivers lakes and other wetlands are given the necessary protections, and any attempt to weaken these designations is against the spirit of the bipartisan Clean Water Act of 1972. I uphold the Clean Water Rule of 2015 because it ensures us 

clean water and viable habitats for people and animals. Any attempt to limit these protection to will lead industries to recklessly pollute waterways to the detriment of public health and safety. I oppose any and all efforts of the EPA to work against one of its central missions of providing Americans with clean and safe drinking water. 

Signed: ______(name) 

Date_______(today's date) 
 

This post is by Eleanor Greene and Mark Rakhmilevich.

BY EILLIE ANZILOTTI

Apart from the familial ties that I was born into, my relationship with Wells Fargo may have been one of the longest-standing of my life. Since I was 11 years old, I’ve had a savings account with the bank, linked to my parents’ finances. I don’t remember how old I was when I opened my first checking account, but I assume I was in high school. When I moved to New York three years ago, I set up my first credit card in a Wells Fargo branch office and felt very adult and also concerned about the streak of fiscal irresponsibility the new plastic might unleash in me. What company I banked with felt as inevitable as the family I was born into and the state in which I grew up. Putting my Wells card down on the table at dinner, I often felt a bizarre affection for how it identified me as a Californian.

But despite that sentimentality, Wells and I have parted ways. The decision was mine, and the idea to make it began to percolate earlier this year, as allegations of the bank’s financial investment in the Dakota Access Pipelinebegan to come out. That California-based sentimentality over my account had morphed into something more resembling nausea, knowing my money was funding something I didn’t believe in. But even so, it’s taken me until now (longer than it took the entire city of Seattle) to make a switch.

After I decided I wanted to pull my money from Wells, I had to confront the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. How would I go about finding a new bank I could trust? When should I move my money, and how? It took a series of conversations and months of thought and preparation, but I’m sharing what I learned here to make it clear that it’s not as overwhelming as it seems.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN YOUR BANK?

Where you bank is not fated; it’s a personal choice. Or rather, it should be, but the same forces of apathy, ignorance, trepidation, and laziness that were preventing me from taking my finances out of an institution with which I ethically disagreed prevent too many others from doing the same. When you’ve frequented the same ATMs and logged into the same online bank account for the majority of your life, a move away from that institution can feel rather like stepping off the edge of a cliff.

But it’s a cliff that’s proving increasingly intriguing for many young Americans, who have been losing faith in our large financial institutions. Wells Fargo is not alone in finding itself at the center of a scandal: In 2015, Citibank was ordered to pay back its customers a total of $700 million for misleading credit card marketing; Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is still at the helm of the company despite knowing of and ignoring to Bernie Madoff’s $64 billion Ponzi scheme, largely run through JPMorgan Chase account and considered the most fraudulent financial scheme of all time. Both institutions, along with Bank of America and Wells Fargo, were the engines that both created and punctured the housing bubble that precipitated the financial crisis of 2008. As Robert Jackson Jr., a law professor at Columbia University, told Quartz, “there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ big bank after the financial crisis.”

“Generally and broadly, there’s a lack of trust among millennials in the financial industry, and it’s deserved,” Ariel Anderson, a financial planner at Society of Grownups, a personal finance organization aimed at young people, tells Fast Company. “We constantly read headlines about the missteps of banks like Wells Fargo; we lived through the financial crisis,” she says. And large financial institutions are representative of the capitalist system, which, as Fast Company has reported, has fallen out of favor with more than 51% of the millennial demographic.

Various organizations have tapped into this trend: In 2011, during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement, a group of organizers designated November 5th as Bank Transfer Day, and encouraged consumers to move their money into nonprofit credit unions or ethical financial institutions. This past year, Green America suggested that people funnel their Valentine’s Day discomfort into a breakup with their big bank. (Though there are no estimates as to how many people participated, Bank Transfer Day drew around 50,000 members to their Facebook page). Both organizations emphasized, however, that starting the process should not be confined to these designated days: You should begin to move your money whenever you feel ready and able to do so.

So that being said, here’s what I’ve learned from making the switch out of a big bank:

DO YOUR RESEARCH

Given that I parted ways will Wells Fargo over an ethical quandary, I wanted to find a new platform that wouldn’t compromise my values. Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) banks and credit unions, generally, target their investments more toward local investments and causes, rather than destructive projects like DAPL. Credit unions are highly localized, member-owned nonprofits that provide financial services to the communities in which they operate; CDFIs are private, for-profit institutions that make loans to underserved communities (read more about them here). The Harbor Bank of Maryland, for instance, recently made a loan to East Baltimore Development Inc. that has gone toward financing new science buildings for local schools. The Opportunity Finance Network, an umbrella organization for CDFIs, has a helpful search tool to use to locate nearby community development banks.

Ethical banks like Aspiration in the U.S. and Triodos in Europe, both of which boast sustainable and fossil-fuel-free investment portfolios, are another alternative. Though less hyperlocal than CDFI banks and credit unions, ethical banks are driven by good–Aspiration, for instance, devotes 10% of its revenue to charity, and charges customers only what they feel is fair to pay–and aim for institution-wide transparency to counteract the labyrinthine structures of big banks.

For the sake of disclosure, after a long and thorough search process, I opened an Aspiration account. Spring Bank, a New York-based CDFI, was a close contender, but another thing to consider about banking with a CDFI is that you ought to be firmly settled in your community to do so–I still have strong ties to the West Coast as well as New York, so I wanted a bank that would offer me more flexibility in terms of location (Aspiration is all online). But give me a few more years to become a a rooted New Yorker, and experienced bank switcher, and I can see myself opening another account with Spring Bank. Both Aspiration and Spring represent another bonus of ethical banking: They reimburse all ATM fees.

MAKE SOME (VERY CAREFUL) MOVES

Once you’ve analyzed your options and selected a new account that aligns with your ethics, now’s the time for the tricky part: Actually moving your money. This is best done very slowly (the whole process took me about two months). I talked to Andrei Cherny, CEO of Aspiration, after I decided to open an account with them, for some tips; here’s what he recommended.

If you have more than one account open with your big bank–I had two checking accounts and a savings account–consolidate your money into one account, then alert your bank that you will be closing the others. I communicated with Wells Fargo through email, which was surprisingly simple, but you can also visit a physical branch and meet with a representative who will walk you through the process. Then, open your new account–I transferred just $500 to begin with, and most banks will suggest a minimum deposit–and if you’ve been receiving direct deposits from your employer, talk to your HR representative to get a new form to route your checks into your new account. I recommend doing so immediately after receiving a paycheck, so there will be enough time in between checks to link the new account. For me, it took less than two weeks.

While you’re waiting for your new card to arrive in the mail, go through last month’s bank statement from your old account to identify and cancel automatic payments and recurring transfers (some examples: the amount I regularly moved into my savings account with each paycheck; my Optimum bill; my monthly Netflix payment). Then, go through your payments systems, like Venmo and Apple Pay, and make sure those are linked to your new account or card, when it arrives.

When it does, you can do a big transfer from your old account to your new one. To do so, you’ll need to link your old account with your new one. On your new bank’s website, find the “bank transfer” section, select your old bank from a list (you’ll see all the big ones–Wells, Bank Of America, Citi, and so on), and sign in. You’ll then select whatever account you want to link, and how much money to move to your new bank.

It’s best to keep some money in your old account if you’ve missed any automatic payments–you don’t want to be hit with an overdraft fee while you’re trying to financially liberate yourself. And it’s also best to keep that old account open with a small amount of cash in it for a couple of months after migrating, just in case of emergencies.

WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, FACE DOWN YOUR FINANCES

I expected to feel good about putting my money into an account that I chose, and I do. But the unexpected benefit to this whole, long process, was the opportunity to get up close and personal with my finances. In addition to a distrust of large financial institutions, JJ Ackles, the director of marketing for Long Game, a prize-linked savings account app, tells Fast Company that young people tend to get trapped in an avoidance cycle when it comes to their money. “It’s like: I feel shitty about my money, therefore I don’t want to look at it, therefore I don’t look at it, therefore I feel shitty about it,” Ackles says.

When you move all your money to a new account, you have to look at it. And that opens the door to considering new ways to handle it. There are apps like Long Game, which reward every time you move money into your savings account with the opportunity to play addicting, lottery-like games and potentially win more money; other savings platforms like Digit help you set up specific savings goals.

And it’s also, says Erin Lowry, blogger and author of Broke Millennial, not a bad time to consider investing, if you haven’t done so already. Though the financial industry has a history of making investing into an opaque endeavor, available only to those with substantial monetary worth and knowledge, that’s actually not the case. New tools now exist that both lower the financial bar to investing, and make it easier to tailor your investments to support causes you care about. Aspiration, for instance, manages two funds with a $100 minimum investment, both of which support only companies with solid environmental and ethical commitments. The startup OpenInvest has a $3,000 minimum investment, but takes the unique approach of asking you what you care about, whether it be climate change or low-income housing development, and builds out a portfolio unique to you. (Fast Company has done a thorough roundup of what you need to know to invest to fit your values.)

Taking your money out of a bank with which you clash ethically frees you to use your money to have the kind of impact you want on your life and on the planet. “People are looking for better tools and better ways to manage their money,” Ackles says. “We want to create a way for people to have a positive interaction with their money.”

And taking that step, Lowry says, will begin to put pressure on the big banks to reconsider their own ethics. “We need to educate ourselves and we need to stop putting our money in institutions that we feel are unethical,” Lowry says. “So many people don’t even bother to do the diligence and just stick with the status quo. That makes it easier for the old banks who have not changed their policies to behave in the way they have always done, just because they can.”

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There are a lot of claims made about bioplastic products. Some are true, some are partly true, many are misleading, and most are unsubstantiated. It’s a bit of a Wild West scenario in the world of bioplastics: producers are trailblazing into new terrain in search of petrochemical plastic alternatives; everything from corn to mushrooms to poop is seen as a polymer source. Manufacturers and retailers are hot to tout what they see as “environmentally safe” plastic. Meanwhile, policymakers and regulators are scrambling to attach real definitions to the producers’ eco-fantastic labels.

There’s plenty to get excited about in terms of finding a good alternative to petrochemical-produced plastics, but we shouldn’t ride off into the sunset with bioplastics just yet.

What are bioplastics?

Bioplastics are, in simple terms, plastics made from renewable feedstocks, which can include corn, sugar cane, potatoes, coconuts, mushrooms, wheat, wood, or soy beans to name a few. (Conventional plastics are made from crude oil.) Like conventional petrochemical-produced plastics, there are several types of bioplastics: Some of the most common include poly lactic acid (PLA) derived from corn, wheat, or sugar cane, and labeled with a #7 resin recycling code; bio-polyethylene made from sugar cane or corn, with a #4 recycling code; polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) primarily derived from corn, with a #7 recycling code.

Bioplastics are used to make a lot of so-called “green” products like food containers, cutlery, bags, bottles, foams, electronics casings, medical supplies, and beyond. Many are compostable, a few might be biodegradable, and some are also recyclable.

Sounds great, doesn’t it—a naturally derived plastic from a renewable source that just melts back into the Earth when we’re done with it? We hate to break your bioplastic bubble, but not all of these biomass-produced polymers are environmentally innocent.  

Renewable Isn’t Always Green

You probably noticed that many of the renewable feedstocks used to make bioplastics are agricultural crops—corn, sugar cane, soy beans. Industry cowboys are quick to point that out, too. But what they aren’t so forthcoming about is that much of the corn used for bioplastics is a GM (genetically modified) crop, and that crop requires a lot of industrial fertilizers, pesticides, water, and land to produce. For example, NatureWorks, one of the largest manufacturers of PLA bioplastic in the US (a subsidiary of Cargill, one of the largest suppliers of genetically modified corn in the world), uses—you guessed it—GM corn.

Magnify this process to a global scale: GM crops expanding, huge swaths of land being converted to agriculture but not for food, more deforestation, more fertilizers and pesticides being used, food costs continuing to soar, and food shortages becoming even more of an issue. Suddenly, the scenario isn’t so Earth-friendly. Sure, the stuff isn’t made from crude oil, which decreases use of fossil fuel and the production of greenhouse gases, but it has negative consequences in other ways.

But not all bioplastics use genetically modified corn, or even corn, and innovations using more sustainable biomass, like algae and even chicken feathers, are already underway. There are promising results by a California-based start-up converting sewage into biodegradable bioplastic. There’s certainly no shortage of human waste! According to Heeral Bhalala, a research associate in sustainable plastics for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), even mega-companies like PepsiCo. are greening bioplastics: “[They] are already working on using the food scraps from their food production plant to create 100% biobased bottles for their beverages.”

That said, even if bioplastic companies start using abundant, low-impact materials for their products, we can’t neglect to consider the end-of-life cycle of many of the bioplastics—that is to say, their ability to biodegrade, compost, or recycle.

Beware of Biodegradability Claims

This is the category in which bioplastics theoretically have huge benefits. Bioplastic producers like to hoot and holler about their bioplastics being 100% biodegradable and/or compostable. Not every bioplastic is biodegradable (e.g., bio-polyethylene (#4) is only recyclable), and even those that do biodegrade may only do so in specific environments, if at all. ILSR’s Heeral Bhalala states that most product claims of biodegradability “are usually not true.”

Part of the problem is that there are loose standards for what qualifies as biodegradable, and there’s virtually no third-party verification of manufacturers’ biodegradability claims. The Federal Trade Commission “Green Guide” gives a broad definition for biodegradability for manufacturers to use a guide in terms of marketing, but the FTC is an agency built to protect consumers from deceptive advertising—it doesn’t make environmental policy or set the standards.

ASTM International, an organization that develops international standards across various industries, created pass/fail standards for biodegrading and composting that are generally accepted and trusted. Yet, know that these are voluntary standards; bioplastic products aren’t required to be tested, except in California.

In terms of specific legislation, California passed laws that require products with compostable or biodegradable labels pass ASTM standards. And the USDA’s Certified Biobased Product label, which verifies that a product contains a proven amount of renewable biological ingredients using ASTM standards, just went into effect in February of 2011. Further legislation for marketing claims and stricter definitions of terminology are sure to come either on a federal or state level, or both.

However, even biodegrading bioplastics that pass ASTM standards need to be looked at carefully. You have to ask what conditions are required for that biodegradation? By and large, the answer is an aerobic or oxygen-filled environment (a field, a forest, an ocean) with adequate microbes to start munching away at the stuff. Here’s the hitch: a lot of plastics (petrochemically produced or biomass produced) end up in landfills. The Environmental Protection Agency reports on its Web site that “only 7 percent of the total plastic waste generated in 2009 was recovered for recycling.”

Let’s be clear on this: landfills are designed to be as anaerobic (oxygen-void) as possible—the things are practically hermetically sealed to prevent as much decay as possible. Melissa Hockstad, Society of the Plastics Industry’s Vice President of Science, Technology and Regulatory Affairs and Director of the SPI Bioplastics Council, put it bluntly, “Bioplastics are not currently designed to degrade in a landfill.”

In short, even bioplastics from the most sustainable feedstocks aren’t going to benefit the environment any more than conventional plastics if they end up in landfills. They must be disposed of in a way that allows them to biodegrade or compost.

Coordinating Composting

A biodegrading product is not held to the same standards as a composting product; composting is a more strictly defined, standardized process of degrading. “Biodegradable” means a product will break down and return to the Earth in a “reasonably short time,” according to the FTC Green Guides. They may need the help of a municipal composter to do so.

Composting bioplastics shows a lot more promise than biodegrading. “Compostable,” according to the FTC, means the product will degrade into “useable, compost-humus-like material that enriches the soil and returns nutrients to the Earth.” According to the FTC, they are supposed to degrade just like leaves and food waste in a backyard composter, but due to a lack of oversight with this label, the fact is that many will still need a municipal composter to fully break down.

Right now, consumers probably should assume that current “biodegradable” and “compostable” bioplastics can only be composted in a commercial composting facility with controlled heat and moisture (i.e., generally not the backyard heap). Sadly, these composters are few and far between, the majority do not accept material from individuals, and some may ban bioplastics anyway, since many bioplastics are indiscernible from conventional plastics. A lot of progress still needs to be made simply in terms of public access.

On the bright side, detailed international standards for compostability already exist, and the noprofit Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) created a Compostable Label program that verifies company’s composting claims. Additionally, the Sustainable Biomaterials Collaborative (SBC) created a set of guidelines and recognition levels for compostable biomass-based food serviceware called the BioSpecs, which take into account issues of environmental protection, health, social and economic justice, and material resources. Hopefully paving the way for more cities, San Francisco and Seattle implemented   city-wide compost curbside pick-up programs that accommodate compostable bioplastics; Seattle’s municipal composter, Cedar Grove, even has its own approval label on compostable products that reads “Cedar Grove Approved.”

For other ways to get your compostable bioplastics to a commercial composter, Heeral Bhalala of ILSR suggests seeking out the compostable bins at Whole Foods (not all stores have them) and other sustainably minded stores and restaurants, which often have compost-hauling services. And you can look up your nearest municipal composter and see if it’s one of the few that accept waste from individuals on the Web site findacomposter.com.

For home-composters willing to try it, Bhalala says “it’s good to test composting [bioplastic] products in your own backyard compost pile. They do require higher temperatures to compost and are slower to break down, so it helps to shred them to increase their surface area and to put them in the middle of the compost pile.”

Melissa Hockstad, of SPI, states that the US Composting Council is “… working on growing the composting industry in the US such that more people have more access to [commercial composting] facilities, which is beneficial for bioplastics such as PLA and PHA.” But until composting facilities are readily available and accessible, bioplastics could most often end up hauled off to landfills.

Recycling Bioplastics

Recycling bioplastics isn’t always an easy accomplishment. Recyclers fear that non-petroleum-based plastics will corrupt their streams (many bioplastics have lower heat resistance—and that whole biodegrading thing they might do is not desirable in the eyes of recycled plastics manufacturers for fear that the recycled plastic will degrade prematurely).

Most bioplastic manufacturers say recyclers’ concerns are unfounded.  In fact, bioplastics are recyclable; bio-polyethylene (given a #4 resin recycling code) is even accepted in many traditional recycling streams. As for bioplastics PLA and PHA (the #7s), they are generally not accepted by municipal recycling collections, but some manufacturers offer to take back their products for recycling. However, there is no infrastructure for individuals to collect and transport the plastics back to the manufacturers, so for those unwilling to mail their bioplastics back to the manufacturer, in the trash it goes!

In essence, current US recycling and composting facilities just haven’t caught up with bioplastics. And in order to give recyclers and composters the incentive to start to invest in accepting bioplastics in their streams or facilities, there needs to be a significantly larger volume of bioplastics to recycle or compost. Basically, the problem has to get worse before it will get better. The current and predicted growth rate for the bioplastics industry (estimated to be upwards of 40% in the next four years by some experts, like Melissa Hockstad), might make that happen sooner than later.

The Toxicity Question

As we reported in the Nov/Dec 2011 Green American, plastics are rarely just made out of oil—they’re mixed with a host of chemical additives to enhance their capabilities, i.e. make them more flexible or less flammable, to prevent them from degrading or to tint them pretty colors, write Mike Neal and Dr. Anthony Andrady in a 2009 research paper published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transitions B. The same holds true for bioplastics—they aren’t just made from plants. They may have the same toxicity issues that a conventional plastic does.

In October 2010, a team from the University of Pittsburgh released an analysis of both petro- and corn-based PLA bio-plastics for toxicity and environmental life-cycle impact (from cradle to end use, not including disposal), published in Environmental Science and Technology.  The bioplastics were more toxic than conventional plastics when it came to releasing ozone-depleting chemicals, carcinogens, acidification, eutrophication (contributing to dead zones in bodies of water, usually via fertilizer runoff) and eco-toxicity.

These impacts came largely from fertilizer and pesticide use associated with growing the corn feedstock for the bioplastics, say the researchers. And critics of the study note that it did not take bioplastics’ sustainability trump card—its ability to biodegrade or compost—into account at all in the lifecycle analyses, which may have put bioplastics far ahead of petro-plastics in more categories.

But analyzing the manufacturing of bio-based feedstock into plastics did contribute to the researchers’ toxicity rankings.

In addition to feedstocks, chemical additives and manufacturing processes will differ between manufacturers. Other, more responsible manufacturers not included in the University of Pittsburgh’s analysis have demonstrated far different results when it came to the toxicity of their products.

What consumers can learn from this study is that just because a plastic is plant-based doesn’t make it 100 percent nontoxic.

An Evolving Industry

Responsibly manufactured bioplastics make a lot of sense in many ways. At the most basic level, they aren’t derived from petroleum, and reducing dependence on oil is always a good thing. There’s no question that conventional plastics are an enormous problem for the environment on many levels, from their production to their disposal. Adding urgency to the matter are the expected continued growth of the use of plastics and dismal rate of plastics recycling. Secondly, based on the information we know now about bioplastics, they don’t stick around for hundreds of years, though they probably don’t degrade as quickly as most manufacturers claim—certainly not if they are in a landfill.

At this point, corn, sugar cane, or soy beans may not in sum be significantly better than petrochemicals as a source for plastics, but it’s a start. Bioplastics are still a new industry and it’s evolving almost daily. Nonprofit, watchdog groups (like BPI and SBC) are stepping in where state and federal laws and regulations lag, too. Companies that are using corn, even GM corn today, are already looking to other biomass to produce their bioplastics in the future.

Given enough pressure from consumers, environmental groups, and federal agencies on bioplastics manufacturers, recyclers, and composters to coordinate their efforts, improve accessibility, and become greener, we could end up with a truly biodegradable, compostable, recyclable bioplastic—and live happily ever after.

What to Look for in Bioplastics

In the meantime, the path of least impact is to use compostable bioplastics, especially if you’re able to compost them through a commercial composter or through trial and error in your own compost pile (remember it could take a long time to fully degrade). Heeral Bhalala of ILSR recommends seeking out bioplastics that meet as many of the following criteria as possible:

- Made from biomass, not a conventional plastic with biodegrading additives (e.g. BioGreen Bottles)

- Meets at least a SBC BioSpec Bronze level

- Meets ASTM (D6400 or D6868) or EN 13432 standards of compostability or displays BPI’s Compostable Label or Cedar Grove Approved logo (European companies Vinçotte and Din Certco also have compost labels)

- Made from as much biomass material as possible, preferably displays the USDA Certified Biobased Product label

- Made from GMO-free crops

Washington, D.C.—August 24, 2017— The two largest telecommunications companies in the country – Verizon and AT&T – are being urged by Green America to rapidly adopt renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Both companies are currently using less than two percent renewable energy, putting them far behind many leaders in the tech industry, including Apple and Google, which have met their goals of 100 percent renewable energy. Telecom competitor Sprint is also ahead of AT&T and Verizon, with a goal of securing 10 percent of the company’s energy from renewable sources by 2017.

The new campaign is on Green America’s website, Facebook page, and a dedicated action page, to mobilize customers nationwide to call on AT&T and Verizon to make public commitments of 100 percent renewable energy in their operations by 2025.

“AT&T and Verizon are clearly behind the curve when it comes to adopting renewable energy to power their massive data centers,” said Todd Larsen, executive co-director of Consumer and Corporate Engagement at Green America. “As more and more companies recognize their obligations to lower their emissions and help the U.S. meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accords, our two largest cell phone providers are clearly lagging behind leaders like Google and Apple. Now is the time for both companies to make a commitment and provide a timeline to get to 100% renewable energy.”

With clean energy sources growing rapidly in the U.S. and prices coming down, more and more companies are getting on board with 100 percent clean energy commitments,” said Beth Porter, climate campaigns director at Green America. “AT&T and Verizon both recognize the urgency of climate change and the need for action, now we need to see that concern translate into commitments to purchase of wind and solar power.” 

“Customers of AT&T and Verizon expect both companies to be leaders,” said Fran Teplitz, executive co-director of business, investing, and policy at Green America. “As those customers increasingly use data, and drive demand for power-hungry servers, both companies need to move to renewable energy sources quickly to lower the impact of their operations on the planet.”

AT&T uses approximately 15 million MW of electricity per year and Verizon uses over 10 million MW.  Their combined electricity usage is enough to power 2.6 million homes. The combined emissions from operations is equal to nearly 4 million cars on the road for one year.

Last year in the U.S., there were 207 million people with access to data networks via their smartphones. Not only is this number expected to rise to nearly 264 million users by the end of 2021, but each user’s data consumption also expected to increase by a factor of six over the same time period, creating a growing demand for energy to power these networks.

In order to ensure security and accessibility, the servers that store data and keep the network up must be kept running for 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, using massive amounts of electricity. Unfortunately, with only one to two percent of the electricity generated or purchased by Verizon and AT&T comes from a renewable energy source like wind or solar, both companies are relying heavily on fossil fuels for their energy, which contributes to climate change.

Despite rapid growth in cellular data demands over the past several years, both AT&T and Verizon have managed to keep their energy use relatively constant. On their websites, they highlight their efforts to reduce their energy intensity; a measurement of efficiency, which is the amount of network traffic per megawatt of electricity (petabytes/megawatt). While energy efficiency is a crucial step, AT&T and Verizon are still using millions of megawatts of electricity, mostly supplied by fossil fuels, and contributing to the rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

ABOUT GREEN AMERICA

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org

MEDIA CONTACT: Max Karlin for Green America, (703) 276-3255, or mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.

By: Ayate Temsamani, Better Paper Project Fellow

It can be exciting to start the new academic year in college with brand new supplies! Unfortunately, those notebooks, binders, and papers can generate a significant amount of energy and water waste. Paper products are a classic staple (pun intended) of the most important “Back to School” supplies. But new paper production generates more waste and contributes to devastating climate consequences. Making virgin fiber paper is a resource-intensive process: it is estimated that 3.5 billion to 7 billion trees are cut down globally each year to produce paper, not to mention all the energy needed for bleaching, printing and transporting the paper.

 Like any product, paper produces environmental impacts throughout its life cycle (raw material extraction, processing, manufacturing, distribution, use and treatment of waste). Over 40% of the world’s industrial logging goes into making paper, and this is expected to reach 50% in the near future. Forests contain more than 80 percent of the terrestrial biodiversity and represent one of the last refuges for a large number of animal and plant species. This is why deforestation is a disaster for both humans and other species, since it is estimated that 27,000 animal and plant species disappear every year because of it. This loss of biodiversity, which can be irreversible, will eventually deprive us of invaluable services and resources. School supplies can easily turn into a mountain of paper and plastic, hurting your wallet and the planet at the same time.

Here’s the good news…

We’ve put together some tips you can use to green your back to school experience and start implementing some green living habits in college. Here are some simple habits to adopt, which can be both ecological and economical:

1) Give your school supplies a new life!

While many school supplies such as pens are reusable for several years in a row, the EPA estimated that 1.6 billion disposable pens are thrown away every year. If they are not lost or broken during the year: binders, pencils, pens, calculators can all be reused.

2) Buy second-hand

Buying second hand allows us to use resources already produced, while enjoying much lower prices. There are plenty of online used book stores such as Thriftbooks, Powells, AbeBooks.  

3) Compost in your dorm room

A list of things that are found in college students’ dorm rooms can be composted including: Fruit and vegetable scraps, moldy bread, crackers and cereal, tea and teabags, Cotton balls and swabs made from 100 percent cotton, Natural corks from wine bottles, used paper towels, napkins and tissues among other items. There’s likely a garden or Agricultural Sciences Center on campus that will appreciate the donation!

4) Recycle and encourage your friends to do so

Make sure to recycle school supplies including old class handouts, papers, unusable textbooks… Check if your dorm has a recycling program and let your friends and neighbors know about it. You can always help start one in case your dorm doesn’t have a recycling program already in place. Finally, don’t forget to donate your supplies when you leave for the summer, you can use sites like Craigslist and Freecycle, or take them to your local Goodwill or thrift store.

5) Buy non-toxic supplies!

There are lots of non-toxic school supplies that are socially and environmentally responsible. Such supplies can be found at Naturally Playful*, Far East Handicrafts*, Life Without Plastic*, Favor the Earth.* Other products such as corn plastic pens, recycled plastic mugs, recycled paper notepads among others are available at Write Choice Promotions.

6) Make a list before buying

In case there are some items that can’t be recovered from last year, make a list and stick to it while shopping for Back to School supplies. This is a great way to avoid overbuying and it also protects your wallet! You could also look up around how much you will likely spend on supplies, and then take enough cash to cover those items to make absolute certain you won’t overbuy.

7) Look for recycled paper products

If you need to buy new notebooks or notepads, make sure to buy ones that are made of recycled paper: Acorn Designs*, Earth Presents*, Greenline Paper Company*, New Leaf Paper.* For any virgin content, only use fiber from certified Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forests.

8)  Use your laptop to take notes

You can start taking notes on your laptop or other digital devices that don’t require any paper. Moving from a paper version to a digital version can be more eco-friendly and requires less energy especially if the laptop is charged with solar power. Moving toward paperless products allow people to reduce their paper waste. In addition to reducing paper waste, taking notes digitally saves space and don’t get lost in your dorm room. It is also a great way to take better notes as more students type faster than they write!

9) Save energy in your dorm room

There are many ways you can save energy in the dorms:

• Rather than running extension cords everywhere to power your electronic devices, put them all on power strips. Make sure to turn the power strips off when not in use!
• Use natural plants or place a dryer sheet on the vent to keep your room smelling good at all times instead of plug-in air-fresheners.
• Share a fridge with your neighbor and consume less energy.
• Change your light bulbs to light emitting diode bulbs, also known as LED, which use far less electricity and last for a longer time.
   

10) Take action to save One Million Trees!

     We are calling on universities to make the Better Paper Commitment. By making this commitment, universities would be required
     to better their paper practices, starting by switching to recycled paper for its alumni magazines.

     As a matter of fact, if all colleges used 100% recycled paper for their alumni publications, we would save the wood equivalent of 1,000,000 trees, conserve enough water to fill over 700 Olympic-sized swimming pools and cut down 90,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every single year.

     At the start of the coming school year, we are asking students to help us raise awareness about the One Million Trees campaign on campus and help us achieve our goals. See if we are reaching out to your school here – take action urging your campus to move to recycled paper for alumni magazines!

     Overall, these are simple and effective steps to green your Back to School experience! Adopt as many tips as you can and contribute to saving our planet.

 *All the starred businesses in this blog post are certified by Green America for their social and environmental impacts. Search all our green businesses on GreenPages.org.

The communication industry uses millions of megawatts of power for their servers and networks and that's largely coming from fossil fuels.  Energy demand will increase with the ongoing adoption of 5G and AI technologies. 

• The ten largest communications companies collectively use at least 51 million MWh of energy annually, equivalent to powering 4.3 million homes, which is more households than found in each of 43 US states. 
• Most of these companies are sourcing less than 10% of their energy from renewable sources, with several companies reporting 0% renewables. 
• Energy justice, ensuring the communities who are most harmed by fossil fuels are benefited by renewable energy, is poorly addressed by the majority of companies in the communications industry. 
• Companies need to ensure that the mining of critical minerals that power the renewable energy transition avoids violating human rights and environmental justice. We need renewable energy, but companies also need to use their market power to incentivize a responsible supply chain. 

Read more about company practices and steps companies can take in our latest report. 

Thank you to Carla Itzkowich for supporting this work.

Campaign Updates (June 2024)

Our Hang up on fossil fuels campaign originally targeted AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. 

Thanks to consumer pressure, since our campaign launched, we've seen significant movement in shifting the telecoms industry to clean energy! 

• T-Mobile continues is the leader in the industry in the use of renewable energy, reporting 100% renewable energy usage. 
• AT&T and Verizon are entering into significant contracts for renewable energy. And Verizon now has a goal of 100% renewable energy by 2030. 

Campaign Goals

Communications companies must set a goal for 100% renewable energy that puts new wind or solar power on the grid by 2030 and enter into contracts to meet this goal 

Communications companies must set a net zero goal for emissions in line with the Science Based Targets Initiative by 2035.  

Communications companies must ensure that the mining of critical minerals that power the renewable energy transition supports environmental justice and avoids violating human rights 

Communications companies must transparently disclose their energy justice goals and benchmarks to achieve those goals. They must also disclose their sourcing policies, and how they monitor and ensure compliance with those policies. 

Green-friendly Nor-Tech is renowned throughout the scientific, academic, and business communities for easy to deploy turnkey computer clusters and expert, no wait time support. All of our technology is made by us in Minnesota and supported by us around the world. In addition to HPC clusters, our custom technology includes workstations, desktops, and servers for a range of applications including CAE, CFD, and FEA. Our engineers average 20+ years of experience and are responsible for significant high performance computing innovations. Where possible, we integrate sustainability into the products and services we offer and encourage others to do the same.

Our mission is to inspire conscious living by providing simple and practical ways to live in symbiosis with Mother Nature. We help you take the leap forward from conscious awareness to conscious action in what you consume, whether it be products or information. Our tools will help you navigate everyday life mindfully and have a positive impact on the environment. Nature Sustained is a collective of creative individuals striving for healthier relationships with people and the planet. Everyone in the tribe is on their own journey of personal growth and development, but what we all have in common is the drive to seek information, solutions, ideas and tools that support your growth.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— August 15, 2017 —Green America is pleased to announce that Jeff Marcous, CEO (Chief Evolutionary Officer) of Dharma Merchant Services in San Francisco, is the new chair of Green America's board of directors.

“Jeff has a long history of engagement and leadership with Green America as both an individual member and as a member of our Green Business Network, and we are honored to work with him in his new role with us,” said Alisa Gravitz, president and CEO of Green America.

Inspired by Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, Marcous first joined Green America in 1988, motivated by the organization's commitment to creating an economy driven by respect for communities and the Earth. His company, Dharma Merchant Services, a payments processing firm, joined Green America's Green Business Network in 2007, earning its Gold-level certification. The company is also a California Benefit Corporation. In 2015, Marcous joined Green America's board of directors and its Green Business Committee, focused on supporting and highlighting innovations in the green business sector.

"I am dedicated to the principals of social responsibility, full transparency, ecological economics, and commerce with compassion -- making involvement in Green America 'a must' for me and my business," said Marcous. “I am inspired by the extraordinary intentions and work of the Green America team to manifest major change in our economy and society and I look forward to playing my part in further advancing Green America's mission.”

Marcous has also served on the Tricycle Foundation Board, Conscious Capital of the Bay Area Board, and frequently volunteers at San Quentin state prison.

Marcous succeeds as board chair Julie Lineberger, CEO of Linesync Architecture Ltd. and CEO/president of Wheel Pad L3C, who remains active on the board. “I'm thrilled that Jeff accepted the unanimous nomination and vote to serve as Green America's board chair,” said Lineberger. “Green America's mission is more important than ever and Jeff has the experience and commitment to successfully advance our goals for an economy that works for people and the planet.”

ABOUT GREEN AMERICA

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today's social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org.

MEDIA CONTACT: Max Karlin, (703) 276-3255 or mkarlin@hastingsgroup.com.

The horrifying events over the weekend in Charlottesville are just the latest events demonstrating the rise of hate in the United States.

White supremacists marched through the streets and the University of Virginia, wielding torches and explicitly aligning themselves with Nazis and the KKK, shouting racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant slogans on Friday.  On Saturday, the white nationalists and supremacists engaged in violence against counter-protesters.  A man, who is believed to be part of a white supremacist group, drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring many. Police arrested a suspect, who faces a hearing on August 14.

These events are shocking, and they are just the latest in a growing series of hateful attacks against people of color, women, immigrants, Jews, and Muslims. Just a week before, the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington was bombed, and is part of a growing series of hate crimes against Muslims. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has reported that hate crimes against Muslims in 2017 increased 91 percent compared to the same period in 2016.

The lack of an appropriate response to these events from the Trump administration is also deeply disturbing, especially since a number of white nationalists and supremacists explicitly cite the administration as encouraging their behavior.  In response to the horror in Charlottesville, President Trump condemned the violence “from many sides,” instead of calling out the white nationalists and supremacists.  In response to the mosque bombing in Minnesota, the president has been silent, and White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, has suggested the attack was actually a fake.

With the White House failing to address hate, and actually acting as a driver of it,  it is up to us to take action to support people who are under attack.

Vigils are being organized across the country in response to the violence in Charlottesville.  Please join one of them to stand against hate.  

And, take action in favor of acceptance, and support immigrants, religious minorities, and people of color in your communities every day. Green America’s weekly Resistance Summer actions will help you find actions you can take as a community member and with your dollars, for example, supporting minority and immigrant owned businesses.

Together, we can take action to create a country that is open and accepting.

All shopping is not created equal — we all have our preferred soaps and phone brands. I’d rather walk a bit further to my favorite grocery store than the closer one at the end of the block.

Sometimes these choices are based on convenience, familiarity, quality, or price. But how often are they based on the impact they’ll make on the world?

Since I started learning about environmentalism, I’ve discovered the dark sides of products I’d been blissfully ignorant of — like that they come from companies with no regard for the environment, or they’re made by people who don’t get a living wage.

With politics the way they are, it can feel like big business will soon be able to get away with anything. It can all seem unbearable, and it’s not possible to campaign 24/7 — making dozens of phone calls a week or marching every weekend.

So how can I make sure my purchases aren’t undermining my values?

By voting with my dollars.

Voting with your dollars can be done every day. It’s a goal, but it’s flexible.

For example, I buy fair trade coffee. It might cost a dollar more, but I know the farmers who grew those beans in Ethiopia, Colombia, or Peru are making a wage they can get by on. Fair Trade works by paying a premium to producers, which is then reinvested into improving the farm or community.

It’s a start at least. I could take another step and buy coffee from a local business instead of the chain I go to. I also shop at a grocery chain, but I could do better by going to local businesses or farmer’s markets more often. I buy organic dairy and eggs, but if I had a bigger budget I’d go all organic.

When I learned that my bank doesn’t treat customers well — and worse, loans money for fossil fuel projects — I changed to a local credit union. It’s not like I’m making so much that a big bank will miss me. But in a credit union, my money goes into home loans, local businesses, and development I support.

Last fall, during the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, we learned that big banks including Sun Trust and Wells Fargo were giving loans to the company building it.

Now at least I know I’m not supporting that project. And if you write or call your bank when you leave explaining why, they’ll know, too.

We can’t expect ourselves to be perfect, but we can push ourselves to be better.

Sometimes voting with your dollar means keeping it in your wallet. Every dollar you don’t spend on junk is a dollar you can put in a community bank or credit union to finance jobs, housing, and social services that every community needs. Or it can be donated to a charity that helps the less fortunate, combats hate or takes action on climate change.

The organization I work for is trying to build a green economy. That means more than trying to avoid supporting harmful corporations — it means actively supporting businesses that adopt green practices, grow local economies and pay suppliers fairly.

Where you shop and what you buy sends a direct message to business owners. If enough of us shift our spending and investments at once, it can force large corporations to reconsider their supply chains and business practices. And it can help small businesses stay afloat.

It can be hard to feel like your voice matters when you vote. But your money has the power to support Earth-friendly practices, fair wages, healthy food and local economies. It has that power every time you reach for your wallet.

Eleanor Greene is the associate editor of publications at Green America. This piece was originally published by OtherWords.org.

Campaign Updates and Victories!

(May 30, 2023) Big news on Green America’s Skip the Slip campaign! California state legislation that bears our campaign’s name has passed the Assembly (May 30, 2023)! Assemblymember Phil Ting (D- San Francisco) is sponsoring the legislation that gives customers the option of getting a non-toxic paper receipt, getting an e-receipt, or getting no receipt at all at most businesses in the state.

Assemblymember Ting was inspired by our campaign Skip the Slip and originally introduced a bill in 2019. After listening to the input of businesses and consumers, the bill is back and is headed to the California State Senate. Thanks to all of you who have taken action on this campaign and look for more updates and action alerts soon.

Thousands of you joined our campaign urging CVS to address its wasteful, toxic paper receipts and this pressure led to a dialogue between Green America and CVS on its receipt practices.

Because of our Skip the Slip campaign, CVS Pharmacy, the largest pharmacy chain in the US, worked with Green America to make some real progress on receipts and paper.

• CVS implemented BPA/BPS-free paper in all 10,000 of its stores.

• In April 2022, CVS added a new receipt prompt at cash registers so that all customers could choose to receive a printed receipt, digital receipt or no receipt. Four months later, the receipt prompt saved 87 million yards of receipt paper, enough to circle the globe twice.

• CVS reports phasing out print circulars in 2/3 of its markets, resulting in a 70 percent reduction of paper use.

How Store Receipts Impact People & the Planet

• Every year, receipt use in the United States consumes over 3,680,000 trees and over 10 billion gallons of water.
• Receipt production uses enough energy to operate nine million refrigerators and emits the greenhouse gas equivalent to over 471,000 cars on the road each year.
• Most thermal paper receipts are coated with BPA or BPS - BPA has been banned from other items because it contributes to developmental, reproductive, and neurological problems. 
• It's estimated that retail workers have 30 percent more BPA in their systems than other adults. Nearly 81 percent of Americans have detectable levels of BPS in their systems, and 90 percent of our exposure to BPS comes from thermal paper receipts.

The Solution: Skip the Slip

Green America’s “Skip the Slip” campaign is one of the first initiatives in the United States to analyze environmental and human health impacts of receipt usage and waste, propose solutions for businesses, and engage consumer action. 

We want to eliminate toxic chemicals from thermal paper and to reduce the waste of paper receipts. Many retailers are already making the choice to offer a digital option and use non-toxic thermal paper, but the majority of stores still need to take action. 

Our new report highlights cost-effective digital and non-toxic solutions for retailers to protect their employees and customers, and reduce impact on the environment. Businesses will walk away from this report with a deeper understanding of the unnecessary impacts receipts have on the environment and human health, and also be equipped with next steps for better receipt practices.

Access our full Skip the Slip report on receipts.  

Since we launched the Skip the Slip Campaign, we’ve seen significant progress in addressing waste and toxic chemicals from major retailers, including CVS, Target, and Walmart.

Our campaign is making paper-based receipts safer for people and recyclable, while also getting retailers to offer and promote digital receipts that are better for the planet.

How do Corporations Rank on Receipts

Ways to Take Action 

• Sign up for digital receipts on retailer’s apps, websites, or in store.
• Urge companies to improve receipt practices on social media (#SkiptheSlip).
• If you're a business owner, check out our report for best receipt practices.

Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 4.0. For more information visit www.papercalculator.org 

Make a difference by supporting green businesses.

Take a look at Green America's Green Pages Online to learn more.

It is back-to-school time! As the summer comes to an end, it is time to start thinking about what you are going to fill your kid’s lunch box with. Some of the most popular lunchtime snacks and foods have GMOs hidden in them. Other brands like Lunchables and Doritos may have organic options but these products are still far from healthy. With so many great alternatives out there, make sure to educate yourself on what to steer clear of and what to stock up on. Check out our list of concerning items and great alternatives below:

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are an old standby when it comes to easy-to-make school lunches. But the most common varieties of jelly are likely to contain GMOs. Smuckers Jam, in particular, contains high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sugar, and citric acid - all ingredients that are most often produced from GE varieties of corn and sugar beets (and these sugars come with their own set of health impacts). Smuckers also contributed to anti-labeling campaigns, infringing on consumers’ right to know what is in their food. Smuckers recently purchased Jif, now owning both the PB & J. A good alternative to traditional preserve brands is Crofter’s, a great company that produces organic fruit spreads and maintains a high level of integrity around the quality of fruit and regularly checking for pesticide residue.

Tuna salad is another common sandwich filling, but it might surprise you that Bumble Bee Tuna contains soybean oil, which is most often produced from GE soybeans. Maybe we can say something like the issues with the fishing industry such as overfishing, unnecessarily killing of other animals, and impact on marine eco-systems. To avoid these hidden GMOs and environmental concerns, switch to another form of protein for sandwiches. This might be a great opportunity to embrace Meatless Monday and explore some alternative protein sources for your family. If you are looking for animal protein that makes for a good salad, try whipping up some egg salad with organic pasture-raised eggs, even better if they are from a local farm.

While you are addressing hidden GMOs in your tuna salad, don’t forget to re-examine your choice of mayonnaise. Kraft Miracle Whip* is one of the most commonly used mayo brands and is filled with GMOs. Also, most mayo brands (even organic) do not address the poor living conditions of egg-laying hens. To ensure that hens are being treated in the best way possible, skip the eggs altogether and try a great alternative to traditional mayo - Follow Your Heart vegan mayo. Check out our mayo scorecard to compare other top brands!

Honey Nut Cheerios* are an easy snack to throw in a bag, giving kids something slightly sweet and crunchy to munch on. But they also happen to be filled with GMOs. Either opt for plain Cheerios which went non-GMO or consider switching to other non-GMO Project Verified snacks like Royal Hawaiian Orchards Macadamia fruit & nut clusters, which are full of nut protein and lightly sweet thanks to pieces of fruit and without any GMOs.

Hummus and carrots can be a perfectly balanced snack if you avoid brands that use soybean oil and citric acid, both ingredients most often derived from GE corn and soy. There are lots of other wonderful hummus brands that avoid these icky ingredients; we’re big fans of Hope Hummus. Check out our hummus scorecard to find out how other top brands match up!

Hopefully, this post will help you think creatively about many more non-GMO and healthy lunchbox items. Happy Lunch Packing!!!

*Follow the brand links above to take action and tell these brands that it is time to change their ways and provide better products for families and kids, free of GMOs and toxic chemicals.