Campaign Update!

Thanks to pressure from over 150,000 consumers, Starbucks is taking action to address its impacts from milk by offering more plant milks and reducing the climate and water impacts of dairy production.

Easily one of the world’s most popular and widespread coffee brands, Starbucks has paved the way for the modern mass coffeehouse industry with its promotion of corporate social responsibility and consistently strong branding.

One area of improvement for the coffee giant? Starbucks dairy milk. 

While not genetically modified themselves, dairy products are not immune to the insidious impacts of GMOs. Cows living in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are fed a grain diet comprised almost entirely of genetically modified corn, soy, alfalfa, and cotton seed. These crops degrade the quality of our land and water, perpetuate corporate-controlled agriculture, and have potentially negative health impacts on livestock. Additionally, the overuse of antibiotics in industrialized farming is contributing to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, putting us all at risk. Starbucks milk is an environmental issue. 

With biotech giants Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and Syngenta lending power to industrialized agriculture, the future of our food system rests in the hands of profit-driven corporations, while people and the planet come last on the list of priorities.

Starbucks boasts nearly 20,000 retail stores in over 60 countries. With its global presence, Starbucks must prove its true dedication to sustainability and provide organic dairy milk at all of its locations to support a sustainable future for all. 

Starbucks is already a leader in the coffee shop industry by serving rBGH-free dairy and using only USDA-certified organic soy milk. By setting the same organic standard for dairy milk, Starbucks can demonstrate a serious commitment to providing environmentally and socially conscious products.

Dean Foods. You might not have heard their name, but as one of the largest processors and direct distributors of dairy products in the U.S., you just might have bought one of their products before. Land O’Lakes, Garelick Farms, Alta Dena, Country Fresh, Berkeley Farms, Mayfield Dairy – all brands owned by Dean Foods.

The other thing that all of these brands have in common? GMOs. 
While not genetically modified themselves, dairy products are not immune to the insidious impacts of GMOs.  Cows living on industrialized farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), are fed almost entirely GMO crops like corn, soy, alfalfa, cotton seed, and/or sugar beets.  In fact, 98% of GM soy and 49% of GM corn goes to feeding livestock and poultry.

Animals, like humans, are deeply impacted by the quality of their diets. A recent study showed that pigs fed an entirely GMO diet suffered from severe stomach inflammation when compared to pigs given non-GMO feed. Additionally, while the dairy industry claims that genetically modified particles are broken down in the digestive tracts of the animals that eat them, these GM particles have shown up in the organs and milk of animals fed GMOs, the same milk and meat that humans then eat.

Dean Foods claims that their white milk does not contain GMOs, while sourcing their dairy from cows raised on genetically modified feed. To quote Dean Foods from their website: “Pure and simple, we ensure Mother Nature’s most perfect food finds a place in every home.”
Considering Dean Foods’ use of genetically modified animal feed in their dairy operations, their products don’t seem so “pure and simple” to us. And as for Mother Nature? CAFOs and genetic engineering were probably not what she had in mind.

It’s time to hold Dean Foods accountable. Join us in calling on Dean Foods to shift to non-GMO feed for their cows, and help us accelerate the shift to a non-GMO food system!

Chocolate is a delicious treat that countless Americans enjoy. But in West Africa, the world's largest cocoa-growing region, 60% of cocoa farmers earn less than $2 a day, the international poverty line. Millions of children work on cocoa farms instead of going to school or enjoying a childhood. Despite the growth of Fair Trade, as well as the enormous resources the cocoa industry has invested in combating this issue for the past decade, the level of child labor has not gone down.

Problems in the Chocolate Industry

• Millions of small-scale cocoa farmers in the Global South take in only 6% of the profit from each bar of chocolate sold, earning under the poverty line of $1.90 per day. 
• While the worldwide chocolate market is expected to grow from US$137.599 billion in 2019 to US$182.090 billion by 2025, one research shows cocoa farmers actually experience a decreased in their income due to the impact of COVID-19.  
• 1.56 million children engage in child labor in cocoa production, with many involved in hazardous labor.  
• Children exposed to agrochemical products, such as highly hazardous herbicides and pesticides, increased from 5% to 24% between 2008-2019. 
• In 2020, 47,000 hectares of forest was lost in cocoa growing areas of Côte d'Ivoire. 
• Lead and Cadmium: 285 of 469 chocolate products tested in a recent study by As You Sow contained lead and/or cadmium above California’s Maximum Allowable Dose Levels

Consumers Pressure Chocolate Companies to End Child Labor

In 2010, Green America launched the Raise the Bar! Hershey campaign with allies, demanding that Hershey take steps to address the issue of child labor in their supply chain. Thanks to sustained pressure from Green Americans and Hershey consumers, the two-year campaign culminated with a commitment from Hershey to move to 100% ethically sourced cocoa by 2020.

The Raise the Bar! Hershey campaign demonstrates how powerful a united consumer voice is. We must continue to build on the success of the Hershey campaign, and pressure other leaders in the cocoa industry to make serious commitments to end child labor. 

Most major chocolate companies have commitments to source more sustainable cocoa. In fact, many of them have plans to have 100% certified cocoa in their supply chain by 2020. Although this is an important step in the right direction, certification programs alone are not enough to solve the underlying issues that contribute to child labor in cocoa, including farmer poverty and a lack of infrastructure.

What Can You Do

• Use this chocolate scorecard when buying chocolate to see which chocolate companies are taking care of people and planet and which are not.
• Take action: Tell chocolate companies that you believe that children deserve to have healthy and safe childhoods away from cocoa fields.

Genetic engineering (GE), or genetic modification, is the process of manipulating an organism’s DNA to display specific traits. Gene splicing introduces new genetic material into an organism’s DNA, resulting in a genetically modified organism (GMO). More recently developed methodologies of genetic engineering include gene-editing. This technology allows scientists to target specific traits and either remove or rearrange them. In most cases, none of these modifications would be possible under natural circumstances and are only obtained through intensive research and experimentation in a laboratory.

The Problem with Genetic Engineering: It's Poorly Regulated and Harmful to Environmental Health 

Biased Research and Lack of Government Regulation 

Uncertainties around the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and related herbicides can be attributed to lax regulation by the FDA, USDA, and EPA and the lack of unbiased scientific research on the long-term human and environmental health impacts. For example, Monsanto marketed glyphosate (the chemical found in RoundUp that is the most frequently used herbicide with GMOs) as safe, but in recent years, the World Health Organization found that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen and a jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million to a school groundskeeper who got terminal cancer after using RoundUp.

Much of the current research around GMOs has been conducted by major companies in the industry, calling into question the legitimacy of their findings and possible conflict of interest. Many studies conducted by scientists not affiliated with the industrial agricultural complex have called into question the safety of consuming GE crops.

Further unbiased research regarding health and safety issues is needed. And, the government entities responsible for the wellbeing of farmers, consumers, and the environment must pursue regulations to protect these stakeholders.

Engineered to Withstand Chemicals that Negatively Affect Ecosystems, Farm Workers, and Consumers 

The most common GMOs are crops developed to be resistant to herbicides, such as glyphosate, 2,4-D, and/or dicamaba, and engineered with the pesticide Bt to protect against pests (the plant itself contains the Bt toxin). Since the crops are engineered to resist the effects of pesticides and herbicides, most commonly glyphosate, these chemicals are sprayed freely and extensively on the farm, negatively impacting surrounding communities and destroying ecosystems.

These effects are seen in the decline of key pollinator species, including honeybees and monarch butterflies.

Farm soils are degraded from monocropping, a method required in GE crop growing. In turn, poor soil health requires farmers to rely on additional synthetic inputs, including nitrogen fertilizers, which further perpetuates dependence on fossil fuels and pollutes waterways.

Excessive use of pesticides and herbicides in conjunction with GE crops has led to superweeds and pests that have developed resistance to the most commonly used chemicals, forcing farmers to turn to much more toxic chemicals. In turn, these chemicals pollute and poison the soil, waterways, and human that come into contact with them. Both glyphosate and 2,4-D—herbicides used extensively on GE crops—have been deemed probable carcinogens by the World Health Organization.

The Solution to Genetic Engineering: Regenerative Agriculture and Sustainable Farming Practices

GMOs have no place in a sustainable agricultural system.

In order to sustain our soil and food supply, we must move to a regenerative system of agriculture, with its basis in the principles of organic agriculture. This means moving away from destructive chemical inputs such as synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and moving towards systems that compliment the natural biology in the soils and surrounding environment, including rotation of diverse cropos, use of on-farm mulching materials, composting, and many others.

Green America actively engages with members of Congress, federal regulating agencies, and companies to create dialogue around the necessary steps towards a more sustainable food system. We are committed to educating consumers on the impacts of genetic engineering, GMOs, industrial agriculture and the steps that we can all take to protect and improve our food and the environment.

Kamut International (KI) has been a sponsor of GMO Inside for the last three years. We chatted with Bob Quinn, KI founder and organic farmer from Montana, to discuss the history of the company and what differentiates KAMUT khorasan wheat from other grains.

What is an ancient grain?

Ancient grains are those that are derived from ancient society and have been left practically unaltered by human interference since that time. Ancient grains are gaining in popularity, with grains such as spelt, khorasan, emmer, and einkorn becoming more common to consumers. These grains are vastly different from the modern wheat that most people consume on a daily basis.

KAMUT^® is a brand name for  an ancient grain (khorasan) and its history has a bit of folklore behind it. When Bob’s father originally received a few grains they came with a story that they were found in King Tut’s tomb. Eventually Bob traveled to Egypt to track the history of these seeds in an attempt to find their true origin. He was disappointed to find among the wheat recovered from ancient tombs and on display in the Cairo museum, nothing looking like giant seeds of khorasan. A few years later he traveled to Turkey where local farmers called the grain the prophet’s wheat. The local legend was that the wheat traveled in the Arc with Noah. While the exact history of KAMUT^® khorasan is still unknown, scientists believe it originated from Mesopotamia.

Not all wheat is created equal.

It is important to remember that not all wheat is created equal. The most common forms of wheat today, the white flour that is used in so many processed goods and baked goods is vastly different than the stone ground whole grain wheat flour from 150 years ago and even further removed from ancient grains. These differentiations matter not only in how the grains can be used but also in how our bodies react to the grain. While only a small percentage of the population has celiac disease or a wheat allergy more and more people are noticing sensitivities to modern wheat.

What makes modern wheat so different? The vast majority of the wheat we consume today has been drastically altered from its original form. While wheat has yet to be commercially produced and sold as a genetically engineered crop it has still been altered through intensive conventional breeding. According to Bob “what is inherent and drives modern wheat breeding programs are higher yields and being able to produce more loaves of bread from the same amount of wheat, which is linked with the national drive to sell cheap food in this country. Cheap food is the main food policy these days. With that being the main goal many things have been changed.  To make higher yields, plants were made shorter and more uniform, they were made more disease resistant, and more resistant to insects.” But all of these changes plus others have had many unintended consequences. “What is probably even more significant is the change in the proteins and starches in the kernel to make more loaves of bread with less wheat.  This is significant because this is the part we actually eat,” says Bob.

The cheap wheat most often consumed today is stripped of many of its nutrients and removes the health benefits that can be found in ancient grains. All of this is done to lower costs. Research shows that it is how we have altered modern wheat that is resulting in so many health complications linked to wheat. The health implications of modern compared to ancient grains are a major focus area for KI. Bob thinks, “recent changes made to modern wheat is probably at the heart of the troubles that people are having eating wheat, these are unintended consequences that people are struggling with.”

Beyond the drastic changes caused by breeding, the ways our bodies react to modern wheat is a result of the conventional growing methods which use high levels of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Research in Canada has shown that our bodies’ response to glyphosate can be very similar to the response of wheat sensitivity. Oftentimes glyphosate is used as a desiccant to dry out the wheat in preparation for harvest, meaning that there is frequently glyphosate residue on the wheat kernels that are processed into food for human consumption.

This is why KI’s trademark and requirement of organic growing methods is so important. It ensures the integrity of the grain and limits the chemicals that the wheat crop is exposed to and in turn what consumers are exposed to.

Why a trademark?

One very unique thing you might notice about KAMUT^® is that it is a registered trademark and carries the ® afterwards. Here is Quinn’s explanation of the reasoning behind this and why the trademark matters:

“Because I own the trademark I get to make the rules, the rules are that it always has to be organic and you have to tell truth about it. In our trademark rules, the wheat can never be changed from what we started with, so it can never be crossed with modern wheat. For example, they have cross bred spelt with modern wheat in order to get higher yields and they can still call it spelt. The common name for the variety sold under the KAMUT^® trademark is khorasan and the same thing could technically be done with khorasan wheat and you could still call it khorasan. But with the trademark it guarantees that it is an ancient grain that has never been mixed with modern wheat or hybridized in any way. This is important because with modern wheat they have changed so much in the last 100 years.”

Are other farmers catching on to ancient grains?

As consumer demand continues to grow and conventional growing methods prove to be unsustainable for the land and famer income, more and more farmers are shifting to using organic methods and growing ancient grains. According to Bob, economics alone is enough of a reason for farmers to transition to organic. KI and their partners work with 200 organic farms in Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan totaling over 80,000 acres of organic agriculture this year alone.

Where can you find KAMUT?

KAMUT^® Brand grain is used in a number of product’s that can be purchased at your local grocery store. While specialty natural food stores, like Whole Foods or your local food co-op, are going to have more of a variety, your local mainstream grocery store likely carries products such as baking mixes and flour that contain KAMUT^® wheat. You can find a full listing of products at http://www.kamut.com/en/product.

This interview has been edited for length. All photos are courtesy of Kamut International. 

This post is sponsored by Kamut International. Thank you for supporting the brands that support us. GMO Inside is a non-profit campaign and we are thankful for the brands that support our work to change the food system.

When it comes to Halloween spending, each year seems to break more records. In 2025, the National Retail Federation expected Halloween purchases to reach a staggering $13.1 billion across the nation. Costume sales alone are expected to hit $4.3 billion and decorations spending is projected to hit $4.2 billion. Candy remains a popular Halloween purchase with spending projected at $3.9 billion.

While you’re searching Pinterest and Buzzfeed for costume inspiration, don’t forget about what your Halloween budget is supporting. Making the holiday more sustainable for you and the Earth could mean joining 10% of Halloween shoppers at thrift stores, or hitting up local businesses like seven percent of shoppers. Here are a few more ideas to make your Halloween more green.

Swap Out Your Halloween Costumes 

Unless you’ve got your cat ears on repeat, part of the fun of Halloween is the novelty of finding or making the perfect costume. Consider swapping costumes to reduce and reuse this Oct. 31st.

Costume swaps cut back on waste and reduce the resources used for making, packaging, and transporting new costumes. Plus, hosting a swap is easy, fun, and saves money. National Costume Swap day is officially the second Saturday of October, but the idea is easy enough no matter which day you pick.

You can swap with a few family members and friends, or, better yet, hold a community swap!

If you choose to do the latter, book your swap at a school, community center, park, or host at home. Publicize! The more people come, the better the pickings will be as far as sizes and variety. Invite neighborhood families and friends, and share on social media and through local public bulletin boards or listservs. The host or a volunteer can bring unwanted costumes to a local thrift store at the end of the event. Families can also promote reuse and save money by making costumes by hand from items you have at home.

Candy’s Not So Sweet

Washington mom Corey Colwell-Lipson founded a movement called Green Halloween in 2006 to revolutionize the holiday to make families healthier and greener. One of her ideas was to deemphasize the tradition of handing out candy and encourage families to give out healthier treats and non-food treasures to trick-or-treaters. Ideally, treasures are recycled, natural, or sustainably sourced, and can be enjoyed year-round.

During the first year of Green Halloween events, Colewell-Lipson introduced thousands of kids to treats like polished stones, temporary tattoos, and friendship bracelets—and asked them what they thought.

“We were floored—absolutely shocked—that first season when at [Green Halloween] events, thousands and thousands of kids came by, and not one single child of any age, toddler to teen, said that they would rather have candy when they saw the alternatives. Not one,” Colwell-Lipson says. “What was interesting was that it was the parents who had the harder time making the leap.”

For those who want to give out more traditional treats, there are many organic and all natural options—from organic and fair trade chocolate to sustainable chewing gum. If you’re buying chocolate, it’s particularly important to choose fair trade chocolate, as many conventional chocolate companies have ties to child labor. 

Nontoxic Face Paint 

A 2016 study by The Breast Cancer Fund's Campaign for Safe Cosmetics examined cosmetics products marketed to children, including 48 face paints from Halloween makeup kits, to test them for carcinogens and other substances related to increased risk of breast cancer, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, and mercury.

The study found that 21 of those kits tested positive for at least one of those five elements, with some containing up to four. Additionally, test results showed that the darker the face paint colors, the higher the presence of heavy metals. Exposure to these heavy metals has been linked to cancer.

When dressing up little ghouls and goblins on Halloween, parents can either make or purchase healthier face paints. Check out our ideas for better face paint.

Green Halloween Treats

Bite-sized Chocolates
These sustainably sourced chocolate companies offer mini pieces perfect for trick-or-treaters, using all-natural, fair trade, and/or organic ingredients:
Alter-Eco Chocolate
Equal Exchange Organic Chocolate
Tony's Chocolonely
Unreal Candy

Healthier Treats
Cascadian Farm Chewy Granola Bars: Organic bars.
Honest Tea Honest Kids Juice Pouches:  Organic fruit juice.
Plum Organics Snacks: Fruit bars and snacks
Surf Sweets: Organic gummy bears and jelly beans.

Treasures
Greenline Paper Company: Pencils made from recycled money or cast-off blue jeans.
Education and More: Fair Trade friendship bracelets.

Nontoxic Face Paint
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics: Recipes for homemade face paint.
Aveda: brightly colored lipstick and dramatic eye pencils, which can later be used as day-to-day makeup in addition to face paint.

Other Items
ChicoBag Company:  Reusable, collapsible trick-or-treat bags.
Sarah’s Silks: Handmade, eco-friendly silk cloths in a variety of colors, easily transformed into capes, skirts, belts, and robes. Also carries other dress-up items.

Updated October 2025

After 34 years, Green Business Network Director Denise Hamler has retired from Green America.

Whether you’ve met Denise once or have worked with her for a lifetime, you know she is a force for good and makes real change happen. Her joy for life—and bubbly laughter—always leave you energized.

Green America (then Co-op America) first opened its office on September 25, 1982, in Washington, DC. From the beginning, Denise gave 34 years to the organization, working hard to grow the green economy. She has enjoyed working with so many innovative green business leaders and change-makers over the years.

Denise tells the story of first starting at Green America, working from a shoebox full of index cards with members’ names and addresses. She adds, “I thought I was only going to have this job for 6 months!”

Three decades later, Green America engages with millions of people, from every background, who share our vision for environmental sustainability and social justice. Denise’s fearless spirit has helped lead us every step of the way.

When Green America began, Denise had a two-year-old son. Now, she has a two-year-old grandson.

View highlights from the retirement party for Denise Hamler:

Green America’s Board of Directors invites you to make a gift in honor of Denise’s many contributions to social justice and environmental sustainability. Gifts will be placed in a special Denise Hamler Endearment Fund that will support our powerful green economy programs.

Our goal is to raise $1,000 for every year she has served our mission — $34,000! The fund will remain open until December 31, 2016. Please celebrate Denise’s extraordinary legacy by making a tax-deductible donation today.

For the last few years we have been educating consumers about the impacts of GMOs. While GMOs are still deeply concerning and we are continuing to push manufacturers to remove them, companies are developing and using nanoparticles, a new technology that is equally concerning. Nanotechnology allows scientists to engineer nature at the atomic and molecular level, creating nanoparticles. Similar to GMOs, these new technologies are being released into our environment and our food without regulations and adequate safety testing. Nanoparticles are cause for concern and it is important that we let companies know we don’t want nanoparticles in our food, clothing, health care products, or cosmetics.

Here are the top 5 things you need to know about nanoparticles:

1. They are unregulated. The use of nanotechnology is currently unregulated by the FDA, meaning it does not go through an approval process or adequate safety testing before entering our food system.

2. They are really really small. Nanoparticles are 1000 times thinner than a human hair. The size of the particles means that they interact with our bodies and the environment differently than normal particles.

3. They pose a threat to human health. These tiny particles can flow freely through our bodies, potentially getting into places that they aren’t mean to, such as the gut wall, bloodstream, organs, and cells. Recent research shows that these tiny particles are a potential toxin and the long-term impacts of ingesting them or putting them on our skin are unknown.
4. They pose a threat to the environment. Just as the implications for humans aren’t fully known these tiny particles post a great risk to the environment. They have the ability to enter into our waterways and environment, damaging helpful microbes and moving up the food chain from smaller to larger organisms.

5. They aren’t labeled. Nanoparticles are not required to be labeled, making it difficult for consumers to avoid purchasing products that contain them. There are however ingredients that are more likely to be in nano form and should therefore be avoided. Products such as sunscreen, toothpaste, cosmetics, and infant formula are all likely to contain nanoparticles but they can also be found in toys and clothing.

Want to know more? Here are some resources to learn more about nano and its environmental and health implications.

• Tiny Ingredients Big Risks
• Nanoparticles in Baby Formula
• Manufactured Nanomaterials and Sunscreen

Take action by signing GMO Inside’s petition to get nano out of infant formula!

Green America Calls On Magazine to Spare Tens of Thousands of Trees a Year by Switching to Recycled Paper; Seed-Paper Fliers to Be Distributed During Mall Action.

WASHINGTON, DC – October 25, 2016 – Green America rallied today on the National Mall to raise awareness of its "Practice What You Print" campaign. The organization is calling on Smithsonian to move its magazine to recycled-content paper in order to save impacted forests and reduce landfill waste. The campaign looks to build on its success persuading National Geographic to begin printing on recycled-content paper in 2014, and its success in helping over 200 publications move to recycled fiber papers. 

Campaigners today greeted guests to the Natural History Museum, facing the historic Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall, from 11:00 AM-1:00 PM. A banner featuring a photo of the National Mall devoid of trees was displayed, highlighting the impacts that Smithsonian Magazine has on the environment by not using recycled paper. Green America collected signatures for their petition to be delivered to Smithsonian's headquarters, asking the institution to live up to its environmental commitments by using recycled paper for its flagship publication. Green America also distributed fliers with campaign details printed on seed paper, which can be planted to grow into non-invasive pollinator-friendly wildflowers.

Photos from the rally can be found here: http://greenam.org/2f0PDwE.

The campaign calls on Smithsonian Magazine to transition to better paper, starting with 30 percent recycled content paper by 2017. For the remainder of its fiber, the campaign urges Smithsonian to use only virgin paper fiber from sustainably-managed Forest Stewardship Council certified forests. More on the campaign’s goals here: https://greenamerica.org/Smithsonian-Practice-What-You-Print/about.cfm.  

“Smithsonian has made symbolic commitments to sustainability, but when it comes to producing its magazines, the organization is falling short,” said Beth Porter, director of Green America's Better Paper Project. "We want to raise awareness that a leader in the publishing industry is not practicing what it prints, and we did that today in Smithsonian's front yard on the National Mall."

Smithsonian requires almost 65,000 trees for its 19 million magazine copies every year. By incorporating just 30% of recycled paper into its production, Smithsonian would:

• Lower its annual wood use by the equivalent of more than 19,000 trees.
• Reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
• Lower its annual water consumption by about 14 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
• Keep 354 tons of solid waste from going to the landfill each year, reducing methane emissions. (When paper ends up in a landfill the decomposition of that paper produces methane, which has over 20 times the heat trapping power of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.)

"Hundreds of magazines already print on recycled paper, and readers are increasingly concerned about sustainability," said Todd Larsen, co-executive director on Consumer Engagement for Green America. “With a switch to readily available 30 percent recycled fiber paper, Smithsonian could be keeping 19,000 trees in the ground and 2 million pounds of CO2 out of the air every year.”

A transition at Smithsonian Magazine to recycled paper would initiate the conversation within Time Inc. to move more of its publications to recycled paper. Smithsonian Magazine acquires its paper through a partnership with Time Inc., which publishes 90 magazines, producing hundreds of millions of copies every month, all using virgin fiber paper.

Consumers interested in supporting the campaign to move Smithsonian to recycled paper can sign the petition here: http://greenam.org/1XcptSZ

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

Green America’s Better Paper Project has 15 years of experience guiding publishers to more sustainable paper choices for magazines. This goal of increasing the demand for recycled paper offers huge relief to endangered forest areas, curbs the publishing industry's climate change impacts, and lessens pollution of nearby communities through new paper production.

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

EDITOR’S NOTE
Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 3.2.1. For more information visit www.papercalculator.org.

Gene Lee’s record on environmental, health, animal welfare and worker issues at odds with “Golden Chain” accolade

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a letter sent today to Nation’s Restaurant News, a coalition of 15 environmental, animal welfare and worker justice organizations with over ten million supporters expressed dismay over the publication’s decision to honor Gene Lee, CEO of Darden Restaurants, as one of the recipients of its Golden Chain Award. The award, which will be presented on October 24 during the Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators (MUFSO) conference, “celebrates industry veterans for their outstanding leadership, solid company performance and dedication to giving back.”

“Darden Restaurants CEO Gene Lee deserves the ‘Golden Greenwashing’ award, not the Golden Chain award,” said Kari Hamerschlag, deputy director of the Food and Technology program at Friends of the Earth. “Darden consistently misleads the public and the media with its empty rhetoric on responsible business practices. There is nothing responsible about serving meat and dairy produced in polluting factory farms with routine antibiotics or paying paltry wages to the majority of its restaurant staff.”

Within the letter, the groups stated that “Lee is undeserving of this award” and “has failed to show excellence in leadership in terms of improving conditions for employees, protecting the environment, fostering humane treatment of farm animals or promoting the health of Darden Restaurants’ customers.” The letter detailed reasons why Lee should not be given the award. Among these reasons include:

• Darden undermines public health by buying meat from suppliers that routinely use antibiotics for nontherapeutic purposes in order to compensate for unsanitary practices. Darden subsidiary Olive Garden recently received an “F” grade for its weak antibiotics policies in “Chain Reaction II,” a report released last month by a number of public interest groups.
• Approximately 20 percent of Darden’s hourly workforce is paid a paltry $2.13 per hour. Tens of thousands of Darden workers are paid only the minimum wage and are employed part-time with no sick leave, while Lee reportedly received a 46 percent boost in salary to $6.1 million per year.
• There is a major gulf between Darden’s rhetoric on environmental and animal welfare stewardship and the actual impacts of its food sourcing practices. For instance, Darden purchases poultry products from Simmons Foods and Sanderson Farms, companies which have numerous U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violations. Additionally, both companies have multiple citations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for egregious acts of cruelty, such as boiling birds alive and improperly desensitizing them before cutting their throats.

“In an era when corporate social responsibility is on the rise, Nation’s Restaurant News’ award committee should consider more than just profits when evaluating corporate excellence, said Michelle Pawliger, farm animal policy associate with the Animal Welfare Institute. “Rewarding Mr. Lee’s false rhetoric gives a silent nod to Darden’s problematic practices—which include a continued reliance on suppliers that abuse animals. It also ignores the thousands of consumers who have spoken out against Darden for not implementing real improvements."

“Instead of marking progress, Nation’s Restaurant News’ honor encourages more restaurant chains to use misleading rhetoric instead of meaningful action to address the serious social and environmental issues facing our food system,” added Anna Meyer, food campaigns manager at Green America.

Additional details on the gaps between Darden’s promises to be a good corporate citizen and its actual practices were identified in a January 2016 letter sent to Lee from members of the Good Food Now! campaign. In May 2016, the Good Food Now! campaign and allies delivered 130,000 petition signatures calling on Darden to improve its labor and sourcing practices.

###

The Good Food Now! campaign is a partnership of Friends of the Earth, Restaurant Opportunities Center-United, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Green America and the Animal Welfare Institute. For more information, visit www.good-food-now.org.

Chobani, maker of America’s #1 selling Greek Yogurt brand, and Green America, the nation’s leading green economy organization, announced today that they have partnered together in an effort to improve cattle feed in the U.S., including options for non-genetically modified and organic grains.

“Institutions of higher education should have been leading the way and they haven't. They've been complacent, and they've been mired in the status quo. And yet, there's incredible opportunity in this crisis.”

Dr. Stephen Mulkey is a climate scientist and the president of Unity College in Unity, ME. Last November, he proposed to the school's board of trustees that they divest their endowment from fossil fuels. After a lively discussion, the board voted unanimously in favor of the proposal.

Header photo by Unity College.

Green America/Martha van Gelder: Why do you believe that universities need to take action on climate change?

Dr. Stephen Mulkey: I absolutely think that universities and colleges across the board have a special responsibility to take action. Our charge is to renew civilization. That being the case, it is ethically inconsistent to invest in its destruction.

My own personal perspective is very simple: This generation of college students is facing an incredible series of sustainability challenges that will force them to live on a very different planet from the one that I grew up on. Unavoidably, the warming and the climate change that's in the pipeline will create a dangerously disruptive climate for the second half of their lives, and increasingly so.

The real question in play right now is whether my grandchildren and their children will have a civilization. Because warming of 6°C or even 4°C is not consistent with civilization as it's currently configured.

Green America/Martha: Your school has moved in incredibly quickly to divest from fossil fuels. How have you been able to do that?

Mulkey: Well, that is just who we are. We looked at our portfolio and said, “This is the right thing to do.” This was an ethical decision on the part of the board. Like any good board of trustees, they insisted that we dig into the details to find out just what the financial implications of this were. And the answers in our case, and I think the answers with any institution, are favorable.

There are a number of considerations from a strictly financial perspective. Number one is, “Are you likely to harm long-term investment by taking the 200 industries that are directly involved in fossil fuels out of your portfolio?” There's a rich body of literature in the investment research area that asks the question, "Does social screening hurt your portfolio in terms of return?" And the answer is, not necessarily. We don't just simply drop out the fossil fuel companies. What you do is strategically replace them with other investments.

We are very comfortable with this approach. The one objection that's frequently raised is that someone will say, "Wait, you know that fossil fuels are going to be worth a whole lot at some point. They are really going to become lucrative." And our response to that is, “So what if they’re lucrative? We don't buy tobacco stock.”

Having a mission to renew civilization while at the same time investing in its destruction is ethically incompatible. I don't think that that's an option for an institution of higher learning.
 

Green America/Martha: I've heard the argument from university administrations that an endowment only exists to fund the university and shouldn't be swayed by whatever social or environmental issue is important to the students. Is there any specific response you'd have to that argument?

Mulkey: It's reprehensible, period. And the reason that I would use such a strong word is that it goes beyond the particular desires of students. I guess I agree with the statement in the sense that whatever issue students may have as their agenda du jour should not drive the colleges’ investment policies, per se. But this has to do with the survival of civilization and the viability of their future. So, while in general we can't make our investment policies responsive to the agenda of the students, on this issue, to not do so is indefensible.

Green America/Martha: Why do you think other universities have been so resistant to fossil-fuel divestment?

Mulkey: I think there’s a number of things going on. Number one, they may have been influenced by the heavily funded denial industry whose entire purpose is to insinuate doubt. So, they feel less of a sense of urgency than we do.

Number two, making this change goes against the inertia of the system. The inertia is to keep the investments managed the way they have been, and it's painful to make that kind of change. You have to challenge a lot of peoples’ assumptions, and you have to have somebody who has the courage to lead it. That's hard to do.

Number three, right now the ground is shifting under colleges and universities in a massive way. There is a whole suite of new constraints that are coming to bear, and at the same time we have disruptive innovations in higher education. University administration and boards are panicking. They're looking at new ways of configuring their operations to save money, and for the first time since the 1950s, the students are not lining up at the door. These are issues affecting many institutions, the elites excepted. There are issues related to maintaining enrollment, to the financial viability of the institution. So, with that kind of foment shaking the foundations of higher education, it's hard to take on this kind of issue right now.

I would submit, however, that I actually believe that the solution to both is doing the right thing in respect to the environment and climate change. There is no higher value proposition for higher education then giving the students the tools to deal with sustainability challenges. So if you have the courage to put your institution on a firm foundation of financial sustainability and academically sustainable education, you will stand out, and students will come to your doors. I absolutely am certain that there is a whole generation of students in high school that are coming out of the chute right now looking for alternatives [to a destructive economy]. And those institutions that are offering alternatives will find that their financial issues will be significantly assuaged, if not abolished.

Green America/Martha: How do you want to equip your students at Unity for their life after graduation?

Mulkey: If you are a student in college today, and you're not an activist, I wonder what's wrong with you. Frankly, how can you be complacent in the face of the challenges your generation is facing? If you think that you can sit comfortably through your four years of undergraduate education and [global warming] will somehow be solved, you are wrong.

We encourage our students to be activists; we want them out and engaged in the political process. We want them talking to their legislators; we want them debating what is the right way forward.

Friends don't let friends deny climate change. You get in their face about it, and you say that that's absolutely not true, it is real, and it is incredibly dangerous. And so I encourage all the students to carry the message home to the parents and their family and to be a guiding light.

The truth is, institutions of higher education should have been leading the way and they haven't. They've been complacent, and they've been mired in the status quo. And yet, there's incredible opportunity in this crisis. The opportunity is so rich.

I don't know if you've ever had a course in evolution, but there’s a term called an “adaptive zone.” The invention of wings in birds and the convergent evolution in the wings of insects represented an adaptive  zone, meaning that there are now multiple new niches that these winged organisms can then occupy. Think about all the different kinds of birds there are, and all that became possible because of the natural selection for organisms that could fly. So that's the concept of an adaptive zone.

If you look at our economy, it has been entirely built on the diversification of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have provided us plastics, they've provided us integrated circuits, they've given us the ability to span the globe in our travel. Well, that represents  all of those niches in an adaptive zone based on the fossil fuel industry.

If we now turn our attention full-bore to building a civilization and an economy based built on non-fossil-fuel energy sources, you will see a whole new adaptive suite of economic opportunities. There will be a new adaptive zone. We don't have to worry about the viability of our economy. I think there will be an incredible opportunity to restructure our economy with all of these new set of ways to make a living that have nothing to do with burning carbon for energy. So I see a clean economy, a green economy as a new adaptive zone for the economy that will result in its diversification.

There are plenty of pieces of evidence to point to this. If you go to the McKinsey and Company studies, and you see the different tools that they recommend for the mitigation of climate change, every one of those represents a new niche in the economy. If you go to the recent study at the Brookings Institute that was published

in 2011, you see that during the recession, the overall economy faltered, and employment dropped significantly and very painfully. But the green economy within and without the public-sector jobs, or with and without tax payers' support, actually continued to grow. I think that that is indicative of the fact that there are new niches and new opportunities that are just waiting to be taken advantage of.

Green America/Martha: Anything else you’d like to add?

Mulkey: One final thing is that I am very frustrated with the scientific and academic community at large. They're quiet, they're sitting in their labs, and they're doing their fieldwork, and they're training their graduate students for business-as-usual when they’re the ones who really know what's happening here and what the challenges are.

I think that it's reprehensible and inexcusable for them not to use tenure for the reason that it was invented: to protect us when we speak out. I was silenced and dismissed by a select committee of legislators while giving an invited talk about climate and energy. A conservative legislator called me a liar and demanded that I be dismissed, and I was. But I had tenure at the time, and that's what tenure is for, to allow me to be that kind of activist and to make statements based on my work as a climate scientist, and to stand by it and not be intimidated and not lose my job. I am extremely frustrated with the academic community for being quiet in the face of this crisis.

Green America/Martha: What do you think it will take for the academic community to start taking real action around climate?

Mulkey: I do think that if the students will speak with one voice, ultimately they hold the key to the future of higher education. They don't know it; they often think that they are powerless. But I am sitting in the president's chair, and I happen to know where the power is, and it's with the students and their parents. And the students in particular… if they will speak with one voice, they will be heard.

Go Fair Trade with Your Treats to Protect Farmers and Children 

The scariest thing at Halloween should be the little ghosts, ghouls and goblins that come to your door asking for treats.  Unfortunately, if you are handing out chocolates you picked up from the local grocery store, the treats you are giving out may be what’s truly scary.  

Big Chocolate = Big Problems 

That’s because most chocolate comes from the west coast of Africa, where farmers are paid very little money for their cocoa, and child labor and deforestation is rampant.  It’s possible that the chocolate you are handing out to a little kid comes from cocoa harvested by another child who is not much older. And, the cocoa trees may have been doused in pesticides, poisoning the land and the workers.  

Major chocolate companies take in billions of dollars in sales, while farmers and families that make the crucial raw material go deeper and deeper into poverty and the land is destroyed. 

Green America is a partner in the International Chocolate Scorecard, and the 2025 Edition found that several major Halloween faves were sub-par or sad: 

Shift Your Halloween Chocolate from Exploitation to Fair Trade 

Green America and our allies actively work to get the giants of the chocolate industry to improve labor conditions on cocoa plantations and improve environmental sustainability, and thanks to tens of thousands of consumers like you speaking out, we are seeing progress.   

If you want to make sure that the chocolate you hand out this Halloween promotes fair labor, and is either organic or non-GMO verified, make sure to pick fair trade options this Halloween.  

Equal Exchange is a certified member of Green America’s Green Business Network with delicious, fair trade options for Halloween treats.    

Equal Exchange is a long-time leader in providing fair trade chocolates from farmer cooperatives around the world.  They have Organic Chocolate Minis (($42 plus shipping)  that features 150 bite-sized chocolates (either Dark Chocolate or Milk Chocolate).  That way you can give tasty ethical chocolates to kids. 

Tony’s Chocolonely is a leader in Fair Trade chocolate that pays farmers a living income premium on top of the Fairtrade premium – so famers are getting a fair deal.  Tony’s sells pouches with 14 pieces of milk, caramel, and mixed chocolate for $6.99 each plus shipping.  

Alter Eco provides chocolates that are Fair for Life certified and USDA organic. Their Silk Velvet Truffles come individually wrapped and are $54.99 for 60 pieces.  And they offer many more flavors of truffles. 

Get your Halloween Chocolate Early 

Make sure to order your fair trade chocolate early so it arrives on time, and order extra because you and your family will want to sample these Halloween treats yourselves.  After all, the more you eat or give away, the more you benefit farmers. 

All Year Long 

For the rest of year, check out all these brands of fair trade, direct trade, organic chocolates. 

And for which brands to avoid, this chocolate scorecard reveals all. 

--Written by Todd Larsen, Executive Co-Director for Consumer & Corporate Engagement  

The Social Venture Network (SVN) is hosting its Fall Conference in Philadelphia, PA from November 2-5. Attendees will learn about social entrepreneurship and hear from experts about the importance of making an impact through social ventures.For 29 years, high-impact business leaders, social entrepreneurs, and impact investors have convened at SVN conferences to have conversations with values-aligned peers. This unique conference experience creates a space where the true challenges of leading a mission-driven organization can be addressed, and where long-time SVN members and first-time attendees find the people, resources, and ideas they need to succeed and grow.

Hear from speakers like Seth Goldman (co-founder of Honest Tea) as he shares his story of ups and downs on his road of social entrepreneurship during the “True Confessions of Entrepreneurs” panel.

Other speakers include Meghan French Dunbar (Conscious Company), David Levine (American Sustainable Business Council), and Uri Berliner (NPR News).

View the full list of speakers here.

Registration rates are $,1299 for SVN Members and SVN Affiliates (before October 11, 2016), and $1,799 for Non-Members (before October 11, 2016). Prices will increase in the weeks leading up to the event, so register today.

Learn more about the Social Venture Network and how they empower diverse, innovative business leaders.

Bumble Bee tuna is now non-GMO project verified. The company has transitioned away from genetically modified ingredients (GMOs) in its solid white albacore canned tuna, a flagship product.

Green America's GMO Inside campaign has called on its supporters to encourage Bumble Bee to drop GMOs for several years.

Dressed to Impress and Impact Less: Clothing Companies in NY, AZ and WI Awarded for Being Environmentally and Socially Conscious

WASHINGTON, D.C.— September 8, 2016 —Three small green businesses offering ethical apparel in New York, Arizona and Wisconsin, today were announced as the winners of Green America’s “People & Planet Award.” The winners of the $5,000 prizes are: Themis and Thread of Hector, NY; Fed By Threads of Tucson, AZ; and Fair Indigo of Madison, WI. The winners were selected by the public during a month-long online voting period.

The Award recognizes innovative U.S. small businesses that integrate environmental and social considerations into their strategies and operations.

Fran Teplitz, Green America’s executive co-director, said: “Choosing clothing made ethically and with consideration to the environment is one of the best ways to support social and ecological responsibility in your day-to-day life – by literally wearing it on your sleeve. We at Green America applaud these small businesses for their work to help people and the planet with each garment they produce.”

The winning companies are:

• Themis and Thread, Hector, NY. http://www.greenamerica.org/green-business-people-and-planet-award/Summer2016/Themis-Thread.cfm. Themis and Thread creates clothing while taking great care not to adversely affect the environment, humanity or the economy. It offers a fully customizable fashion line of organic cotton and upcycled material, and uses exclusively American-made components.

• Fed By Threads, Tucson, AZ. http://www.greenamerica.org/green-business-people-and-planet-award/Summer2016/Fed-by-Threads.cfm. Fed By Threads is the first American-made "Supply Chain Aware" organic, sweatshop-free, boutique clothing store and custom print apparel business that only carries certified responsibly manufactured products. It also provides emergency meals through the purchase of its garments.

• Fair Indigo, Madison, WI. http://www.greenamerica.org/green-business-people-and-planet-award/Summer2016/Fair-Indigo.cfm. Fair Indigo Label garments are made with organic Peruvian pima cotton and dyed with Oeko-tex certified dyes. Its cooperative members and small business employees in Peru are paid fairly and treated with dignity and respect.

Jesse Beardslee, founder of Themis and Thread, said, “Themis and Thread will use the prize money to purchase vintage and American-made sewing equipment to complement the current machine, a 1940's Singer Featherweight 221. Other plans include deepening our commitments to alternative energy, carbon neutrality and American- produced, organic and recycled fiber innovations.  We will expand our current projects with recycled paper hang tags, posters and packaging, and our natural non-toxic dye method.”

Alok Appadurai, co-founder and CEO of Fed By Threads, said, "It’s an honor to be recognized for our commitment to ending hunger in America, supporting living wage garment jobs nationwide, reducing food waste, and increasing demand for organic sustainable sweatshop-free apparel. We will use a portion of these funds to jumpstart our pilot program to donate organic Fed By Threads hoodies to kids battling cancer in America. It's all about love."

Robert Behnke, co-founder and president of Fair Indigo, said, “We strongly believe the best way we can contribute to a cleaner, greener apparel industry is to grow the market for fairly traded and earth-friendly clothing, which supports organic farmers and small-scale humane production. In this era of viral video clips, we feel the best way we can use this prize money is to connect consumers to the farmers and workers who benefit from fairly traded ethical apparel by making a mini-documentary. We will show consumers how their purchases directly help grow the green economy and shrink the more toxic economy.”

The next round of Green America’s award will be announced in early 2017 and for the first time one of the three winning companies will receive $10,000 and two will each receive $5,000. The award will be given to three green small businesses that focus on green products and services for pets and animals. The next companies nominated could be overall green pet stores, help raise chickens or bees, or responsibly produce items for pets and other animals.

The businesses that the public vote on are determined by public nominations and an expert panel of judges: Gigi Abbadie, Aveda; Justin Conway, Calvert Foundation; Tess O’Brien, Clean Power Perks, Jennifer Snyder, Clif Bar; Erlene Howard, Collective Resource, Inc., Dale Luckwitz, Naturepedic;  Jonathan Reinbold, Organic Valley; Martin Wolf, Seventh Generation; and Andrew Korfhage and Fran Teplitz, both of Green America.
 

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

After a year with their solar hot water heater, homeowners Bob Allen and Lyle Rudensey say they’ll never go back to relying on a conventional water heater. Even in gloomy, rainy Seattle, they are saving money and energy by heating all of their water with the power of the sun.

“With a lack of leadership at the federal level, I feel it’s very important that we all do what we can to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gases,” says Rudensey. “Solar hot water systems are a great place to start. They’re not as expensive as solar photovoltaics, and they’ll save you substantial amounts of energy and money.”

Looking at his household energy bills, Lyle notes that it’s hard to quantify the exact dollar amount the new water heater has saved, because he and Bob also installed energy-efficient appliances and a solar photovoltaic system last year, as part of an overall strategy to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. Still, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), water heating uses more household energy than any activity other than heating and cooling, so replacing your household’s water-heating energy with free power from the sun will have a significant effect on your bottom line. With all their savings combined, Lyle points out that his and Bob’s electric bills have dropped to a low of $5.

“Plus, the water heater increased the value of the house,” Allen adds. “And it’s a hedge against future energy cost increases.”

Allen and Rudensey installed an active solar water heater with evacuated tube collectors, which they say works great in the Pacific Northwest, because the heater keeps working even on overcast days or when temperatures are freezing outside.

“I can’t think of anything negative to say about it,” says Rudensey. “It never ceases to amaze me to see our solar hot water system still pumping 80- to 100-degree water late into the evening on a day when it isn’t even sunny.”

Active Versus Passive Solar Water Heaters

When you select a solar water heater for your home, you can choose between an active system (like Bob and Lyle’s), or a passive system.

• ACTIVE SYSTEMS use a pump to move water through their heating system, and this requires a source of energy (often a solar photovoltaic panel).
  
  An active system stores water in a tank inside your house, and uses its pump to move either water or a “heat exchange” fluid through a “collector” on your roof. Collectors are the components of your solar water heating system it to heat your water. Used in freezing climates, the heat-exchange fluid is a non-freezing liquid that carries the sun’s heat from the roof to your tank, where it transfers the heat to your water. The fluid re-circulates to the roof to be heated again, while the water flows on to your tap. (This fluid is usually propylene glycol, which the FDA has approved as an additive in food and medicine. However, it is a suspected neuro- and respiratory toxin, according to the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety.)Although active systems are more expensive but more reliable than passive ones, you may still wish to keep your conventional water heater for a back-up. In fact, in many areas, local building codes require conventional back-ups, so be sure to check with your contractor or local government. Active systems using the “heat exchange” method are best for areas where freezing temperatures are likely.
• PASSIVE SYSTEMS use no pumps or electrical components.
  
  Because of their design, passive systems are the simpler of the two. They work essentially like a garden hose left in the sun, except the container for the water is much, much larger. The sun directly heats the water in a large, rooftop tank, which then flows down into your plumbing system. If the water has not yet reached the temperature you’ve selected on your thermostat, your conventional water heater will need to kick in to finish the job. Passive systems are best suited for warm climates where your rooftop storage tank is in no danger of freezing.
  
  Because of their simplicity, passive systems are usually cheaper and can last longer than active systems. The drawbacks are that they can be less reliable, and require a heavy water tank, or collector, to be mounted on your roof. (Depending on your roof’s design, this may require structural support.)

Keep in mind that solar water heaters also work great for your outdoor hot water needs, like pools and hot tubs.

Two Types of Collectors

If you choose an active system, you’ll need to consider two types of collectors:

1. FLAT-PLATE COLLECTORS: These are metal boxes with glass or plastic covers (called glazings) on top and a dark-colored “absorber plate” covering a system of pipes on the bottom. Sunlight passes through the glazing and is collected by the absorber plate, which converts the sunlight into heat that is passed on to the liquid (either water or a heat-transfer fluid) in the system of pipes. The advantage of this type of collector is the price—it’s cheaper than evacuated-tube collectors.
2. EVACUATED-TUBE COLLECTORS: Best visualized as a series of small, connected thermoses, these collectors consist of individual glass vacuum tubes surrounding a secondary inner tube, through which the liquid or heat-transfer fluid flows. The most efficient (and most costly) collector, the evacuated-tube model works somewhat better than the flat-plate model in cold climates.

Depending on the type of system you choose, a solar water heater can cost from $2,000 to $6,000, and begins paying for itself right away with your reduced energy bills. The amount you save will depend on many factors, including how much hot water you use, your system’s performance, sunlight in your area, and the local cost of conventional fuels, but the US Department of Energy estimates than on average, your bill should decrease by between 50 and 80 percent.

The Tax Incentives for Solar Water Heaters

Federal income tax credits for solar energy have been in place for over a decade. A credit of up to 30 percent was available until the end of 2019. Unfortunately, despite the success of the program at encouraging solar use, the tax credit will decrease year by year until the end of 2021 when it will go away. For 2020, the tax credit remains at 26%.

Be sure to save documentation of all costs associated with the system’s installation (including the labor of any installers, plumbers, or electricians you use), and note that to claim the credit your system must be certified by the Solar Rating Certification Corporation. To claim the credit, file form 5695 as part of your taxes.

To find additional state-level tax incentives, including rebates, property tax credits, sales tax exemptions, and more, visit the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy.

Remember that no matter where you live or what your climate, a solar water heater can be a great way to reduce our country’s dependence on fossil fuels, and position you to not only start saving money today, but to save a lot more money in the future as the cost of fuels like natural gas and heating oil continue to rise.

“Some people might think that solar water heaters aren’t worth installing in a climate like the Pacific Northwest, but that’s not true,” says Lyle. “Germany gets about 70 percent as much sunlight as Seattle does, and they are the biggest users of solar power in the world. This is something everyone can do that really makes a huge difference.”

Updated September 2025

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

It’s no secret that sweatshops are behind much of the clothing sold today. The media and nonprofits overseas report on factory bosses paying starvation wages, forcing employees to work unpaid overtime, denying bathroom breaks and sick leave, and retaliating against workers who seek better treatment. Corporations claim this is the price consumers have to pay for cheap clothing, but more shoppers are saying that they don’t want low prices to come at the expense of workers—in the U.S. and around the world.

Here are ways to steer your clothing dollars toward companies with fair labor practices, avoid some of the worst sweatshop-labor-using companies, and create a system that respects workers’ rights.

6 Steps to Sweatshop-Free Clothing

1. Reduce, Reuse, and Refuse

Secondhand clothing is a great option for people who want to avoid supporting sweatshops. As a bonus, shopping secondhand can be easier on your budget and the planet. Check your local Yellow Pages or Google Maps for thrift or consignment stores, peruse online swap groups and resources like Facebook Marketplace, and check your local listings for opportunities like yard sales and estate sales. You can also organize a clothing swap in your office or community.

When purchasing necessary, new items, look for clothing that you’ll be able to wear over and over again. Choose high-quality items that fit your personal style, and then care for them properly so they last.

And one guaranteed way to keep your clothing dollars from enriching companies that use sweatshops is simply to buy less clothing overall. When you’re considering a purchase, ask yourself whether you really need the item.

2. Buy Fair Trade

When you buy a hand-knit sweater or shawl from a conventional retailer, chances are that it passed through several middlemen and left the person who made it with a small fraction of the purchase price. Under the Fair Trade system, artisans sell directly to wholesalers or retailers and earn fair payment for their products. When you buy Fair Trade clothing, you’re supporting a system that provides fair wages and healthy working conditions worldwide, especially for economically disadvantaged artisans. You’ll also get unique and high-quality items, such as hand-crocheted, organic cotton sweaters from Indigenous creators, made by artisan cooperatives in Peru and Ecuador.

3. Beyond "Made in the USA"

Another way to find clothing that hasn't been made in sweatshops is to look for the UNITE label, which means the garment was made by members of UNITE HERE (the union created from the merger of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union).

“When something has a union label, it means the workers who made it have a voice—a way to deal with problems on the job without fear of getting fired, reprimanded, or retaliated against,” says Amanda Cooper of UNITE HERE. “They’ve negotiated an enforceable contract with their company that covers wages and benefits, safety on the job, and production standards.”

The union label is a much better indicator of fair labor conditions than the “Made in the USA” label is. First, explains Trina Tocco of the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), there are many illegal sweatshops operating within the U.S. and in U.S. territories; also, it’s likely that a non-union “U.S.-made” garment was produced overseas and only had the finishing touches, like buttons or embroidery, applied in the US.

4. Check the Source

You can also look for clothing companies that operate responsibly. Some companies are, or source from, cooperatives which allow workers to organize themselves democratically and have ownership in their businesses. Cooperatives may also benefit disadvantaged individuals.

Companies like Patagonia are starting to include sourcing on the individual item's page. It's a step in the right direction for accountability, and normalizes transparency for buyers.

Many cooperatives also demonstrate concern for the environment as well as their workers, using organic materials and low-impact manufacturing methods. For instance, Open Threads is a Cleveland, Ohio, cooperative that employs low-income individuals in manufacturing organic-cotton clothing.

Maggie’s Organics is a Michigan-based business that buys much of its organic-cotton clothing from the Nicaraguan cooperative Maquiladora Mujeres.

5. Do a Little Digging

Keep in mind that large clothing companies often work through dozens of subcontractors and can change suppliers from one month to the next in search of lower prices or faster turnaround times—which often come at the expense of workers’ rights. If digging results in a long history of news reports linking a retailer to sweatshop violations, you can assume that the company puts profit before fair labor standards.

“It’s hard to find companies producing completely responsible garments,” explains Tocco. “There are so many stages in the supply chain: gathering raw material, spinning it into cloth, dyeing the cloth, and cutting and sewing the garments. You could have a union-made garment made of cotton picked by a child laborer.”

Ethical companies will have codes of conduct ensuring worker rights (including freedom of association and freedom from harassment, as well as fair safety, wage, and hour standards); use independent monitors to check factories’ compliance with the code; report publicly on the monitors’ findings; and work with factories found in violation of the code to get into compliance. It’s also a good sign if a company is purchasing from supplier factories where workers are represented by an independent union and have collective bargaining arrangements in place, and if the company stays with these factories for a long time.

The better companies will be able to answer your questions about sweatshops, codes of conduct, and related issues with specifics if you call or write to them.

6. Change the System

While good clothing options do exist, there are far too few; we’ll need to work together to create more. Green America challenges shoppers to buy five responsible clothing items (Fair-Trade, union-made, or cooperative-made) this year, and to make sure any clothing gift purchases are responsible, too.

Let companies know you're concerned about labor practices. If you're replacing old jeans with a union-made pair, tell the company you used to buy from why you're making a switch, and what they need to do to win you back.

If companies hear enough consumers questioning their labor practices or taking their business elsewhere because of labor violations, they’ll know they need to address these concerns.

You can also pressure clothing companies to become more responsible by getting large institutional purchasers to demand sweatshop-free clothing made under fair labor conditions. Thanks to the work of student activists, more than 100 colleges and universities joined the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a nonprofit that helps the schools ensure that the suppliers making products that bear the school’s logo are respecting workers’ rights. Contact the WRC or United Students Against Sweatshops to learn about getting your college or university involved.

Sweatshops are a deep-rooted global problem, but solutions are emerging as workers and consumers demand a better system. Buy the best, sweatshop-free clothing you can today, and act to create a better future for garment workers around the world.

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

Smucker’s Called on to Produce Non-GMO and Organic Peanut Butter and Jelly and Stop Jamming Americans Full of GMOs: Urged to Follow Lead of Hershey’s, Campbell’s, General Mills, Gerber and Other Iconic American Brands.

WASHINGTON, D.C.//AUGUST 25, 2016 – Today, Green America’s GMO Inside campaign launched a major push – “Smucker’s: Make PB&J Great Again” – to get The J.M. Smucker Company, America’s iconic producer of Smucker’s jams, jellies, and Jif peanut butter, to phase out the use of genetically engineered ingredients (GMOs) and transition towards organic products.

The new campaign website (http://www.gmoinside.org/smuckers) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/GmoInside) call on Smucker’s to stop sourcing GMO ingredients for their products, and to use a third-party verifier to ensure that fruit spreads and peanut butters produced by Smucker’s are all non-GMO.

The new push comes as Smucker’s this week posted a 7 percent decline in net revenue, and non-GMO products continue to see strong growth. Polls show that half of all Americans seek to avoid GMOs. 

“Millions of people enjoy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” said Michael Stein, Food Campaign Manager at Green America. “Yet they may unwittingly be consuming GMOs produced with toxic inputs. Smucker’s should be clearly labeling products that contain GMOs to provide the transparency demanded by American consumers. As Americans increasingly seek out organic and non-GMO products, Smucker’s must transition away from GMOs and increase organic offerings.  Smucker’s can’t afford to alienate more than half of its customers.”

The J.M. Smucker Company has been working hard to keep consumers in the dark about GMOs in food products. The company spent over $1 million to fight against various state and federal mandatory GMO labeling initiatives. 

Green America’s GMO Inside campaign has called out The J.M. Smucker Company in the past for the company’s funding of opposition to GMO labeling ballot initiatives. With the passage of the Dark Act, a federally mandated GMO labeling bill, GMO Inside is now working hard to pressure Smucker’s to remove GMOs from its products, seek third party non-GMO verification, and transition to more organic and sustainable products. Additionally, GMO Inside is pushing Smucker’s for clear on-package GMO labeling until the company can transition away from GMOs.

“The days when a global company like Smucker’s can hide GMOs from the customer are over. Consumers demand clean and safe non-GMO products,” said GMO Inside Co-Chair John W. Roulac. “It is time for Smucker’s to commit to transparency, and sourcing the highest quality organic ingredients for its customers.”

Multinational food companies like Smucker’s are increasingly hearing the demands from consumers for clear on-package GMO labeling, and to transition to sustainable non-GMO organic ingredients in their foods. Companies including General Mills, Hershey’s, Campbell’s, and Gerber have taken steps to remove GMOs from products as a result. Green America will continue to pressure Smucker’s to remove GMOs, provide clear on-package labeling of genetically engineered ingredients, and transition towards producing more certified organic and non-GMO verified products.

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:  Natalie Watson, (703) 276-3256, or nwatson@hastingsgroup.com.

Click to view this list as an illustrated infographic.

Whether you're looking to save money or save the environment, there are many ways you can save energy around the house. Learn how to cut your energy bill by 50% with these 10 easy, energy-saving tips.

Save 2%: Turn Off the Lights

Be mindful about shutting lights off when you leave a room. If you have a forgetful family member or roommate, place reminders on the switchplates or consider installing motion-detector switches.

ADVANCED: Replace your bulbs with CFLs or LEDs.

Save 19%: Install Ceiling Fans

Install Energy Star ceiling fans in the rooms you use most often. They’ll help keep you cool in the summer while your AC works less or not at all. In the winter, switch them to turn clockwise to circulate the warm air rising up to the ceiling back down into the room.

ADVANCED: Go with a white roof or install a green roof, which will prevent heat loss through the roof in winter and cool your home down in the summer.

Save 4%: Show Your Fridge Some Love

The refrigerator is one of the biggest energy-users in your home, and if it was built before 1993, it’s a huge energy hog. Clean the coils on your fridge every six months to keep it running efficiently, and take up unused space with jugs of water, which will hold in the cold better. Eliminate a second refrigerator, if you have one.

ADVANCED: Replace or recycle your older appliances wisely. Buy energy-efficient new appliances when possible.

Save 9%: Wash Your Clothes in Cold Water, Let them Air Dry

Washing clothes in cold water gets them just as clean as hot, and cuts your washer’s energy use in half. Drying your clothes on an outdoor line or indoor rack can save around $100 in energy costs every year.

ADVANCED: Water and energy use are intertwined: producing energy uses water, and providing clean drinking water requires energy. Take steps to conserve water everywhere in your home.

Save 12+%: Upgrade Appliances

Appliances use 20 percent of the energy in the average US home. When it’s time to buy new appliances, look for the most efficient Energy Star model you can find. The biggest energy hogs in a home are usually the refrigerator (particularly if it was built before 1993) and clothes dryer.

Save 1-3%: Give Your Water Heater A Blanket

Adding an insulating cover to your water heater can reduce heat loss by 24-45 percent. Also, turn your water heater down by ten degrees, if possible. If half of US households did so, it would prevent 239 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

ADVANCED: Upgrade to a tankless or solar water heater, and save 14% off your energy bill. And while you’re in your garage, consider buying a super-efficient car or, better yet, a bike.

Save 12%: Plug Air Leaks

Replacing windows is often the least cost-effective step you can take to save energy, so seal air leaks around doors and windows instead with caulk and weatherstripping. Also, consider putting up insulating curtains, pasting low-e film to the window glass, and installing storm windows or plastic window films to further cut down on heat loss in winter.

ADVANCED: Get a RESNET or Home Performance with Energy Star audit to help pinpoint your biggest energy losses.

Save 10%: Use Your Programmable Thermostat

Nearly half of US homes already have a programmable thermostat. Dig out that owner’s manual and learn how to use yours to maximize the efficiency of your heating and cooling systems. Program your thermostat to turn itself down or off when you’re sleeping or are at work or school.

ADVANCED: Set a winter target of 68°F when you’re at home and 55°F when you’re away. Set a summer target of 78°F when you’re at home and 82°F when you’re away.

Save 3%: Air Dry Dishes

Using your dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand can save water, but if you let the drying cycle run, you’re wasting energy and money. Skip the drying cycle and let your dishes air dry. Newer, more effective and efficient dishwashers allow you to skip the step of pre-rinsing your dishes before you load them in the dishwasher.

ADVANCED: Run your dishwasher (and your clothes washer, for that matter) at night, during off-peak hours. It’s our country’s peak demand that determines the expansion of dirty coal-fired power plants.

Save 5%: Eliminate "Phantom Load"

Many electronics still suck energy even when they’re turned off--such as powering that little clock on your microwave when it’s not in use. Unplug your electronics or plug them into a power strip and switch it off to save on this “phantom load.”

ADVANCED: Use a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure the energy use of appliances and gadgets, even when they’re turned off. You can also keep track of your home’s entire energy use with a whole-house energy monitor.

Save More Money on Energy!

The following incentives can help you save money on efficiency retrofits:

• FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL INCENTIVES: Search the database of state incentives to find tax incentives and rebates for your renewable and energy efficiency home improvements.
• HOME STAR: Proposed legislation would create a “Home Star” program, providing rebate incentives to the American public to encourage Home Performance with Energy Star audits, energy-efficient retrofits, and the purchase of efficient appliances. At press time, Home Star legislation was included in the July 2010 Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act.

If we don’t take widespread, systemic action to reduce our energy use, the impacts of climate change will be severe. Fortunately, we have existing solutions to address climate change right at home. Learn how to cut your carbon use at home even further, and green your energy use whenever possible.

Inspired by our Summer 2016 issue of the Green American on recycling, editorial fellow Ilana Berger investigated why and how to buy recycled eyeglasses. Here's what she discovered....

A few weeks ago, I went to LensCrafters with my mom to help her pick out a new pair of glasses. Having been blessed with 20/20 vision, I had never been glasses shopping before.

I must have picked out around 15 different frames for her to try on, but none of them stuck. Mom would try a pair on, consult a mirror, usually with a dissatisfied expression, then glance at the brutally honest saleswoman who would shake her head.

It wasn't until right before we were about to leave that I noticed some frames in the glass desk we were sitting at. They were tasteful, inexpensive, and best of all, had an eco-friendly label. By that time, mom had already decided on a pair and didn't have the patience to try on another. And I didn't blame her! That was when I began to understand why many people don't wear eco-friendly frames.

Flaws of Metal Frames

Choosing glasses frames seems like it can be such a stressful process, that when you find something you like, you are likely to buy it regardless of its material. But before you walk out of Lenscrafters, or another store, consider what goes into traditional metal frame making. What you learn might make you want to take the extra few minutes to find a pair of eco-friendly frames.

According to the Ecologist, an environmental affairs magazine, most metal frames are made out of titanium, silver, or stainless steel. Titanium itself is thought to be safe for humans, but its production creates hazardous waste. There are two processes that are used to manufacture titanium: the sulfate process and the chlorine process.

The sulfate process creates sulfuric acid waste, which gets dumped into surrounding bodies of water. The increased acidity then lowers the PH of the water, which lowers oxygen levels and suffocates marine life. It is also very corrosive, and burns plants and animals that it comes into contact with. Crude titanium dioxide is purified using the chlorine process, during which titanium is fed with carbon and chlorine gas. If the gas escapes into the atmosphere, it can cause skin, nose and throat irritation, chest tightness, and difficulty breathing.

Silver can be equally as damaging. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, nickel, and gold mining, which is one of the most destructive industries in the world. Open-pit mines, which are created by blasting soil and rock away to bring the ore to the surface, destroys habitats. They also creates tons of solid waste.

According to Oxfam America and Earthworks’ joint 2010 report Dirty Metals: Mining, Communities and the Environment, in 2001, 96 percent of arsenic emissions and 78 percent of lead emissions came from metal mining. Mining also exposes rocks that contain sulfide to the elements for the first time, because the metals are often found within them. This can be a problem because when the rocks are dumped as waste, the sulfides react with air and water to create an extremely high concentration of sulfuric acid.

The mining industry is also infamous for violating worker rights by turning a blind eye to dangerous working conditions. In the mines, rock falls, tunnel collapses, fires, and heat exhaustion are all common causes of injury and death. Deep shaft miners spend hours working in temperatures as high at 140 degrees F. Anyone remember the 33 Chilean miners who were stuck 2,300 feet underground for 69 days in 2010? That was a gold and copper mine. All the while, they were inhaling toxic methane gas and dust, which causes tuberculosis, bronchitis, and lung cancer in the long term.

In China, around six million miners have been afflicted with silicosis from inhaling quartz dust. The disease causes the lungs to scar and harden so that lose their flexibility, and the afflicted person can no longer breathe in and out. It is irreversible but completely preventable with proper gear and ventilation. To make matters worse, according to Reuters, an international news agency, management and authorities often try to cover up mining accidents and avoid covering medical bills that miners cannot afford to pay.

Investing in Recycled Eyeglasses

I could go on and on about the harmful effects of metal mining and manufacturing, but the important thing is that there is something you can do to reduce the demand for these processes. Consider investing in frames that are made out of recycled plastic, plant-based acetate (from a green company), or sustainably harvested wood. Unlike most other plastics, acetate is not petroleum-based but is made from cotton and wood fibers instead.

Companies are coming up with creative ways to offer recycled and biodegradable frames that are just as stylish as ordinary ones.

Look for eco-friendly or recycled eyeglasses at your local store, or check out one of the websites below: 

• Modo: Eyewear design, manufacturing, and distributing company whose brand, ECO, is made of 95 percent recycled plastics and steel. Modo is the first consumer company in the world to receive an Environmental Claims Validation (ECV) on recycled content, from UL (Underwriter Laboratory) Environment, a company that certifies electronics. Modo also plants a tree in Cameroon for each pair of ECO frames you buy, in a partnership with Trees for the Future. 
• Nature Eyes: Designs several brands of eyewear, including models made from at least 75 percent recycled wood, titanium, and acetate. One of their collections is made from 100 percent recycled materials including the packaging, and has a hinge-lock or buckle-lock instead of traditional screws, so they're super durable. 
• Solo Eyewear: Creates a selection of sustainable, reasonably priced frame designs that are 20 percent recycled plastic, or repurposed bamboo and acetate. Every pair of glasses you buy helps to fund eyeglass prescriptions and eye surgeries for people in developing countries. 
• Readers.com: This website sells a selection of lightweight frames made with recycled bamboo, bark, and wood. 
• Dick Moby: Dick Moby works with Mazzucchelli, a leading acetate producer, to make its black optical and sunglasses frames using 97 percent acetate waste. According the website, the remaining 3 percent is black ink. Other colors are made from biodegradable acetate certified as being free from crude oil and toxic plasticizers, and all frames come in a recycled leather case with a cleaning cloth made from recycled PET bottles. 
• Homes Eyewear: This company makes sunglasses frames using old-growth wooden boards repurposed from old houses in Detroit. They get the boards from Reclaim Detroit, a social enterprise that creates jobs for people in the area dismantling parts of buildings instead of destroying them. 
• Vinylize: A Budapest-based company that makes eyewear from high-quality recycled vinyl records to increase durability. Fun fact: many of its frames are made from minimal techo vinyls. 

Another great way to get the most out of a pair of glasses is to recycle them when you're finished with them. Instead throwing your gently used frames away, bring them to one of these organization's drop-off centers to help someone who may not have access to proper eye care. 

• Respectacle Inc.: This organization enters its donated glasses into a database so that people all over the world, or their eye care professionals, can view their options and choose a pair of glasses that is the right style and prescription for them. Glasses can be shipped to Respectacle's main location in Minnesota if there is no drop-off location near you. 
• Lions Clubs International: As part of its Recycle for Sight program, Lions Clubs collects used glasses at regional Lions Eyeglass Recycling Centers. The glasses are then sorted by hand and given to low-income people. You can also ship glasses to any Recycling Center, or the Lions Clubs headquarters in Illinois. 
• Saving Sight: A nonprofit organization that takes recycled eyeglasses from Lions Clubs and other organizations and makes sure that they get to the people who need them by distributing them to humanitarian groups and to Respectacle to be entered into its database. Saving Sight also has six office locations where you can directly donate glasses.

—Ilana Berger, editorial fellow

Amazon’s web services hold the company back, despite its attempts to promote the innovations of others.

A row of servers in a data center.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its second City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge today, but key changes must be made within the company before it can truly lead the innovation charge.

The City on a Cloud program, designed to recognize local and regional governments for technological developments that greatly contributed to their communities, comes at a time when its influential business clients are pressuring the tech giant to be more transparent in its energy portfolio.

“The cloud can be a powerful force to help our companies and our customers reach their greatest potential,” noted AWS clients, including The Huffington Post and tumblr in a letter to Amazon’s Senior VP of Web Services, Andrew Jassy. “But given the threat of climate change and the significant amount of electricity needed to power the cloud, we are increasingly concerned about our responsibility as companies who value sustainability and share concerns about climate change.”

By powering its data centers with unsustainable fuel sources, Amazon is missing out on key innovations in the field of renewable energy–innovations that have the potential to create thousands of new jobs, reduce healthcare costs, and improve the health of our environment.

Handing out information on AWS’ energy use at it’s GovCloud conference in Washington, DC.

As a part of Green America’s Amazon: Build a Cleaner Cloud campaign, we teamed up with representatives from Greenpeace to talk to attendees of AWS’ June 25th GovCloud conference in Washington, DC.

Representing governmental, educational, and nonprofit fields, these GovCloud clients have the perfect opportunity to demand greater transparency in Amazon’s renewable commitment. In refusing to be transparent about its energy usage and plans, AWS deprives these influential groups of the ability to make responsible, informed decisions about where to invest public money.

Merely committing to using 100% renewable energy, as AWS has done, is meaningless without a clear plan to achieve this goal. We’re calling on AWS customers to reach out to their AWS representatives to demand greater transparency in Amazon’s energy future and cease the construction of new data centers that rely on non-renewable energy.

Companies like Google and Apple, whose data centers are powered by renewables, have demonstrated that such a business model is profitable, and Amazon must keep up in order to remain competitive.

Help encourage AWS to deliver on its responsibility to build a cloud that works for both our communities and our environment. Take action with us by signing our petition at buildacleanercloud.com.

$1.32 an Hour and Forced Overtime: Major Labor Abuses Documented in Factories Making Disney Products; Consumers Urged to Speak Out and Opt to Purchase Green, Sustainable Toys.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— August 17, 2016 — With holiday shopping less than three months away, Green America is calling on consumers nationwide to send a message to Disney CEO Robert Iger asking him to address significant labor abuses in Disney factories that make Disney toys, including popular Frozen dolls. The campaign is calling on Disney to ensure living wages for workers and improved working and living conditions overall.

The campaign petition can be found here. Consumers looking for toys made by workers who were treated well, and made without deadly toxins, can go to Green America’s www.SafeGreenToys.org to find options.

“Americans purchasing Frozen toys for their kids this Holiday season need to know the truth behind the toys: Disney is using factories in China that engage in exploitative practices,” said Todd Larsen, executive co-director of consumer and corporate engagement at Green America. “We’re asking all consumers to put pressure on Disney to address labor abuses in its factories, and we encourage consumers to purchase sustainable green toys this Holiday season.”

"The beautiful world of Disney is merely a fairytale,” said Li Qiang, founder and executive director of China Labor Watch. “The real world is one where evil has triumphed over good, and where profits triumph over conscience. We need those who seek justice to come together and fight the villains in the world of Disney, to create a world where Disney is wholeheartedly kind and just."

"Disney has a lot of suppliers in China. It claims to regulate these suppliers with a Manufacturer Code of Conduct, which we doubt is effective,” said Au Lap Hang, China officer at Worker Empowerment. “We observed serious violations of local labor law in Disney supplier factories, which include long working hours without proper overtime salary and not providing the mandatory state pension for workers. In recent years, the Disney Company even required suppliers to relocate their factories to Southeast Asia in order to reduce production cost. As a result, the Mizutani Factory in Shenzhen was shut down and 196 workers lost their job, without getting the compensation required by law."

The campaign asks Disney to take the following actions to address labor abuses:

1. Living wages for workers, so that workers need not rely on excessive overtime just to make ends meet.
2. Strictly voluntary overtime work and payment for all overtime hours worked.
3. Payment for all mandatory job-related activities including group meetings, training and on-boarding, including back pay for workers who were denied payments in the past.
4. Hygienic and safe housing for workers.
5. Pre-job safety training that adequately prepares workers and informs them of risks to their short-term and long-term health, and how to reduce these risks.
6. A safe work environment, including free and easy access to safety equipment, and health screenings/exams, and clear and unlocked fire escapes.
7. Allow workers to elect enterprise level union representatives and allow workers to elect their occupational health and safety representatives.
8. Pay workers the full amount of social insurance they are owed and ensure severance payments for workers who lose their jobs when Disney supplier factories close.

A recent report from China Labor Watch entitled “The Dark World of Disney” found significant labor violations at two Disney supplier factories in China (Lam Sun Plastic Products Co. Ltd and Dongguan Zhenyang Toy Limited Company, both in Dongguan, Guangdong province), including workers laboring 12 hours per day with brief rest breaks, cramped dormitories with unhygienic facilities, low pay ($1.32 per hour), and forced overtime. The report is just the latest investigation by China Labor Watch which has documented similar labor abuses in dozens of Disney factories. In addition, Worker Empowerment, a non-profit labor rights group based in Hong Kong has documented similar abuses at Disney factories and the failure to provide severance pay for workers at a closed Disney supplier factory (Mizutani Toy Factory Co. Ltd in Shenzhen), and is helping workers to obtain the severance owed to them.

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.

You can use socially responsible investing (SRI) to help you meet your financial goals, like growing your savings while ensuring your money has a positive impact on people and the planet.

Socially-concerned investors generally seek to own shares of profitable companies that are transparent about their operations, have strong records of community involvement, positive environmental impact policies and practices, respect for human rights around the world, and create safe and useful products. They will also try to avoid investments in those firms that fall short in these areas.

Green America is pleased to partner with our Green Business Network member, Natural Investments LLC, a leader in environmentally and socially responsible investing, to bring you the mutual fund Heart Rating. The Heart Rating evaluates mutual funds selected by Natural Investments based on their environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) performance, their degree of community development investing, and the fund companies’ engagement in shareholder activism.

The Socially Responsible Investing Heart Rating

You, or your financial advisor or asset management firm if you have one, can screen stocks, mutual funds, and other investments on the issues that matter to you.

For additional information on socially responsible mutual funds, including financial performance, visit USSIF's Mutual Fund Performance Chart.

Myth: Socially responsible investments make less money than conventional ones.

Fact: The evidence, amassed through hundreds of studies, shows that historically, SRI products have performed as well as or better than their conventional counterparts.

Before buying shares, read the prospectus (document with details about the fund) to understand the risks.

Need help investing? Consider using a financial planner or advisor who is dedicated to socially and environmentally responsible investing. Find financial planners and advisors who are certified members of our Green Business Network here.

Divestment

Divestment is when investors drop their shares in a company or remove funds from a bank in order to make a statement and to re-align their investments with their values for longer-term benefit. Divestment campaigns launched against a company can make corporate management take notice and change company policy since divestment represents a potential drop in share prices and loss of revenue. 

In the 1990s, activists convinced companies to divest from business in South Africa to put pressure on that government to abolish apartheid. That campaign was hugely successful and gave rise to modern divestment movements. In recent years, university students in the US and internationally have demanded their schools divest from fossil fuels in a variety of ongoing campaigns, resulting 220 educational institutions committed to divesting their endowments in 2021, according to the 2021 Invest Divest Report. Some cities and countries, as well as philanthropies and other institutions, have also committed to divesting their assets from fossil fuels companies. Beginning in 2016, divestment was used by protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline, who asked individuals and cities to remove their investments from the 17 national and international banks giving loans to the building company.

Beyond your own investments

Every organization, faith congregation, school, or workplace needs a bank account. You can help steer more money into underserved communities, and into local economies, by encouraging any of the organizations you're a part of to switch to a better bank and shift investment funds into community investing options. 

Or, you may be able to become involved with the larger holdings of your religious denomination if it belongs to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). Bringing together socially responsible investors across many faiths (Catholic, Episcopalian, Jewish, Mennonite, and more), ICCR members leverage the combined $100 billion of their investment portfolios to sponsor shareholder resolutions on climate change, the use of sweatshops, human rights, and other crucial issues. To check whether your denomination is a part of ICCR, visit its website. 

Want your retirement to work for the world? Here are tools on how to encourage your workplace to adopt socially responsible investing options into regular retirement contribution accounts.

Green America is not an investment adviser nor do we provide financial planning, legal, or tax advice. Nothing in our communications or materials shall constitute or be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or investment recommendations.

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the country’s first labeling legislation for genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law this week.

Advocates were quick to express dissatisfaction with the bill when it hit the Senate floor. Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, called it a “sham” and a “legislative embarrassment.” Food Democracy Now called it a “corrupt bargain.” And multiple groups said it included backdoor dealings with organic food companies and Monsanto, the biotech giant behind the bulk of GMO crops planted in the U.S. as well as the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup).

The final bill represented something of a compromise, and many in the advocacy space were surprised it passed.

Gary Hirshberg, chairman of the Just Label It initiative and co-founder of Stonyfield, called the bill “inadequate.” And the initiative officially opposed it. (Its gripes, like many of its cohorts’, center around the bill’s loose definition of GMOs and its focus on QR codes rather than on-pack messaging.) But the news isn’t all bad, he told a group of journalists last week. “In the big picture, coming from 2011 when zero consumers had any knowledge” of GMOs, “this is progress.”

“But what this law really shines the light on,” Hirshberg continued, “is the critical importance of responsible companies now to do the right thing.”

And one leading consumer company is out to do just that. Ahead of the bill’s passage on Thursday, the nation’s leading yogurt maker announced a policy that blows past any federal or state requirements for GMO labeling.

Dannon’s big plans

New York-based Dannon plans to adopt an “all-natural approach” for its three flagship brands, Dannon, Oikos and Danimals, president and CEO Mariano Lozano said at a press briefing on Thursday.

Depending on your background, that sentence either made you smile or cringe. While studies continue to show that American shoppers seek out “natural” foods, advocates have longstanding beef with the ambiguity of the term. But for its part, Dannon set a clear internal definition for its “natural” approach — and its scope may surprise you.

“For us, ‘all natural’ means fewer ingredients that are closer to nature, clearer labels, that they are ingredients that we can pronounce, that they are not synthetic and are non-GMO,” Lozano explained.

Dannon’s first round of non-GMO yogurts represent around 10 percent of the company’s product portfolio. But that’s just the beginning of what industry experts say is a pioneering strategy. Here’s the gist:

• Dannon plans to continue evolving its flagship brands to pivot toward non-GMO ingredients, with the ultimate goal of placing the Non-GMO Project’s Butterfly Seal on all Dannon, Oikos and Danimals products. These brands represent half of the milk the company uses and half of its on-shelf turnover.
• Dannon will label all products containing GMO ingredients nationwide by the end of this year.
• Starting in 2017, the company will go one step further to ensure the cows in its supply chain are fed non-GMO feed, a first for a leading non-organic yogurt maker.

This is a former Green America campaign, and progress was made! In 2018, Samsung signed a binding arbitration framework that ensured victims of chemicals exposure are properly taken care of, and Samsung published a list of 11 substances that are regulated within its supply chain.

Roughly half the world's smartphones are made in China, where tens of millions work in the electronics-manufacturing sector. Workers in China and other countries that manufacture electronics are regularly exposed to dangerous chemicals without protective gear or adequate training, and some are developing serious illnesses such as leukemia and nerve damage. Sick workers do not always receive sufficient treatment. 

Our Demands for Smartphone Sweatshops

Eliminate Toxic Chemicals

Stop the use of the most dangerous, toxic chemicals in smartphone supplier factories and replace them with safer alternatives.

Factories making smartphone products use toxic chemicals that cause cancer (carcinogens such as benzene), chemicals that cause birth defects and miscarriages (reproductive toxins such as the chemical toluene), and chemicals that cause nerve damage (neurotoxins such as n-hexane). Brands, starting with Apple and Samsung must identify and disclose all chemicals used in supplier factories as well as those in all their products. In situations where the danger of a chemical is unknown, brands must require proper testing. Apple and Samsung must institute and enforce appropriate exposure monitoring, medical monitoring, and effective training and management systems to ensure worker health and safety. Supplier factories must provide workers with adequate safety training and protective gear free of charge.

In response to Green America's Bad Apple campaign, in 2014, Apple agreed to ban benzene and n-hexane from supplier factories and is now engaging in a comprehensive approach to address toxins in its supply chain.  However, Samsung has failed to take actions that address worker safety in its factories. Green America continues to mobilize consumers to put pressure on Samsung.

Ensure Adequate Medical Treatment

Create a fund to pay for the treatment of injured workers and ensure that all workers injured while making Apple and Samsung products receive adequate treatment. For workers struggling to access care, Apple, Samsung, and their supplier factories must institute a safe and rapid mechanism for workers to report illnesses.

End Worker Abuse

Apple, Samsung and their supplier factories must ensure compliance with the ILO’s eight Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, article 32 on the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, and national laws regarding occupational health and safety, worker benefits, and minimum wage for all workers, including young, migrant workers. Apple, Samsung and their suppliers must ensure worker empowerment to effectively oversee and enforce these rights without interference or retaliation from management.

Single-stream recycling—or allowing households to dump all types of recyclables into one blue or green bin—has increased US recycling rates by 30 percent. It has also caused recycling contamination to skyrocket. Putting the wrong items or dirty items into your bin can ruin entire batches of recyclables, meaning they’ll all end up landfilled or incinerated instead. 

Use these tips to ensure more of your  bin items reach actual recyclers. Read below or watch the video version:

Video is a co-production of Gringo Starr Productions and Green America.

Glass

• Never put broken glass into your recycling bin. It could harm workers, who hand-sort recyclables. It could also get caught in and damage machinery or spoil bales of plastic or paper recyclables. 
• Pyrex, china, ceramic, and porcelain are not recyclable, so keep them out of your bin. 

Metal

• Metal caps from containers may or may not be accepted for recycling at your facility. Check with your waste hauler.  
• Never put jagged pieces of scrap metal into your bin. It could cut workers who hand-sort recyclables, and it could also get caught in and damage machinery. 

Paper

• Paper can easily be contaminated by food and liquid residues. To keep your paper clean and dry, collect it in paper sacks, staple the sacks shut, and write “PAPER” on them in marker or pen. 
• Don’t include shredded paper unless your local waste-management company says it’s okay. Paper recycling facilities often can’t recycle super-short paper fibers—like the small, confetti pieces that come out of your shredder. These pieces are also prone to flying around sorting facilities, where they can contaminate other recycling batches. 
• Go ahead and shred what you need to to protect your privacy, but then compost it or use it for packaging cushion material. 
• If your paper has oil or food residue—think pizza boxes or popcorn bags—it’s a contamination hazard. Do not recycle! These can be composted if there are no plastic coating or parts.  
• If your paper has plastic coating on it, as with frozen food containers or microwave meal boxes, it’s also a contamination hazard and should be landfilled. Do not compost, as plastic won’t break down in the environment.  
• Don’t include coated receipt paper. It’s not recyclable and is a contamination hazard. It’s also usually covered in chemicals like bisphenol-A (BPA), so it shouldn’t be composted. 

Plastic

• Don’t squish your plastic containers! Flattened containers can be mistakenly sent with paper items by automatic sorting machines, causing contamination.  
• Find out what number plastics your waste management company accepts, and ONLY throw those plastics in the bin. Don’t “wish-cycle” the other numbers in the hopes that they’ll magically be recycled. 
• If your community doesn’t accept #5 plastics, for example, not only will that #5 butter container not be recycled, it may also contaminate entire bales of perfectly recyclable #1 and #2 plastics your community accepts.
• Remove plastic lids and caps from containers and throw them in the trash. They are often #5 plastic and not accepted at most facilities. 
• Don’t include plastic shopping bags or put your recyclables in plastic trash bags. These environmental menaces are also a big problem for recycling facilities. Most communities do not accept plastic bags for recycling, so they’ll just be hand-sorted out—which wastes workers’ time—and landfilled. Plus, just like you often see them flying across the landscape, they tend to fly around inside recycling facilities, where they may get tangled in equipment, or land in and contaminate items your community would normally recycle.   

General Tips

• Wash all food and liquid residue from containers and let them dry before putting them in a single-stream bin, to avoid contaminating other items. 
• Though diapers are made from plastic and paper, two commonly recyclable materials, their, erm, contents once they’re used are considered hazardous waste. Also, remember, workers are hand-sorting these items—how would you like to hand-sort a dirty diaper? Keep your dirty diapers out of the recycling bin (and switch to cloth if you can!). 
• Recycling practices vary across the country, so be sure to follow all local instructions about recycling. 

The Other R's

The best thing to do even before you recycle is to embrace a mindset of elegant simplicity—which means embrace the other “R’s” before you even get to “recycling”. 

Reduce:  

Before you buy something, ask yourself if you really need the item. Could you borrow it or rent it? Could you make do with something you already own?

Reuse: 

Before you throw something in the trash or recycling bin, see if you can repurpose it, refurbish it, or give it to someone else who can use it.

Refuse:  

Not one of the three traditional “R’s,” but refusing to buy what you don’t need can go a long way toward shrinking your personal impact on the landfill, the recycling center, and the planet. 

Rot:  

Can you compost it? Always compost if you can, rather than throwing organic waste into the landfill. Read our tips for picking the right composter.  If you live in a smaller space, try worm composting.
 

Once cell phones, laptops, or other electronics have outlived their mayfly-like lifespans, their disposal becomes an issue. Full of toxic chemicals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and PCBs, improperly recycled electronic waste, or e-waste, can expose people to substances that lead to cancer, birth defects, and other major health issues.

According to some estimates, 50 to 80 percent of electronics collected for recycling in North America is exported to developing countries, where they’re dumped or hand-processed by workers with little to no protective gear, and release toxins at deadly levels.

“Some people in Africa, China, and India are making more money scavenging e-waste than they could otherwise, but they’re risking their lives to take it apart or burn the plastics off to recover the recyclable metals,” says Ted Smith, coordinator of the International Campaign for Responsible Technology. “High-end e-waste recyclers should know how to recover the metals without burning and exposing people to toxins, but wastepickers in developing countries don’t have the cash or the wherewithal to do it. That’s what’s creating pollution that’s just wreaking havoc in so many places.”

To reduce the likelihood of your electronics ending up in a toxic dump in Africa or Asia, pay close attention to whether and how your recycler is certified. The two main certifications in the US are R2 and e-Stewards.

R2 is the standard developed under the heavy hand of US electronics manufacturers and a scrap-recycling trade association. E-waste activists consider R2 lax and cite numerous loopholes that allow R2-certified companies to cut corners and mislead clients. For example, companies with only one R2-certified facility can act as if their entire business is “R2-certified” while still operating non-certified facilities that may ship your old electronics to developing countries.

In contrast, the robust e-Stewards certification is run by the Basel Action Network (BAN), an environmental and human rights watchdog in the area of ewaste. BAN is named after the Basel Convention, an international treaty that prevents global dumping of toxic e-waste, particularly in developing countries. The US is the only developed country that has failed to ratify the Basel Convention.

BAN regularly monitors electronics recyclers—regardless of whether they’re certified by e-Stewards—for illegal overseas waste shipments by planting electronic tracking devices in e-waste that they drop off for recycling, or by photographing containers and tracking their numbers across the ocean.

Chicago-based Intercon Solutions, an electronics recycler currently certified by R2, was caught red-handed in 2011 when a shipping container left its secure facility and arrived in Hong Kong, where authorites, alerted by BAN, found it full of contraband waste, forbidden for entry into China. Ironically, the company was applying at the time for e-Stewards certification. Needless to say, BAN rejected the company for e-Stewards certification, laying out the steps it would need to take to clean up its act.

“R2 allows exporters of e-waste to violate the decisions and global norms of the Basel Convention,” says Jim Puckett, executive director of BAN. In contrast, “e-Stewards is designed to implement the global decisions that prevent the export of toxic waste electronics from developed to developing countries. In this way, we preserve lives and good American recycling jobs.”

Green America supports recycling cell phones, computers, and other electronics through an e-Stewards recycler. Find one near you at e-stewards.org.

Underwear is just one of those things we wear without too much thought beyond how it feels when we put it on. Does it cover everything that it needs to cover? Does it fit properly and not rub or chafe? If the underwear fulfills those requirements, wearers are typically satisfied. However, we don't think much about where our underwear came from or how it was made. That should change.

“There’s a health aspect to it all,” says Jeff Garner, designer of the Prophetik high-end clothing line. Garner recently released a line of men and women’s intimate wear called Jeff Garner Intimates. “For example, formaldehyde is used [on clothing] to set dyes. Some of that can get on us and get into the water supply when you wash it.”

Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen.

As detailed in the article "The Road to Toxic Clothing," manufacturers may apply a whole host of chemicals to clothing, including underwear—to imbue bright colors or make it wrinkle-, pest- and stain-resistant or water- and flame-repellent. Those chemicals are making workers and their communities sick.

Conventional clothing—particularly underwear that comes into direct contact with bare skin and other particularly vulnerable parts of the body—may also not be good for the wearer. While we need more studies examining the health impacts of chemical residues left on clothing when we buy it and after we put it through the washer, studies from Greenpeace International show that some harmful chemicals do remain behind.

Organic Underwear: Better Fabrics, Fewer Toxins

Here’s what to look for when you shop for underwear:

Natural Fabrics: Cotton is the most commonly worn undergarment material for a number of reasons. For one thing, it’s easily available in most stores. It wicks moisture away from the body. It’s also comfortable. Most of the cotton underwear sold in stores is made of conventional cotton, which is usually genetically modified, grown, and processed with a number of chemicals, including chlorine bleach. In fact, around 25 percent of the world’s insecticides and more than 10 percent of the world’s pesticides are sprayed on cotton, according to the Organic Trade Association (OTA). Cotton is also one of the heaviest water users among agricultural crops, states OTA. So what’s the alternative to conventional cotton undergarments? Many companies sell sustainable and organic underwear in a variety of eco-materials—including certified organic cotton, bamboo lyocell, hemp, organic soy, peace silk, and recycled fabrics.

Less Toxic: To ensure that companies avoid the most toxic chemicals throughout the supply chain—from dyes to washes to finishes—look for underwear certified through the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). Keep in mind that smaller companies may not be able to afford certification, so they may advertise as GOTS-compliant. In their case, look for Green America's Green Business Network® Certification. If the garments are dyed, look for companies that use low-impact and eco-friendly, either water-based, vegetable-based, or clay dyes. Some may even obtain GOTS certification for their dyes.

Fair Labor: In addition, look for underwear made under the fair trade system, to guarantee that workers earned a living wage in sweatshop-free factories. For undies made domestically in the U.S., you can’t go wrong with a deep green company—like those certified by Green America—that keeps its manufacturing in the U.S. and is transparent about the location of its factories.

Buy Green: Finding underwear that is good for the body as well as the Earth is just as easy as buying conventional underwear. But with organic and sustainable underwear, you’ll have a much better idea how and where your undergarments are made, what the people who made them were exposed to, and what you are putting on your bodies. And, as an added bonus, underwear made from 100 percent certified organic natural fibers like cotton or hemp is biodegradable, so worn-out pairs can go in the compost pile rather than in the trash.

Search for companies that offer eco-friendly and organic underwear using Green America’s Green Business Network Directory. 

Some time ago, Green America published an article called “The Ugly Side of Cosmetics,” in which we detailed why many experts are concerned about the vast number of potential toxins in body care products.

That article, printed in our Real Money newsletter, cited studies showing that many of the body care products we use on a daily basis—from make-up and hair care products to soaps and baby wipes—contain known or probable carcinogens, hormone disrupters, and other potentially harmful substances. We recommended consumers exercise extra caution and purchase their body care items from companies that pledged to phase out the most harmful chemicals and use organic and truly natural ingredients.

Not too long after we printed that piece, a group of individuals started discussing the article on an Internet message board. At first, they were concerned—until a young woman popped in and reassured everyone that “I’m a chemistry major, and all of these products are safe. The government wouldn’t let them be on store shelves if they weren’t.”

Like that student, many people have considerable faith in the government to protect them, assuming that if a product of any type is sold in the US, it must be safe for human health and the environment.

That faith is misplaced. As evidenced by the recent news reports about lead in children’s toys made in China, toxic products can and do make it onto US store shelves. For example, mainstream newspapers backed up our cosmetics story this year, when in October 2007, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics discovered lead in several trusted brands of lipsticks still sold today in US stores, from drugstore stalwart L’Oreal to the more exclusive Dior brand.

“How is lead getting into children’s toys and my make-up?” asks a shocked Suzanne Anich, mother to an 18-month-old daughter in Eagan, MN. “I thought lead was completely banned from use in the US.”

So did a lot of people. But lead—a potent, known neurotoxicant—is only banned in paint at levels over 600 parts per million, and it can legally be mixed into other products, like the vinyl shower curtain in Anich’s bathroom, the vinyl bib her toddler sometimes uses, the computer in her home office, the cell phone in her purse, and the mainstream-brand makeup she used to use before discovering green products. And yes, even in her daughter’s toys.

“Some of the toxic toys we’re hearing about now did have illegal lead levels, but some of them were probably perfectly legal, especially the children’s jewelry, where the lead can be mixed into the product,” notes Dr. Steven Gilbert, a toxicologist with the University of Washington and author of A Small Dose of Toxicology (Informa Press, 2004).

And we have more than just lead to worry about. There are now some 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the US, and more than 2,000 new chemicals are introduced each year, according to the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center and the Body Burden Work Group.

“While the government does require health studies and pre-market testing on prescription drugs, it does not do so for most other chemicals,” says Gilbert. In other words, when you take a close look at the cleaners we use in our homes; the pesticides that we spray on our food; the hormones ingested by our meat or dairy animals; the paints and stains and finishes we use on our cars, furniture, mattresses, or walls; the body and hair care products we use on ourselves, you’ll find that very few of them are independently tested to ensure they won’t harm human health or the environment before they hit store shelves.

And while corporations may save money by not conducting health and safety tests on the ingredients they use, it’s consumers who pay the price. Time and again, it falls to consumers, university scientists, or nonprofit watchdog groups to prove that a given chemical or product is unsafe—which generally happens only after several people have been harmed or killed, after our air and water and soil becomes poisoned, after entire populations are burdened with more than their share of birth defects, systemic illnesses, cancer.

“So much of public health and environmental policy relies on what I call the ‘dead body’ principle,” says Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Health Environmental Network (SEHN). “When you wait for proof before you take action, the proof is usually in the dead bodies and the sick bodies. When you let the chemical out and haven’t tested it, you’re using our bodies as lab rats.” But we don’t have to rely on the dead body principle, say Raffensperger and others, who are calling for a better way to protect ourselves and future generations. It’s called the Precautionary Principle, and it’s something we embrace here at Green America, whenever we recommend a green product or service over a conventional one or screen a company for membership in our Green Business Network™. It’s why when industry assures us that something is “safe,” we don’t take that for granted. It’s why we champion the cleanest, greenest way of doing business over business as usual.

The Precautionary Principle

When Carolyn Raffensperger was a young girl, her father, a pediatric surgeon, came home from work and made an announcement that would reverberate throughout her life.

“He said he believed the birth defects and childhood tumors that he was a world expert on were caused by pollution,” says Raffensperger. “And when he told me he couldn’t do anything about it because he couldn’t prove it, I was stunned. He was seeing suffering in babies, and they hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Why, I wondered, did he need proof before he could take action?”

It was a question that ultimately led her to SEHN, where she and her colleagues worked to determine how the world could go beyond what’s called “risk assessment.” The way we currently calculate the risk of a chemical is to determine the level at which lab animals get sick from it. Then, we plug it into a formula that basically says, “If we use this much less than what makes animals sick, we should be okay.”

But sometimes, Raffensperger knew, even those low doses of a chemical could cause harm, alone or in combination with other substances in the environment. So she and her colleagues wondered how they could get governments around the world to take action to protect human health and the Earth before having definitive proof.

The answer came in 1998, when a graduate student named Joel Tickner wrote and asked her to participate in his dissertation work on an idea he called the Precautionary Principle.

“I knew this was an answer to the question we’d been asking. Within minutes of seeing the student’s request, I decided to convene the Wingspread Conference,” she says.

And so, ten years ago, Raffensperger, Tickner, and a group of scientists, philosophers, lawyers, and activists gathered at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, WI, to take a stand against the harm we are doing to ourselves, the environment, and future generations. The group reached an historic consensus that “corporations, government entities, organizations, communities, scientists and other individuals must adopt a precautionary approach to all human endeavors.”

The group released the Wingspread Statement elaborating on their consensus, which defines the heart of the Precautionary Principle as follows: When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context, the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.

“Risk assessment embodies the idea that we can measure and manage or control risk and harm—and we can decide that some risk is acceptable,” says Raffensperger. “The Precautionary Principle is a very different idea that says that as an ethical matter, we are going to prevent all the harm we can.”

To illustrate how things would change if we adopted the Precautionary Principle as the backbone of US chemical policy, Raffensperger cites the example of mercury used as a preservative in vaccines. “Risk assessment science says it doesn’t look like mercury in vaccines causes damage, but there’s still a raging debate going on about whether it causes autism in children. And whether it does or not, mercury just isn’t good for children. We don’t have to wait for definitive proof that we’re harming kids before we take action, especially if we have alternatives. The Precautionary Principle says that if you’ve got safer alternatives, why not use them?”

A decade of hope

As we celebrate ten years of the Precautionary Principle, it’s important to also celebrate the considerable impact it’s had. While there hasn’t yet been much in the way of federal action in the US, some states and several countries are moving toward a more precautionary approach:

• The state of California recently banned phthalates, plastic softeners linked to endocrine disruption, in cosmetics and in toys. Last December, Minnesota banned toxic mercury in cosmetics sold in the state. In Washington state, some communities have decided that hospitals and schools must be cleaned with non-chemical-based products. And in Massachusetts, proposed legislation would require using only nontoxic cleaners in day cares, schools, and other public buildings.
   
• The European Union (EU) recently passed the groundbreaking Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals law, or REACH. Under REACH, more than 60,000 chemicals will have to be registered with the EU and, for the first time, evaluated for toxicity to human health and the environment. Substances of high concern will be removed from the market unless the manufacturers can prove their safety.
   
• Businesses like green household products company Seventh Generation and organic body care company Aubrey Organics are going the extra mile to protect human health and the environment, workers and communities. They’re using the safest ingredients they can find, and they’re fully disclosing those ingredients on product labels or Web sites, even though they’re not legally obligated to do so. And consumers are taking a stand by purchasing these cleaner, greener products.
  
  “The green marketplace is booming in every sector—from nontoxic body care to organic food to green cleaners,” says Denise Hamler, director of Green America’s Green Business Network™. “People are letting manufacturers know that they don’t want hidden toxins in their products.”
   
• These green businesses and consumers are influencing mainstream industry, as well-known brands launch green product lines to keep up with consumer demand. Target has pledged to phase out PVC (vinyl) products, which contain phthalates. In cooperation with none other than the Sierra Club, Clorox is introducing “Green Works,” a line of less-toxic household cleaners. Home Depot is now selling several brands of environmentally friendly home improvement products, flagging them in stores with an “Eco-Options” sign.

Then there are the efforts of people like Green America members, who are working to keep toxins out of their homes, workplaces, and communities. Use our Heal Your Home Toolkit to take the most important steps to clear the air in your household.

We are creating change when it comes to toxic chemical products and processes, and we can keep creating change together, until no one has to worry about being exposed to something that will make them or their children sick.

“Do we want to leave a toxic legacy? Or do we want to leave the blessings of a healthy world?” asks Raffensperger.

We can do either one.

A decade ago, a group of European scientists set out for the UN Climate Convention in Kyoto, Japan – without getting on a plane. Determined not to “contribute … to the problem that the convention was intended to solve,” they traveled across Europe and then through Siberia and China to Japan by train, boat and bike over the course of several weeks.

Even for those of use who aren’t ready to completely swear off traveling by air, the story of the “Climate Train” holds an important lesson about the climate impact of flying: A single international flight can emit as much greenhouse gas per passenger as a year of driving.

At those times when we have no choice but to take a journey by plane, we can still mitigate the harm to the environment caused by the flight by offsetting the emissions from that trip.

Carbon Offsets Defined

By purchasing carbon offsets, you help fund a project that prevents one ton of greenhouse gases from being emitted for each ton that you have caused. Carbon offset providers sell the greenhouse gas reductions associated with projects like wind farms or methane-capture facilities to customers who want to offset the emissions they caused by flying, driving, or using electricity. (Though they’re called “carbon” offsets, they offset all greenhouse gases that cause global warming, from carbon dioxide to methane.)

For example, if a scientist had had no choice but to fly to the Kyoto convention, she couldn’t prevent that flight from producing tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs). But she could balance out that impact by investing in a project that reduces global warming emissions, such as a new wind power project that displaces coal energy.

That's where carbon offset programs come in. They help a traveler easily calculate how much of an investment will result in a GHG reduction to match the GHGs generated by her share of the flight. By making that investment and offsetting her flight, a traveler can make her plane trip essentially  “carbon neutral.”

Carbon offsetting is one of many economic actions you can take to address climate change, and it is a powerful one. Many promising projects that would help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions lack the capital they need to get built; by directing your offset dollars to these projects, you can help finance new wind farms, solar arrays, and more.
 

First Step: Do the Math

The first step to reducing the net climate impact of your travel is to calculate how many tons of GHGs will be emitted over the course of your trip. Use an online calculator such as the one offered by NativeEnergy (click on “Travel Calculator”). A round trip flight from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, for example, emits more than two tons of GHGs per passenger.
 

A Variety of Carbon Offset Options

Once you know how many tons of GHGs you’ve added to the atmosphere, select an offset that will reduce GHGs by the same amount. While it’s no replacement for reducing our carbon emissions to begin with, buying carbon offsets is a “compelling way to channel funds to projects that will result in a low-carbon future,” says Adam Stein of TerraPass.

Your carbon offset purchases can support a wide variety of forward-thinking projects that reduce GHG emissions, including:

• Green tags from current renewable energy generation. Energy customers who wish to support wind and solar power can already do so by purchasing renewable energy certificates, also known as “RECs,” or “green tags.” Green tags represent the environmental benefits generated by existing green energy facilities like wind turbines or solar arrays. Consumers without green power options can purchase green tags as a way of supporting renewable energy generation. Or, utility companies that offer their customers green energy options may simply purchase green tags on their behalf from an outside green power facility, rather than building their own.

Because putting more renewable energy into the electric grid will, over time, reduce the energy that GHG-spewing coal plants need to put in, renewable energy also promises to reduce global warming emissions. Therefore, some carbon offset providers sell green tags as carbon offsets. For example, the Climate Trust offers green tag offsets associated with wind farms in Oregon.

• Green tags from future renewable energy projects. NativeEnergy takes an innovative approach to selling green tags as offsets. Instead of offering them from existing green energy facilities, it sells green tags from facilities that are yet to be built, representing the environmental benefits these future projects will generate. In this way, green tag and offset purchases through NativeEnergy help fund construction of new wind turbines and other projects. Better still, these green energy projects are all owned and operated by Native American tribes and small-scale farmers in the US, providing economic benefits to these populations.

In short, NativeEnergy’s model makes new green energy facilities financially viable that would have otherwise lacked the capital to go forward, increasing clean energy generation capacity and building the infrastructure for a low-carbon future.

• Sustainable development projects. Some providers use offset purchases to fund “clean development” projects in developing countries, which both fight poverty and reduce GHG emissions. MyClimate (which sells offsets in the US through Sustainable Travel International) has created a small hydraulic power station in Indonesia that will generate clean, reliable energy for a Sumatran community. In Eritrea, they have installed hundreds of solar water heaters for schools.
• Farm and landfill methane projects. NativeEnergy also uses offset purchases to install methane digesters on family farms in Pennsylvania to capture methane, a potent greenhouse gas generated by livestock. “Digesters” use the methane to generate power (described lovingly as “re-moo-able” energy). Other offset providers support similar projects to capture and convert methane that rises out of landfills​​​​​​.

• Other projects. Offset providers support other creative projects that reduce GHG emissions. The Climate Trust sells offsets to fund the electrification of truck stops, so trucks won’t have to idle while they’re waiting to refuel, and to support a “Climate Cool Concrete” program that gets Portland construction projects to use a blended cement that causes lower emissions.

What to Look for in Carbon Offsets

The market in carbon offsets has grown rapidly, and standards for the industry are still evolving. Particularly because you can’t see or touch a reduction of greenhouse gases, and because prices per ton vary widely among providers, purchasing a reputable offset can be confusing.

“Almost anyone can offer to sell you almost anything and claim that this purchase will make you carbon-neutral,” concludes a recent study by Trexler Climate + Energy Services. “It is very difficult for consumers … to differentiate between a high-quality and a low-quality offering.”

Below, we offer a few general guidelines for selecting a high-quality carbon offset:

• Reduce your impact first. Only purchase a carbon offset after you’ve looked for ways to reduce your emissions by flying less, driving less, driving a higher mileage car, or reducing your home energy use.
• Look for offsets that support specific projects. Don’t settle for a vague claim from an offset provider. When travelers purchase a Flight TerraPass™, for example, they receive a “product content label” describing the specific carbon-reducing projects “contained” in their offset.
• Look for offsets that will cause carbon reductions that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. For an offset purchase to be meaningful, the purchase has to cause a new carbon reduction corresponding with the new emissions you caused, rather than taking credit for a reduction that would have happened anyway. MyClimate , for example, is careful to support specific clean development projects where their investment will make the difference between the project happening (and reducing GHGs) or not happening.
• Look for offsets whose GHG reductions will happen on a clear timeframe. Ask offset providers when the offset you are buying today will result in a reduction, and use that information in selecting a provider.
• Look for offset providers that ensure your offset can’t be re-sold. Offset providers deal in an invisible product, so they must take pains to demonstrate that they sell each offset only once. For example, NativeEnergy retires all green tags purchased as offsets by donating them to a nonprofit so they can’t be double-sold.
• Look for offset providers that are independently verified. There is currently no common standard or certification that guarantees offset quality. The best offset providers find various ways to assure customers that a knowledgeable third party has examined and approved their practices. For example, TerraPass hired the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS) to perform an independent audit of their program, and it made the document available online.

Several organizations, including CRS and the Climate Group (TCG), are currently working with offset providers to develop a common standard for carbon offsets. A certification of offsets, such as CRS’ “green-e Greenhouse Gas Reduction Standard,” or TCG’s “Voluntary Carbon Standard,” may be available to guide customers within the coming year. We’ll announce it in our Real Green newsletter when new shared standards and certifications become available.

• Avoid offsets based on tree-planting projects. Planting trees feels good, and projects that plant trees can be easier to love than projects involving something as mundane as cow methane or cement. However, there are much better offset programs than those that involve trees. It’s very hard to calculate how much CO2 a given forest will “breathe in.” And, some offset providers base their calculations for a tree planted today on the CO2 it will take in over its entire lifetime, which is decades after the emissions associated with the flight or drive being offset. Bottom line: when it comes to carbon offsets, planting trees is not the best bet. However, planting trees has other environmental benefits, and we encourage tree planting for these reasons.
• Avoid offsets that purchase “allowances” on a climate exchange. When companies want to reduce their emissions, they can trade GHG reductions that exceeded their targets with other companies by using the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). CCX does good work in the business sector, but you may want to avoid purchasing offsets based on CCX allowances.

Offset providers that purchase allowances from the CCX and offer them to individuals as carbon offsets often cannot name the specific projects that generated the reductions they are selling. Offset customers have a right to know exactly what reduction they are purchasing, and to receive assurances that it wouldn’t have happened without their purchase.

If you’re a conscientious consumer who tries to live a low-emission lifestyle, consider offsetting the remaining emissions for which you are responsible. And spread the word to others—many offset vendors will send a luggage tag when you purchase air travel offsets or a bumper sticker when you purchase car offsets.

Take these actions on energy and save up to 33 percent of your energy use!

Turn Off Lights You're Not Using 

Take the step: Make a pact with your family to be extra mindful about shutting off lights when they leave a room. A good rule of thumb is that there should be a maximum of one light on in your household per person at any given time. You can even put little reminders around your switchplates—download our template here. Or, install motion sensors (about $20 each) that turn the lights off after a room has remained empty for a certain amount of time.

Why: llluminating rooms that aren’t in use is a huge waste.

Schedule an Energy Audit 

Take the step: Get an energy audit performed on your home.

Why: Get expert advice to help you identify ways you can use less electricity and plug energy leaks in your home. You’ll get the most cost-effective and useful steps that will help you reduce your energy use, lower your home’s global warming footprint, and lower your energy bills, too. Your local utility will probably provide an energy audit for free, but you may get a more comprehensive audit—allowing you to save even more money in the long run—by paying for a whole-house energy audit.

The big picture: Taking all of the most cost-effective strategies for energy efficiency can cut your energy use in half, save you 50 percent or more off your energy bills, and halve your household global warming emissions, too.

Let Your Dishwasher Breathe 

Take the step: Skip the energy-intensive drying cycle on your dishwasher and choose the “air-dry” option, or open the door overnight for some zero-energy dish-drying action. 

Why: The drying cycle uses up a lot of energy and money, while just letting dishes air-dry will accomplish the task for free.

Shift Your Load to Off-Peak Times 

Electricity demand goes down at night and begins rising in the morning, peaking at mid-day before falling back down at nightfall again. Because power sources have to produce the electricity around the time of its use, without any capacity for long-term storage, it is our peak demand that determines the expansion of dirty coal-fired power plants and other polluting forms of energy generation. Someday, utilities may use smart meters to help us even things out, but until then, you can do your own private “load shifting” by trying, whenever possible, to wash laundry or run the dishwasher at nighttime and as far possible from mid-day. “Delay” settings on appliances sometimes make this easy to do—many dishwashers, for example, can be set after dinner to go on in four hours and wash the dishes while you sleep.

Bonus: Your utility company may shift to time-of-day metering in the future, so you’ll actually pay less when you use electricity at night. 

Don't Heat or Cool Empty Rooms 

Take the step: If there is a room in your home that is largely unused, close the vents to save on heating and cooling costs. Always turn off room air conditioners as you leave a room. When you go on vacation, set the thermostat at least ten full degrees below (in winter) and above (in summer) where it’d be if you were home; no need to heat or cool a house when no one is home. 

Why: Heating and cooling rooms no one is in wastes energy (and money!) and generates needless emissions.

Turn Off Your Electronics 

Take the step: If you’re going to be away from your computer or other appliance for more than an hour, turn it off as you leave the room. 

Why: Some people mistakenly think it takes a giant burst of energy to power up a television, computer, or game console, and so they leave these electronics on continuously. However, even on an “energy-saver” setting, a computer, game console, or television wastes much more energy when it’s on all day than if you really turn it off. 

Eliminate "Phantom Load" 

Take the step: Many electronics use electricity even when they’re turned off—so your best bet is to unplug electronic devices and appliances when they’re not in use. Or, plug your TV and accessories into one power strip and switch off the whole strip to eliminate this “phantom load.” 

Why: At least five percent of the average household’s monthly utility bill goes towards powering devices that are turned off. TVs, DVD players, computers, printers, and cell phone chargers are just some of the devices that leak power even when they aren’t on—in fact, a quarter of the energy used by your TV each year is consumed when the TV is off.

Eliminate Your Second Fridge, and Show the First One a Little Love 

Take the step: If you’re paying to power a second refrigerator or freezer in your basement, try to make do with one fridge in the kitchen and unplug the extra one. 

You can help your first fridge function more efficiently by placing jugs of water in any empty space inside (water retains cold better than air does), and by taking some time once every six months to pull the fridge away from the wall and scrub down the grime that accumulates on the coils. (One of our editors found that her fridge was so much more efficient post-scrub that she could set the thermostat higher for the same chill!)

Why: The refrigerator is often the biggest energy-using appliance in a home. A typical refrigerator uses more than 1,300 kWh a year and costs the average American household $120 a year in electricity.

Wash Clothes in Cold Water 

Take the step: Turn the knob on your washing machine to “cold/cold” today, and leave it there. If you use a laundromat, post this flyer from the Center for a New American Dream to spread the word about washing in cold. 

Why: With modern washing machines and detergents, washing your clothes in cold water gets them just as clean as washing in hot water, but it uses half the energy. In situations where you do need hot water—for example, to kill dust mites in bedding— choose cold water for the rinse cycle.

Give the Dryer a Rest 

Take the step: Consider skipping the dryer and hanging your clothes to dry on a rack or a clothesline. (For support in line-drying your clothes and to help fight anti-clothesline ordinances in your neighborhood, join Project Laundry List.) You can avoid wrinkles by using your dryer for five minutes, then hanging clothes on the line. Please note that if you have pollen allergies, you’ll want to skip the outdoor clothesline and use an indoor drying rack instead. 

Why: It takes a huge commitment of energy to run a dryer— all to do something that the air, given a little more time, will do for free. Many households spend more than $100 a year on the energy used by their dryer.

Kristi Minahan plans to protect the environment her whole life—and beyond. As a water resources management specialist at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Kristi spends her days protecting her state’s land and water. Though she hopes she has many healthy years ahead, the sudden death of a relative a few years ago got her thinking about what she would want when her own time comes someday. 

“I have always felt that the modern ways of [burial] are not the way I want to go,” says Minahan. “I would want to be connected to nature in death, not shut out from nature.”

It can be difficult to contemplate our own end. In the last hundred years, standard US funeral care practices have come to involve the use of toxic embalming chemicals and the burying of impermeable, finished wood, metal, and concrete along with the deceased, often in heavily fertilized cemetery grounds. But studies show that, when asked to think about it, the great majority of Americans want something closer to what Minahan wants: a natural return to the Earth.

The Hazards of Embalming 
Embalming first became common in the US in the 1800s, when it was used to preserve the bodies of Civil War soldiers being shipped long distances to their families. Today, many bereaved families are given the impression that formaldehyde embalming is legally required and necessary for protecting public health, but neither is the case in any state.

The embalming process puts mortuary workers at risk both because formaldehyde is a recognized carcinogen, according to the state of California and the World Health Organization, and because the blood displaced by the embalming process may expose these workers to pathogens. Embalming effluent and organic matter extracted during the process are all washed down the drain as wastewater. And some of the estimated 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid buried annually in the US seeps into groundwater, potentially entering local water supplies.

A Box in a Box 
If Minahan hopes, when the time comes, to return to nature quickly and simply, she would need to arrange not to be buried in a conventional casket. The caskets funeral directors sell to families are routinely made of non-biodegradable steel, fiberglass, chipboard, or tropical hardwoods from endangered forests, often with rubber or plastic seals and liners.

“The box is pretty, the lawns are neat, and nature can’t get a word in edgewise,” writes Cynthia Beal in Be a Tree: the Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a Forest (coming Fall 2009 from New Society Publishers).

In most conventional funerals, the casket itself is not even placed directly into the ground. To prevent uneven grounds that are hard to mow, many cemeteries now have rigid cement liners in every new grave into which a casket is placed. Mary Woodsen of the Commemorative Nature Preserves of New York has estimated that US cemeteries inter more than 1.5 million tons of reinforced concrete, more than a million tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, and 30 million board feet of hardwoods every year.

Cemeteries as Land Use 
Conventional cemeteries represent a narrow, inflexible use of land in the first place. When a new cemetery is created, the land is often cleared of existing vegetation, ruining the natural ecosystems and beauty of an area in exchange for a perfectly even, manicured lawn. Grounds crews often maintain such a lawn with excessive water usage and heavy applications of toxic pesticides and fertilizers.

The plot of land has a singular use, as large headstones break up the space and mark it as primarily a burial ground, and visitors typically come to the site only a few times a year. The area will never be viable green space that supports naturally existing plant and animal life. Neither will it be a shared community area that supports both land and people.

Greener Choices 
Those who won’t want their bodies embalmed with formaldehyde or sealed against the elements increasingly have a variety of choices. The grassroots “home funeral” movement has worked to publicize to families that embalming is not required by law—except in cases where a body is being transported across state lines—and that families can use dry ice or refrigeration to preserve a body naturally for several days before burial. In fact, a number of religions, including Islamic, Jewish, Baha’i, and Quaker faiths, routinely eschew embalming, respectfully washing the body of the deceased and proceeding with burial promptly.

Those who want an ally in avoiding embalming can now turn to the Green Burial Council, the first nationwide clearinghouse for greener burial products and services. You can find a list of funeral providers certified by the Green Burial Council as offering burial options without chemicals on the Council’s Web site, or find guidance for ensuring a formaldehyde-free burial from Crossings: Caring for Our Own at Death, a home funeral resource center.

Green businesses, and several casket makers approved by the Green Burial Council, sell beautiful, simple, biodegradable caskets, shrouds, and urns made from recycled or renewable materials. For example, Colorful Coffins, Natural Burial Company, and Passages International offer caskets made of woven willow branches, plain pine wood, painted cardboard, cane, bamboo, or seagrass, and Natural Burial Company offers an Ecopod, a seed-shaped casket made of recycled paper incorporating mulberry leaves and silk.

Rather than attempt to seal off natural processes, all of these greener burial products invite nature in, and are designed to assist rather than impede a body’s return to the Earth.

Opting Out: Cremation 
For several decades, those who were disenchanted with conventional burial looked to cremation as an alternative. Cremation is a part of traditional Hindu and Buddhist funeral practices. Unfortunately, cremation presents some environmental hazards of its own: it requires large amounts of energy, releases significant carbon emissions, and often produces vaporized mercury, a neurotoxicant (an unsavory consequence of the widespread use of dental amalgam).

Within the coming year, the Green Burial Council will finalize standards for “greener” cremation facilities that are more energy efficient, mitigate any mercury emissions, and offset their carbon footprint. And the green businesses mentioned above offer a variety of biodegradable urns for ashes made from gourds, recycled paper, rock salt, or sand.

A Natural Departure: Green Burial 
Across the country, communities are joining with conservation groups to envision and create a new kind of burial ground that marries people’s desire to be buried naturally with the goals of land conservation. Kristi Minahan is a part of one such effort, the Trust for Natural Legacies in Wisconsin. These “conservation burial grounds,” “natural burial grounds,” and “memorial preserves,” as they are variously known, are natural lands (not manicured grounds) preserved for multiple uses, including bike or walking paths, native species conservation, or environmental study. Some portion of the land is made available for natural burials—burials without chemicals in biodegradeable caskets or shrouds.

The burial places are not marked with a large headstone, but only with a small marker, or a tree, or sometimes nothing at all, with only GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates shared with the family so they can find the spot. And the land containing the burial ground is protected from development or other damage by a land trust or easement that ensures that the natural landscape will be preserved in perpetuity. The revenue from burials can be used to purchase more land for the trust as it becomes available, advancing conservation an acre at a time.

These greener burial sites appeal to people who want their last act to be a life-giving one. At the same time, conservation burial grounds also present conservation organizations with a vitally needed mechanism for funding their restoration projects.

Even as these burials direct funds towards conservation, they still often cost significantly less than conventional burials. Families spend an average of $6,500 on burial, including embalming, before paying for cemetery costs such as a lot and gravestone; by contrast, a green burial with a plain wooden casket and a site in a conservation burial ground can come to less than $3,000.

A Natural Departure: Green Burial 
Today, there are more than 200 green burial grounds across the UK. By contrast, the stateside green burial movement is still in the early phases. To see if one of the dozen or so existing green burial grounds in the US are near you, visit our Web site or the Green Burial Council’s site, or seek out any local efforts to create one. Your local chapter of the Funeral Consumers’ Alliance may also be a helpful source of information about local resources for greener final arrangements.

Thanks to a growing interest in more meaningful, affordable burials and in the environment, the green burial movement has been growing dramatically over the past few years, says Joe Sehee, executive director of the Green Burial Council.

“This is the place where ritual and memory connects people to land and to land conservation,” he says. These greener burial options can actually help people feel less resistant to thinking about and planning their final arrangements, because “people can know that their last act is of incredible importance. When they pick out a green burial plot, they are proud. ... It makes people’s eyes sparkle—I’ve seen it.”

Ever wonder what to say when you encounter someone who claims climate change is not real? You might refer them to the Oscar-nominated short film "Sun Come Up," which deals with the plight of the villagers on the Carteret Islands in the South Pacific, who are losing their island as it sinks into the ocean. Green American's Tracy Fernandez Rysavy spoke to director Jennifer Redfearn about the film.

Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: Why did you make this film?

Jennifer Redfearn: I came across a humanitarian alert about the Carteret Islanders in 2008, and I was shocked by it. I didn’t realize people were being displaced by climate change right now. I have a background in environmental science and journalism, and I thought if it was surprising to me, it would be surprising to others. So I thought it was important to tell people about them.

Tracy: What do you hope it will accomplish as more people see it?

Jennifer: We just launched our outreach campaign in early February. We hope this will: 1) raise awareness of climate change and forced migration, because some people don’t know this is an issue; and 2) raise funds for the Carterets.

We just launched what we’re calling a “house-raising campaign,” where people throw a party to raise awareness of climate change and forced migration, and commit to raising money for the Carteret Islanders. Those funds will go back into Carteret community for building new homes in Bougainville.

We’re hoping hundreds of people across the country will commit to doing a fundraiser on the night of the Academy Awards, and our goal is to raise $20,000 for the Carterets.

The Carterets have a very sophisticated relocation plan that they’ve been working on for years. We just want to support that plan. The money we raise doesn’t just support building houses—it supports local environmental leaders, strong environmental leaders from within the community.

Villagers leaving the Carteret Islands by boat.

Tracy: Do you know how the islanders who have relocated are adjusting to life on Bougainville? In the film, it sounded like it would be quite different.

Jennifer: They’re doing really well. There are eight families moving in the next few months, so the money we raise will be used to support that move.

Tracy: It’s easy to slap a definition on people you don’t know, like “climate refugees.” For those who haven’t yet seen the film, what would you like people to know about the Carteret Islanders that goes beyond that sad label?

Jennifer: I’m so glad you asked that. That’s a great question.

That idea that there’s more to the Carterets than just being refugees was something we were striving to demonstrate in the film. We could only show a small part of who they are, but they have created an extensive relocation program themselves, and there’s a lot of thought and creativity in the community. They’re taking matters into their own hands in the face of tragedy—they’re not giving up and waiting for someone to come and give them something.

The term “climate change refugee” is controversial, but we use it to convey an idea, in a very quick way, of the circumstances they’re in, what’s going on in the island. When you’re trying to summarize the film, it’s easier to give people a quick picture.

Tracy: As you just said, and as your film demonstrates, the Carteret Islanders had to form and carry out their relocation—and negotiations for new land—by themselves, with no outside assistance. Has the Papua New Guinea government finally stepped in to help?

Jennifer: The government did at one point allocate 2 million kina [roughly US $765,000), which was sent to the government in Bougainville. The country’s president at the time knew Ursula Rakova—a native Carteret Islander and the leader of the relocation—and was working closely with her. But he passed away before money was distributed, so the Carterets haven’t seen any of that money.

The Carterets formed an organization called Tulun Lepesa in 2005 (which means “sailing the waves on our own”), when they realized they had a problem and weren’t getting support from the Papua New Guinea government or local governments.

Bougainville has this idea that they’ll just buy a plot of land and move everyone from the Carteret Islands on it. But rather than move their community to a plot of land, the Carterets are looking into an integrated approach, moving into different parts throughout Bougainville so they aren’t just becoming another island, but can really become part of the community.

Tracy: One chief in the film says something along the lines of he would rather die on the island than move. What has happened to him and others like him? Has life gotten harder since the film was made?

Jennifer: We finished filming in 2008, and in 2009, there was a particularly devastating high tide season. It wiped out another significant portion of gardening land [in addition to the flooded area shown in the film], and a lot of trees had leaves that were turning yellow. That was a really difficult time for the community.

When we were there, the families would ration food, so they might eat one day and just drink coconut water the next day. It depends how much fish they are able to catch, and what they can still grow in their shrinking gardens.

Tracy: I was really moved by the Bougainville man who said that taking in the Carteret Islanders could or should help the Bougainville people make peace among themselves in the wake of their civil war. Do you know if it has helped build bridges?

Jennifer: I think that’s something that will eventually happen, but since there are so few families that have moved, it’s hard to tell right now.

Tracy: The island on which you filmed seemed almost like this idyllic dream in a bubble. Were there any unique challenges you had making this film in this remote location?

Jennifer: Logistically, it was one of the most difficult shoots I’ve ever done, given the remote location. There were only two of us, and we were carrying everything we needed—our equipment, our backpacks. We were traveling with the Carterets all the time, riding in back of pickup trucks.

When you’re shooting, it can be a difficult journey anyway, but add to it that there were a lot of people in the back of the trucks, and the roads aren’t paved, they go through rivers. Our camera didn’t survive the trip. It died during the last week we were there. It was constantly exposed to everything it shouldn’t be exposed to—dust, salt water, moisture.

We brought a lot of ready-made camping meals with us, and instant meals to which you just add boiling water. When we went to Bougainville, we also stocked up on additional food and water. We brought solar panels, because we knew we wouldn’t have a power source to charge our batteries. So this was a solar-powered film!

Tracy: Tell me more about the house raisers.

Jennifer: People can host a house raiser to raise money for the relocation, and make it part of their Oscar party.

We’ll send out a tool on a DVD that will have information about the campaign and the Carterets, and an excerpt from the film on it. They can visit SunComeUp.com and click on “House Raisers” for more information.

Tracy: I know you have listed the film screenings on the Web site, but where can people see the film if it’s not near them.

Jennifer: We’re currently negotiating with a cable network to broadcast the film. Keep checking the Web site for news on whether that happens.

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

Bobby and Diann Johnson grow pecans on a small farm in southeastern Georgia. Rajah Banerjee improves his community by tending organic tea gardens in northeastern India. Ofelia Flores harvests wine grapes on a vineyard in California where workers have organized for a voice on the job. And formerly unemployed Margaret Sillemon has been grateful to find training and steady work packaging beans and spices into gourmet soup mixes in Denver.

These people—and many others—want to support their families by growing, harvesting, or preparing sustainable food for America’s dinner tables. To do so, they need support from committed customers who shop for food with people in mind, dedicated to solutions for climate change.

Most American households will spend more than $2,000 per person this year on food, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). In these tough times, it’s more important than ever to keep your money away from conventional agri-businesses and support farmers and workers here and around the world. Here’s how to use the power of your food dollars for eating well and doing good.

Buy Local and Organic 

Here in the US, large corporations have consolidated production, squeezing out smaller-scale farms. According to the USDA, the nation lost more than 13,000 farms between 2006 and 2007, and the average size of the remaining farms continues to rise. The large factory farms that replace small-scale family farms may not support their local communities financially or culturally, may not provide living-wage jobs, and are more likely to use toxic chemicals and create vast monocultures. In this environment, small-scale farmers often have difficulty connecting with markets for their harvest. Buying local helps support farmers in our communities and curbs global warming emissions by reducing food miles.

Organic agriculture also avoids toxic pesticides and herbicides, reduces chemical runoff into the water supply, increases biodiversity, avoids genetically modified crops (GMOs), and protects community health.

When possible, look for produce that is both local and organic. Find local and organic produce by joining a community supported agriculture (CSA) program, or by shopping at a nearby farmers’ market. The nonprofit Local Harvest can help you find both.

Buy Fair Trade 

For the food items that are grown and harvested in other parts of the world, Fair Trade offers a strategy for sustaining the livelihoods and communities of small-scale farmers. Fair Trade ensures that farmers and farm workers receive living wages and labor under fair and healthy conditions, with no child labor allowed.

When American consumers purchase Fair Trade Certified™ food products, including tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, honey, vanilla, rice, and fresh fruit, they help to raise living standards for farmers by guaranteeing fair prices for the harvest. This Fair Trade premium covers the costs of living and sustainable production, with enough left over for farmers to invest in development projects. Ask your local grocery stores and restaurants to carry Fair Trade items.

Support Family Farms 

Family-scale farming can thrive in the US when farmers join together to connect with committed
customers. Two members of Green America’s business network are helping US farmers do just that.

Organic Valley has knit together a cooperative network of over 1,300 family farms across the US and Canada, enabling farmers to sell their organic food to major markets. The company keeps their markets regional, reducing food miles. The model has succeeded in sustaining these smallscale farms: Organic Valley’s revenue from sales of its dairy products topped $432 million in 2007.

Equal Exchange, a worker-owned cooperative that began bringing overseas Fair Trade products to market more than two decades ago, launched its “Domestic Fair Trade” program last year. The company actively searches out US family farmers or farmer cooperatives and purchases their products, rather than items from large agri-corps. It sells these items at retail through its catalog and Web site, and wholesale through grocery stores and food coops across the US. It offers pecans from a cooperative of African-American farmers in Georgia, cranberries from an organic bog in Wisconsin, and organic almonds from cooperative farms in central California. Customers can “track their snacks” on the Equal Exchange Web site to learn about the family or cooperative that each product supports.

“We should all be thinking about how farmers and farm workers are treated here in the US,” says Joe Riemann of Equal Exchange. “This is part of the larger question of striving for a more equitable and cooperative economy.”

Protect America's Farm Workers 

The consolidation of farms hasn’t only squeezed small-scale farmers; it has also given rise to a population of 400,000 migrant farm workers moving between 80,000 farms, according to the United Farm Workers (UFW), a union of US farm workers. The UFW, founded by organizer César Chávez, has worked for more than two decades to help farm workers organize to effect change. But unfortunately, laws concerning wages, working conditions, and health and safety for farm workers are not enforced consistently, writes Arturo S. Rodriguez, the current president of UFW. Too often, US farm workers continue to be cheated of wages, female workers experience sexual harassment, pesticides on non-organic farms make workers sick, and many aren’t given consistent access to clean drinking water.

The union label on food helps ensure that farm workers are given a voice on the job to advocate for fair wages and healthy working conditions. UFW maintains a list of mushrooms, roses, grapes, strawberries, apples, and citrus harvested by unionized farm workers at www.ufw.org (click on “Union Label”). A list of packaged foods manufactured by members of the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union (UFCW) is online here.

In addition, the Agricultural Justice Project has been working to develop standards for what social justice means in the context of sustainable, organic agriculture in the US. The Project undertook a pilot program in the Midwest, through which produce from four family farms was sold in co-op grocery stores under a “Local Fair Trade” label, meaning that the source farms had undergone independent monitoring to ensure they adhere to Project standards. Farmers; farm workers; and indigenous, retail, and consumer groups have worked to develop the standards, which address: workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, fair wages and benefits for workers, clear conflict resolution policies for farmers and farm workers, the rights of indigenous peoples, and workplace health and safety.

A Hand Up for the Unemployed 

Low-income people are going to be suffering the most in a depressed economy marked by high unemployment it’s more important than ever to support people’s livelihoods when you purchase food.

Look for enterprises in your community that produce food products as vehicles for training and employing people who may otherwise struggle to make a living. For example, the Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, NY, sees its primary business as supporting individuals in becoming self-sufficient: “We don’t hire people to bake brownies,” says CEO Julius Walls. “We bake brownies in order to hire people.”

When customers purchase Greyston’s “Do-Goodie” brownies in stores and online, they help to ensure that Greyston can continue to provide training and good jobs even during tough times.

Likewise, Food from the ’Hood is a student-run business that helps train high school students from Crenshaw High School in a low-income neighborhood of Los Angeles. Purchasing Food from the ’Hood’s “Straight Out ’the Garden” line of salad dressings, which are available online and in supermarkets throughout southern California, helps to educate students about gardening and entrepreneurship, and to fund college scholarships for graduates of the program.

In Denver, the Women’s Bean Project employs low-income women in the work of baking mixes, bean soups, and marinades for online sales, while also providing on-site mentoring, computer literacy classes, individual job coaching, and life skills classes. The Project has employed more than 500 women over two decades.

Likewise, next time you are looking for a caterer for a meeting or gathering, look to see if there is an employment program caterer at work in your community. These programs serve a critical need in many communities, providing much-needed jobs and job training, especially when times are tough.

Support Livelihoods With Every Bite 

We all have tremendous opportunities every time we buy food to make sure our dollars support dignified work for those near and far who grow, harvest, prepare, and serve food.

“Our products make great meals, but what they’re really about is helping women move towards self-sufficiency,” says Tamra Ryan, executive director of the Women’s Bean Project. “When anyone buys one of our products, they can know that it’s literally changing somebody’s life.”

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

When Maria Garcia-Gutierrez purchased her first home in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, FL, she knew she had her work cut out for her. The house was a 1925 Craftsman bungalow with a rotting porch, hardwood floors that had seen better days, and other neglected spots in need of repair. The then-single graphic designer didn’t have a lot of money at the time, so hiring contractors wasn’t an option.

“I bought the house because it was cheap and I saw potential in it,” she says. “But I didn’t know the first thing about home improvement, other than that my dad, who used to sell tile, had taught me how to set tile.”

With the help of her parents and two brothers, she started tackling what projects she could and hoped for the best.

The neighborhood had been run-down and crime-ridden for years and was just starting to undergo a renaissance. Anytime Garcia-Gutierrez went outside, she invariably ran into neighbors who were also tackling home improvement projects on their new “fixer-upper” houses.

“They were a lot like me—they didn’t have a lot of money and were renovating their homes themselves,” she says. “We were constantly trading horror stories about the bad day we had at the hardware store or the paint thinner we bought that stripped our skin.”

One day, while Garcia-Gutierrez and her mother were stripping the floors in her home, her mother noted that it might be nice if everyone in the neighborhood started collaborating on home improvement projects for each other.

Garcia-Gutierrez initially dismissed the thought, but it stuck with her. A few weeks later at a community event, she half-jokingly told her neighbors about her mother’s “crazy idea.”

“But the only person they thought was crazy was me, for thinking it couldn’t work,” she says.

So that’s when the Southeast Seminole Heights Home Improvement Team, or HIT, was born. The neighbors band together to do repair and renovation projects for each other one Saturday a month.

The benefits, says Garcia-Gutierrez, are enormous: They pool their expertise, the sheer number of workers make the projects go faster, and they save money by not hiring contractors. Saving money allows many home repair teams to more easily afford green home improvement products, like sustainably harvested wood. Best of all, regularly working side-by-side fosters solid friendships and a real sense of community.


Bringing a Team Together

Back in 2000, when the Southeast Seminole Heights HIT program started, the members all owned homes in various stages of renovation. Their projects ranged from putting up privacy fences to replacing Garcia-Gutierrez’s rotting porch to building a garage. But even when most of the members finished their major repairs, they found that they still had no shortage of projects.

“We still do a lot of painting, some landscaping, and even general yard maintenance when people’s yards get a little too overgrown,” Garcia-Gutierrez says. And, since she eventually married an electrician, they now handle some electrical projects, like installing new light fixtures.

In the beginning, the HIT members drew two names out of a hat to decide who would get to go first. Then they set up a rule that members must work on at least two projects before they’re eligible to have a project done in their home. The first few people were on an honor system; now, Garcia Gutierrez keeps track of who has worked on what in a simple database on her computer.

“But the members know, too,” she says. “We never have fights over who is going to have a project done. Usually, I ask who’s ready, and they’ll point to someone and go, ‘You! You haven’t had a project done in a while!’”

Twenty years ago in Minneapolis, MN, Green America members Philipp and Laura Muessig and two other couples started a smaller, more intimate version of a home repair team. Philipp Muessig doesn’t quite remember how their team started, saying its origins are “lost to passing years and the raising of children.”

But like Garcia-Gutierrez, the Muessigs and the other two couples—who met through a mutual friend—had little extra money at the time and older houses that needed a lot of work. And so, once one of them came up with the idea of working on each other’s houses, it didn’t take the group long to organize their first repair party.

For two decades, they’ve met one Saturday or Sunday per month, at 9 a.m. or 2 p.m., first sharing a meal and conversation. They work for three hours each meeting, which Muessig says is the perfect amount of time for busy parents like themselves because “it doesn’t take up the whole day.”

During their early years, they dug new gardens, stripped wallpaper, and tore out crumbling concrete steps. Now that their houses are in good shape, they’ve moved on to maintenance projects like trimming bushes, painting, freezing pesto from the garden, or debugging computers.

When they do home repairs, Muessig says his group likes to choose green, least-toxic products, like low-VOC paints and stains, or nontoxic paint removers. This spring, the Muessigs are planning to install a solar attic fan.

“If a green product costs more, it’s insignificant to us, because we’re saving so much money by working together instead of hiring contractors,”


Expert Advice

No matter which structure you choose, our repair team experts offer the following guidelines:

• Meet one weekend day a month: Anything more than that may scare off busy neighbors.

• Keep in regular contact with each other. Free listservs like those offered by Yahoo.com or Google.com provide an easy way for members to stay in touch. You can send out reminders about work days, ask for equipment you’ll need, and collect RSVPs from people who plan to attend.

• Figure out a simple system for taking turns. A small, stable group like Muessig’s can have a simple rotation system. Garcia-Gutierrez’s group began by drawing two names out of a hat and then initiated the two-project rule.

• Make a pact to go green. Commit to researching and implementing the safest, least-toxic solutions to your home repair problems.

• Protect yourself legally. Garcia-Gutierrez has everyone sign a waiver saying that if they get injured, they assume all responsibility and waive any responsibility on the part of the homeowner.

• Choose projects that can be completed in a day, such as painting a kitchen or tiling a bathroom. Or if you do decide to have your local home repair team tackle a larger project, make sure it’s one where even if it isn’t completed, you’ll be glad that you’ve gotten a head start. Muessig says since his group has “modest” repair skills, they also try not to tackle highly complex tasks. “We don’t want to stress out blowing the installation on a $2,000 swinging door, so we try to keep projects simple,” he says.

• Pool your tools. Figure out what tools you’ll need for your project beforehand, and let the group know. In many cases, group members will have the necessary tools. When you need a piece of equipment that no one owns, you can rent one—probably for fewer hours than if you were working without the extra help.

• Feed the people: Since homeowners are basically getting free labor, it’s a good idea for them to provide food and beverages. Count on at least two meals, as well as a steady supply of drinks.

• Invite new members: As the saying goes, many hands make light work. Put ads in your local paper and community newsletter, and hang up signs in the neighborhood.

• Bring in experts: Some repair teams invite experts to conduct workshops on various aspects of home repair, such as setting tile or faux painting.


Building Community

Saving money and making your home a nicer place to live are two significant benefits of creating a home improvement team. But perhaps the best benefit of all is that it builds a real sense of community among neighbors.

Muessig credits his repair team’s longevity to the group’s solid friendships. “I don’t think we would have been as good of friends without the work parties,” he says.

When Garcia-Gutierrez told her neighbors she was getting married, they surprised her by pitching in to help, just as if it had been a HIT project. One couple offered their home and yard as the site for the wedding, several helped clean up and trim the yard, others set up and decorated, and still others cooked food for the reception. One member has a son who plays the harp, and he ended up providing the music for the ceremony.

It didn’t take long for the community to start referring to the event as “the HIT wedding.”

“I figured when I first bought my house, I just bought a house,” says Garcia-Gutierrez. “I didn’t realize I was buying a whole neighborhood.”
 

Andrew Gondzur of St. Louis, Missouri, used to ride his bike about four times a year—until last month, when he found himself choosing his bike instead of his car to run errands at least three times a week. What changed? Andrew installed a kit that added a rechargeable electric motor to his old bike. He still usually pedals his bike, but with a twist of the handlebar, he can get a bit of motorized help.

“I can go farther and faster than I would if I were just pedaling,” he says, which is why Andrew now takes his bike, not his car, to the post office, the library, his children’s schools, and the grocery store. “Why take 5,000 pounds of car and burn expensive gas to get one thing you forgot at the supermarket? Now I leave my car at home.”

If, like most Americans, you find yourself hopping in your car to drive down the street and around the corner, consider one alternative: “zooming” your way there instead on a quiet and speedy pedal assisted electric bike. Though you may balk at regularly biking more than a mile or two, summer is the perfect time to consider a bike with a little electric “oomph”—a green alternative to driving that doesn’t require you to travel entirely on your own foot or pedal power.

Consumers looking to leave the car at home—or forego a second car—can now find a new generation of “person-assisted” electrified conventional bikes and recumbant bikes (where the rider reclines while pedaling). These vehicles offer a transportation solution that’s far preferable to going by car: they save gas money, run quietly, reduce pollution and global warming emissions—and riding them is fun.


Is an Electric Bicycle Right for You?

Curious if an electric bike might be a good solution for you? Try taking a transportation audit, noting over a single week how many times you jump into your car to go only a few miles roundtrip. If you’re like most Americans, you likely drive fairly short distances, as a Bureau of Transportation Statistics study found that up to 69% of car trips are two miles or less, and many of these trips may be bikeable.

Hopping into the car for these short trips to work, the playground, and the supermarket may not seem like a decision with a big impact, but all of those car miles add up. Cars emit the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that cause climate change, as well as pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, and ground-level ozone, which contribute to acid rain, smog, and health problems. In fact, short trips by car can actually be more polluting per mile than long trips, because pollution is highest in the first few minutes of driving, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Cutting a four mile trip out of your schedule each weekday can reduce your global warming pollution by more than 1,200 pounds a year, estimates Environmental Defense.

And as gas prices continue to rise, the cost of short trips by car is steep—just fueling a round-trip commute to a job five miles away every weekday for a year can cost $300 or more just for fuel, not including parking fees and any additional fuel used for after-work errands and weekend driving.


How Electric Bicycles Work

Motorized bikes, sometimes called “power- assisted vehicles,” “human-electric hybrids,” or “pedelecs” (for “pedal electric” cycles) combine the driver’s pedaling with a motorized assist from a rechargeable electric battery, which can be plugged into any standard outlet. This is in contrast to mopeds or motorcycles, which run on gas and have combustion engines like those in cars, and also in contrast to other types of electric bikes and scooters that run entirely on electricity without any pedal power from the rider.

These vehicles often look just like conventional bikes, and some are even converted from conventional bikes. The motor is sometimes attached to the frame, or in some cases hidden away discretely within the frame.

With some pedaled e-bikes, the rider turns the electric assistance on or off using a toggle or a twist of the handlebar, and can choose an entirely electric ride, an entirely pedaled ride, or a ride combining electric with pedal power.

With a “pedelec,” on the other hand, the rider just gets on, pedals, and switches gears when needed, as if riding a standard non-electric bike. A computerized sensor combines force from the battery seamlessly with the rider’s own pedal power, and gives the biggest “push” when the rider needs it most: usually in kicking off initially and in surmounting hills. At higher speeds, when the rider’s own pedaling has the bike cruising at a fast and steady pace, the battery-powered motor’s contribution can drop out almost to zero. With most human-electric hybrid cycles, you can also choose to ride the bicycles as a regular non-electric bike for extra exercise.

For all types, the motor and battery itself can add a little bit of weight to the bike, around 20 pounds—roughly comparable to adding a couple of textbooks to your backpack.

Electric bikes can go anywhere from 20–50 miles between charges. They are generally classified by law as “low-speed electric bicycles,” because they tend to go about 20–25 miles an hour. They don’t require a license plate or vehicle insurance in most states, but check the rules for where you live. And because they’re electric rather than combustion-powered, a trip on these motorized bikes is quiet—quiet enough to hear the birds singing on the way to wherever you’re going.

Drivers of these vehicles value the motorized boost that helps them more easily pedal up daunting hills, get home with groceries or other heavy loads, pedal a small child to school in a child seat or wheeled trailer, and commute to work in dress clothes without breaking a sweat. And for short trips, riding an electric bike can be faster than driving a car, especially because you won’t get stuck in traffic or can head for the bike rack by the door rather than driving around seeking parking. And drivers of motorized bikes still get exercise from pedaling, albeit with a little electric help—so these bikes offer more exercise than driving that’s a little less strenuous than pedaling a conventional bike.


Greener Than a Second Car

Compared to taking a car or some other gas-powered vehicle, these human-powered vehicles with electric assist travel completely clean, with no carbon dioxide emissions or other pollutants.

Even when you factor in the pollution that might have been used to generate the energy to charge your vehicle, electric bikes are only one-tenth as polluting as driving a car the same distance, according to Electric-Bikes.com.

Many users of motorized bikes also find that they save a bundle on gas and parking—offsetting the cost of the vehicle over time. And in some families, an electric bike can make it unnecessary to purchase a second car and the associated insurance, easily a $10-20,000 savings.


Hauling Stuff on Your Bike

Sometimes the “luggage problem” of getting heavy things home by bike can be so daunting that would-be riders choose cars instead. Having the capacity for an electric assist from a motorized bicycle can help to address that problem. In addition to side baskets or saddle bags, you can also find bike attachments designed to haul the extra-heavy weight of furniture, instruments, and even construction supplies—like the “Sports Utility Bike” accessories from XtraCycle.


Other Considerations

The scooters and bikes available today vary in quality, warns Chip Gribben at ScooterWerks, an electric bike and scooter repair shop in Laurel, Maryland. He encourages customers to purchase electric bikes at retail stores that will service them. If you buy online, choose a company that guarantees it will provide spare parts if the bike needs repairs.

Also, customers who shop with both people and the planet in mind may have trouble learning much about how some of these bikes were manufactured, says Tish Kashani, the screening manager for Green America’s Green Business Network™. “I hope in time that more and more manufacturers of ‘green bikes’ will provide their customers with information about where the products are made and under what conditions,” she says. “Then these vehicles will truly be a win-win-win—for the pocketbook, for people, and for the planet.”


For the Future

Electric bikes hold out the prospect of helping get cars off the road and reducing emissions, pollution, and gas use. In addition to the financial and environmental benefits, electric bike owners are quick to add that riding these vehicles is fun—and they get “thumbs up” and other encouragement from neighbors as they go by.

Andrew Gondzur says his children don’t miss carpool—they’re thrilled to be taken to school in a rolling trailer on the back of his motorized bike. “They love it,” he says. “They sit back there and yell, ‘faster! faster!’”