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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 February 2023

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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. Such practices may lead to cheap clothing on the consumer end, but more shoppers are saying that they don’t want low prices to come at the expense of workers—in the US 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 and Reuse

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

Secondhand clothing is a great option for people who want to avoid supporting sweatshops—and for people who are budget-minded and eco-conscious, too. Check your local Yellow Pages or Google Maps for thrift or consignment stores, and check your local paper for listings of yard sales featuring clothing. 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.

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 to economically disadvantaged artisans worldwide. You’ll also get unique and high-quality items, such as hand-crocheted, organic cotton sweaters from Indigenous, made by artisan cooperatives in Peru and Ecuador.

There is currently no US Fair Trade label for clothing, as there is for items such as tea and coffee, but there may be in the future. Fair Trade textiles, labeled and certified by the European organization Max Havelaar, became available in Europe last year.

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 US and in US territories; also, it’s likely that a non-union “US-made” garment was produced overseas and only had the finishing touches, like buttons or embroidery, applied in the US.

UNITE’s website includes a “Union-Made Apparel Directory” that lists companies selling union-made clothing and specifies which of their items are union-made.

4. Check the Source

You can also look for clothing from 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, Esperanza Threads is a Bedford, 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, “because 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.”

The better companies will have codes of conduct ensuring worker rights (including freedom of association and freedom of 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 have 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.

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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 people put on without thinking in depth about the product. 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. As a whole, most people do not think about where their 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 that offgas. 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 brightly color it, wash it, 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 sits right on the skin and on particularly vulnerable parts of the body—may also not be good for the wearer. While more studies need to be done to show 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 underwear 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 and 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 Green Business Network® Certification (greenpages.org). 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 at home, you can’t go wrong with a deep green company—like those certified by Green America—that keeps its manufacturing in the US 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 their 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.

Visit greenpages.org to search for companies that offer eco-friendly and organic underwear and are members of Green America’s Green Business Network. 

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!’”

Winter brings short days and cooler temperatures, and if you’re like this writer, you’re finding yourself spending more time indoors. Are you looking around at your living room or bedroom and wishing for a change?

Your home is where you socialize, relax, cook, raise your children, and sometimes work—so you want it to be inviting and nurturing. If it isn’t the way you want it to be, you don’t have to be a professional designer, or a millionaire, or use a ton of resources to make your rooms look like a million bucks. We talked to some experts specializing in green interior design to learn their favorite tricks for making an old space feel new without breaking the bank. If you’re itching for a change in your home this winter, follow these tips to create a space that rejuvenates your spirit and is healthy for your family.

Remake Your Space With Color

Perhaps the easiest way to make a big change in a room is to bring in some color by painting one or more of the walls. Think about the purpose of a room when choosing a color, says Norma Lehmeier Hartie, owner of design firm Harmonious Environment and author of Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify & Energize Your Life, Your Home & Your Planet (Lingham Press, 2007). Warm colors, like reds and yellows, are stimulating and therefore good for social rooms. Cooler colors, like blues and greens, are best for calming spaces, like the bedroom.

Most traditional paints are heavy in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), a class of chemicals that may cause health problems ranging from dizziness to nerve damage. In addition, they may contain toxic fungicides (to prevent mildew) and biocides, as well as chemical pigments for color.

Fortunately, there are several brands of less-toxic paint that our green designers recommend to their clients. They suggest looking for nontoxic, natural paints, which are often made from milk protein (called “casein”) or clay, and come in a wide array of colors.

Our designers love AFM Safecoat paint, which is zero-VOC, for its diversity—you’ll have to have a local store add pigments to achieve your desired color. For a completely natural paint with pigments included, try those from Auro USA . For others, see the “Paints” category of our National Green Pages™.

Rethinking Your Flooring

Many of the designers we spoke to said they recommend ripping out wall-to-wall carpets as an important step toward making a healthy and beautiful home. While the wall-to-wall carpets in many homes look soft and inviting, they’re notorious for harboring allergens and trapping toxins like pesticides that get tracked in from outside, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI). Most synthetic carpets also contain VOCs.

If you can’t afford to replace your carpeting, you can spray on a product like AFM’s carpet sealer (which does not contain dangerous chemicals) to seal in offgassing toxins that are a particular problem with newer carpets. Vacuum weekly with a HEPA vacuum to pick up allergens.

But if you’re able, consider replacing your wall-to-wall carpet with a sustainable hard floor made of responsibly harvested wood, reclaimed wood, renewable bamboo, or cork. Or, you can choose a low toxicity, 100 percent wool wall-to-wall carpet from a green company like Pure Home Center, which recommends its carpet for chemically sensitive customers.

For added softness and warmth, you can cover your floors with all-natural area rugs made from wool, hemp, or organic cotton, as rugs are easier to clean than wall-to-wall carpeting.

“Area rugs are fantastic because they define a particular space, but make sure they match the colors and textures in the rest of your room,” says Hartie.

For an array of eco-friendly flooring and rug options, see the “Flooring” and “Carpets/Rugs” categories of our National Green Pages™.

Work With What You've Got

Audrey Hoodkiss, owner of Ecology by Design, often amazes her clients without having to buy a thing.

“Creating a new room can be so easy,” she says. “It can be just about rearranging or revamping what you’ve got and seeing it from a new perspective.”

• Simply rearranging existing furniture can have a profound effect on a room. Designers recommend that you consider how light and energy flow in a given space when rearranging, thinking about balance and functionality. If a room has an “off-kilter” feel to it, seek balance by mixing different sizes of furniture and making sure that most furniture isn’t all in one end of the room.

“An imbalanced room would have large pieces of furniture grouped together on one end and lightweight furniture and bare walls at the other,” says Hartie. “The effect would be like being on a tilting boat in a storm.”

Also, Hoodkiss recommends gathering furniture into “conversation groups” to make it easy for people to talk to one another. Green living expert and author Annie Bond adds that round tables are particularly welcoming for guests, because “everyone feels like they belong.”

Finally, consider whether there’s space for people to walk through comfortably. Look at common paths through the room, and make sure not to obstruct them.

“Don’t sacrifice a comfortable walking pattern for that large-scale, curly armed sofa,” advises Alison Pollack of Earth Friendly Interior Design .

• If you’re tired of the colors or patterns on your furniture, consider refurbishing or covering them, rather than buying new items. For upholstered pieces, this could be more expensive than buying something new, but you’ll enjoy the satisfaction of saving resources by reusing what you have.
  
  Use low- or no-VOC finishes and paints for wood furniture, and make slipcovers and pillow covers from organic cotton or wool, hemp or hemp blends, or other upholstery-quality eco-fabrics, sold by companies like Aurora Silk. If sewing isn’t your thing, look in your local Yellow Pages for businesses that can custom-make slipcovers for you.
   
• Use photos and paintings or prints to bring life into your room. If you don’t have many windows in your room, Hoodkiss recommends framing pictures of nature scenes or loved ones to help bring you peace and balance. Be your own artist and showcase some of your photos or artwork, or frame a section of your favorite fabric and hang it on the wall.
  
  When hanging your artwork, Pollack recommends paying attention to both filled and negative space.
  
  “Group your pictures in such a way as to contain the collection to one section of one wall, with one or two inches between the pieces,” she says. “With open space surrounding the grouping, the eye travels directly to what you want folks to see and allows your eye to rest at the same time, so you won’t be overwhelmed by ‘stuff.’”
  
  Scour your local thrift shop for used frames, or look for frames made from reclaimed materials, like those from Pallet Art, which turns old shipping pallets into frames and furniture.

Bring in Some Green

A great way to liven up your space and clean your indoor air is to decorate with plants. In addition to beautifying your room, plants actually clean your indoor air, according to a study by NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America. Some of the plants the study cited as most effective in removing toxic formaldehyde, benzene, and carbon monoxide from the air were: bamboo palm, Chinese evergreen, English ivy, gerbera daisy, chrysanthemum, and peace lily.

However, “people with allergies and chemical sensitivities should keep potted plants out of the bedroom, because the soil often contains mold and allergens,” warns Hartie.

Being creative in potting your plants can add some color to your room. Reuse jars and containers to avoid buying pots and to give your room some added personality. When placing plants, think first of their lighting needs. Then, consider the same balance you sought through your furniture placement. Large plants work particularly well at filling up empty corners. Also consider putting together plant groupings. Pollack recommends clustering plants in a corner rather than scattering them throughout a room.

Plants are a wonderful way to bring a bit of nature in your home, but you don’t have to stop there. All of our designers agree that having natural elements in your home is key to creating a beautiful, healthy space. Collect some stones from one of your favorite trails and place them on a tabletop, or bring in some color with bouquets of flowers or clippings from your yard. If you love having fresh (ideally organic) flowers in your house, Hartie recommends fashioning vases from things you already have in your house, like pretty bottles or cans covered in fabric.

Shop Sustainably

When you find that it’s time to bring a new piece into your home, remember to go green. First, look for secondhand, new-to-you items that you can keep out of the waste-stream via local thrift shops, the newspaper, or online forums like Craigslist or Freecycle.org. If you can’t find something used, consult the “Furniture” category of our GreenPages.org to find pieces made from sustainably harvested wood and eco-friendly upholstery that isn’t treated with toxic chemicals, such as flame retardants and stain-resistant sealants.

You can also find beautiful decorations for your home by purchasing items from members of the Fair Trade Federation. You can find Fair Trade baskets, statues, housewares, and more, and you’ll help guarantee a fair wage for artisans around the world. Check the “Fair Trade” category of our GreenPages.org.

But don’t get so excited by things that you clutter your home. “Keep the decorative items to a minimum. Too many pretty little things tend to go unappreciated,” advises Pollack. Pick a few special items and place them in small groupings in your room, giving the same thought to negative space as when placing items on a wall, she says.

Interior design can be intimidating, but don’t get overwhelmed by trying to turn your room into a showroom for the latest fashions.

“Design is really very intuitive,” says Hartie. “When most people just go with their instincts, they’ll make a room that is beautiful for them.”

Two years ago, the computer manufacturer NEC Solutions launched a new product for environmentally conscious computer users. NEC’s PowerMate eco computer was described at the time as “the first all-in-one, fanless ecological PC … specifically [designed] to address the growing environmental problems associated with traditional PCs.”

The PowerMate eco reduced the lead content of its internal parts, used only 100 percent recyclable plastic, and included no toxic coatings to make it flame retardant. In 2003, however, NEC ceased production on PowerMate eco, citing poor sales—and that was the end, for now, of computers targeted to the eco-conscious market.

“There’s no silver bullet if you want to go out and purchase a computer free from toxins,” says Sheila Davis, director of the Clean Computer Campaign at the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC).

In its 2003 computer report card, SVTC gave a passing grade to just one company, the Japanese computer manufacturer Fujitsu, in recognition of its commitment to set deadlines for eliminating lead from its products.

“The Japanese companies are a little bit more aggressive in phasing out some of the toxins,” says Davis. In fact, the SVTC report card notes that the most environmentally friendly products often result from environmental regulations that are more stringent in Japan and Europe.

Although computer toxicity remains a real problem in the computer industry, there are still a number of steps you can take to minimize other problems (from energy efficiency to the use of sweatshop labor) in the computer industry, and to keep from sending the toxic parts of your old computer into a landfill.

Environmental and Labor Issues

Equally egregious is the fact that many companies are shipping used computers either to prisons or overseas for recycling. These workers are paid extremely low wages to pick through the toxic components, looking for useful scrap.

Fortunately, pending legislation in a number of states (including Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island) would require computer producers to take more responsibility for their products. Some of the proposed bills ban certain toxic computer components at the state level, and others mandate that computer producers sponsor their own recycling (or “take-back”) programs. However, there is no current legislation covering the labor issues, and computer watchdog groups agree that no company has a spotless social and environmental record at present.

“Consumers may have to balance their values,” says Robin Schneider, director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment (www.texasenvironment.org), pointing out that though Dell, HP, and NEC are industry leaders when it comes to environmental responsibility, none of the three is perfect. NEC is leading on taking steps to reduce the toxic components of some of their machines but declines to sponsor a computer take-back program, she says. Similarly, Dell sponsors a take-back program but has not committed to helping pass progressive local computer legislation.

“We have seen Hewlett Packard (HP) putting their political muscle behind local take-back legislation,” says Schneider, adding that HP and Dell are two computer producers sponsoring take-back programs “In the future, we hope to see Dell follow HP’s lead on supporting clean computer legislation.”

Minimize the Harm

Until a company unveils a “silver bullet” toxin-free, fully recyclable eco-computer, one of the best strategies for conscious consumers is to save existing computers from ending up in landfills.

According to the National Safety Council’s Environmental Health Center, the average lifespan for a personal computer is about two years, and the SVTC estimates that by the end of this year, Americans will have disposed of more than 300 million obsolete computers. By 2006, according to a report by the Computer Take Back Campaign, more than 150,000 computers will become obsolete in this country every day.

Three main strategies can keep many of these computers from being dumped:

1. Refurbish: “Extending the life of a computer is the most effective way to reduce its environmental impact,” says Luke Lundemo, owner of the Computer Co-op, a computer refurbisher. “With some simple maintenance, a computer can continue to do the tasks for which it was purchased much longer than the conventional expectation of three years.”

Even if upgrading isn’t an option for you, remember that there’s probably someone who doesn’t consider your machine obsolete. You can probably find a student, church, or nonprofit that would be happy with your out-of-date computer. Or, check with the Web site of the Electronics Industries Alliance Consumer Education Initiative to find local and national charities, schools, and other organizations that collect used electronics, including PCs.

2. Reuse: If you must purchase a better computer, consider buying used. Barely used computers that are too out-of-date for a technologically advanced business might be perfect for home use.

“Buying a used computer can be a cost-effective alternative to buying new, in addition to the peace of mind of knowing you prevented another computer from ending up in a landfill,” says Don Mayer, CEO of Small Dog Electronics, an authorized Apple reseller that offers both refurbished and new computers. “They’re greener for both your wallet and the environment.”

3. Recycle: Since Real Green first tackled the computer issue three years ago, more and more computer recyclers have set up shop, some locally, some nationally, accepting computers from all across the country, so no obsolete machines ever have to be consigned to landfills.

The resource link at the end of this article contains a nationwide list of computer recyclers who told Real Green they do all of their recycling in the US, with no overseas shipping or prison labor. Some charge a small fee, while others only ask for shipping costs.

An even cheaper and more eco-friendly option is to check your local yellow pages for computer recycling in your area.

Though there’s no clear leader in the eco-computer market just yet, careful consuming and responsible recycling can help minimize the harm of the computer industry, and help stem the tide of e-waste from filling landfills and leaching toxic chemicals into the environment, both at home and abroad. 

New York is a city known for lavish parties and people who embrace the latest material trends. But when Baly Lau and Craig Cooley decided to get married there last year, they made their wedding a simple affair, incorporating as many socially and environmentally responsible touches as they could - a green wedding!

"We wanted a celebration that was meaningful to us, instead of just traditional," says Baly, a Green America member. "Going green and keeping as many purchases local as possible meant a lot to us."

So Baly and Craig held a small wedding in a friend's garden—where they'd planted flowers and greenery the year before in preparation for their nuptials. They chose wedding attire they could wear again for other occasions, and decorated with soy candles, potted bamboo, and lights they'd bought secondhand. They decided to forego an engagement ring because of social and environmental problems with the diamond industry, and they bought all of the reception food and drinks from locally owned stores.

Baly and Craig ended up with a celebration that saved them money and was socially and environmentally responsible. They also look back on a wedding that was elegant, special, and deeply personal.

"It wasn't a sacrifice to green our wedding. I feel we gained more," says Baly. "Our wedding reflected our values, our personalities, and our relationship to our community. Most of our friends said it was the best wedding they had ever been to."

If you or someone you know is about to plan a wedding, anniversary celebration, or commitment ceremony, consider adding in some green touches. Not only will you save money and resources, but you'll be able to personalize your celebration by bringing in your values.

Go Simple with your Green Wedding

The first step to planning a green celebration can often be choosing what not to buy, says Michelle Kozin, author of Organic Weddings: Balancing Ecology, Style, and Tradition (New Society Publishers, 2003) and founder of OrganicWeddings.com.

“The wedding industry is notorious for promoting excess,” says Kozin. “Your dream wedding can become a reality without overspending and overconsumption.”

Tradition dictates you need party favors, rice to throw at the happy couple, and virgin-pulp paper invitations that come with three envelopes and a sheet of tissue paper, for example. But ask yourself, could you do without these or other things, or replace them with pared-down and green alternatives?

Simplifying your celebration isn’t just a money-saving step—it can help you make sure that everything involved in your wedding is personal and meaningful.

The Ring's the Thing

Whether your celebration is a wedding, a commitment, or an anniversary, you may want to exchange rings, whose circular shape symbolizes eternal love. But there are social and environmental problems connected to diamonds, gold, and platinum—the most common materials used for such rings. For example, gemstone and metal miners often work in cramped and unsafe conditions, and mining itself can damage local ecosystems and watersheds. Also, children often labor in diamond mines around the world, and some countries use diamond sales to fuel armed conflicts.

If you’d like to exchange rings, consider purchasing from a sustainable company like Leber Jeweler or Vintage Engagement Rings, which sell wedding, anniversary, and commitment bands made from recycled gold and platinum—no new mining required. Leber also offers rings with responsibly mined gems and conflict free diamonds from Canada, and will do custom designs. And Sumiche sells handcrafted gold and platinum rings from responsibly mined sources. You can even send Sumiche your own ring design, and co-owners Susan and Miché Onaclea will make it an eco-friendly reality.

For more sustainable jewelers, see the “Jewelry” category of Green America’s National Green Pages™.

Eco-paper Invitations

Invitations are the perfect place to go green when it comes to your celebration, because recycled and tree-free paper options abound—and they look as pretty as their virgin-pulp paper counterparts.

You can pick up eco-paper sheets from your local office supply store and design your own, or there are several sustainable companies that offer recycled or tree-free paper invitation packages.

For example, Green Field Paper Company offers handmade paper cards, envelopes, and sheets for invitations made from a blend of recycled paper and hemp. It also offers a “gourmet line” of recycled papers infused with hemp threads, roasted coffee chaff, garlic skins, or junk mail for a unique look. Green Field’s signature product is its handmade Grow-A-Note paper, which has wildflower seeds embedded inside so guests can plant the paper and watch the flowers grow. Grow-A-Note paper comes in sheets or blank invitations and is made from a blend of recycled paper, seeds, and hemp. You can either have Green Field print the invitations for you, or arrange for your own printer. (Be sure to choose one that uses nontoxic soy-based inks.)

Twisted Limb Paperworks offers wedding, commitment, and anniversary celebration invitations, envelopes, and reply cards made of 100 percent post-consumer waste fibers. Twisted Limb artists handcraft the paper from recycled office paper, junk mail, grocery bags, flowers, and grass cuttings, giving each piece a unique, artistic look. No new dyes are used—the colors come from the recycled materials, and the company prints with soy-based inks. Couples can work directly with an artist to ensure that their invitations are unique and individualized.

For more eco-paper options, see the “Paper Products” categories of our National Green Pages™.

For a truly green option, consider forgetting paper invitations altogether and using e-mail instead. Evite.com, for example, offers a free electronic invitation service, complete with RSVP tracking.

What to Wear to a Green Wedding

You can always look in your closet for an outfit you already own to wear to your wedding, commitment ceremony, or anniversary celebration. But, if you’re craving a special, new-to-you garment, try these eco-friendly options:

• Men are simple to outfit—it’s long been a tradition for men to rent tuxedos for weddings. But did you know that women can also rent formal wear, including wedding gowns, thereby saving money and resources? Check the “Formalwear Rental” category of your local Yellow Pages to see what options are available.

• Local upscale consignment or vintage boutiques often offer used wedding gowns or formals at a fraction of the price of a new gown—and they may even have suits for men. Or, check out classified ads from people around the country selling secondhand wedding gowns and tuxes at NearlyNewlyWed.com. 

• Have a tailor make your gown or suit from natural eco-fabrics, which, unlike synthetics, are made without non-renewable petroleum. Eco-fabrics include peace silk (made without killing silkworms), hemp, organic cotton, or hemp-silk blends. Aurora Silk sells peace silk. And Nearsea Naturals offers notions, as well as fabrics, made from organic cotton and organic wool, hemp, and silk. For more options, see the “Cloth/Textiles” category of our National Green Pages™.

• If you buy a new gown or suit, stay with natural fabrics, rather than synthetic, and purchase from a local formal wear shop to keep the money in your local economy. Or, buy from a green company like The Emperor’s Clothes, which offers hemp-silk-blend, three-piece suits for men that are perfect for grooms and groomsmen.

• If you’d like a new bridal veil, Kozin suggests one made from silk organza rather than petroleum-based nylon tulle.

A Place for Everything

When choosing the location for your celebration, consider these steps to make it green:

• The same location twice. If you can, hold your ceremony and reception in the same location—or at least within walking distance—to minimize guest travel. Many houses of worship have banquet halls, or you can ask your officiant to come to the reception location for the ceremony.

• Go local. Choose a locally owned hall to keep money in your local economy.

• Go green. Consider using the ballroom at a green hotel, so your money supports an establishment that goes the extra mile for the environment. To find a green hotel near you, contact the “Green” Hotels Association.

• Help a nonprofit. If you’d like your reception room fee to bolster a local nonprofit organization, Kozin suggests choosing a reception room at your house of worship, a museum, or a local historic building owned by a nonprofit.

• Green decor. When it comes to green decor, consider buying organic flowers from a local shop or using 100 percent soy or vegetable wax candles, rented plants, potted plants, or rented or secondhand lights.

Or, you could choose to have your ceremony outside in a garden, to take advantage of the free natural decor. Your reception party can be outdoors too, under a rented tent. Just make sure your
outdoor location won’t be ruined by having a bunch of guests treading on the premises. Also, be sure to have a back-up plan for inclement weather.

• Buy green tags. Consider purchasing green tags to offset the energy used during your ceremony and reception, as well as for guest travel.

Favor, Food, and Fun

You’ll probably want to serve food and drinks at your reception party, and you may even want to provide favors. Here are some ways to green those:

• Look for a local caterer that will serve organic foods. If you’re serving meat, make it organic, available at local natural food outlets or by mail-order from the Wholesome Harvest Organic Meat Farmer Coalition. Or, you can choose meatless dishes, which save money and are less taxing on the Earth.

• Offer organic and Fair Trade beverages, such as Fair Trade coffee and tea, readily available at local health food stores. You can also find organic beer, wine, and soda locally or in the “Beverages” section of our National Green Pages™.

• Avoid using disposable dishware. Most caterers provide washable dishes and will take them away for you for cleaning when guests are finished with them. If you must use disposables, use recycled paper options, like those from Seventh Generation, or choose compostable, plant-based dishes and cutlery, such as those from Greener Earth Marketing. You’ll want to use an industrial composter for disposal, which you can find through your local waste authority.

• To give your guests a memory of your special day that isn’t hard on the Earth, Kozin recommends several unique party favors on OrganicWeddings.com, from a Tree in a Box seed kits with personalized labels, to organic lavender keepsake sachets from Lavender Green, to homemade organic cookies with your names in frosting.

Gift Registry

Finally, your guests may want to bring you gifts to celebrate your special day. Consider registering at a green company like Gaiam. You can also ask guests to donate to a charity or nonprofit in your name through JustGive.org. The site offers a gift registry option, so your guests can easily find out which of the million charities available you would like to support.

Another charitable option is to create a “Personal Giving Page” on the Internet through First Giving. By using First Giving’s simple interface, you can make a Web page with your pictures and a personal message to send to guests, asking them to make a donation to your favorite cause instead of bringing a present. Green America has set up an account with First Giving, so if you’d like to create a Personal Giving Page to support our work to grow a green economy, please visit www.firstgiving.com/ coopamerica.

There are many ways to color your party green, but what all such celebrations have in common is that they’re unique, eco-friendly, and unforgettable.

Whether it’s the ticker running across the bottom of your screen, or the numbers filling up the business section in the newspaper, the stock market is everywhere. For many of us, buying stocks remains a mysterious, and oftentimes overwhelming, thing. But history has shown that, over the long term (ten years or more), the stock market almost always grows more than virtually any other investment—so it is likely worthwhile for you to roll up your sleeves and learn whether investing in individual stocks is for you, and how you can get started.

Even if you don’t have the money to develop a large, diversified portfolio of stocks, you can consider investing a small amount in a company you believe in—thus playing an even bigger role in the movement for sustainability in the marketplace.

Is Buying Stocks Right for You?

A share of stock is a piece of ownership in a given company. When a company “goes public,” it sells off shares of ownership to investors as a way to get initial capital to grow its business; then, investors take over and start trading shares of that stock among themselves. When stock is traded on the stock market, the price of a stock at any given time is determined by what price is being asked, and what other investors are willing to pay.

Your stock investment strategy will differ depending on your investment goals and the overall size of your portfolio. Most financial advisors recommend maintaining a good diversification (i.e. variety) of stocks to reduce risk.

Christine McHugh, a Colorado-based financial advisor, recommends having a portfolio of at least $100,000 before turning your attention to individual stocks, which many experts say should comprise no more than ten percent of your total investment portfolio. She advises those of us with less than $100,000 in our portfolio to invest in the stock market primarily through mutual funds and other vehicles that offer instant diversification. 

But what about those of us who don’t have a $100,000 portfolio but want to be part of the growth of a company we find exciting? In that case, most advisors say go ahead and make an investment, just know what you’re getting into.

“Investing in a company you believe in is great,” says financial advisor Dena Frenkel .“But you also have to accept that restricting your stock holdings to one or two companies is a riskier venture than spreading a larger amount of money around between many different companies.”

McHugh says that people with less than $100,000 should limit their investment in individual stock to five percent of their total portfolio. Also, other experts recommend that you not use essential funds, like those you’ll need for your retirement, on these small investments, and advise adjusting your investment perspective so that, as Frenkel says, “you’re not investing simply to make money, but to help a company you believe in grow stronger.”

Find a Broker 

To buy and sell stocks, you need a broker to perform the transactions for you, because only licensed members of the stock exchange are allowed to conduct stock transactions. There are two categories of brokers: full-service and discount.

A full-service broker has access to research and analysis of the financial performances of publicly held companies, and can offer investment recommendations. Any financial advisor who is registered as such or has a securities license can act as a full-service broker. 

Some full-service brokers will charge you commission, so you pay a fee every time you buy or sell stock; this is the costliest way to trade stock, and it’s to the advantage of this type of broker that you buy and sell often. Other full-service brokers are paid a single fee for all of the assets under management, along with a small (about $10) charge for each stock transaction; some of these brokers may have minimum account requirements.

Although using a full-service broker is more expensive than using a discount broker (see below), there is one big advantage: If you tell your broker about a company that interests you, she or he will look into its past performance and recommend whether or not it’s the right stock to match your investment goals.

Discount brokers don’t provide the advice you’d get from a full-service broker, but they are also less expensive. Discount brokers simply make your transactions for you. Many discount brokers let you do your trading through the Internet, so you can track your stocks and issue transaction orders 24-7, without speaking to anyone. 

Most online discount brokers have an account minimum of between $1,000-$2,500, and charge a fee of about $10 for each online transaction. Some offer the option of trading by phone, or with the assistance of a live broker—both options are more expensive, costing between $35–$45. 

For a comparison of discount brokers, visit the Motley Fool's investing Web site.

Pick Your Stock 

Once you’ve found a broker, it’s time to pick your stock. There are plenty of resources for finding stock recommendations (see our box below), so you may want to start by browsing those sources, or finding out if any of your favorite companies are publicly traded. 

Many brokerage houses give stock ratings of “buy,” “sell,” or “hold,” depending on the value of the stock and the behavior of the market. However, each brokerage house has its own set of standards regarding how these ratings are assigned; some “buy” ratings suggest that a stock will gain 15 percent or more over the next 12 months, while others simply predict that a stock will do better than the overall market. Before you follow ratings, make sure the brokerage’s investing philosophy matches your own.

If you’re using a discount broker, call the Investor Relations department of the company in which you’re interested and ask for company financial records detailing income and past performance. You can also choose stock investments that reflect your social and environmental values. For example, you may want to seek out companies that work on green energy or have great diversity records. Or, you might exclude those tied to human rights abuses or poor environmental impacts from your portfolio. For assistance, you can work with a financial advisor who specializes in socially responsible investing (SRI), as she or he will have access to special SRI databases and screening tools. If you’re using a discount broker, you’re largely on your own when it comes to SRI screening, but the resources below can help you find green stocks. 

Once you become a shareholder, make sure to vote for social and environmental proposals on your annual shareholder proxy ballot. You can find detailed information on being a shareholder activist on our Web site.

Buying and Selling

When you’ve settled on the stock you want to buy, it’s time to make an order. Stocks are most commonly sold in round lots, or lots of 100 shares or more. A lot of less than 100 shares is called an odd lot; odd lot transactions generally have greater commission costs associated with them. Financial professionals advise having enough money to buy a round lot of shares in one company. Many discount brokers require that you trade at least 100 shares of stock at a time.

There are two main types of stock orders.

Buy at market: You order your broker to buy shares at the current market price. 

Buy at limit: You order the broker to buy shares only up to a certain price. If you want to buy 100 shares of a company, but you’re not willing to pay more than $40 a share, your broker will watch and only purchase shares for you when they’re available for $40 or less. However, there’s also no guarantee that the stock will be available at that price, so you might never be able to buy it.

When it’s time to sell your stock, there are a few ways to do it. You can sell at market, in which case your shares will be sold at the prevailing market rate. You can also sell at limit, guaranteeing that your broker will only sell your stock at a specified price or higher.

One way to ensure you won’t lose too much on your investment is to put a stop-loss order on your stock. In this case, you pick a price and make a standing order to sell your stock if the market price drops to your limit. If you bought your stock at $40 a share, you may put a stop-loss order of $20 on the account. When the market price for the stock falls to $20 a share, your stop-loss order will activate, and your broker will sell your shares. 

It’s important to note that placing a stop-loss at a certain price does not guarantee that you’ll get that exact price for your stock; rather, once the market price drops to your limit, your shares will be sold at market price during the next available sale.

Investor Discipline 

Even though you may be investing in a company you believe in, beware of becoming too emotionally attached to a specific stock. Advisors recommend setting a sell limit for yourself when you purchase stock and sticking to it. 

You also want to avoid the pitfall of excessive trading. Online discount brokers make it easier to watch the market and make fast trades, but the fees and commissions can add up quickly. 
 

Our allies at the Environmental Health Trust have a wealth of resources available to keep you informed about the potential health risks of cell phones. Check out the links below to find out more from their Campaign for Safer Cell Phones, and download some clever stickers (courtesy of the Environmental Health Trust and Jeanne Chinard) that you can apply to your electronic devices to remind yourself to keep them away from your head.

The Campaign for Safer Cell Phones produced this assortment of stickers (page one and page two) to remind cell-phone users to adopt safer habits.

Fine-Print Warnings
Motorola, T-Mobile, Blackberry, Kyocera, and Apple all admit to the potential dangers of cell-phones in their fine-print warnings. The Campaign for Safer Cell Phones has them all collected in one place. Read More »

Schools Take Action
See how a junior-high school in Ada, Oklahoma is teaching students about safer cell phone use. Read More »

Business Campaign for Safer Cell Phones
The Business Campaign for Safer Cell Phones is an initiative of companies who are committed to protecting employee health and agree to provide headsets to all employees who use phones for business and create programs to promote cell phone safety. . Read More »

Four decades ago, the socially responsible investing (SRI) movement began with dialogue. By calling on companies to not do business in South Africa because of the government’s policy of apartheid, a group of concerned investors helped spur a movement of shareholders who regularly demand that companies put people and the planet on par with profit.

Today, investor coalitions and institutional investors, such as socially responsible mutual funds and pension funds, use their deep pockets and strong standing to communicate directly with corporations about social and environmental issues, through methods such as open letters and face-to-face meetings with management.

This year, shareholders engaged in dialogues with companies on issues as diverse as divesting from military-ruled Burma (Myanmar) and eliminating bisphenol-A from consumer products.

Why Dialogue Works
These investor groups are able to get access to corporate management for dialogues because they have a huge amount of capital behind them. In fact, 55 US institutional investors representing a total of $740 billion in assets used that considerable economic clout to dialogue with corporate managers from 2008 through the first half of 2010, according to the Social Investment Forum’s 2010 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States.

“As we’ve been engaging in corporate dialogues for nearly 40 years, [we are able to convene] effective, face-to-face discussions with management that bear fruit in the form of meaningful reform,” says Laura Berry, executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a coalition of faith-based institutional investors.

So while shareholder resolutions may get the lion’s share of media attention, it is often dialogue (in which all parties know the next step is likely a shareholder resolution) that gets the job done.

"Because we understand ensuring a good return and safeguarding the health of the planet and its inhabitants aren’t mutually exclusive goals, we propose realistic solutions that are often adopted in dialogues that make further actions, such as filing shareholder resolutions, unnecessary,” says Berry. “For that reason, corporate dialogues are generally our preferred and first course of action.”

Below are highlights of recent dialoguing successes and ongoing challenges.

Human Rights/Discrimination
Three years of investor dialogue, led by Trillium Asset Management, Domini Social Investments, Boston Common Asset Managementm, and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, convinced a Toyota affiliate this year to fully divest from a joint venture with the Burmese (Myanmarese) military regime. The regime has been accused of human rights violations by the United Nations and global human rights organizations, including the absence of an independent judiciary, Internet restrictions, forced labor, human trafficking, child labor, and sexual violence.

In August, these investors received a letter from Toyota North America stating that its trading arm Toyota Tsusho Corp. had sold its stake in the venture in Burma.

On the home front, after seven months of dialogue, NorthStar Asset Management scored a major victory by getting package delivery giant FedEx to provide domestic partner health benefits to same-sex couples by 2012.

Health and Safety
The chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), a likely hormone disruptor, has become a big concern among investors. Canada recently declared it a toxin and banned its use. In the absence of a US federal response to regulating the chemical used to line metal food and beverage containers, investors are taking action.

Investment advisory firm Green Century Capital Management and As You Sow, a nonprofit working to increase corporate accountability, have been dialoguing with companies about using BPA in products and packaging for years. To speed up improvements, these investors released two well-publicized reports grading companies on their progress in phasing out BPA—one in April 2009, and the latest this past November.

“We believe companies may face financial risks from the presence of BPA in product packaging and should act quickly to eliminate the chemical to help protect shareholder value and preserve company reputations,” write Green Century and As You Sow in the new report.

In the 2009 report, agriprocesssing giant ConAgra (which owns Chef Boyardee, Hunts, and Healthy Choice) received a D- grade, and HainCelestial (which owns Health Valley, Earth’s Best, and Westbrae Natural) led the pack with a not-so-impressive C-. Thanks in part to investor dialogues and the bad publicity from the report, both companies received an A grade in the 2010 report for introducing BPA-free packaging for some of their products and committing to a timeline for phasing out BPA altogether.

The BP Oil Catastrophe
Following the most recent environmental catastrophe along the Gulf Coast, 58 global investors and government entities managing $2.5 trillion in assets sent letters—often the first step in initiating a dialogue—to 27 major oil and gas companies in August pressing them to disclose information on spill prevention and response plans for deepwater drilling operations around the world.

The investors—which were led by Ceres (co-founded by Green America, which holds a seat on its board) and included the New York State Comptroller, the Florida State Board of Administration, and the UK-based Local Authority Pension Fund Authority Forum—sent a second letter to 26 insurance companies asking them if they are going to reassess their exposure to offshore oil and gas operations and if they will change their underwriting criteria to take increased safety risks into account.

Peyton Fleming, Ceres’ senior director of strategic communications, tells the Green American that so far they have received responses from at least a dozen oil companies and a number of insurance companies. Ceres is currently evaluating the responses and will soon release the information to the public.

Also in response to the BP oil spill, shareholder activists will be engaging in dialogues with oil companies asking for very specific disclosures on health and safety practices, says Sanford Lewis, a lawyer who provides legal support for shareholder advocates such as the Investor Environmental Health Network.

Look for concerned investors to be asking oil companies for more details on drilling practices in the near future. “For example,” says Lewis, “[federally] documented violations that are severe or health threatening and orders to close facilities, withdraw products, suspend production are not necessarily disclosed now. They should be.”

By advocating for safer schools and looking for Earth-friendly school supplies for your children, you’ll not only help to protect their health, but you’ll also teach them to be stewards of the environment.

Climate Change
Sometimes a public policy issue comes up that would so fundamentally alter the investing landscape that socially responsible investors take a public stand. This was the case recently in California when climate activists scored a big victory by defeating Proposition 23—a ballot measure bankrolled by out of-state oil companies that would have gutted the state’s landmark climate change law.

In October, a group of 68 major investors managing $415 billion in assets, delivered a joint written statement to the media as part of a public campaign opposing Prop. 23. The statement, whose signatories include Domini and Pax World Fundsm, said the measure would “negatively affect job growth, economic competitiveness, private investment, energy price savings and stability, and air pollution and public health.”

Green America is leading a campaignaimed at shareholders and consumers to get Southern Company—one of the top five utility polluters in the world—to curb its emissions by increasing its investments in clean energy and energy efficiency and shutting down their dirtiest coal-fired power plants.

Political Disclosure
Socially responsible investors are fighting back against the 2010 US Supreme Court Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. The decision, in a nutshell, allows corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. The immediate consequences are reflected in the recent midterm elections, which were the most expensive ever in American history.

Corporate giants such as Target, Best Buy, 3M, and Pentair faced shareholder backlash in the form of a public pressure campaign and proposals filed by Walden, Trillium, and Calvert after the Minnesota based companies gave large donations to MN Forward, which was created after the Citizens United ruling to funnel corporate contributions to extreme candidates such as climate change denier and anti gay gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer.

“Companies may be legally allowed to make donations, but they are still going to face a lot of pressure from investors and customers to show that the money being spent really does enhance shareholder value. And if it leads to boycotts and bad publicity, that’s not good for shareholder value,” says Annie C. Logue, author of Socially Responsible Investing for Dummies.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom this year as socially responsible investors claimed a major victory by reaching the point where half of the corporations on the S&P 500 have agreed—through dialogue and shareholder resolutions—to disclose their political contributions. Microsoft, Time Warner, and Starbucks are some of the high-profile companies that have committed to fiscal transparency. But according to Bruce F. Freed, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Political Accountability, some companies have been resistant to disclosure, including JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and AT&T, and investors will keep the pressure on these big political spenders.

“Citizens United has made it much more difficult to regulate political donations legislatively, so it makes the corporate governance route that much more important,” says Freed.

Proven Investor Power
As these examples demonstrate, dialogue is a proven method that continues to get results by harnessing the collective power of socially responsible investors. Dialoguing is just one strategy that experienced investor coalitions employ on a case-by-case basis, along with filing shareholder resolutions and divesting, to change corporate conduct for the better.

Over her distinguished career as a scientist, professor, and author, Dr. Devra Davis has racked up her share of laurels. With a Ph.D. in science studies and a post-doctoral Master’s of Public Health in epidemiology, Dr. Davis has worked for the National Academy of Sciences, and as a senior advisor in the US Department of Health and Human Services. She was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to his Chemical Safety and Hazard Mitigation Board. And she served as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007 along with former Vice-President Al Gore. She was the founding director of what is reputed to be the world’s first Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh, and she currently lectures at Harvard University and Georgetown University.

Her book, When Smoke Ran Like Water (Basic Books, 2002), was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her book The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Basic Books, 2009) is being used at major public health universities, including Harvard, Emory, and Tulane.

But it’s her 2010 release, Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family (Dutton, 2010), that may put her in the history books as the 21st century’s Rachel Carson. In it, Davis examines the controversy surrounding cell phone use and its possible link to brain cancer and other human health impacts.

Like many of us, Davis was initially skeptical about the ties between cell phone use and cancer. But after spending the past seven years poring over the research, she’s become one of the most vocal and credible voices warning about the dangers of cell phone radiation.

Green America editor Tracy Fernandez Rysavy talked to Dr. Davis about why she’s concerned about widespread cell phone use, and why it’s so vital to protect our children from cell phone radiation, even in the face of some uncertainty of harm.

Green America/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: What made you start to worry about the connection between cell phones and brain cancer?

Dr. Devra Davis: I initially figured this was just one of those issues that
attracts people who aren’t very credible. There’s a kind of arrogance that those of us who’ve been at the center of American science tend to have: I frankly assumed if there was anything important to know about cell phones and cancer, I would of course know it!

Then I came across a report by Sir William Stewart of the Stewart Commission of Great Britain. Sir William has been the president of the British Association for Science, the president of the Scottish National Academy of Science, and he’s one of Britain’s most distinguished scientists. He was an advisor to Margaret Thatcher. He’s very highly regarded among both conservatives and liberals in England—a scientist’s scientist. And he issued a warning in 2000 that said children should not be using cell phones. I thought, “Well, the British, they’re eccentric, you know.”

Then I got a hold of the report, and I was flabbergasted. Sir William and his colleagues were concerned about the biological properties of cell phone radiation, which I knew nothing about at the time. The report cited studies showing that pulse signals from cell phones could damage DNA and could weaken the blood-brain barrier.

Tracy: So then you looked through seven years’ worth of research on this topic. What have the studies that have found possible links between cell phones and cancer had in common?

Dr. Davis: Every study that’s ever looked at people who’ve used a cell phone heavily for ten years or more finds a doubled risk of brain tumors.

Tracy: Every study?

Dr. Davis: Yes. Including the industry-sponsored ones, and there aren't that many of those.

The majority of studies on cell phones and brain cancer have been negative— they’ve not found anything. Those studies have defined a user as a person who averaged one call a week for six months. And the average person in the study used a phone for less than six years. Brain cancer takes a minimum of ten years to develop. So if you’re studying a bunch of people who’ve made very few phone calls and have used a phone for a very short period of time, of course you’re not going to find anything. It would be shocking if you did.

Today, three out of every four children under 12 uses a cell phone, and many households have eliminated their landlines and use cell phones exclusively. There are now nearly five billion cell phones in use worldwide.

Another thing those studies have had in common is that they’ve almost all been independently funded. In other words, when funding comes from industry, it really tends to discourage results from being positive in terms of a link between cell phones and brain cancer. Now that’s not to say that everybody who works for industry is on the take. But there are these subtle ways in which it affects conclusions.

There’s a general reluctance on the part of scientists to agree that something is a problem, because then their research might be over. So the more uncertainty we can find, the more we need to continue doing the research. Uncertainty becomes a very convenient thing to perpetuate.

I say this as someone who’s worked in science for more than 30 years. In the cases of asbestos and passive smoking, which I was involved in leading studies of at the National Academy of Sciences, it was a tremendous struggle before we could get results released suggesting there was a problem. The struggle arose not because of debates about the science of these hazards, but because of the political and economic influence of these highly profitable industries.

Tracy: You’re not the first person I’ve heard compare the studies on cell phones and brain cancer to the struggle to prove that tobacco and asbestos caused harm.

Dr. Davis: In both of those situations, I noticed a pattern: First you’d have reports of harm of people. And then industry steps in to raise doubt of that harm.

Now with the publication of the tobacco papers, we have evidence of what went on, which is a campaign where the tobacco companies exaggerated doubt so they could keep selling their products. A book by Dr. David Michaels called Doubt Is Their Product (Oxford University Press, 2008) talks about a phrase that appeared in a memo from the tobacco industry referring to the idea that smoking caused lung cancer:

“As long as we can raise questions in people’s minds, then we’ve succeeded.” That’s the modus operandi here: raise doubt, confuse people.

Tracy: Let’s get more specific about how cell phone radiation can damage DNA. There’s a belief out there—which was published last fall in Scientific American—that cell phone radiation can’t cause cancer, because it’s non-ionizing radiation.

Dr. Davis: That was a very unusual piece for Scientific American to run on several accounts, one of which was that it used language that science usually doesn’t use. It said that it’s “physically impossible” for cell phone radiation to have a biological effect that causes cancer, because it doesn’t damage DNA by breaking chemical bonds.

Let’s break that sentence down. First of all, yes, it’s certainly true that cell phone radiation is too weak to break DNA. No one has ever suggested that it does so like X-rays. In fact, X-rays are ionizing radiation. That means they break the chemical bonds that hold things together.

Non-ionizing radiation, by definition, cannot do that. That doesn’t mean that it’s safe. It may damage DNA in other ways. The amount of power in a cell phone is several thousand times weaker than that of a microwave oven, but they both use the same frequency. A microwave oven will boil a cup of water in two minutes. And cell phones are being held next to your brain for hours a day.

Studies are showing that cell-phone radiation produces free radicals that we know can cause damage. It is destabilizing DNA, impairing the ability of DNA to repair itself. And we know it’s causing weakening of the blood-brain barrier and weakening of cell membranes. All of these are biological impacts that can lead to cancer.

We also know you can get cancer without damaging DNA, as what happens with asbestos and hormone replacement therapy; these two agents cause cancer but do not directly damage DNA. So this idea that you can’t have cancer because you don’t damage DNA is wrong, on its face.

Finally, we know that cell phone radiation has profound biological effects from studies that have been done in cell cultures in animals and some experimental studies on humans. For all of those reasons, the Scientific American article was really mistaken. It’s incredible that it took such a strong tone.

Tracy: I want to go back to the blood-brain barrier, because I thought that was so important when I read your book. Can you explain what it is, and how cell phone radiation affects it?

Dr. Davis: The blood-brain barrier is a natural barrier that protects the brain from undesirable materials that could enter it through the bloodstream.

I talked to Dr. Allan Frey for my book, who performed a study involving the blood-brain barrier with the Office of Naval Research. What he basically did was to take a rat, inject blue dye into its veins, and show that while everything else inside the rat turned blue, the blue dye didn’t get into the brain. That showed
we have a blood-brain barrier protecting the brain.

Then what he did was to perform the same experiment exposing the rat to a microwave-sized, pulsed digital radiofrequency signal before injecting the dye—and the brain turned blue. That was pretty powerful.

And then he was told by his superiors to stop working in that area if he expected to continue getting support for his research. Well, a pseudo-replication of this study was done by a group connected to industry where they injected the dye into the abdomen, not into the bloodstream. The brain, of course, didn’t turn blue, so they concluded that Frey was wrong. That’s the kind of misleading science that has characterized this field.

The blood-brain barrier work, by the way, is really relevant to Green America’s work on toxins. Since radio-frequency radiation weakens the blood-brain barrier, that means you will enhance the uptake of toxicants through the brain by using a cell phone. So all of our policies to protect us from toxins will do nothing if we do not also deal with this exposure.

Tracy: Why is it that we have to worry most about children and cell phones?

Dr. Davis: Children are not just little adults. They have thinner brains, they have thinner skulls, and their brains contain more fluid. The more fluid something contains, the more vulnerable it is to microwave radiation. After all, a cell phone is just a small, two-way microwave radio.

Children today are growing up in a sea of radio-frequency radiation that did not exist even five years ago. They need to be protected.

Tracy: I was surprised to learn that men who’d like to become fathers also need to be careful of cell phone use.

Dr. Davis: Yes. If you take sperm from healthy men and split it into two samples, it will die naturally, because sperm don’t live that long. But sperm exposed to cell phone radiation will die four times faster, and they will develop biological signs of damage that we know indicate they’ve been harmed.

Studies showing sperm damage in human males have been done by leading researchers in Australia, in Greece, in Turkey, and in the US at the Cleveland Clinic. In addition, studies have followed men who have reduced sperm count and found that those who use their phone for four hours a day have half the spermcount of others.

Finally, studies in Greece have shown that exposing fruit flies to cell phone radiation doesn’t kill them. But when you expose them and then magnify them under a microscope, you can see that their testes and ovaries are shrunken.

These studies have also led to researchers raising the issue of whether cell phone radiation has anything to do with the hive collapse phenomenon that’s endangering honeybees.

Tracy: One thing you point out in your book that I think people don’t realize is that industry is issuing warnings about cell phone radiation and human health—though very quietly.

Dr. Davis: The ultimate indication of this now comes from the insurance industry. You cannot buy secondary insurance for cell phone damages from Lloyds of London, Swiss Re, or many of the companies that provide this insurance.

And the cell phone companies are all issuing fine-print warnings in the paperwork that comes with all the smart phones. What are you supposed to do if you have an iPhone 4 that says you can’t put it into your pocket without exceeding the FCC exposure guidelines?

Tracy: And many of the warnings also recommend holding your cell phone about an inch from your head.

Dr. Davis: Yes, go ahead and try getting everyone to do that.

Tracy: I know your campaign (EnvironmentalHealthTrust.org) is asking for more visible warnings directly on the phones themselves. What would this accomplish?

Dr. Davis: It would accomplish two things: First, people would have to look at this warning every time they picked up their phone and think about how they have to keep it away from their body and their brain.

Second, it would also help the phone companies reduce their liability, so it’s not a losing proposition for them.

Tracy: Would it also push them to create safer phones, too?

Dr. Davis: Yes. The newer phones now have the antennas on the back, pointing away from the body when you talk on them. That feature is safer than in the past, when the antennas were on the front.

But the newer phones are also more dangerous, because if you turn that phone and keep it in your pocket with the antennas pointing toward your body, as that phone is searching for a signal— which is what they do when they’re on—it’s pumping radiation into you.

Plus, studies indicate that the newer 3G and 4G phones may be even more harmful than the 2G phones. [Editor’s note: One 2008 study cited in Davis’ book found a ten times higher rate of damaged DNA in human cells exposed to radio-frequency radiation from 3G phones compared to 2G phones.]

Tracy: Can they make a low-radiation phone that isn’t as much of a concern, or is any radiation bad for us?

Dr. Davis: They can make very low-radiation phones. But there’s no guarantee of safety, no matter how low the radiation is, if you’re going to use the phone next to your head for hours.

Tracy: How problematic is the fact that when the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] establishes threshold safety levels for radiation exposure from cell phones, it’s basing them on the SAM model?

Dr. Davis: SAM stands for “standard anthropomorphic male,” and he was taken from the top ten percent of military recruits in the 1989. He was six-foot-three, weighed 220 pounds, and had an 11-pound head. Most people in the world do not have SAM’s head. Radiation goes more deeply into a smaller head than a larger one. And today, three out of every four 12- year-olds, and half of all ten-year-olds, have a cell phone.

Plus, the safety standards for cell phones also presume calls last only up to six minutes. Our heads—especially children’s heads—are getting a lot more exposure than SAM would get. We need a major revision of the safety standards that takes into account that billions of cell phone users are much smaller and younger than SAM.

Tracy: One thing in your book that really worried me was that cordless home phones are emitting similar radiation to cell phones.

Dr. Davis: Yes. And the base station is radiating all the time. When you hold the handset next to your head, you’re getting a whopping dose. We recommend that people not use cordless phones, and certainly not have the base station close to your bed.

Tracy: Which, of course, is where mine has been.

Dr. Davis: Which is where most people’s is. I’ve actually replaced my cordless phones with corded landlines.

In France, people are starting to buy them more, and the Israelis have recommended that people replace their cordless phones with corded phones.

The good news is that experimental studies show that good nutrition— literally exposing animals or cells to the natural hormone melatonin or vitamins A, E, or C before you expose them to radiofrequency radiation—may help repairdamage. So whatever you have done in the past, go forward with good cell phone practices, and good nutrition can help repair past damage.

Tracy: How worried do we have to be about wireless Internet? Is it as much of a worry as cell phones?

Dr. Davis: No, it’s not as big of a worry because we’re not holding the wireless routers against our bodies. But again, distance is your friend. Your routers should not be located in your bedroom or anyplace where your family spends a lot of time. Turning wireless devices off at night makes sense because it protects health, saves energy, and reduces demand for energy grid access. What I’m very concerned about now are children sleeping with phones under their pillows so they can text at night, and young girls are keeping phones in their bras.

Tracy: I didn’t know that was an epidemic!

Dr. Davis: Well, apparently, it’s pretty common among teenagers and athletic women. Several hysicians have contacted me about breast tumors in women right at the site where they’ve kept their phone.

Tracy: Is there anything else you’d like to our readers to know?

Dr. Davis: Those of us working in this field want to encourage safer design. We want to encourage people to use cell phones in a safer way and to encourage more corporate responsibility. I am pleased that the businesses joining our Business Campaign for Safer Cell Phones are agreeing to provide headsets and simple warnings to all their employees. That’s why I wrote my book and why I’m speaking around the world.

And I do think people need to use their phones less. I realize that cell phones are going to be driving economic forces. It’s not like I want people to turn off their phones. It’s not realistic. But we really do need a national conversation and a cultural change about a lot of aspects of cell phone use.

Deron Beal, Tucson, AZ

Njau Recycling and Income Generating Group, The Gambia

Learn more about how to get serious about the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) with our Web exclusives to our Fall 2007 Green American, Getting to Zero Waste:

Exclusive Interviews
Green American editor Tracy Fernandez Rysavy talks to leaders in the environmental justice movement:
     Her interview with Van Jones explains the concept of eco-Apartheid, how the "Green Jobs Corps" can help, and what's next for the Ella Baker Center.
     Her interview with Dr. Robert Bullard introduces you to the "father of environmental justice” and his 25 years working on behalf of communities of color who have been victims of environmental racism.

True Tales
True stories about how people in the US and around the world are taking waste matters into their own hands and making a difference:

1. How Robert Haley is going zero-waste at home, while working to make his city zero-waste by 2020.

2. How 13-year-old Tayler McGillis uses recycling to improve his community.

3. How a quest to sustainably unload unwanted stuff led Deron Beal to found Freecycle.

4. How a cooperative of women in the Gambia are cleaning up their community and earning a Fair Trade living.

Hazardous Health Care
Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing, but for many communities throughout the country, toxic hospital waste poses a threat to the health of citizens, some of whom live within hundreds of feet of medical waste incinerators that are pumping cancer-causing emissions into the air. Read more »

Recommended Reading List
What happens to garbage after it's thrown "away"?  Our Green American editors found the first two books below to be invaluable in understanding the secret, post-curb life of household waste.  Both books led to a second question: whose garbage is it, anyway?  Ours?  The local government that pays the bill for disposal (as suggested by the term "municipal solid waste")?  Or does the garbage ultimately belong to those corporations whose heavily packaged, disposable products are designed to generate waste that someone else will pay to take "away"? The third book on the list, Cradle to Cradle, invites a radical rethinking of how products would be manufactured if corporations were, indeed, held responsible for garbage. What if waste weren't an inevitable part of modern life -- what if it were a design flaw?
 
Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, by Elizabeth Royte
New York: Back Bay Books, 2005

Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, by Heather Rogers
New York: The New Press, 2005

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
New York: North Point Press, 2002

If have questions about recycling, we have answers. Here are some of our most commonly asked questions.

Q: If my recycling gets picked up in the same truck as trash, is it really being recycled?

A: Probably. In some municipalities, trucks have been retrofitted to collect trash on one side and recycling on the other in separate compartments. In others, the city sends around two different trucks, on the same day or different days. If you’re in doubt, contact your local solid waste authority and ask what happens to your recycling once it’s picked up.

Q: How do I know if my city is really recycling my plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper?

A: Call and ask. Look up your state's department of environment (or solid waste authority, if it has one), and ask them where your recycling is taken. If it’s taken to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) for sorting, call and ask the MRF operators what percentages of the materials that they receive are sold to recyclers, and what percentage they reject as “residuals.” Also ask how much of their recyclables are being shipped to Asia or other developing countries, where your garbage’s fate is more dubious than if it’s being recycled domestically.

Q: Some places I’ve visited accept a long list of materials for recycling, but my city has very specific guidelines. Why are the rules so different from place to place?

A: While the materials that are technically capable of being recycled don’t vary from place to place, the market for recycled materials fluctuates over time and varies locally in response to demand. In addition, there are also a range of tactics that municipalities use to maximize citizen participation in recycling. For example, some municipalities that do not recycle any plastics #3–7 nonetheless advise citizens to put all plastics #1–7 into their recycling bins, out of the belief that more people will participate if they don’t have too many complicated rules to follow. Then the MRF fishes out whatever they cannot recycle and sends it to a landfill or incinerator.

Q: My city only recycles plastics numbered 1 and 2. Is there a way I can recycle those numbered 3-7?

A: Probably not. “It’s safe to say that plastics with the resin code 3-7 are not recyclable and should be avoided by consumers,” says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste. No plastics are truly recyclable back into the same type of container they were before, due to the chemical properties of plastics. Plastics #1 and some #2 are “downcyclable” into second-order products, like plastic “lumber” for picnic tables and decks. With the exception of a few model programs like that of Stonyfield Farms and Recycline—which turns used #5 yogurt cups into Recycline toothbrushes and razors—there is almost no domestic market for plastics #3–7. When municipalities do accept the higher numbered plastics, it’s often because they are under pressure from the public to take them. In most cases, higher numbered plastics are bundled together and shipped overseas to developing countries—where they may be burned as boiler fuel (which generates toxic air pollution), or simply dumped into unregulated landfills

Q: My grocery store accepts plastic bags for recycling. Can they really be recycled, or is the store greenwashing?

A: Some may be sold to actual recyclers—Safeway, in particular, has an arrangement with a domestic recycler to downcycle these plastic bags into compressed “lumber” for decks, fencing, and picnic tables. But the majority of the plastic bags collected by these receptacles are baled and shipped to Asia. What is done with them there? Even the man responsible for overseeing California’s mandatory plastic bag recycling law for supermarkets hasn’t been able to find out: “I’d love to know what happens to [baled plastic bags] overseas,” says Neal Johnson, a research analyst for the California Environmental Protection Agency. “There are a lot of anecdotal comments about whether it gets burned as boiler fuel [a toxic use of plastic that’s illegal in the US], or reprocessed as some sort of filler. We don’t quite know what happens there.” Your best bet: bring your own reusable shopping bags and produce bags with you to the supermarket.

Q: If I put the wrong number plastic in my bin, will it mess up the whole batch? Will it magically get recycled anyway

A: Every recycler does some mechanical and optical sorting to ensure the correct materials end up in the recycling stream, and large Materials Recovery Facilities are factory-sized sorting operations that make sure each recycler receives the right sort of materials. So while it’s helpful to workers at these facilities if you follow your municipality’s guidelines, you’re probably not going to ruin a whole batch of recycling if you periodically make a mistake. Chances are the non-recyclable item will get fished out down the line and thrown away, though it won’t get “magically recycled.” That said, polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC #3 plastic —is rarely recyclable and has a fantastic capacity to mess up the downcycling of a whole batch of plastics #1 or #2; so try to be particularly mindful of keeping #3 out of your recycling bin. PVC is also unsafe, and several campaigns are afoot to end the use of the “poison plastic” in consumer products and construction materials. For more information, visit www.pvcfree.org, www.myhouseisyourhouse.org.

Q: Is a biodegradable product better than a conventional product if they both end up in a landfill?

A: Maybe a little, but not much. If biodegradable products are just headed for the regular trash, they are still part of the general waste stream. If they end up in a landfill, they’re unlikely to degrade aerobically when buried under tons of trash away from light, oxygen, or moisture. Instead, they’ll more slowly degrade with the help of anaerobic bacteria, a process that generates greenhouse gases: methane and carbon dioxide. That said, a product made out of a renewable resource such as bamboo probably has a better ecological footprint than one made from petroleum. And, using the new biodegradable plastics helps keep harmful PVC #3 plastic out of the waste stream—it’s the burning of PVC and other toxic plastics that cause some of the worst pollution from incinerators. However, the best choice is to use reusable items whenever you can. The second best is to use compostable products and then actually compost them. Find a community composting facility near you at www.findacomposter.com.

Q: Can you compost if you live in an apartment?

A: Yes! You can create a worm composting bin using Real Green’s step-by-step guide, or explore one of the motorized apartment composters on the market, such as NatureMill. Another option is to save your compost in a container in the freezer (to prevent smells) and give it periodically to a homeowner friend who composts.

Q: How can I start a recycling program in my city?

A: Read our article, featuring Tayler McGillis, a 12-year-old who started a community-wide aluminum recycling program in Toluca, IL.

In 2004, Felix Kramer gathered with a group of engineers and car junkies in a friend’s garage. Their goal: to make a hybrid car that would plug into the wall, giving it a greater ability to run on electricity.

The concept had been pioneered by University of California Davis professor Andrew Frank years before, and with the help of student teams, Frank had built several plug-in electric hybrid prototypes that were generating excitement among environmentalists, engineers, and car lovers. Now Kramer and his colleagues were gathered in the garage to see if they could make one themselves by converting a Toyota Prius to plug-in. They were joined long-distance by engineers from around the world, troubleshooting and giving advice via email.

The PRIUS+ team built the first conversion kit in Sept. 2004. (L-R) Ron Gremban, Felix Kramer, Marc Geller, Kevin Lyons, and Andrew Lawton.

Kramer had already had a long and diverse career before he found himself pounding copper tubes in his friend’s garage. One of the original desktop publishing innovators of the 1980s, Kramer used his computer skills to write a book about desktop publishing and start a Web development company. After selling the company in the 90s, Kramer, who was part of the first Earth Day in 1970, turned his attention to the environment. He spent time in several organizations working on energy and consumer issues, until he formed the California Cars Initiative, called CalCars for short, in 2002.

“We came up with the idea of a buyers club for cars,” recalls Kramer, ”You figure out what kind of car people want, and you organize people in support of that, and take that to carmakers. The decisions about what cars get made are made by a very narrow group of people, and we want to broaden that to car owners and buyers, citizens as a whole, because the cars we drive affect everyone in society on profound ways, so everyone should have a say.”

But before Kramer could organize consumers around the support of a specific vehicle, he had to do the research to find out which vehicles offered the most environmental benefit. Kramer and his colleagues flirted with the idea of promoting hydrogen-powered cars, but when it became obvious that clean hydrogen technology wasn’t going to be available anytime soon, they turned their sites to hybrid vehicles. Electric vehicle enthusiasts were thrilled by the 2004 Toyota Prius, which was equipped to run solely on battery-stored electricity in Japan, but not in the US. Prius owners across the country started adding extra batteries to the car to increase its electric range, and Kramer gathered together a group of experts to find a way to plug the Prius in.

The result was the PRIUS+, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that gets over 100 miles to the gallon, puts out half the greenhouse gas emissions of a conventional vehicle, and costs almost half as much per mile to drive.

Unfortunately, PHEVs aren’t currently being made by car manufacturers; so rather than organizing consumers through a buying club, Kramer is working with a wide array of allies to advocate for the widespread development and implementation of PHEV technology.

He takes the car around the country, demonstrating that the technology is available today. Kramer loves educating people about the vehicle, and has seen people responses to a plug-in car evolve from “What is this?” to “Why are carmakers holding back?”

Kramer’s answer to that last question is that “carmakers are slow to change, and make bad decisions all the time.”  He hopes that demonstration cars like the PRIUS+, and other plug-in conversions underway by Hymotion and others will prove the viability of plug-in technology, motivating carmakers to stop dragging their feet. In Kramer’s vision of wild success, plug-in hybrids will become the standard automotive platform in the coming decades..

Biodiesel is clearly a win for the planet—using it results in 52% fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline, 41% fewer than diesel, and 41% fewer than the much-touted corn ethanol when it’s made from soybeans. But some people wonder whether a massive switch to biodiesel would be sustainable: would it use up food crops and drive up grain prices? Would it result in countries clearcutting critical habitat to grow more feedstock for fuel?
 
These are valid concerns, but the good news is, unlike with corn ethanol, there are ways to produce biodiesel that benefit both communities and the environment. To make sure that’s the path we as a nation choose, several diverse groups have come together to form the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance (SBA).
 
“Because the biodiesel industry is still relatively small, we have a chance to do it right and move forward in ways that could make it renewable and sustainable,” says Heidi Quante, SBA’s director. “There’s no reason to recreate the problems we’ve had with petroleum.”
 
SBA was founded in December 2006 by film star Darryl Hannah, Pacific Biodiesel's Kelly King, and Annie Nelson, whose husband, country musician Willie Nelson, is also an outspoken advocate of biodiesel. The three women brought together biodiesel producers that were community-owned and –operated, and looking for ways to make their fuel as sustainable as possible. They also invited several nonprofits concerned about sustainable transportation and family farmers, like the IATP and Farm Aid, as well as university scientists and other industry experts, to the table.
 
What the groups all had in common was that they all wanted to see the creation of a community-based biodiesel infrastructure that benefits farmers, stewards the Earth, and brings the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of biodiesel to the lowest levels possible.
 
A Multi-Stakeholder Process  
The various players involved in the SBA are working on creating a consensus around a list of best practices for producing and purchasing biodiesel. These best practices, which the SBA plans to unveil this September, focus on keeping biodiesel environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable.
 
For example, Quante says, some language will probably go into the list to ensure that:

• from an environmental perspective, critical habitat isn’t clearcut for biodiesel crops, and that waste is used for making biodiesel as much as possible.

• from a social perspective, that small-scale or subsistence farmers in developing countries aren’t forced off their lands to increase biodiesel production, as has reportedly been happening in Colombia.

• and from an economic persective, that urban and rural communities benefit as much as possible from the biodiesel energy future, such as by having community-owned production facilities and locally produced feedstocks when possible.
 
In an effort to ensure that biodiesel is sustainable from as many perspectives as possible, the SBA has gone beyond its membership to bring a multitude of stakeholders into working groups. The various working groups mirror the lifecycle of biodiesel, focusing on growing feedstock, plant processing, and distribution.
 
Green America business member Organic Valley, a cooperative of US organic, family farmers that sells organic food, is part of the growing feedstock and plant processing working groups.
 
“We’re really interested in the sustainable agriculture part of it,” says Organic Valley’s Cecil Wright. “We like to see crop diversity, not monocropping, as well as organic or close-to-organic production. We want to make sure that the biodiesel is as good as it can be for family farmers and the environment, over its entire lifecycle.”
 
On the other end of the spectrum, the US Navy—currently one of the largest users of biodiesel in the US—is also participating in the SBA working groups.
 
“They want to see a domestic biodiesel industry, for national security reasons,” says Quante.
 
Once the best practices are in place, the SBA plans to come out with a Sustainable Biodiesel seal in 2008, which consumers could look for to determine whether their biodiesel was grown and produced in ways that benefit people and the planet. The seal will be modeled on other third-party industry certifications, like the Forest Stewardship Council FSC mark. 
 
Looking at Feedstocks
One of the major questions the SBA and its working groups have been tackling is which feedstocks make the best biodiesel for people and the planet.
 
“We’re finding that that differs from region to region,” says Quante. “For example, sunflowers aren't optimal crops for every region in the US, but they make a high-yield biodiesel crop that’s more efficient than soy. So while one region may want to grow sunflowers, another might grow mustard or camelina.
And, of course, the SBA is big on using as much waste as possible to make biodiesel.
 
“Waste has such an amazing place in biodiesel,” says Quante. “One of the problems is that waste grease can cause problems in municipal water systems. By using waste oil for biodiesel, you help avoid a problem for many large urban cities. Also, urban communities can benefit from production, as waste oil becomes a type of ‘urban crop.’”
 
Quante cites Fryodiesel, a for-profit biodiesel producer in Philadelphia, as an example. The company is part of the SBA’s best practices working group for producers and purchasers. Using its own patented process, Fryodiesel makes a high-quality biodiesel from waste grease it collects from local restaurants.

Not only does Fryodiesel sell this fuel to customers across the state, but it also makes an effort to get it in the hands of Pennsylvania school districts, as part of a statewide effort to convert the state’s school buses to biodiesel.
 
“The majority of school buses run on diesel, and they’re incredibly polluting,” says Nadia Adawi, Fryodiesel’s president. The Union of Concerned Scientists notes that diesel exhaust has been linked to asthma, heart disease, and cancer, and several studies have found that diesel pollution can concentrate inside the buses, where children breathe it in.
 
“Besides the air quality issues, one of the reasons we try to sell to school districts is that they can get grant money from the state to cover any incremental costs associated with a switch to biodiesel,” says Adawi.
 
So with Fryodiesel’s help, local schoolbuses in one district have converted to biodiesel that’s very sustainable: It’s made from waste grease, it’s produced in a community-owned, local facility, and it’s less polluting than diesel and so less of a danger to the children in the buses. The company hopes to help more districts convert in the future.

Efficiency First, Then Biodiesel
 While the SBA remains focused on making biodiesel as sustainable as possible, Quante notes that their efforts will be in vain if we don’t increase the fuel efficiency of our cars, so we need less fuel, including biodiesel, in the first place.
 
“Biodiesel is by no means a silver bullet,” says Quante. “We need to look at improving fuel economy and improving our public transportation systems, so we use much less fuel.”
 
She points to a 2006 WorldWatch report, Biofuels for Transportation, which states that “advanced biofuels could provide 37 percent of US transport fuel within the next 25 years, and up to 75 percent if automobile fuel economy doubles.”
 
For now, she encourages consumers to take steps in their own lives to use less fuel, and advocate for more public transportation and improved fuel economy overall.
 
For those of us who want to jump on the biodiesel train before SBA certification comes online, Quante encourages us to ask questions when we purchase it, such as: What feedstock do you use? Is it waste or virgin? Where is your feedstock coming from? Is it domestic or imported?
 
Also, she says, you can ask about ASTM certification, which is a standard set by the American Society for Testing and Materials to ensure that the biodiesel meets a certain fuel quality. Note that some local cooperatives may not have ASTM certification, because it can be costly.
 
“If we want a sustainable future, it’s up to each individual to act,” says Quante. “We need to ask questions about what’s being posed as a solution to our current energy structure, and we need to get behind the best options.”

In addition to putting consumer pressure on multi-national corporations to respect people and the planet in their overseas operations, another tactic for holding large corporations responsible for their international human rights violations is to take them to court.

The International Labor Rights Fund and EarthRights International have pioneered this approach for requiring multinational companies to comply with internationally recognized worker rights.  They have done so by reviving use of the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), an anti-piracy law from the 18th century which allows non-citizens to use U.S. federal courts to hold parties in the US accountable for violations of international law. 

            Over the past few years, ILRF and EarthRights have brought a slew of such cases against multi-national corporations, including several concerning the exploitation in Africa described in our Spring 2007 Green American. All are currently winding their way through the court system:

September 1998           Wiwa vs. Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell)          
EarthRights brings a suit against Shell Oil in Nigeria for participating in the 1995 hangings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and John Kpuinen, both Ogoni activists who opposed the extraction of oil from their community’s land.  The suit also charges Shell with aiding and abetting the torture and detention of Owens Wiwa, and the shooting of a woman who was peacefully protesting the bulldozing of her crops in preparation for a Shell pipeline.

May 1999                      Bowato vs. Chevron/Texaco                              
EarthRights brings a suit against Chevron/Texaco on behalf of slain protesters.  Chevron/Texaco called in the military to break up a peaceful protest on one of its off-shore oil platforms in Nigeria. The military shot and killed two protesters on that occasion, and later attacked two villages with Chevron boats and helicopters, killing several people.

July 2005                       Doe vs. Nestle, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland
ILRF brought a class-action complaint against Nestle, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland on behalf of three Malian children trafficked to Ivory Coast where they were enslaved to harvest cocoa.  The opening hearing took place in February.

November 2005             Doe vs. Bridgestone Corporation
ILRF brought a suit against Bridgestone Firestone for adults and children “trapped in poverty and coersion” in Liberia’s rubber plantations. After Bridgestone successfully had the trial moved from California to its home state of Indiana, where Bridgestone Firestone headquarters are located, the opening hearing was rescheduled for early 2007.

            Though no one has yet won a case against a multi-national corporation for human rights abuses using the ATCA, the Supreme Court has affirmed that the law can be used against companies. Not surprisingly, multinational corporations and, at times, sympathetic branches of the government, have tried to obstruct this use of the ATCA.  But the lawyers who are championing this new approach are undaunted. “In these trying times,” writes Terry Collingsworth, the Executive Director of the ILRF, “it is crucial for the U.S. government to show that no one is above the law, and that human rights violators of whatever stripe will be held accountable.”          

            The lawyers who are pursuing these cases hope they can push other companies to behave better, as well: “It sends a strong message to other multinational companies,” says Richard Herz of EarthRights, “that they cannot participate in egregious human rights abuses with impunity.”

J.J. Keki is a Ugandan Jew, a member of the Abayudaya community, a small religious minority in Uganda, where most people are Christian or Muslim. After being elected to his local council by his Christian and Muslim neighbors in 2002, Keki sensed that he had an opportunity to further bridge the religious divides that have long existed in his country and to bring more income into his community. He began traveling door-to-door, and to local churches, mosques, and synagogues, to talk to people about working cooperatively.

J.J. Keki, founder of Mirembe Kawomera Photo: Ben Corey-Moran

Many of Keki’s neighbors were coffee farmers, but the liberalization of Ugandan coffee in the 1980s sent coffee prices fluctuating, and many farmers could no longer make a living from their farms. Keki saw a cooperative as a chance to work together and find a higher price for their coffee.  In 2004, Keki’s hard work paid off, and 80 farmers formed the Mirembe Kawomera interfaith cooperative. Mirembe Kawomera means "delicious peace" in the Ugandan language Luganda, and is a fitting name for this cooperative of small-scale, family farmers from diverse religious backgrounds.

With the help of Kulana, a US-based nonprofit that assists Jewish communities throughout the world, Mirembe Kawomera started looking for buyers for their coffee. Laura Wetzler, a Kulana volunteer, began calling a list of US coffee roasters in alphabetical order, before she reached CEO Paul Katzeff at Thanksgiving Coffee. Wetzler had been turned down by the first 40 roasters she called, but the Mirembe Kawomera story resonated with Katzeff.  “For me the story was inspiring at minimum,” writes Katzeff on the Thanksgiving Coffee Web site. “People of faith finding hope through coffee. Choosing cooperation in a world torn up by intolerance. I said, ‘OK, I'll buy it.’”

Katzeff was so inspired by the story of Mirembe Kawomera that he agreed to buy their entire harvest without tasting the coffee. When he received a shipment of the coffee weeks later, he was just as impressed with the coffee as he was with the interfaith efforts of the cooperative.  “We "cupped it" and it is good, real good, and it fills my heart with hope,” said Katzeff.  

Thanksgiving Coffee purchases all of Mirembe Kawomera’s coffee on Fair Trade terms, which has allowed the cooperative to grow from 80 farmers to more than 500. In Fair Trade relationships, farmers are guaranteed a floor price for their coffee, which covers the cost of sustainable coffee production, does not fluctuate with the market, and provide a livable income. The family farmers of Mirembe Kawomera are earning about twice as much as they were before Fair Trade. They also receive a Fair Trade premium to be used for development projects; they hope to soon build a cooperative office, and are exploring other needs in the larger community.

Many farmers who had been burned by the coffee market were initially hesitant to join in the cooperative, but the transparent and reliable trading relationships provided by Fair Trade earned the trust of local farmers, and how many are clamoring to work with Mirembe Kawomera.

Mirembe Kawomera also serves as a model of religious tolerance in a nation with a long history of religious and tribal divides. Christians, Muslims, and Jews are all members of the cooperative and are all represented on the cooperative’s Board of Directors, and working side-by-side has given farmers of different backgrounds a chance to see what they all have in common. Wotti Elisa, a Christian member of the co-op, says he discovered that “our community problems are the same regardless of religion,” and that working together has helped people clear up misconceptions they had about other religions.

“We hope to make the cooperative a model of championing peace and development in the area,” says Keki. “We also hope that others will emulate the principles of Mirembe and bring about peaceful coexistence in communities.”

Keki’s experience with Fair Trade has made him determined to “convince the whole world to join Fair Trade,” and he sees the Fair Trade model, which promotes justice, transparency, and fairness, as a way to use business to promote peace throughout the world. 

Mirembe Kawomera’s coffee can be purchased by visiting the Mirembe Kawomera Web site or calling Thanksgiving Coffee at 800-648-6491.

What if time really were money? At the Time Bank Store in Dane County, WI, it is. The store is the first of its kind in Wisconsin, and the unusual thing about it is that your US currency is completely useless inside.

The Time Bank Store is a project of the Dane County Time Bank—based in Madison, WI, and surrounding communities—which aims to connect community members so they can provide services for each other. It’s kind of like old-fashioned bartering, except through a highly organized exchange system that eliminates the quid pro quo aspect. In other words, you don’t always get a service from the person you serve.

Through the Dane County Time Bank—part of a network of Time Banks across the country tracked and supported by TimeBanks USA—every hour an individual or organization volunteers to help another member of the bank earns a “Time Dollar,” which she or he can then spend on receiving an hour of service from anyone else in the network. Volunteer services can range from giving someone a ride to the doctor or on errands; helping with home repair, child care, or cleaning; home visits for the elderly; or even activities such as going out dancing or playing games with someone who needs a partner.

"I view the Time Bank as a social safety net that we can provide as a community, because our government is not adequately providing that kind of net for people,” says Stephanie Rearick, director of the Dane County Time Bank. “We see this as a way we can step in and do things for each other.”

The Dane County Time Bank steering committee made a commitment right from the start to involve members from a broad cross-section of the community. The result? “It has just exploded,” says Rearick. “We have 900 members in all different parts of the county and all the different neighborhoods throughout town. It’s huge.”

Time Dollar transactions at the Dane County Time Bank were conducted solely online and by phone when it launched in October of 2005. However, the project has grown so successfully that they opened the Time Bank Store in November of 2008, a brick-and-mortar location where people could bank and spend Time Dollars. In addition, the Time Bank Store doubles as a thrift shop where people can donate and purchase goods ranging from toiletries to furniture.

Fostering Resilient Communities
Especially in tougher economic times, models like Time Banking can be a creative way of cutting back on spending while still getting goods and services one needs. By working outside of a mainstream economic framework, community networks create ways of sharing and providing services that don’t rely on the exchange of currency. And while currencies and markets fluctuate, strong community ties are a constant.

In fact, a report recently released by The New Economics Foundation in Britain proposed Time Banking as a “recession-proof means of exchange,” given the cracking of mainstream global economic structures.

Particularly in the current economic climate, Rearick says that systems like Time Dollars can also be empowering because they encourage individuals and communities to support one another when governments fall short.

As first conceived in 1980 by economist Edgar Cahn—1998 winner of Green America’s Building Economic Alternatives Award— the philosophy behind “Time Dollars” is based on the ideal that we can best build community when everyone’s contributions are valued equally. Where our current economic structures do not attribute the same value to everyone’s labor—for instance, unpaid work within the home such as housework, raising children, or elder care does not hold any monetary value within mainstream economic models—the Time Dollar system is based on equality and reciprocity for labor. One hour equals one service credit in the system no matter what the service, and thus encourage reciprocal community service.

Where monetary transactions are characterized by fleeting exchanges, time banking fosters community building at the most basic level because it encourages interaction.

“In the beginning, I was more interested in the economic impact it could have,” says Rearick. “But now that I am immersed in it, I think it is a wonderfully powerful community-building tool. ... This is the first thing I’ve seen that really reaches across demographic boundaries and helps build relationships and trust in a community across income, race, class, and neighborhoods.”