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Veteran's Day honors the US soldiers that have served in times of war and peace.

Veteran’s Day originated as “Armstice Day” on November 11, 1919 to mark the ceasefire between the Allied nations and Germany that took place on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” during World War I. In 1926, Congress passed a resolution making the date an annual observance, and November 11th became a national holiday in 1938. At the time, the day stood to honor the soldiers that fought in World War I. However, the name was changed to Veteran’s Day in 1954 to account for veterans of all wars. 

Today’s population of veterans includes people from all walks of life. There are 17.4 million veterans in the United States and 1.6 million of them are women. As of 2019, the top three states with the highest percentage of veterans are Virginia, Wyoming, and Alaska.  

Unlike Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day honors living veterans especially—many companies will offer discounts and free products and services to veterans on this day. Additionally, veterans are starting up their own enterprises, as the Small Business Administration reports that 25 percent of post-9/11 veterans want to be entrepreneurs.  

Veterans are important changemakers in our society and economy. Veteran-owned businesses employ 5.8 million individuals. Additionally, the Small Business Administration notes that military service exhibits one of the largest marginal effects on self-employment and veterans are 45 percent more likely to be self-employed than non-veterans. 

Green America gives veteran-owned companies a special shout out in our online directory of green businesses. Green Business Network members with veteran status can connect, network, and thrive in our community of companies for good. Here are a few veteran-owned green businesses that are certified with Green America:

Valley Isle Excursions

Valle Isle Excursions is a tour service that takes travelers on adventures through Maui on the Hawaiian Islands.  Experience a majestic Haleakalā sunrise or journey down the road to Hāna to find a black sand beach, waterfalls and incredible coastal vistas.

E&B Auto Repair

E&B Auto Repair is a general repair auto shop that goes the extra mile for sustainability. It is a NAPA AutoCare Center with ASE Certified Technicians located in Fort Bragg, California.

Conte Wealth Advisors

Christian Stearns, CFP(r), specializes in socially responsible investing and impact investing. He is located on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Browse more veteran-owned businesses and find any sustainable product or service across the US by searching the Green Pages Online.

Contact Purrfect Play: Website | Etsy | Instagram | Pinterest

Pam Wheelock always loved cats but was disappointed when she saw that most store-bought toys were made in China from bright, synthetic materials. Since cats and dogs play with toys with their mouths, they ingest toxins from plastic and polyester. Additionally, she knew that dyes were polluting the rivers in China and affecting the people that used those water sources. So, she decided to make her own that would be healthy and fun.

“It may be cute that it looks like a piece of pizza, but it’s not really a fun toy for the cat,” she says. “When I design a toy, I ask myself, ‘what is the goal for the cat playing with this toy?’ Not how can I attract the human to buy the toy for the cat.”

From the beginning, Purrfect Play has been dedicated to a sustainable business model. Wheelock emphasizes social and environmental responsibility in every aspect of her company: from where she sources wool—from small family farms that are pasture-raised and name their sheep—to donating five percent of every sale to rescue organizations.

“If I can’t stick to my values, I don’t see the point in doing it,” she says. 

Sticking to her values has kept Purrfect Play running for over a decade. The company not only weathered the financial crisis of 2008, but sales have doubled in 2020 amongst the COVID-19 pandemic. Her advice for growing during tough times is to take it slow and be intentional.

“Take your idea and do something with it, even if it's small. See how that feels to you. Don’t convince yourself you have to survive on it,” she says. “Do it small, do it bootstrapped, learn as you go. When you don’t have a lot of skin in the game, you can afford to make mistakes.”

Keeping the business small also means Purrfect Play only wholesales one product, which is their hemp catnip carrot. Wholesaling requires marking up products five to ten times its cost to produce—and with the quality, organic hemp and cotton Purrfect Play uses, the final cost would be unattainable to the average person. So, Wheelock is happy to stay a maker-to-customer business so she can keep prices affordable for any pet parent.

Purrfect Play is also a longtime member of the Green Business Network at Green America. Wheelock notes how it has played a part in the company's growth over the years.

“Being a part of the Green America community is really important to us, especially in the beginning with the Green Festivals that we would attend and meet other producers,” she says.

Purrfect Play partners with another Green America business member, Mountain Rose Herbs, for their quality catnip. You can find their best-selling hemp catnip carrot on the Mountain Rose Herbs website.

The wool balls and the orca toy are the most popular toys for dogs and the wool dust bunnies for cats are bestsellers. Wheelock estimates thousands go out the door every year.

"A big part of your philosophy is that you can't make people care about the planet, but if they love their pets—and you help them see the value of loving one non-human being in their life—I think that spreads to how people view the planet," says Wheelock.

Clean Energy Credit Union is a unique, innovative, federally chartered credit union (aka not-for-profit, financial services cooperative) that is online/digital-only – i.e. it does not have any brick-and-mortar branches – and that focuses exclusively on providing loans for clean energy and energy saving projects such as electric vehicles, electric bicycles, residential solar electric systems, residential geothermal systems, and other green home improvements. Clean Energy Credit Union was started by a group of “clean energy geeks” who are passionate about clean energy and the environment. It is based in Colorado, but it serves members who live throughout the entire USA.

Clean Energy Credit Union’s vision is a world where everyone can participate in the clean energy movement, and our credit union helps make this vision a reality by: (1) making it easier for everyone to afford clean energy and energy saving products and services by offering clean energy loans with amazing terms; and (2) making it easier for everyone to invest in the clean energy movement by offering federally insured checking accounts, savings accounts, and clean energy CDs whereby the deposits are solely used to help others pursue their clean energy and energy saving projects.

Members of Green America, as well as members of their immediately family and household, are automatically eligible to join Clean Energy Credit Union. To join, you simply need to open a savings account and make a $5 minimum deposit via an online membership application at www.cleanenergycu.org/join. Membership in the credit union then provides you access to checking accounts, debit cards, money market accounts, and CDs – where your deposits would solely be used to finance clean energy projects – as well as access to clean energy loans that are designed to have the best loan terms in the USA. Please consider joining Clean Energy Credit Union and helping us to grow the clean energy movement!

Thank you to everyone who voted in last week’s election, and a big thanks to all who worked the polls or helped to get out the vote. 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won the election.  This is an historic moment for the country, since Kamala Harris is the first woman and person of color to achieve such a high office in the US. 

We won’t know the full composition of the Senate until January, owing to run off elections in Georgia.  If Democrats control both Houses, it means that legislation on climate change, health care, police reform, immigration reform, worker’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and support for people and communities struggling with COVID-19 will move forward. 

We also know that even if the Senate remains Republican, Biden will take swift action through executive orders, including re-entering the Paris Accords, re-instating environmental regulations overturned by the Trump Administration, ending the travel ban on Muslim countries, re-instating the Dreamers program, and repealing the transgender military ban, to name a few. 

Biden and Harris have also promised to work towards larger climate goals, like phasing out fossil fuels in electric energy production by 2035 and to advance climate and racial justice. 

But progress won’t come automatically.  We’ll need to mobilize to urge Congress and regulators to act swiftly to undo the damage of the past four years and to chart a path forward for a truly green economy and country – one that values all people and the planet. 

Green America’s experience over nearly 40 years tells us that no matter who sits in the White House, it takes economic action to get corporations to be greener and more just – mobilizing the voices of people like you to demand change. 

With you by our side, we look forward to achieving our vision of a just, inclusive, green economy. 

On Friday afternoon, October 30, 2020 the Department of Labor (DOL) pushed through a new rule to undermine the ability of 401(k) and pension plans to include environmentally and socially responsible investments.  The rule is clearly a pre-election political move against corporate responsibility, in line with Trump administration actions that have consistently rolled back protections against corporate misconduct. No evidence has been brought forward that this fiduciary change is needed.

The DOL offered a very short public comment period for the rule, which nevertheless generated overwhelming opposition -- 95% against -- from investors large and small and concerned stakeholders, including thousands of Green America members.

“This rule works against the well-being of investors, companies, communities, and other stakeholders and should be reversed,” said Fran Teplitz, Green America’s executive co-director for business, investing, and policy. Reversal would be possible by a new Administration, through Congress, or the courts. “It is absurd and unconscionable that the DOL even fails to take the climate crisis into account as a concern of investors seeking long-term value,” she added.

While not referring directly to “socially responsible investing” or as it’s called in industry terms “ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing” the rule restricts the use of investments that offer “non-pecuniary” benefits – demonstrating the DOL’s failure to understand that attention to the social and environmental impacts of companies has real life financial implications for investors and society.

As Jon Hale of Morningstar stated “Most of what this rule implies as being non-pecuniary benefits, in the case of sustainable or impact strategies, are actually long-term benefits that should ultimately bolster rather than hinder the returns of retirement plan participants and their beneficiaries.”

The rule opposes the direction of the investment industry as more and more individual and institutional investors choose funds that integrate financial, social, environmental, and corporate governance criteria. In fact, the multinational financial services giant UBS has just decided to recommend ESG investing over conventional investing to its clients globally -- including to its retirement plan clients.

Smart investors and fiduciaries will continue to see that corporate responsibility is a win for investors and society.

Supporting small business this season (and for every special occasion) is a compassionate and fun way to invest in your community—and surprise your loved ones with more unique and impactful gifts.

The Department of Labor made final on Friday a rule making it harder for socially-minded investments to be included in select retirement plans, a move that some commenters welcomed, preferring return-driven decisions. Others objected, calling the Trump-led shift a misread of investing trends and preferences.

 “Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments” will discourage 401(k) and other qualified retirement plans from offering funds from managers that consider Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors in their due diligence, those opposed to the change have stressed. The proposal establishes burdensome requirements for analysis and documentation around inclusion of ESG options, those critics say. The Labor Department currently had no such requirements for any other kinds of funds.

The rule finalized Friday stipulates that fiduciaries for private pension plans covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) cannot invest in ESG vehicles that sacrifice investment returns or take on additional risk. It specifically requires that ERISA plan fiduciaries “select investments and investment courses of action based solely on financial considerations relevant to the risk-adjusted economic value of a particular investment or investment course of action.”

The rule was proposed in June and drew criticism from some in the retirement-planning community, including claims that the Labor Department did not sufficiently justify its reasoning behind the proposal and concerns that the proposal would add to fiduciary confusion regarding if and when ESG factors may be considered material.

The DOL received more than 8,730 comments. Most of the comments came from individuals —of which 96% opposed the rule change —and one petition from Green America drew more than 7,000 signatures, representing the mobilization of investor-led grassroots opposition, an analysis of the review period by Morningstar and US SIF showed. Opposing comments came not only from asset managers focused on ESG investing but also from many large conventional asset managers, including BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street Global Advisors, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard.

“This is another harmful action by the Trump administration, at a time when the global climate crisis looms large as another systemic risk upending lives, livelihoods and causing deadly devastation and damage,” said Mindy Lubber, president of sustainable investing advocate Ceres.

“This decision will impair the ability of pension funds to consider the short- and long-term financial risks posed by extreme weather, water shortages and human rights abuses in performing their investment analysis and allocations,” she said.

The rule-making comes as this investment focus gains interest from investors. Sustainable investing assets in the U.S. reached $12 trillion in 2018, up 38% from 2016, according to a recent US SIF Foundation’s Trends report.

ESG investments SUSA, +0.58% have been outperforming broader index funds so far in 2020, according to data from Standard & Poor’s and Morningstar. Those gains can be linked in part to a heavy concentration in high-flying tech stocks and away from oil during the COVID-19 shutdown.

Alicia Munnell, a columnist for MarketWatch and director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, welcomes the agency’s stance, she wrote at the time of the proposal.

“Pension fund investing is not the place to solve the ills of the world. ESG investing is a diversion that enriches financial managers, reduces participants’ retirement investment returns and makes people think they are addressing a problem without doing anything substantial,” Munnell said. “No one can seriously think that stock selection is going to fix climate change.”

Aron Szaprio, Morningstar’s director of policy research, said ESG risk analysis should be part of any prudent investment decision-making process as it is difficult to holistically assess a company’s long-term prospects without a clear view into the sustainability of its business.

Szaprio said in a recent commentary that regardless of the outcome of the election, Morningstar does not foresee a decline in investor interest toward sustainable funds.

"...if you come together with a mission, and it’s grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible.” –John Lewis 

Green America works to address multiple interrelated crises threatening our world. We believe we must work together to build a truly green economy that values all people and the planet. In doing so, we believe we must follow the lead of the people who are most disadvantaged by our current economic crises as we create a more just, equitable, and regenerative economy.  

At Green America, we embed social justice and equity in our work to create strong relationships among people of all backgrounds. We continue to join with, and learn from, the people, communities, businesses, and investors on the frontlines of fighting for social and environmental justice through collective economic action. Together, we are building a society that truly works for all people and the planet. 

Why Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are Central to our Work 

Historically and to this day, Green America’s work focuses on economic systems because our national and global economies structurally disadvantage people of color; Indigenous peoples; ethnic and religious minorities; women; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex, Asexual, and Two-Spirit (LGBTQIA+ and 2 Spirit) people; disabled people; and create other vulnerable communities worldwide. These structural injustices are embedded in capitalism and the history of White supremacy and core to the production of wealth for the few at the expense of the many. In the US, this history includes the enslavement of Black people and the mass killing of American Indians and forced removal from their lands, followed by ongoing racism and discrimination against Black and Brown peoples; xenophobia and exploitation of immigrant populations; and discrimination against women and those identifying as LGBTQIA+ and 2 Spirit. These are just a few examples. 

The capitalist system privileges the wealthy and powerful at the expense of natural systems and workers worldwide. These power dynamics, deeply embedded in current systems, reinforce oppression and the commodification of natural resources and people. The rampant exploitation inherent in ever-growing capitalist economies is causing the climate crisis, the collapse of ecosystems worldwide, and the sixth mass species extinction. The impacts of environmental crises are and will continue to be felt most strongly by people with less wealth, who are disadvantaged by the capitalist economy and the most burdened by environmental injustices, both within wealthier countries and poor countries worldwide. 

Workers throughout the world experience oppressive and dangerous working conditions to meet the unrealistic demands of corporate supply chains that prioritize profits above human life. In the US, agricultural workers, service workers, caregivers, and many other people in professions that rely disproportionately on people of color, immigrants, and women, do not receive a living wage, health care, or paid sick leave. This puts millions of people in a precarious economic position and leaves them unable to build wealth.  

Our Commitment  

Green America is an organization that works for a socially just and environmentally responsible society through economic action. We believe that:  

• Our work is strongest when it fosters an inclusive and equitable society.  

• Understanding and celebrating diversity strengthens our connections with each other and with communities.  

• Continuing to learn from and partner with diverse communities creates inclusive solutions that incorporate the lived experiences and perspectives of these communities and deepens the impact of our programs and communications. 

• Strengthening an equitable and inclusive organizational culture at Green America, which includes ensuring leadership and staff work collaboratively, sharing experience and expertise, and holding one another accountable to a shared vision of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in our relationships with one another, and in all our work.  

Green America works for a world where all people have enough, where all communities are healthy and safe, and where the abundance of the Earth is preserved for all the generations to come. To achieve this mission, we need to ensure that we bring together people from all backgrounds to work for a world where people who are most disadvantaged are heard and their voices help lead the way to a truly equitable and green economy. 

Written by Jeremy Yamaguchi, the Founder and CEO of Lawn Love.

Some of my favorite memories as a child are playing on my grandparents' front lawn. I remember how expansive it seemed, and I loved the smell when it was freshly cut. My grandpa took great pride in his perfectly manicured grass as did all the neighbors; it was a unifying sense of pride for the neighborhood. I still get a rush of nostalgia when I think back on those times, even as I see the need for change in this industry. 

Today, over 80 percent of Americans have lawns. They became popular in the late 19th century with the advent of the lawn mower—a lush green lawn was a symbol of prosperity and the American Dream. However, rapid population growth and a better understanding of their environmental impacts have many reconsidering this tradition.

Lawns are Water Guzzlers

As vast regions of the western United States move into the grip of what Science Mag calls the first mega drought observed in 1,200 years, we must look critically at our traditional American lawn. 

Turf grass is the country’s largest irrigated crop—three times larger than any other—covering an area larger than the state of New York and demanding enough water every year to fill the Chesapeake Bay. According to the EPA’s nationwide estimate, that’s 9 billion gallons a day to keep our grass green. 

Outdoor water use often accounts for half or more of all residential water demand, especially in the hotter inland areas where population growth is fastest. We continue to see outdoor water usage rise as population growth drives development and single-family home construction. This is all happening against decreased water supply as global temperatures increase and freshwater basins dry up.

Lawns are Polluters

Water usage isn’t the only environmental issue associated with the traditional American lawn. Water pollution and climate emissions are also linked to our grass obsession. 

Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides and fertilizers per acre on their lawns than farmers use on crops, and these chemicals can end up in our drinking water and waterways, harming human and ecosystem health. Production, transportation, and use of these chemicals also contribute to the climate crisis.

Americans use 800 million gallons of gas every year for lawn equipment and spill 17 million gallons just trying to refuel mowers—that’s more than was leaked by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Hour per hour, gasoline powered lawn mowers produce 11 times as much air pollution as a new car. This is not sustainable.

Alternatives to the American Lawn

As we face the climate crisis and water shortages, many Americans are looking for ways to get rid of their lawn. 

Xeriscaping, a type of drought-tolerant landscaping that requires little or no irrigation, can reduce home water usage and costs by 50 to 75 percent. Well-designed, drought-resistant xeriscaping might include decorative rocks and beautiful, blooming native plants that are very low-maintenance and have a natural beauty that can certainly rival a green lawn. In California, many cities offer residents conservation incentives to replace their lawns with xeriscaping, and it works! In Novato, CA, for example, the city’s water department estimated that homeowners who chose xeriscaping saved 120 gallons of water a day. 

Replacing grass with a meadow is another option that requires no fertilizing, little to no supplemental watering, and minimal mowing, making this an appealing low maintenance option. Meadows provide habitat to pollinators and are capable of capturing carbon.

If you’re a fan of local foods, you can also try your hand at gardening or foodscaping—a type of home gardening that puts food-bearing plants front and center to maximize production while keeping aesthetics in mind. Replace your grass with a garden using Climate Victory Gardening practices and your yard goes from part of the problem to part of the climate solution. 

These alternatives to the traditional expansive green lawn and their related environmental and cost benefits can’t be ignored. Those who care about the planet and the people on it will come to see that the scientific evidence is irrefutable. We can help solve some of these environmental issues if we summon the collective will. 

The yards of the future will feature wildflowers, native grasses, succulent greenery, and edible plants, creating a space that’s far more interesting and better for our planet than just a plot of green grass.

Hours: Full-time (4-days, 32 hours/week)
Salary: $63,000 - $68,000, grant-track (contract option available, if preferred) 
Benefits: medical, dental, disability, vacation, holidays, sick days
Supervisor: Senior Director, Climate and Agriculture Network 

Green America is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a just and sustainable society by harnessing economic power for positive change. Our unique approach involves working with consumers, investors and businesses to create a world that works for all. We deploy marketplace solutions to solve the most pressing social and environmental problems facing society today. 

The Center for Sustainability Solutions builds on Green America’s work over the years, where we’ve brought together industry groups across supply chains to create major shifts in such areas as solar, community investing, sustainable agriculture and fair labor. The Center supports Innovation Networks, focused working groups of stakeholders with the objective of making significant, industry-wide system change. Current networks focus on regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, clean electronics, climate and banking. 

The Soil Carbon Initiative (SCI) was co-developed by Green America and The Carbon Underground with input from key stakeholders from throughout the food supply chain.  SCI creates a framework that calls all who touch the soil to address the climate crisis by building soil health and increasing soil carbon sequestration through better soil health. This outcomes-based, scientific, agricultural standard is designed to help farmers and supply chains measure improvements in soil health and soil carbon.

The SCI Director will oversee the final phase of development and official launch of the Soil Carbon Index. The position will require both keen project management and organizational skills, along with a strong orientation towards stakeholder engagement and relationship development. As a key member of the SCI Design Team, the Director will need to be collaborative in nature, highly adaptable, and comfortable with complexity. 

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develop a work plan for the final phase of development of SCI and work in tandem with senior staff and the SCI Design Team to ensure alignment and successful completion
• Provide input for the development, implementation, and execution of the Soil Carbon Index
• Oversee SCI Pilot Program, including the development of proposals 
• Track and manage deliverables and communications with pilot participants
• Work to ensure interoperability between SCI and other key food and carbon standards
• Draft reports and communicate to the SCI Design Team on a regular basis key updates and milestones
• Work with senior staff and industry advisors to resolve outstanding questions or areas for further development
• Design in tandem with industry experts an initial platform for pilot participant data
• Participate in Cross Departmental Teams: The success of our organizational work includes the voluntary participation of staff members from all levels of the organization in cross departmental teams addressing a range of issues to strengthen our impact and planning, as time and other work commitments allow.

Qualified Candidates should have the following skills and qualities:

• Strong program leadership skills, with 10+ years of experience directing complex programs and teams
• Familiarity with document control practice
• Deeply organized and oriented towards keeping projects and deliverables on track
• Comfortable with project management and reporting tools
• Experience with the development of standards, and more specifically standards in the food and agriculture space is a plus
• Strong interpersonal skills, including the ability to develop trusting relationships with senior executives and high-level leaders across a range of sectors
• The ability to understand and converse competently about complex supply chain issues with a broad range of stakeholders
• Proficient in Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook
• Familiarity with various farm management applications, a plus
• Strong research and writing skills
• Strong speaking skills
• Bachelor’s degree required; masters in a related field, including sustainable agriculture, agronomy or business management a plus. 

To Apply: Email your resume and cover letter to centerstaffing@greenamerica.org. No phone calls, please.

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Green America is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination regarding: actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, related medical conditions, breastfeeding, or reproductive health disorders), age (18 years of age or older), marital status (including domestic partnership and parenthood), personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, genetic information, disability, matriculation, political affiliation, citizenship status, credit information or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Harassment on the basis of a protected characteristic is included as a form of discrimination and is strictly prohibited.

Want your banking to build a better world? Find a bank or credit union near you that benefits people and planet.

Brady Quirk-Garvan is a business development associate at Money With A Mission [m], a socially responsible investing firm focused on divesting from destructive industries and making money work for progressive causes.  Quirk-Garvan has lived in Charleston, South Carolina for over 15 years and served as Chairman of the Charleston Democratic party from 2016 to 2020.  In 2019, Quirk-Garvan became one of Green America’s newest board members. Associate editor Sytonia Reid spoke with Brady to learn more about his background, expertise and vision for the future.

Green America: You went to the College of Charleston and served as Chairman of the Charleston County Democratic party.  What role has Charleston played in shaping your worldview and beliefs? 

Brady Quirk-Garvan: I grew up in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, and went to high school in Ithaca, New York. Until I went to college, I had lived in a very liberal bubble and moving to Charleston broadened my worldview as I started interacting with people who didn’t agree with me politically.

Charleston is also undergoing changes that are at the heart of the climate crisis. There are areas that are flooding that weren’t when I moved here 15 years ago, and there is this sense of pride in living in an environmentally beautiful area that   is constantly under attack by climate change and over-development. Charleston is on the frontlines of the climate crisis and climate justice because we have lower income neighborhoods that are rapidly flooding and communities of color that are hosting incinerators and trash operations.

Green America: As a financial planner, can you elaborate on some of the different ways people can give and what ways might be particularly impactful during these times? 

Brady Quirk-Garvan: There is no wrong way to give. People might volunteer their time at a nonprofit or those who get bonuses might decide to donate half of it. People who inherit large sums of money can give more through appreciated stocks or DAFs. With DAFs, people can designate money to charities in a tax-advantageous way and that makes it a great planning tool but we must make sure that money is actually flowing to the nonprofits they’re intended for.  I encourage those who have DAF’s to start distributing those funds now. What I think is most important is recognizing that most of us can give a bit more and that’s what this time calls for.

Green America: This summer, Natural Investments joined a group of SRI firms in an official statement confronting racial justice. Can you elaborate on the ways the investing community has historically aided racial injustice and how SRI can help correct it?

Brady Quirk-Garvan: Racial justice, environmental justice, and climate change manifest in various ways but at the core, are all deeply connected. The financial sector has historically been one of the worst drivers of racial wealth inequality, and we know that the investment choices of what banks and companies we support leads to huge decisions for entire communities.

For example, there are weapons manufacturers who are trying to drive up prices by turning police into para-military forces, and whether those companies thrive makes a difference in Black and Brown communities. We also know that mega banks not only heavily invest in fossil fuels but continue predatory and discriminatory lending practices toward non-white borrowers. So the SRI community must recognize that racial justice is intrinsically tied to the financial world and we are obligated to stand up and say we need to fix that.

Green America: How are you and your family staying green at home?

Brady Quirk-Garvan: Since we’ve been cooking more we’re cutting down on a lot of packaging and cognizant about buying things in bulk. My wife and I aren’t commuting to work anymore and that cuts 50 minutes of driving a day which is good for the environment but also our family dynamic because we’re all home together more. We’ve had more time to enjoy the surrounding outdoors and would like to sustain these things in the future.  

Green America: Your family has been involved with Green America since our beginning. What direction do you think Green America can go in in the future?

Brady Quirk-Garvan: Green America is demonstrating its understanding that the environmental movement isn’t just about saving trees or land, but what neighborhoods factories are put in and whether farms are open to non-white people in terms of land access and capital. My hope is that Green America will become the leader in helping even more people understand that while the movements for sustainability and for racial, climate and economic justice may have different goals, they are deeply related.

Green America: You have experience working on political campaigns. What do you think everyday people can do to bring out voters in 2020?

Brady Quirk-Garvan: When I talk to people about politics, they’re often not intrigued by a bill happening in the halls of Congress. It’s an asphalt plant being built a mile from my house, or a dump moving into a historically Black neighborhood, or marshes being filled with $800K condos. These are the issues that motivate voter turn-out, and I think we need to have conversations with people who aren’t motivated by the presidency about local issues that matter to them. 

Green America: What’s giving you hope during these peculiar times?

Brady Quirk-Garvan:  History shows us that out of dark times comes enormous burst of light and progress. After the Dark Ages, we had a time of creativity and enlightenment. Out of the despair of the Jim Crow era, we had the Civil Rights Movement with people stepping up and taking action. It’s clear to me that we are in a darker time of civil unrest and undemocratic government, and all in the midst of a global pandemic but what gives me hope is that we are likely to see incredible breakthroughs and societal transformations soon.

COVID-Fueled 10% Decline in Paper Receipts “Could Become Permanent”; Target Also Makes Progress.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – October 20, 2020 – As paper receipt usage sees a dramatic reduction because of the COVID-19 pandemic, CVS, the largest U.S. pharmacy chain, is responding to pressure from Green America and thousands of consumers and stopped using thermal receipt paper coated in Bisphenol S (BPS), an endocrine-disrupting chemical linked to health issues. The company has implemented phenol-free, recyclable paper in all its 10,000 stores across the country. Since 2017, Green America, the nation’s leading green economy organization, has urged CVS and other retailers to reduce paper receipt waste and toxicity through its Skip the Slip campaign.

Per Green America’s urging, CVS has also increased promotion of its digital receipt option which led to over one million new customer sign-ups in 2019. The company reports that its digital program has resulted in saving 49 million yards of receipt paper, which Green America estimates is more than enough paper to circle the globe.

Thousands of individuals have signed Green America’s petition to CVS and contacted the company on social media, which resulted in a dialogue between CVS and Green America to discuss receipt alternatives, reducing the length of receipts, providing digital opt-in prompts for customers to sign up for digital receipts, and switching to phenol-free, recyclable paper.

The new Skip the Slip report tracks the progress on receipt practices of 35 major companies, including CVS, Target, which has implemented phenol-free receipt paper and a digital receipt option, and Walmart, which offers a digital option at checkout (but still uses phenol-coated papers). Target received over 51,000 petitions from Mamavation urging the company to drop BPA and BPS from its receipts.

The report also discusses changes in thermal paper demand, which had been steadily increasing each year in the United States but declined since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. used 280,000 metric tons of thermal paper for receipts in 2019, but this has dipped to an estimated 252,000 tons in 2020. The decline could become permanent if consumers continue increased shopping from home and declining paper receipts at the register post-COVID.

“CVS’ changes to its receipt practices reflect the growing consumer demand for digital options and non-toxic, recyclable receipt paper,” said Beth Porter, Green America’s Climate Campaigns director. “We encourage the company to build on this progress by identifying the many more opportunities to reduce waste across its operations.”

Since 2017, Green America has campaigned to raise awareness on the unnecessary environmental impacts of paper receipts and the toxins coating paper receipts, most commonly BPA and BPS. Green America estimates that in 2020, U.S. receipt consumption will use over three million trees and nearly nine billion gallons of water. Receipt production requires the energy equivalent to operating nine million refrigerators a year and generates 297 million pounds of solid waste. Receipt production generates the greenhouse gas emission equivalent to over 400,000 cars on the road each year.

“Retailers are spending an estimated $282 million on thermal paper for receipts this year,” said Todd Larsen, Green America’s executive co-director. “Companies should be looking to digital options that are safer, cheaper and better for the environment.”

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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, investors, and consumers to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.GreenAmerica.org  

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

Imagine driving 45 minutes to buy a fresh tomato. That’s what Ron Finley’s South Central Los Angeles community had to do before he began growing food in a parkway next to his house in 2010. In that narrow strip of earth between the sidewalk and street opposite the Farmdale metro station, he sowed the seeds of a movement to convert these barren rectangles into gardens that serve people and the planet.

What is a parkway garden?

It’s all about intentionally growing vegetables, fruits, herbs, or flowers in that space between your sidewalk and street—the parkway, also called a planting strip, treelawn, hellstrip and dozens of other names.

Just like all other types of landscaping and gardening, your parkway garden will be unique to you. The plants that do best are adaptable, durable, and low-lying native plants that require minimal care. If your parkway is paved over, a container garden in this area could still be an option.

Parkway gardens and other forms of urban gardening are taking hold across the country. From California to New York, people are reclaiming previously ignored patches of dirt close to their homes, planting gardens to brighten America’s neighborhoods via these greenspaces. In suburban River Forest, Illinois, alone, the community’s Sustainability Commission has created 36 parkway gardens.

Why are parkway gardens important?

They may be small spaces, but taken together, parkway gardens can help solve some of the biggest human-caused ecological challenges, including polluted runoff, flooding, biodiversity loss, and the climate crisis.

Enhancing parkways with native plants can reduce the contaminants headed for our streams and seas since the vegetation intercepts and filters that runoff. The plants boost floodwater retention because their roots and soil biodiversity form conduits that enable the ground to soak up excess water.

Parkway gardens support aboveground biodiversity by providing food and habitat for at-risk pollinators, birds, and other wildlife. What’s more, these spaces can also draw down atmospheric carbon if grown using Climate Victory Gardening practices, locking planet-warming carbon dioxide in the soil.

And, of course, they beautify the stark pavement and foster passersby’s wellbeing. In fact, research shows that such greenspace can lower violent crime in cities.

How do you plant a parkway garden?

Follow these steps to turn an overlooked parkway near you into a lush garden:

1. Ask your local government whether you must obtain permission to modify the parkway or follow specific maintenance rules—every municipality is different, but you can start by contacting the sustainability, transportation, public works, or parks and recreation department. Before breaking ground, check with utility companies about cables and pipes to avoid hazardous accidents and service disruptions while digging. If your neighborhood has a homeowner’s association or similar regulatory body, consult them, too. Your city might also offer assistance. For instance, Washington, D.C. plants trees in parkways for free upon request. 
2. Choose up to a dozen species to start, Sunset Magazine suggests. It’s okay to keep it simple with fewer and expand later. Go for enduring plants like perennials, shrubs, and bulbs that are native to your area, don’t need much water, and stay below 3 feet tall without obstructing passersby’s path. You might choose a small fruit tree to provide food for the community and wildlife. To maximize beauty, harvest diversity, and consistent pollinator feed, incorporate a medley of shapes, textures, bloom times, and edible produce.  
3. Eliminate nonnative plants already growing in the area. Excavate them and cover the plot with sheet-mulching to build soil health and prevent future weeds. If you’d like, use stones or bricks to build a buffer around your garden.
4. If the earth is compressed and lifeless, add a couple inches of well-decomposed manure or compost. Avoid planting directly under trees and nearby shallow roots.
5. Put plants a little closer than usual to speed their spread and fill in the space. Add an inch of mulch to protect soils and decrease maintenance.
6. Water weekly for a few months if rain is infrequent, and continue weeding until the parkway fills in.

How else can you produce food with limited space?

If parkway gardening isn’t an option, there are still many easy ways to get your hands dirty growing food. Consider replacing ornamentals in your existing landscaping with food-bearing species. For a rewarding social experience, join a community garden, or find an empty lot to launch one yourself (abide by local restrictions). No matter how you decide to garden, have fun connecting with the earth and enjoy your delicious homegrown bounty.

Remember to add your garden to the Climate Victory Gardens map to showcase your commitment to curbing carbon pollution through building and harnessing the soil!

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The time for action has never been more urgent. According to NASA, the past nine years have been the warmest since modern record-keeping began in 1880. Shrinking glaciers, droughts, rising seas, heat waves—we have more than enough evidence to compel us to act personally and collectively. 

The 2023 Synthesis Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered a "final warning" on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. While the report identifies dire conditions globally, there is still time to act to avoid the worst outcomes. We need to keep the vast majority of remaining fossil fuels in the ground. 

The Divest-Invest climate movement is an increasingly powerful force to help achieve the goal of a global clean energy economy. Individuals and institutions—including foundations, states and cities, colleges and universities, pension funds, faith-based organizations, and civil society groups—have pledged to divest either in whole or in part from fossil fuels. 

As of April 2023, $40.4 trillion in assets, from 1,508 institutions in 71 countries, have been pledged to divest in whole or in part from fossil fuels. The urgency has never been greater for divesting from fossil fuels and reinvesting those funds in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and clean-energy-based community development. 

You can join this movement too! 

We spend an average of 33 percent of our time (eight hours per day) in our bedrooms. And, experts say the bedroom is often the room with the highest allergen content in the entire house.

If you or a family member have allergies or asthma, you might experience a noticeable difference in your symptoms after removing as many allergens as you can from this one room. Here are our best tips for creating an allergen-free bedroom.

What Lurks Under Your Bed

There are five main types of allergens that lurk in the bedroom:

• Dust mites: These ugly little microscopic creatures feed on sloughed-off skin cells and congregate mainly in bedding, pillows, stuffed animals, curtains, upholstery, carpets, and storage boxes. It’s actually dust mite waste that triggers our allergies, not the mites themselves.
• Mold: Anything damp—from pet bedding to carpets to walls and window moldings—can become a haven for mold.
• Animal dander: If you allow your cat or dog to sleep in your room, allergy-inducing proteins from your furry friend’s skin, saliva, and urine—also called animal dander—may be sticking to any available surface. Animal dander also remains airborne for several hours, so it can float into your bedroom from other areas of the house.
• Pollen: Pollen is often carried indoors on clothing or on pets. It can also float inside from windows or your central air system.
• Cockroaches: The cast-off skins and droppings of these pests are what trigger allergies. Now that you know what allergens could be making you sneeze, it’s time to focus on getting rid of them as much as possible. If you’d like to pinpoint exactly which allergens trigger your symptoms, consider asking your doctor for a referral to an allergist, who can figure out what you’re allergic to through a simple skin test.

Simplify Your Bedroom

Simplifying your life isn’t just good for your pocketbook—it can be good for your health, too. The more storage boxes, books, upholstered furniture, pillows and bedding, and other items in your bedroom, the more places allergens have to hide.

Keep your bedroom as simple as possible. Clear out clutter, and see if you can sell or donate it instead of letting it sit around and collect allergens. Put items you can’t part with in other rooms.

Remove drapes, feather pillows, upholstered furniture, non-washable comforters, and other non-washable soft items, if possible.

For children, minimize stuffed animals and other soft toys in the bedroom—they become havens for dust mites. Look for machine washable stuffed toys. Clean those that can’t be washed with a damp cloth, then put in the dryer on a high setting to kill dust mites.

Carpets: A Haven for Allergens in the Bedroom

The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) recommends replacing carpets with hard flooring, since carpets are notorious for trapping allergens and exacerbating symptoms.

To find environmentally (and allergy-) friendly flooring options, consult our Real Money July 2003 article, “Eco-Flooring Options,” or check the “Flooring” category of our National Green Pages™ for sellers of cork, sustainable hardwood, and bamboo flooring.

If replacing carpeting isn’t an option, vacuum floors at least weekly with a machine that has a high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter. (Standard or water-filtered vacuums just stir up allergens.) Vacuum furniture and curtains as well.

Several green companies offer nontoxic allergen-reducing sprays, detergents, and cleaners for
carpeting, upholstery, and more.

Steps to Reduce Allergens

These steps will help reduce all five allergens:

1. Filter your air: Though no studies have proven that indoor air filters help clear out allergens in the bedroom, many people with allergies attest to their effectiveness. The NIAID recommends talking to your allergist about the best type of air filter to use. Having your air ducts cleaned has not been proven effective against allergies, says the AAAAI.
2. Bring in plants: Indoor plants are great air filters, so unless you have mold or pollen allergies, putting plants in your home can reduce allergens.
3. Keep humidity levels low: All five allergens thrive in humidity, so keep humidity levels below 50 percent by repairing leaks and using a dehumidifier. If you live in a very humid climate, you may need to turn on your air conditioner to reduce humidity and, therefore, your symptoms.
4. Clean your house: In addition, keeping your home, especially your bedroom, as clean as possible will go a long way toward keeping allergens at bay. Use nontoxic cleaning products, which can be found at your local health food store or in the National Green Pages™, to avoid chemical irritants.
5. Avoid toxins: “Those with allergies and asthma should avoid airborne irritants, including tobacco smoke, aerosols, paint, perfumes, cleaning products, or other strong odors or fumes,” says the AAAAI.

Cut down where it counts

Use the following suggestions to specifically expunge each of the five main types of allergens from your bedroom:

1. To dispel dust mites:
   • Encase mattresses, box springs, comforters, and pillows in airtight, zippered plastic or special allergen-proof fabric covers. These are widely available at national and specialty stores, as well as from the socially and environmentally responsible businesses listed in the resource box on this page.
   • Avoid down pillows and comforters, if possible, as they attract dust mites. If you choose to use them, encase them in allergen-proof covers.
   • Wash sheets and pillow cases weekly in hot water to kill dust mites—the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) says temperatures lower than 130°F will not kill mites. (You can still save energy by rinsing in cold water, and by washing your other items in cold water.)
   • Vacuum weekly with a HEPA vacuum cleaner. Dust weekly with a damp or electro-static cloth to pick up dust, rather than dispel it. Wear a dust mask while cleaning to minimize symptoms.
2. To combat pet dander:
   • The best way to minimize allergens is to keep your pet outside in an environment that meets its health and social needs. If your pet isn’t the outdoor sort, at least keep it out of your bedroom, even when you're not in there.
   • Replace bedding and carpeting that has animal dander on it. “It can take weeks or months for fabrics to come clean of allergens, and animal allergens may persist for a year or more,” says the AAAAI.
   • Bathe your pet weekly—studies have shown that weekly baths can minimize dander.
   • Vacuuming does little to reduce pet dander, since vacuums don’t clean the very bottom levels of the carpet where dander collects. A HEPA vacuum may help somewhat. As with dust mites, the best solution is to install hard flooring, if possible.
   • If your pet allergies are significantly reducing your quality of life, the only way to truly get rid of dander is to find your pet another loving home with someone who is not allergic to it. The AAAAI says that even keeping your pet outdoors exclusively isn’t a complete solution, since homes with an outdoor pet have been found to have a higher concentration of pet dander inside than homes without a pet.
3. To minimize mold:
   • To keep mold out of your home, keep dampness out. Repair and seal any leaks, and keep humidity levels below 50 percent.
   • If you discover mold, clean it promptly with a solution of water and a non-ammonia soap or detergent. Remove any carpeting or wallpaper contaminated with mold.
   • If the soap or detergent doesn’t eliminate the mold, and you can’t remove the contaminated materials, some green companies, such as Sneeze.com, offer nontoxic mold removers. As a last resort, a solution of water and five percent chlorine bleach may kill stubborn mold. Keep in mind, however, that chlorine bleach may react with organic compounds in drinking water to produce carcinogens and other toxins, according to the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition.
   • Keep houseplants out of your bedroom.
   • If you don’t have pollen allergies, open doors and windows periodically and use fans to increase air movement. Open your bathroom window after a shower to release moisture.
4. To reduce pollen:
   • Bathe before going to bed to wash pollen off your skin and hair. Leave the clothes you wore all day in a hamper outside your bedroom.
   • Avoid line-drying your clothes outside, as they will collect pollen. Instead, invest in a folding drying rack and dry your clothes indoors to save energy.
5. To control cockroaches:
   • Block areas where roaches could enter the home, including cracks, windows, and outside doors and drains.
   • Keep your home meticulously clean, especially the kitchen. Store food in airtight containers, clean counters and sweep the floor after meals, and put away pet food after your pet eats. Vacuum frequently, and take out trash and recycling daily.
   • If you think you need to call an exterminator, first try employing the less-toxic roach control methods such as: "The Pesticator" (an ultrasonic device that is supposed repel mice and roaches), borax for carpets and cracks (use caution around pets and children), products from the "Pest Control" section of our National Green Pages™, and pest-control companies that use less-toxic methods.

Of course, none of the advice we’ve given is intended to replace evaluation of your symptoms by a physician. If you have concerns about your health, please consult your doctor. Hopefully, though, the tips offered here will help you reduce your daily sneezing and get you on your way to an allergen-free bedroom!

Amazon continues to grow in popularity for its low prices and fast delivery. But warehouse workers behind the scenes are paying for it all with bottom-level salaries and back-breaking work.

In cities across the country, people are waiting with bated breath to see where online retail giant Amazon will build its planned second headquarters, because they’re hungry for the 50,000 jobs the company says it will add as part of the expansion. 

Amazon has already busted out of its headquarter city of Seattle. It has 75 fulfillment centers across the US employing 125,000 full-time workers, according to company reports, with hundreds of other locations and hundreds of thousands more employees around the world. But what goes on behind the closed doors of those fulfillment centers—and thousands like them owned by other companies—is a dangerous business. 

Temporary Workers, Permanent Problem

After the labor movement of the 1940s and ’50s, warehouses jobs were stable, paid enough to support a family, and offered benefits. But in the following decades, costs fell as companies outsourced manufacturing, and box stores saw they could increase profit by paying US warehouse workers less, too. 

Temporary workers are now standard in the industry—an organizer in Southern California says up to 40 percent of warehouse jobs in the state’s Inland Valley region are temporary, and in Chicago, organizing group Warehouse Workers for Justice estimates more than 60 percent of the city’s 80,000 warehouse jobs are temporary. Chicago and L.A. are the biggest shipping hubs in the US.  

Temporary workers provide companies with a more flexible labor force requiring fewer benefits than full-time, salaried employees. They are also a more “vulnerable workforce with unclear lines of accountability for health and safety,” states a 2018 report from the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH).

The way companies like Amazon and Walmart fulfill temp positions is through staffing agencies, which find, hire, and pay workers. This system prevents unionization—because not all jobs in one warehouse are for the same staffing company—and helps corporations save on health insurance and other costs. 

Sheheryar Kaoosji is executive co-director at the Warehouse Worker Resource Center in Ontario, CA, a nonprofit that aims to improve working conditions in the Inland Valley of California, home to a large warehousing industry. 

“There’s 80,000 jobs available [here], but because of the temp system, there might be 200,000 people flowing in and out of those jobs—they’re not fully employed,” explains Kaoosji. “It’s a key part of the ‘working poor’ economy in our region.”

He says workers who move to the Inland Valley, because of the lower cost of living and many job opportunities, end up scrambling to make ends meet. 

“The warehouse worker population is almost entirely people of color, and it’s lots of people who are new to the community,” Kaoosji says. “It’s a lot of people ... who are trying to hang on and make a life for themselves. This region was promised that these jobs would be the future of the economy, and it’s not turning out to be that way.”

Humans Treated Like Machines

Ten percent of the warehouse jobs in the Inland Valley are at Amazon warehouses. Kaoosji says people must pay attention to Amazon because it draws in workers with wages a few dollars higher than minimum wage, and as one of the country’s largest retailers, it impacts how other companies treat their workers. [Editor’s note: Green America has a campaign pressuring Amazon to clean up its coal-powered cloud operations.]

Recently, workers have spoken out anonymously to various news sources about the bad conditions in Amazon’s warehouses. As orders come in via the Amazon website, workers called “pickers” retrieve items for orders from stocked warehouse shelves, putting them onto giant shopping carts and delivering to a boxing station. Amazon holds pickers to a steep piece rate, reported to be from 85-300 items per hour.

Pickers can be and have been fired for not making rate, and these workers complain of back and joint pain from bending, reaching, and being on their feet all day. Some workers report walking more than ten miles per shift through huge fulfillment centers.
Roberto Jesus Clack is an organizer with Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ) in Chicago. He says that Amazon’s goal is to provide the same instant gratification as department stores. 

“Really, its goal is to be able to get people as many products as possible within the day, or even within a few hours of ordering,” Clack says. “There’s a ton of pressure on the workforce to always speed up, speed up. [WWJ is] really concerned about safety issues, and whether [workers are] being compensated appropriately for the value they add.” 

Other reports make Amazon’s warehouses seem like sweatshops. Security checks to prevent worker theft are included in break times, so half-hour lunch breaks and timed bathroom breaks end up being shorter than promised. Employees have reported being written up for not showing up for overtime hours, which should be voluntary by law. 

Since 2013, there have been seven fatalities among Amazon warehouse workers. In 2013, picker Jeff Lockhart Jr. died after collapsing during his overnight shift. A cardiologist who reviewed his autopsy said it was likely from overexertion. And last year, two workers were crushed by warehouse vehicles, calling into concern the safety procedures of both drivers and ground staff. 

The Associated Press reported in November that Amazon could face $28,000 in fines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for safety violations that led to last year’s deaths, including a $7,000 fine for failure to provide training. 

Earlier this year, Amazon made headlines when it was approved for a patent for a wristband that tracks workers’ movements. The wristband will buzz when a worker’s hand is close to the item they’re reaching for, to help reduce the time needed to locate the correct item on a crowded shelf. 

Kaoosji, says the wristband is just the latest push in the company’s efforts to improve its employees’ piece rates. 

“Amazon has a specific kind of problem that stems from its obsession with metrics, and because of technological advantages, their surveillance regime is about as good as it can get,” Kaoosji says. “They’re surveilling employees to watch exactly what they’re doing and how quickly they’re moving.”

That kind of constant pressure to meet ever higher fulfillment quotas has created a culture at Amazon warehouses where stressed-out employees forgo bathroom breaks or urinate in bottles, out of fear of being disciplined or losing their jobs, according to journalist James Bloodworth, who went undercover in a UK Amazon warehouse, the subject of his new book Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain (Atlantic Books, 2018). 

Dangers of the “Lower-archy”

Many warehouse workers are afraid of losing their jobs if they report a safety violation or complain about conditions. Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director at National COSH, describes the people who feel least comfortable speaking out, and who are the lowest-paid workers as a “lower-archy.”

“The lower you are, the fewer job options you have, the more that you risk if you speak up about a labor violation—be it health and safety or not being paid—and the less likely you are to feel comfortable speaking up,” Goldstein-Gelb says. “There’s a few factors that make you vulnerable: if you don’t speak English, if you’re younger, if you lack a union, if you’re a temporary worker. If you’re in a day-to-day situation where you could be fired for speaking out, then your life is at risk.”

National COSH and its regional groups are trying to make workplaces safer by training employees on what to look for to assess workplace safety, how to speak up if their workplaces aren’t safe, how to work with unions, and how to talk to communities about the importance of having strong safety laws and standards.

Consumers can help by telling their Congressional representatives to press for adequate staffing at OSHA, Goldstein-Gelb says. This federal agency can make workplaces comply with regulations for worker safety by sending in investigators who cite employers for violations. However, nearly 50 investigator positions have opened up and not been rehired since the beginning of Trump’s presidency. Goldstein-Gelb notes it would take the current number of investigators 140 years to look into all complaints that are on file right now (with no new ones added).

“In the ideal world, employers would simply want to have safe workplaces and do it on their own without any need for enforcement, but too often, we find that employers are cutting corners and trying to make a quick buck at the expense of workers,” Goldstein-Gelb says. 

Support Warehouse Workers

Across the country, warehouse workers are organizing for better working conditions. Here’s how you can amplify their efforts: 

• Support unions. Shopping at stores where the workers are unionized supports fair wages and safer workplaces. Instead of buying groceries at Amazon or Walmart, try union stores like Kroger or Albertson’s. Find one at ufcw.org/grocery. Find union-made products at unionlabel.org.
• Shop green and local. Avoid big-box and online retail giants like Amazon when you can, and shop with local, green businesses instead. Find those near you at GreenPages.org. And read our “11 Greener Options Than Amazon.” 
• Support campaigns at warehouse worker organizations. Stay informed through Warehouse Workers for Justice, the Warehouse Workers Resource Center, and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

Michael Rainville of Maple Landmark Woodcraft, a Vermont green toy manufacturer, has never seen business pick up as fast as it has in the last couple months. “We are phenomenally busy,” he says. “We’re scrambling to figure out how to meet demand.”

Rainville knows why there is renewed interest in the colorful wooden trains, buses, and cars he sells—the recalls of hundreds of thousands of Chinese-made toys containing lead paint last summer were a surprising wake-up call to many parents.

“There’s a lot of fright over the fact that there are issues parents weren’t aware of before with conventional toys,” says Rainville.

When parents ask persistent questions about whether Maple Landmark is truly manufacturing in the US, Rainville offers to hold up the phone “so they can hear the saws running and know we’re making the toys under one roof.” He then tells parents about the company’s other sustainable features: the toys are all made from sustainably harvested Vermont wood. Safe paints and finishes range from beeswax coatings to colorful lacquers. In addition, Maple Landmark packs its toys in secondhand boxes and shipping materials, and takes care to recycle whenever possible. It donates its scrap wood to farmers for sawdust bedding and to locals for kindling.

Once parents learn about everything the company does to ensure safety and sustainability, they’re reassured that Maple Landmark toys will be safe for their kids, says Rainville. If you’re wondering how to ensure that the children in your life only play with safe toys, we’re here to help. We’ve gathered some of the most important considerations in selecting safe toys.

Toxins in Toys, Legally

Toys sold in the US are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which enforces federal standards for children’s products. General laws regulating all products concern sharp points or edges, parts small enough for a child to swallow, and lead in paint, according to Consumer Reports. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the government tests toys for safety before they go on the market.

On the contrary, the CPSC is “entirely reactive,” says Ruth Ann Norton, the former executive director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning (CECLP, part of the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative). Once a toy is already on store shelves, toy manufacturers are required to report to the CPSC if it causes any injuries or deaths, and consumers may submit reports, as well. The government’s current recall mechanism is exclusively “complaint driven,” explains Norton: the CPSC collects reports and may issue a recall of a toy it deems unsafe.

Regardless of what is legally permissible in the US, Norton says, toys made in China or other developing countries carry a higher risk of containing chemicals that are illegal than toys made in the US, Canada, or the European Union (EU), because dangerous chemicals are less well-regulated in these countries.

Lead Paint

Though there is no comprehensive US ban on lead in toys, it is illegal for the paint to contain more than 0.06 percent concentration lead, and with good reason. When ingested, lead can cause nerve damage, learning and behavioral problems, reproductive damage, and irreversible brain damage. It can also increase the risk of cancer.

Legal limits notwithstanding, several high- profile toy recalls over the summer revealed that some toys made in China and sold to families in the US contained illegal and dangerous levels of lead. The levels of lead in some of the toys recalled by the Mattel Corporation were as high as 11 percent, 180 times the legal limit.

Some states have banned lead in children’s products entirely, and a stricter federal standard for both lead levels and testing of imported toys may be forthcoming from Congress, says Norton. Meanwhile, she suggests that parents follow the motto posted in her office: “When in doubt, throw it out.”

Unfortunately, the test kits for detecting lead in homes can’t be reliably used by parents to test toys, and laboratory tests of toys destroy the toys. If you do have concerns that your child may have been exposed to lead, have your health care provider conduct a blood test. If the test shows elevated levels of lead, the child can take medicine that brings down lead levels to prevent further damage.

How to steer clear of lead:

• Avoid painted toys made before 1978, because before lead paint was banned in toys, residential structures, and hospitals that year, it was used commonly in paints in the US.
• Imported painted toys carry a higher lead risk because lead is less well-regulated in many developing countries. Choose toys manufactured in the US, Canada, or the EU.
• Show caution around any imported toy with flaking paint, in particular.
• The CECLP advises parents to avoid fake painted pearls, including Mardi Gras beads, and cheap children’s jewelry of the type sold in vending machines or given away as party favors. A 2006 study by Ashland University researchers found that 70 percent of the 20 cheap toy jewelry samples they tested contained illegal levels of lead, only three of which have been subsequently recalled.

PVC & Phthalates

Polyvinyl chloride plastic, known as PVC or vinyl and identifiable by a #3 or “V” symbol, is so toxic for people and the planet at every point in its lifecycle that some activists call it by another name: the “poison plastic.”

Of particular concern for children’s health are vinyl toys such as teethers, “rubber duckies,” beach balls, and bath books. These are often made of a flexible vinyl that has been softened using “plasticizer” chemicals called phthalates. (Lead has also been found in some children’s vinyl products, such as bibs.)

Children’s polymer clays such as Fimo and Sculpey also have been found to contain trace amounts of phthalates. Phthalates can leach out of PVC products, especially when hot food is served in plastic containers and when children put PVC toys like teethers in their mouths. Studies have identified phthalates as a hormone disrupter. Phthalates may also cause liver and kidney lesions, a higher risk of certain cancers, and may exacerbate asthma and allergies in children.

PVC also creates dangerous chemicals throughout its lifecycle: making PVC releases carcinogens such as vinyl chloride and dioxins, and incinerating PVC generates carcinogenic dioxin. Because phthalates harm a person through total exposure from many sources, it’s hard to measure the harm likely to be caused by particular PVC toys. However, many experts, including those at the nonprofit Healthy Child Healthy World, say it pays to be cautious. The EU, 12 countries, and the state of California have banned or restricted the use of phthalates in children’s products, and some US toy manufacturers have enacted voluntary bans.

How to steer clear of PVCs and Phthalates:

• Avoid PVC plastic: Unfortunately, most plastic toys don’t carry clear information about the type of plastic they’re made of, though some PVC toys may carry a #3 or the word “vinyl.” A number of toy companies have pledged to begin phasing PVC out of their toys, but IKEA is the only major retailer that has already completely phased out PVC.

Mike Schade, the PVC Campaign Coordinator for the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice (CHEJ) recommends e-mailing toy companies directly to ask if a particular toy contains vinyl; he’s found that most respond within a day or so. Instead of toys that contain vinyl/PVC, choose toys made of alternative materials, including FSC-certified wood, natural fabric, or plastics #1, 2, 4, and 5.

Clear Plastics and Bisphenol A

Bisphenol-A (#7) is legally used to make transparent, hard, unbreakable plastic products, such as baby bottles and “sippy” cups, and CD jewel cases. Very small amounts of this chemical have been shown to cause serious reproductive damage in mice, especially when the exposure occurs in utero. Exposure may cause prostate cancer, breast cancer, female infertility, and obesity.

How to steer clear of bad plastics and BPA:

The Natural Resources Defense Council advises parents to avoid polycarbonate (#7) plastic. When in doubt about items you already own, call the manufacturer and ask. If you notice that a clear plastic bottle or cup has become worn, or that the clear plastic of a toy has become cloudy, that may be evidence of off-gassing bisphenol-A. Throw it out.

Instead, choose baby bottles and spill-proof cups made of glass or polyethylene (#1, #2, #4 recycling symbols) or polypropylene (#5). To find safe bottles and sippy cups by brand name, consult the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s “Smart Plastics Guide."

Keep Recalls in Mind

When a manufacturer issues a toy recall, they may contact customers who purchased the toy online, or prevent shoppers from purchasing the toys still on store shelves. But it’s up to parents to scan the recall lists and notice if a toy recall applies to something your children play with.

To review toy recalls, visit www.recalls.gov or call the CPSC hotline, 800/638-2772. You can also report unsafe products to the CPSC via the hotline.

When it’s time to buy a new toy, the greenest companies are most often the safest. See our box at right for resources that can help you find toys that are safe for people and the planet.

Ruth Ann Norton at the CECLP admits that she sometimes imagines Barbie, Dora the Explorer, and Thomas the Tank Engine commiserating together somewhere in the aftermath of the massive recalls. “They’ve had a rough year,” she says. “But these are toys that kids love, and they can be made safely. Someday, they will be.

During World War II, millions of Americans— a staggering 65 percent of all households—bought Victory Bonds to support the US role in the war. The ten-year bonds raised roughly $185 billion for the war effort (about $2 trillion in today’s dollars), and everyone who bought one received a return on their investment of three percent, if held to maturity.

Green America is working to create the same kind of investment vehicle—a Clean Energy Victory Bond—to support green energy and the US fight to curb the climate crisis. These bonds would allow individuals to invest in the rapid deployment of renewable and energy efficiency projects, with a fixed rate of return—and with the full backing of the US government.

“With the world already feeling the effects of climate change, it’s vital that we use every possible avenue to finance green-energy solutions,” says Green America executive director Alisa Gravitz. “Clean Energy Victory Bonds would allow anyone with a savings account to help put new renewable projects on the ground, with just $25 to $1,000.” Clean Energy Victory Bonds aren’t yet available in the US, but Green America is working with White House and Hill staffers to include them in climate legislation.

In the meantime, if you’d like to put your investment dollars to work for a cooler planet, there are several avenues available right now.

Why Invest in Green Energy?

Climate change is affecting the market in significant ways. Since the consequences of business as usual will be catastrophic, many experts say that high-carbon technologies like dirty coal and low-mileage cars are becoming less attractive to investors.

Technologies that both meet consumer demand and address the climate crisis are increasingly being seen as the next big area of economic growth, even in the current depressed economy, says Todd Larsen, Green America’s director of corporate responsibility.

Jackson Robinson, president and chief investment officer of Winslow Management Company, concurs. “At Winslow, we’ve experienced a very significant increase in interest in past couple of years in investments that support long-term environmental sustainability—specifically investments in green energy and energy efficiency,” he says. “Investors from both the progressive community focused on environmental improvement and from the mainstream are seeing immense opportunities available in this rapidly growing market.”

With institutional investors and governments getting behind “clean tech,” investing in renewable and efficiency technologies may be a smart financial decision as well as a necessity for a healthy planet.

Indexes and Index-Tracking ETFs

If you enjoy picking individual stocks, on your own or with the help of a financial advisor, you can invest directly in clean-tech company stocks.

Stock indexes make a great starting point for ideas on picking individual stocks that fit certain criteria—and there are some indexes that focus specifically on tracking companies involved directly in renewable energy or energy efficiency. While you can’t purchase an index, there are exchange traded funds (ETFs) available that are based directly on clean-tech indexes:

• The WilderHill Clean Energy Index (ticker symbol: ECO) tracks companies directly involved in clean energy. These technologies include renewable energy harvesting or production, energy conversion, energy storage, pollution prevention, improving efficiency, power delivery, energy conservation, and monitoring information.

Market capitalization for the majority of the stocks in this index are generally $200 million and above, although the index does include a handful of stocks from some smaller companies with a market cap of $50 to $200 million. —The Powershares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio (PBW) is an ETF based on this index.

• The WilderHill New Energy Global innovation Index (NEX) tracks companies involved in clean tech that are traded primarily outside the US. Market capitalization for the majority of the stocks in this index is generally $200 million and above, although it includes some smaller companies with a market cap of $50 to $200 million. —The Powershares Global Clean Energy Portfolio (PBD) is an ETF based on this index.

• The NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index (CELS) tracks stocks in the clean-energy sector. The companies included are involved in renewable energy generation, renewable fuels, energy storage and conversion, energy intelligence (e.g. smart-grid technologies), and advanced materials (i.e. materials that enable renewable technologies or reduce the need for petroleum-based materials). Companies included must have a market capitalization of $150 million or more. —The First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index Fund (QCLN) is an ETF based on this index.

• The NASDAQ OMX Clean Edge Global Wind Energy Index (QWND) includes companies that are primarily involved in wind energy manufacture, development, distribution, installation, and use. Companies included must have a minimum market capitalization of $100 million. —The PowerShares Global Wind Energy Portfolio (PWND) is an ETF based on this index.

• The NASDAQ OMX Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Index (QGRD) tracks companies involved in the smart-grid and electric infrastructure sector. Companies in this index will be significantly involved in electric meters, devices, and networks; energy storage and management; and smart grid software. Companies included must have a market capitalization of at least $100 million. —The First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Index Fund (GRID) is an ETF based on this index.

Many of the companies included in these indexes are “pure plays,” meaning they are primarily involved in the clean technologies that provide the focus for each index. However, the wind and grid indexes may also include some multinational companies that don’t focus primarily on clean tech, but have a significant investment in this sector.

It’s important for those involved in socially responsible investing (SRI) to note that stocks in these indexes are not screened for social or environmental concerns—and therefore, any ETFs that mirror these indexes won’t be, either.

“[Clean Edge indexes] are going to look like SRI indexes—especially CELS. But we don’t do negative screening,” says Ron Pernick, co-founder and managing director of Clean Edge. “For example, in our wind index, we think it’s important to cover GE in wind energy—they’re a huge player, with billions invested in wind. But they also invest in nuclear and other technologies that could be problematic from a pure SRI perspective.”

A Word of Caution

Remember, when you invest in stock shares, mutual funds, or ETFs, your principal isn’t protected, and you could lose it. In addition to seeking the advice of a financial advisor, do your research on stocks, and ask for and read a prospectus before investing in a mutual fund or ETF, to ensure it meets your financial, social, and environmental goals. That said, many investment professionals, including Winslow’s Jack Robinson, continue to be optimistic about the outlook for high-quality clean tech companies. “We believe all investors will want to have some amount of clean energy exposure in the years to come,” says Robinson.

One of the most common questions we get about the Chocolate Scorecard is, “Why did my favorite chocolate company receive that score?” If you’ve been wondering that yourself, this primer should help!

When we first created the Chocolate Scorecard, ratings were given to companies based on their commitments to source certified cocoa and their progress as they worked towards having 100% certified cocoa in their supply chains.

While certifications are helpful tools for companies and consumers to use, on their own they cannot address the underlying causes of child labor, which include farmer poverty, lack of infrastructure and/or educational opportunities, and cultural/traditional understanding regarding child labor.

Furthermore, different certifications have different standards – and companies count all cocoa sourced from the different certifiers as ‘sustainable.’ Yet as time has gone on, we’ve learned the chocolate industry cannot certify itself into social and environmental sustainability. Despite an increase in volume of certified cocoa making it into chocolate supply chains, farmer income remains low and child labor remains endemic.

This is why, in addition to tracking a chocolate company’s certification commitments, the scorecard now looks at what companies are doing beyond certification. Knowing if a company has a plan to improve farmer livelihoods, engage with cocoa communities, promote sustainable agricultural practices, and yes, specifically address child labor, are just as important as knowing how much certified cocoa a company is sourcing.

The information on this page is based off publicly available information found on company websites and/or in sustainability reports. Some information that has been disclosed to us in private may be incorporated into the final grade as well. See below for brief snapshots into highlights of company programs as well as links to web pages/reports.

Mars
Program: Cocoa for Generations, as part of Sustainable in a Generation
Financial commitment: $1 billion over ten years
Sustainable cocoa goals: 100% responsibly sourced and traceable by 2025
Sustainable cocoa in supply chain: 47%
Certifications: Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance
Most recent sustainability report: 2018
Scorecard grade: C+

Mars’ Cocoa for Generations is separated into present-day, immediate goals, such as having 100% responsibly sourced and traceable cocoa by 2025 and improving farmer income, as well as long term goals to improve farmer livelihoods. Mars will also enhance child labor monitoring and remediation (CLMRS) systems in its supply chain. A CLMRS works with local communities to identify underlying reasons for child labor and helps them address the problems, then monitors the progress.

In addition to Mars’ commitment, Mars launched its Farmer Income Lab, a “think-do tank” that is working to identify best practices to improve farmer income. The Farmer Income Lab works with academics, the private sector, civil society, and governments to tackle this challenge.

Mars has spoken out in favor of plans to increase farmgate prices of cocoa, as proposed by the Ghanaian and Ivorian governments.

Nestle
Program: Nestle Cocoa Plan
Financial commitment: 110 million CHF (just over 110 million USD) between 2010-2019
Sustainable cocoa goals: 230,000 tons of cocoa sourced by 2020 (est. 57% of anticipated supply)
Sustainable cocoa in supply chain: 42.9%  - 186,358 tons of cocoa
Certifications: Fairtrade, UTZ
Most recent sustainability report: 2018
Scorecard grade: C+

In 2012, Nestle partnered with the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) to launch the first cocoa-focused Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS). Rather than punish farmers when incidents of child labor are discovered, the CLMRS works with local communities to identify underlying reasons for child labor and helps them address the problems, then monitors the progress. Remediation can affect a community or address the specific needs of a family. In addition to the CLMRS, Nestle hosts community training sessions about child labor to help communities identify child labor, differentiate between tasks that are appropriate for children and tasks that are dangerous, and shift attitudes about child labor.

In Nestle’s first report on its CLMRS efforts, it shares the reach of its program, challenges it has encountered, and next steps to continue rolling out the program. As of the publication of the report, over 40,000 5-17 year old children were being monitored by the Nestle Cocoa Plan CLMRS, and over 5,000 were helped.

Lindt
Program: Lindt & Sprungli Farming Program; Lindt Cocoa Foundation (NGO arm of Lindt)
Financial investment commitment: N/A
Sustainable cocoa goals: Fully traceable and verified by 2020
Sustainable cocoa in supply chain: 86%
Certifications: N/A – self-verifies supply chain
Most recent sustainability report: 2018
Scorecard grade: C

In addition to committing to sourcing more sustainable cocoa, Lindt has also committed to making sure its cocoa it can trace where its cocoa beans are grown. Lindt does not use any of the major certifications but rather self-verifies its supply chain. Increased transparency throughout the cocoa supply chain is needed to help provide long-term stability to farmers and ensure that measures are working. Lindt implemented its own CLMRS program in its supply chain. Its standards/process are slightly different than the CLMRS program that the International Cocoa Initiative is using. Through the Lindt Cocoa Foundation, Lindt’s non-profit, Lindt is also working on country-specific farmer trainings/ projects, creating a child labor risk indicator with ICI, and developing a living income benchmark for Ghana.

Mondelez
Program: Cocoa Life
Financial investment: $400 million, ten years
Sustainable cocoa goals: N/A
Sustainable cocoa in supply chain: 42% in 2018
Certifications: Cocoa Life (In-house certification scheme)
Most recent sustainability report: 2018
Scorecard grade: D

Cocoa Life is Mondelez’s in-house certification scheme. It is verified by FLOCERT, the certification/standard setting arm of Fairtrade. This means that FLOCERT confirms the information is accurate, but FLOCERT and Fairtrade do not have a say in what standards Cocoa Life uses. Unlike Fairtrade, Cocoa Life does not guarantee farmers a minimum price. Premiums are awarded to farmers if they work with selected NGOs to develop plans, which removes some farmer autonomy. Furthermore, Cocoa Life standards were not written in consultation with farmers, and there is not a lot of transparency about what Cocoa Life standards are, although Mondelez and Fairtrade have said that farmers will “receive a competitive price for the cocoa” which will be “at least equivalent to [the value] previously delivered under Fairtrade.”  Cocoa Life provides farmer training on agricultural practices and sensitizes farming communities to child labor. 

In 2017, Mondelez began to implement CLMRS into cocoa communities, in partnership with the International Cocoa Initiative. We look forward to learning more about Mondelez’s CLMRS efforts in subsequent reports.

Hershey
Program: Cocoa for Good
Financial investment: $500 million through 2030 (12 years)
Sustainable cocoa goals: 80% was sustainable and certified in 2018
Sustainable cocoa in supply chain:  100% by 2020
Certifications: Fair Trade USA, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ
Most recent sustainability report: 2018
Scorecard grade: C

In 2018, Hershey launched Cocoa for Good, its new initiative. Public details about this program are still scant, and details are filled in from Hershey’s 2017 sustainability report. Under the Eliminating Child Labor portion of Hershey’s sustainability report, Hershey notes that “Hershey’s certification programs use independent authorities to verify our use of certified and sustainable cocoa in our products,” meaning that it still relies heavily on certification schemes to address child labor.

The program relies strongly on Learn to Grow program, whose goal is to improve quality and yields of cocoa. The industry theory behind improving cocoa yields is that if cocoa farmers can grow more cocoa, they can sell more cocoa and improve their income. While this sounds good on paper, this strategy has not been as effective in improving farmer livelihood in practice, especially coupled with low cocoa prices and an oversupply of cocoa. Hershey has also begun trainings for farmers. Hershey has stated that it will begin implementing CLMRS programs, and we look forward to seeing the results of its efforts.

Ferrero
Program: N/A
Financial investment: N/A
Sustainable cocoa goals: 100% certified as sustainable by 2020
Sustainable cocoa in supply chain: 75%, FY 2017/2018
Certifications: Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Utz
Most recent sustainability report: 2017
Scorecard grade: D

Ferrero’s sustainability initiatives are centered on CocoaAction, an industry initiative that most of the other companies on the scorecard are also a member of. Ferrero worked with ICI to introduce CLMRS programs to 11 co-ops/farmer organizations. In addition to the industry initiative, Ferrero’s efforts to combat child labor NGO partnerships to monitor ECOOKIM, one of the union cooperatives that Ferrero sources from in Cote d’Ivoire, and leading trainings in communities on child labor sensitization and identification.

Godiva
Program: N/A
Financial investment: N/A
Sustainable cocoa goals: 100% sustainable cocoa by 2020
Sustainable cocoa in supply chain: N/A
Certifications: N/A
Most recent sustainability report: N/A
Scorecard grade: F

Godiva has stated on its website that it has a goal of sourcing 100% sustainable cocoa by 2020. It has not indicated which certifications it is sourcing from, what progress it is making with this goal, or what additional steps it is taking to address child labor and farmer income. While its competitors publish annual reports on their progress, Godiva only reports minimal information on its website.

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Last updated July 2019

Industrial agriculture. Exposed fields that reach the horizons alternate with endless rows of corn that blur like a flip-book as you drive by. If you were to stop and touch it, the dirt in these fields would fall through your fingers like sand. This type of food production relies on synthetic chemicals and heavy mechanization. These fields are inhospitable; the only life likely to be found are monocrops, meticulously bred, planted, and controlled by humans.

Agriculture—the vast majority of it industrial—covers over one third of the earth’s surface. The soils, fields, adjacent streams, and skies above industrial farms were once the home of diverse flora and fauna, from microscopic to large mammals. But today, farming is the number one threat to wildlife. These ecosystems have been disrupted and fields are more akin to wastelands.

Globally, around 5,400 vertebrate species are threatened by agriculture and the habitat destruction, land use change, and chemical use that accompany it. Industrial agriculture and impacts from our food system reach far beyond the fence line. Animals are being affected off-farm by chemical drift, runoff, and habitat fragmentation, not to mention the impacts of human-driven and agricultural-driven climate change, which impacts species from the depths of the ocean to the poles.

Much of the current science focuses on flying creatures like birds and bees. But, a deeper dive shows that many animals (and plants!) are affected by agriculture, from the tiniest soil organisms to large mammals—this concerning and urges us to look deeper at the impacts of industrial agriculture and alternatives to the existing system.

Soil Microbes

Not much is known about extinctions that take place underground, because they mostly go unseen and unstudied. However, it is likely that this is happening at a rate higher than above ground. Much of this population and species loss is caused by the application of synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Habitat loss and climate change are also major causes of soil microbe extinctions, resulting from the compaction and desiccation of soils. Soil microbes are highly specialized, so any changes in the soil have major impacts. Healthy soils are the foundation for a resilient ecosystem, and loss of soil biodiversity has consequences for all other terrestrial species.

Indigenous Crops and Native Plants

Industrial agriculture is all about controlling nature, curating the land for human use, and choosing which plants are valuable. While much of biodiversity loss is a secondary result of farming techniques (think: habitat loss or unintended chemical runoff), plants are often eradicated on purpose (think: weeds). You may not consider plants when thinking about extinctions, but it is a very real and urgent concern, with one in eight plants facing extinction. An example you’ve likely heard of is the threatened species milkweed, which the vulnerable monarch butterfly relies on for reproduction. Milkweed is often killed with herbicides or mowed away from hedgerows and roadsides.

Beyond wild plants, agricultural diversity is also being lost. One estimate suggests that 75 percent of agricultural crops have been lost since 1900, with important rice, wheat, and yam species at risk today. This lack of diversity in food crops is risky for human food security, especially in the face of a changing climate.

Insects

Recent research shows that insect populations have shrunk by as much as three quarters in the past twenty-five years, largely due to pesticides and land use change. Many insects rely on a single type of plant, so loss of crops and native plants hits insects hard. These insects include pollinators and important sources of food for many other species higher on the food chain; humans would only survive a few months if all insects were to go extinct.

The threat of bee extinction from neonicotinoids is an often-cited concern, both on and around farms as these pervasive chemicals enter the waterways and can be found in plants and pollens far from their fields of origin. Bees are a major focus, but let’s not forget the butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, and other insects that are also pollinators and providers of other ecosystem services like controlling agricultural pests and accelerating organic matter decomposition.

Amphibians, Reptiles, and Fish

Populations of freshwater species have decreased by over 80 percent since the 1970s. These animals are sensitive to change and have narrow habitat requirements. Amphibians are especially susceptible to pollution because of their permeable skin. For example, frogs have been found to contain disruptive pesticides used decades ago on agricultural areas up to 100 miles away from their habitats; the world has lost around 200 species of frogs since the 1970s. Similarly, around one in five reptiles are at risk of extinction. Numbers for freshwater fish are even more grim, with some scientists calling them the most endangered group of animals, with more than one third facing extinction due to human impacts including agricultural runoff.

Birds and Bats

Woodland bird populations are decreasing all around the world due to habitat loss but species that rely on diverse farmlands, like the gray partridge, are hit the hardest. Farmland bird populations have decreased by over half since 1970. Not only are birds suffering from a loss of habitat and food sources, they’re also being affected by harmful pesticides like neonicotinoids that create confusion and cause migrating birds to lose their way. Bats face similar challenges from pesticide exposure and habitat loss.

Large Mammals

More sizeable animals often require larger habitats, territories, and quantities of food. Animals like foxes, coyotes, wolves, bears, mountain lions, and many others rely upon a heathy food chain and linked open areas to survive. Barren farmlands chop up diverse habitats that may have resources but in too small a quantity to support animals higher in the food chain. When all the animals listed above are threatened, these larger animals also lack a source of food.

Regenerative Agriculture (and You!) Can Keep Farms Diverse

Industrial agriculture is killing the very species it depends on. While all the above species have an intrinsic value beyond their usefulness to humans, many of them provide invaluable ecosystem services. This is especially true of the soil biome and pollinator communities that are not only hit hardest but also fill important roles on the farm like sustaining crops and keeping pests in check. For example, it is estimated that bats provide $3.7 billion of ecosystem services to US agriculture, while bees provide commercial pollination (not including wild bees or other pollinators) of $15 billion annually.

Regenerative agriculture presents a very real alternative to industrial agriculture. It employs methods specifically intended to increase soil biodiversity, which ripples out to ultimately benefit the many animals otherwise facing displacement and extinction from industrial agriculture. Regenerative grazing methods increase soil health in grasslands and forested areas to more closely mimic natural habitats than conventional approaches. Soil biodiversity is crucial for growing crops, it is also directly related to plant biodiversity. Each level of the food chain relies on the health and diversity of plants and animals below it. When you expand the lens from the ground up—beyond just the birds and the bees—the importance of species diversity becomes clear.

Organic farming methods are also a boon to biodiversity, with organic fields hosting around seventy percent more bees—for example—than conventional fields. Similarly, biodynamic methods reduce chemical usage and encourage diversity for resilience.

Humans have to farm to eat, but agriculture as we know it must change. Groups like the Wild Farm Alliance see farming as a solution to increasing biodiversity, but this isn’t going to happen in industrial agriculture. It’s going to happen on diversified systems that recognize the ecosystem services and strive to adopt methods that protect these creatures on the farm—organic and regenerative methods.

We are not helpless bystanders. You can make a difference by reducing chemical use and intentionally creating habitat on your own property. You can reduce your meat consumption, which is a major driver of habitat loss and land use change. You can use your consumer power and vote with your fork, choosing food produced with species-friendly, regenerative agriculture.

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View and download the Crop to Cup infographic here. 

A Milk Company

Milk Factory Farms & Animal Mistreatment 

The dairy industry is not what it once was. Despite consumer campaigns showing happy cows, the industry in general is more concerned with profit and efficiency than the welfare of the cows themselves. Since Starbucks does not have a dairy purchasing policy in place that specifies organic milk, nor does it mandate any animal welfare standards, most of the company's milk is sourced from industrial-scaled dairy farms. 

In the last few years, the dairy industry has become so consolidated that a few select groups control 83% of the US milk supply; Dean Foods controls 40% of the market, and combined, the four largest co-ops (Dairy Farmers of America, California Dairies, Land O’ Lakes, and the Northwest Dairy Association) control 43%.⁵ Dairy production is concentrated in only a few states, with 86% of the US milk supply produced on only 26% of the nation’s farms.⁶ Consolidation of the industry resulted in the prevalence of dairy cows raised in large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs, also known as factory farms), defined as farms with 500 or more cows.

Because of the sheer number of animals packed into tighter and tighter spaces, CAFOs are linked to animal welfare problems and public, as well as environmental health concerns.⁷ The number of cows on all American industrial dairies nearly doubled to 4.7 million between 1997 and 2007.⁸ With such large numbers in a herd, dairy cows have little to no access to grazing, instead consuming a diet of mostly genetically engineered (GE) corn, soy, cottonseed, and alfalfa.

Despite such large herds, the low cost of milk still results in farmers trying to maximize the production of milk per cow. The average amount of milk each cow produces per year has risen from 7,000 pounds in 1970 to more than 22,000 pounds in 2012. Dairies have achieved this astonishing increase in production through methods both deleterious to the health of consumers and torturous to dairy cows. In addition to the use of hormones and antibiotics, rigorous milking and feeding schedules and constant confinement contribute to higher milk outputs and much lowers lifespans for cows. 

The low lifespans and high mortality rates seen in CAFO's can be attributed to several health problems including infections, respiratory problems, leg injuries, and diarrhea. The numerous conditions dairy cows suffer and die from are easily preventable and treatable, but are overlooked in pursuit of higher production and increased profit.⁹ 

When it comes to dairy cows, there is one key thing to remember: in order for a cow to produce milk, it must first give birth to a calf. In industrialized dairy operations, calves are seen more as a byproduct of milk production rather than as actual living beings. Immediately after birth, they are taken from their mothers. Bull calves are either killed, sent to veal production facilitates, or raised for hamburger meat.¹⁰ Female calves become milk producers at fifteen months.¹¹

Every year, farm operators impregnate dairy cows through artificial insemination (the industry standard) so these animals can spend the year continually lactating. Once lactation has stopped, the farmers quickly start the cycle again. Throughout the process of impregnations and lactation, cows live in extremely crowded and unnatural conditions such as standing on the concrete floor of a barn surrounded by their own urine and feces.¹²

Once industrial dairy cows have completed their 4-5 prime years of production, they are sent to a slaughterhouse and sold off as hamburger meat (despite the fact that a healthy cow’s natural lifespan is 15-20 years).¹³

Then there are the repercussions that CAFOs have on people and the planet. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report “Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities” notes that the problematic environmental and health impacts of CAFOs are a result of the concentration of animals who produce 3 to 20 times more waste than humans every year.¹⁴ One large dairy factory farm (1,000+ cows) produces as much sewage as most large cities, such as Los Angeles.¹⁵ Cattle manure and gases, such as methane, have a drastic impact on ambient air quality and are a major contributor to climate change. In addition, not only is dairy production extremely water intensive, with producers using up to 150 gallons of water per cow per day, the waste can leach into ground water, polluting numerous ecosystems and potable water sources.¹⁶

Antibiotics in Livestock Production

While antibiotics are a key resource for human health, one of the many dirty secrets of industrialized dairy production is the widespread misuse of them. The livestock industry uses 80% of the annual antibiotics supply in the US, equaling 24.6 million pounds.¹⁷ CAFO conditions increase animal stress and poor hygiene, which increase pathogen development and decrease growth, resulting in the overuse of antibiotics.

In the dairy industry, antibiotics are most often used to treat cows who suffer from mastitis, a condition that results in painful inflammation of the cow’s udders. The most common antibiotic used to treat mastitis is penicillin.¹⁸ Mastitis is directly linked to unsanitary conditions, exposure to high levels of feces and stagnant water, confinement, poor nutrition, and high frequency of milking.¹⁹ All of these conditions are a result of an industrialized dairy system; and many of the mastitis infections could be prevented with improved living conditions and access to pasture.

Antibiotics are also commonly employed in a non-therapeutic manner (any use of antibiotics in food animals without disease or documented disease exposure) on US dairy feedlots. The most common non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in the livestock industry is for disease prevention and growth promotion. Using antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes has led to the development of antibiotic resistant (AR) bacteria (“superbugs”) in the American food system, which poses a major risk to human health. In fact, a superbug was recently found on a Midwestern hog farm that is resistant to treatment by carbapenems, a class of drugs used after all other antibiotics have failed.²⁰ 

CAFOs serve as a perfect breeding ground for bacteria; and bacteria (and their genes) can transfer from animals to humans through contact with animals, infected meat, and the consumption of crops fertilized with manure from feedlots.²¹ These bacteria have been overly exposed to antibiotics and have developed a resistance to our most depended upon antibiotics. According to the 2013 CDC report “Threat Report on Antimicrobial Resistance,” of the 2 million people who contact AR disease each year, 23,000 of them result in death.²² Many of these infections and deaths could be prevented by stopping the unnecessary use of antibiotics in factory farms.

Use of Hormones in the Dairy Industry 

In response to consumer concerns, many dairies have cut down on the use of growth hormones, like rBGH, but they are still commonly used. This is cause for concern as the use of hormones has serious implications for the health of cows and unknown implications for consumers. 

Recombinant bovine growth hormone ) rBGH) is a synthetic hormones owned by Monsanto and used widely in US dairy production. This hormone is used to increase cows' milk production. Use of rBGH is documented to cause adverse effects in cows such as increased infections like mastitis, foot problems, and injection site infections.²³ The rise in mastitis infections has resulted in the increased use of antibiotics both to treat animals and as a preventative measure. Overuse of antibiotics is responsible for the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. It is relevant to note that Bayer, which is in the process of purchasing Monsanto, owns antibiotics to treat mastitis. Once merged, Bayer will benefit financially from increased infection rates.²⁴ 

All of this is completely unnecessary; the reality is we currently produce way more milk than our country needs. In 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that in the first eight months of the year US dairy farmers had dumped 43 million gallons of milk, equivalent to 66 Olympic sized swimming pools.²⁵ Instead of producing excess, non-organic milk using antibiotics and hormones, we need to produce the correct quantities of high-quality milk to meet the actual demand for dairy products. 

GE Crops for Milk

Dairy products rely heavily on genetically engineered crops (commonly referred to as GMOs). The US animal feed industry is the largest purchaser of US corn and soybean meal.²⁷ Soy and corn are not only the top crops grown in the US, but are also the most likely to be genetically engineered (GE). With 94% of corn, 93% of soy, and 96% of cottonseed grown in the US are GE.²⁸ This vast section of our food system is controlled by only a few powerful corporations. Of the 40% of the word's GE crops that are grown in the US, Monsanto controls 80% of the GE corn market and 93% of the GE soy market.²⁹ Monsanto’s biotech seeds and traits accounted for 87% of the total world area planted with GE seeds in 2007.³⁰

Contrary to industry assertions, GE corn and soy do not feed the world. Nearly 48.7% of GE corn goes to animal feed, 30.8% to ethanol production, and 12.1% makes up the many hidden additives found in 70% of processed foods.³¹ Additionally, only 1% of soybeans are used to feed people.³² The modern cow’s diet is a direct result of the consolidation of the dairy industry and the CAFO lifestyle, despite the fact that cows were not intended to live on a diet of corn and soy.

Furthermore, contrary to industry claims, GE corn and soy have not been proven safe for consumption by livestock (or humans). Several animal studies have demonstrated significant biological impacts resulting from the ingestion of GMOs; and the health implications are still unknown and require additional research.³³ There is no scientific consensus regarding the safety of GMOs.

GE crops designed in partnership with herbicides put a heavy toll on soil quality; together, the GE system results in the elimination of key soil microbes, causing a decrease in biodiversity.³⁴ The prevalence of GE crops has led to the mass adoption of industrialized mono-cropping, causing a decline in soil quality by reducing its water absorbability and retention.³⁵

Ongoing depletion of soil quality is directly linked to an increased need for synthetic fertilizers. The heavy use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers in key agricultural regions, such as the Mississippi River Delta, run off into waterways and increase nutrients, causing algal blooms and resulting in large oceanic dead zones.³⁶ The high levels of algal blooms decrease the available oxygen for fish species causing large die offs and uninhabitable areas, impacting aquatic biodiversity and oceanic health. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico reaches high points during summer months, growing to the size of Connecticut in 2014.³⁷

Combined, these environmental impacts of GE feed make conventional dairy and extremely resource-intensive product.

Pesticides for Dairy Crops

The majority of GE corn and soy are engineered to resist toxic pesticides, most commonly glyphosate, a key component of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready line of products. Though these crops came with a promise of decreased pesticide usage, the reality is starkly different: between 1996 and 2011, herbicide use increased by 527 million pounds.³⁸ Not only do these pesticides kill soil health and biodiversity, they also have concerning implications for human and pollinator health. Exposure to pesticides is linked to increased rates of cancer and neurological disorders, especially in children, as well as reproductive harm.³⁹ Recently, the World Health Organization determined that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen to humans.⁴⁰

Overuse of glyphosate is resulting in the growing prevalence of weed resistance, causing “super weeds.” Farmers are on a pesticide treadmill where using higher levels of herbicide on their GE crops no longer kills the weeds in the field; so they are seeking stronger, more toxic chemicals.⁴¹ Despite the already visible environmental harm and health impacts of pesticides like glyphosate, the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved three herbicides that are even more toxic to human health and the environment: 2,4-D (a component of Agent Orange), Enlist Duo (a Roundup and 2,4-D combo), and dicamba.⁴²

Pesticides used on dairy feed crops also negatively impact key pollinators species such as butterflies and bees, which are responsible for pollinating at least 30% of the world’s food crop.⁴³ Neonicotinoids (neonics), a class of insecticides, appear to significantly harm honey bee colonies over the winter and are linked to colony collapse disorder.⁴⁴ 90% of US corn is pretreated with neonics.⁴⁵ In 2009, the neonicotinoid global market, of which Bayer, Syngenta, and Sumitomo (Bayer) share a collective majority, made $2.6 billion in neonicotinoids sales.⁴⁶ Monsanto is the top seller of seeds pre-treated with neonics.⁴⁷ Since one in three bites of food is pollinated, the danger pesticides present to pollinators is of major concern.⁴⁸

Conclusion

The facts are clear: Because organic certification prohibits the use of antibiotics, hormones, GE feed, and feed treated with synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, organic, small- to medium-scale dairy farms have clear environmental and health benefits over industrialized conventional dairy operations. The current industrialized system is input-intensive, with negative impacts on environmental and human health. Additionally, the animal welfare impacts of the current system are inexcusable, and it is time for things to change.

We believe Starbucks can make a positive impact at every step along the supply chain by transitioning to organic milk. Ultimately, this commitment would build the market for organic dairy overall, thereby opening up access to organic dairy for smaller coffee companies and cafes. Green America understands the current strains on the supply of organic dairy and does not expect Starbucks to make this transition overnight, but rather make a long-term commitment to more sustainable practices.

We urge Starbucks to make the following changes:

• Transition all of its dairy across its 22,000 stores to organic. In making this transition, it will support more sustainable local dairies and work to prevent further industrialization of the industry.
• Make a commitment to higher animal welfare standards for dairy cows, including clearly defining responsible usage of antibiotics, as stated in recent company welfare commitments.[43]
• Make a commitment to giving animals the maximum amount of access to pasture and grass, going beyond the organic standards.⁵²
• Be a leader in the organic milk sector and create programs to support and train farmers to transition to organic. By doing so, the company will guarantee a fair price to the farmers and help increase the supply of organic milk in the US.
• Do not pass the cost of transitioning to organics onto consumers. Starbucks can reduce the costs of organic milk adoption with an orderly transition over 5-10 years.
• Make a public statement supporting consumers’ right to know about GMOs in their food, and commit not to fund oppositional campaigns at the state and federal level.

By purchasing a large volume of organic milk, a company like Starbucks is in a unique position to trigger positive change along the entire supply chain. With its purchasing power and clout, it can be a part of making organics and grass-fed principles the norm rather than the exception, improving the landscape of dairy in the US overall.

We cannot wait for corporations to decide to make these changes indecently, we must use our purchasing power to force their hands. To do so, you as consumers can vote with your dollars at the store by shifting your purchasing practices. 

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End Notes 

1. Starbucks. (2015). Starbucks Coffee International. Retrieved from http://www.starbucks.com/business/international-stores

2. Molla, R. (2014). New York has nine Starbucks for every square mile in Manhattan. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/ numbers/new-york-has-nine-starbucks-for-every-square-mile-in-man- hattan-1647/

3. Lepore, M. (2011). 15 facts about Starbucks that will blow your mind. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/15- facts-about-starbucks-that-will-blow-your-mind-2011-3?op=1 *esti- mate based on prior calculations; Lepore, M. (2011). 15 facts about Starbucks that will blow your mind. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/15-facts-about-starbucks-that-will- blow-your-mind-2011-3?op=1 *estimate based on prior calculations

4. Starbucks. (2015). Our Company –Our Heritage. Retrieved from http:// www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information

5. Hauter, W. (2012). Foodopoly: The battle over the future of food and farming in America. New York: New Press.; Dairy Foods. (2014). The dairy 100: Enhanced dairy 100 report. Retrieved from http://www. dairyfoods.com/ext/resources/files/2014-Dairy100-Table-links1.pdf

6. Kurlansky, M. (2014). Inside the milk machine: How modern dairy works. Modern Farmer. Retrieved from http://modernfarmer. com/2014/03/real-talk-milk/

7. Hauter, W. (2012). Foodopoly: The battle over the future of food and farming in America. New York: New Press

8. Food & Water Watch. (2012). Factory farm map. Retrieved from http:// www.factoryfarmmap.org/states/us/

9. Allen, W. & Colby, M. (2016). Industrial dairy cow blues. VT Digger. Retrieved from https://vtdigger.org/2016/12/21/will-allen-michael-col- by-industrial-dairy-cow-blues/

10. Kurlansky, M. (2014). Inside the milk machine: How modern dairy works. Modern Farmer. Retrieved from http://modernfarmer. com/2014/03/real-talk-milk/; Eicher, S. (2010)

11. Environmental Protection Agency. (2012). Lifecycle production phases. Ag 101. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/dairy- phases.html

12. Kurlansky, M. (2014). Inside the milk machine: How modern dairy works. Modern Farmer. Retrieved from http://modernfarmer.com/2014/03/ real-talk-milk/; Eicher, S. (2010). Dairy cow welfare fact sheet. United States Department of Agriculture Livestock Behavior Research Unit. Re- trieved from http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/50201500/ Dairy%20Cow%20Lameness%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

13. Environmental Protection Agency. (2012). Lifecycle production phases. Ag 101. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/dairy- phases.htmldocs/understanding_cafos_nalboh.pdf

14. Hribar, C. (2014). Understanding concentrated animal feeding oper- ations and their impact on communities. Center for Disease Control. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/docs/understanding_ca- fos_nalboh.pdf

15. Food & Water Watch. (2010). Factory farm nation: How America turned its livestock farms into factories. Retrieved from http://www.factoryfar- mmap.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/FactoryFarmNation-web.pdf

16. Bohanec, H. (2014). California’s drought-Who is really using all the water?. One Green Planet. Retrieved from http://www.onegreenplanet. org/news/californias-drought-whos-really-using-all-the-water/

17. Food & Water Watch. (2014). Antibiotic resistance 101: How antibiotic misuse on factory farms can make you sick. Retrieved from http:// www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/nahms/dairy/downloads/dairy07/ Dairy07_is_ContMastitis.pdf; Benbrook, C., Benbrook, K. L., & Mellon, M. (2014). Hogging it: Estimates of antimicrobial abuse in livestock. Union of Concerned Scientists. Retrieved from http://www.ucsusa.org/ food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/ hogging-it-estimates-of.html#.VOYIFU1Ftkc 

18. Animal Welfare Approved. (2010). Dairy cattle antibiotic residue review. Retrieved from http://animalwelfareapproved.org/2010/09/27/ dairy-cattle-antibiotic-residue-review/; Wageningen UR. (2012). Antibi- otic usage in dairy cows. Retrieved from http://www.wageningenur.nl/ en/Research-Results/Projects-and-programmes/MARAN-Antibiotic-us- age/Trends-in-use-per-species/Antibiotic-usage-in-dairy-cows.html

19. Schroedery, J.W. (2012). Bovine mastitis and milking management. North Dakota State University Extension Service. Retrieved from http:// www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/dairy/as1129.pdf

20. Cooke, C. (2016). “Nightmare” bacteria resistant to last resort antibi- otics discovered on farm. Civil Eats. Retrieved from http://civileats. com/2016/12/15/26075/

21. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). Antibiotic resis- tance threats in the United States, 2013. Retrieved from http://www. cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/

22. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). Antibiotic resis- tance threats in the United States, 2013. Retrieved from http://www. cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/

23. American Cancer Society. (2014). Recombinant bovine growth hor- mone. Retrieved from https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/ recombinant-bovine-growth-hormone.html

24. Baytril. Mastitis. Retrieved from https://www.baytril.com/en/farm-an- imals/cattle/mastitis/

25. Gee; K. (2016). America’s Dairy Farmers Dump 43 Million Gallons of Excess Milk. Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ameri- cas-dairy-farmers-dump-43-million-gallons-of-excess-milk-1476284353

26. Conklin, T. (2014, February 25). An animal welfare history lesson on the Five Freedoms. Retrieved from http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/ an_animal_welfare_history_lesson_on_the_five_freedoms

27. National Corn Growers Association. (2012). World of corn: Unlimited possibilities. Retrieved from http://www.ncga.com/upload/files/docu- ments/pdf/WOC%202013.pdf

28. United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. (2014). Adoption of genetically engineered crops in the U.S. Retrieved from http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetical- ly-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx

29. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applica- tions. (2016). Brief 52 –Global status of commercialized biotech/GMO crops:2016. Retrieved from http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publica- tions/briefs/52/download/isaaa-brief-52-2016.pdf

30. ETC Group. (2011). Who will control the green economy?. Retrieved from http://www.etcgroup.org/content/who-will-control-green-econo- my-

31. National Corn Growers Association. (2013). World of corn: Unlimited possibilities. Retrieved from http://www.ncga.com/upload/files/docu- ments/pdf/WOC%202013.pdf; Hauter, W. (2012). Foodopoly: The battle over the future of food and farming in America. New York: New Press

32. Wills, K. (2013). Where to do all these soybeans go. Michigan State University Extension. Retrieved from http://msue.anr.msu.edu/news/ where_do_all_these_soybeans_go 

33. Carman, J. A., Clinch-Jones, C.A., Edwards, J.W., Haynes, J.I., Robin- son, G.W., Sneller, V.E., ...Vlieger, H.R. (2014). A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet. Journal of Organic Systems. Retrieved from http://www. organic-systems.org/journal/81/8106.pdf; Hilbeck, A. (2014). No scientific consensus on GMO safety. Environmental Sciences Europe. Retrieved from http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/s12302- 014-0034-1.pdf

34. Friends of the Earth Europe. (2013). The environmental impacts of glyphosate. Retrieved from http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/ files/press_releases/foee_5_environmental_impacts_glyphosate.pdf

35. Benites, Jose & Bot, Alexandra. (2005). The importance of soil organ- ic matter: Key to drought-resistant soil and sustained food pro- duction. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from http://www.sustainabletable.org/207/soil-quality#

36. Bruckner, M. (2012). The Gulf of Mexico dead zone. Microbial Life: Educational Resources. Retrieved from http://serc.carleton.edu/ microbelife/topics/deadzone/index.html

37. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds. (2014). Northern Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone. Wash- ington, DC. Retrieved from http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/ named/msbasin/zone.cfm

38. Gillam, C. (2012). Pesticide use ramping up as GMO crop technology backfires: study. Reuter. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/ar- ticle/2012/10/02/us-usa-study-pesticides-idUSBRE89100X20121002

39. Abrahamson, J., Leu, A., Swanson, N. L., & Wallet, B. (2014). Genet- ically engineered crops, glyphosate and the deterioration of health in the United State of America. Journal of Organic Systems, 9(2). Re- trieved from http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/Swanson_et_al_2014. pdf; Antoniiou, M., Habib, M. E. M., Howard, C. V., Jennnings, R. C., Leifert, C., Nodari R. Ro.,... Fagan, R. (2012). Teratogenic effects of glyphosate-based herbicides: Divergence of regulatory decisions from scientific evidence. Journal of Environmental and Analytical Toxicology. Retrieved from http://earthopensource.org/wp-content/ uploads/Antoniou-Teratogenic-Effects-of-Glyphosate-Based-Herbi- cides.pdf; Leon, M. E. & Schinasi, L. (2014). Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and occupational exposure to agrucltural pesticide chemical groups and active ingredients: A systematic review and meta-anlysis. Inter- national journal of environmental research and public health. Doi: 10.3390/ijerph1104044

40. Benbrahim-Tallaa, L., El Ghissassi, F., Grosse, Y., Guha, N., Guyton, K. Z. ... Straif, K.(2015). Carcinogenicity of tetrachlorvinphos, para- thion, malathion, diazinon, and glyphosate. The Lancet Oncology. Retrieved from http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/ PIIS1470-2045(15)70134-8/abstract

41. Food & Water Watch. (2013). Superweeds: How biotech crops bolster the pesticide industry. Retrieved from http://documents. foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/Superweeds.pdf#_ga=1.79981975.1042 159242.1422553281 

42. Gurian-Sherman, D. (2015). The next phase of genetic engineering: A flood of new crops evading environmental regulation. Civil Eats. Retrieved from http://civileats.com/2015/01/27/the-next-phase-of-ge- netic-engineering-a-flood-of-new-crops-evading-environmental-regula-tion/

43. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. (2014). Bio- diversity for a world without hunger: Pollinators. Retrieved from http:// www.fao.org/biodiversity/components/pollinators/en/

44. Callahan, R., Lu C., & Warchol, K. (2012). In situ replication of hon-ey bee colony collapse disorder. Bulletin of Insectology 64(1). Retrieved from http://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/ sites/216/2012/10/in-situ-replication-of-honey-bee-colony-collapse-dis- order.pdf

45. Philpott, T. (2012). 90 percent of corn seeds are coated with Bay- er’s bee-decimating pesticide. Mother Jones. Retrieved from http:// www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/catching-my-read- ing-ahead-pesticide-industry-confab

46. Simon, M. (2014). Follow the honey: 7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits. Friends of the Earth. Retrieved from http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/f0/f/4656/Fol- lowTheHoneyReport.pdf

47. Simon, M. (2014). Follow the honey: 7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits. Friends of the Earth. Retrieved from http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/f0/f/4656/Fol- lowTheHoneyReport.pdf

48. Natural Resource Defense Council. (2011). Why we need bees: Nature’s tiny workers put food on our tables. Retrieved from https://www.nrdc. org/wildlife/animals/files/bees.pdf

49. USDA Organic. (2011). Organic Production and Handling Standards. Retrieved from http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDoc- Name=STELDEV3004445 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/arti- cle?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0082429

50. ASPCA. Meat, Eggs and Dairy Label Guide. (2017). Retrieved from http://www.aspca.org/take-action/help-farm-animals/meat-eggs-dairy- label-guide

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53. Hahn Niman, N. (2010). Avoiding Factory Farm Foods. Huffpost.http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/nicolette-hahn-niman/avoiding-facto- ry-farm-foo_b_353525.html 

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

1. Choose your new bank or credit union. While picking a local bank is a good option, and a local credit union an even better option, moving your accounts to a community development bank or credit union is your best bet to matching your banking with your values. Find hundreds of options at Green America’s Get a Better Bank.
2. Open your new account. Keep your old account open as you order checks, debit cards, and deposit slips.
3. Make a list of your automatic payments and withdrawals.
4. Move your automatic deposits to your new account. Ask your employer to transfer your direct deposit paychecks to your new account. Do the same for Social Security and other deposits you receive. Ask for the date on which deposits to your new account will take place.
5. Move your automatic withdrawals to your new account, once you know you’ll have sufficient funds in the account. Ask for the date on which payments from your new account will begin. It’s wise to leave a small amount in your old account for a month after you’ve shifted your deposits and withdrawals to your new bank or credit union, just in case.
6. Get print or electronic copies of statements and canceled checks that you may later need if you have only online banking through your mega-bank.
7. Transfer the remaining funds in your mega-bank account to your new account after you have all your automatic payments and deposits transferred and any final checks have cleared your old account.
8. Close your mega-bank account! Obtain written confirmation that your account is closed. 
9. Inform your mega-bank why you’re breaking up with it. See a sample letter that you can use to make the big break.
10. Encourage your house of worship, alma mater, workplace, and community organizations to use a community development bank or credit union. 
    For congregations, turn to US SIF’s free “Community Investing Toolkit for Faith Communities.” Endowed institutions can get assistance from the Intentional Endowments Network.

Back to the Vote With Your Dollar Toolkit

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.

Since 2007, more than 100 Samsung factory workers have died due to work-related diseases and hundreds have fallen ill, according to SHARPS, an occupational health advocacy group in South Korea.  

Courts in Korea sided with one victim, ruling her leukemia was caused by dangerous chemicals she was exposed to at work. Seven years after her death, Samsung finally issued an apology to workers in 2014.

In July 2015, Samsung finally agreed to pay victims $85.8 million in compensation—in line with the recommendations of a mediation committee set up to negotiate between workers and the company.  However, so far, Samsung has ignored the core recommendation of this committee: to fund an independent non-profit foundation that will determine how to fairly distribute compensation to workers for their diseases and how to develop an effective strategy for assessing and incorporating safer chemicals into production, in order to prevent future diseases. 

Without a plan to monitor and remove hazardous chemicals from Samsung factories, young workers risked their lives every day, just by doing their jobs. Victims engaged in a sit-in in front of Samsung headquarters in order to get the electronics giant to protect workers from toxins and work with the Mediation Committee. Investigations of Samsung factories worldwide by International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) also found widespread abusive labor conditions.

Building community, when done with care and concern for the good of the commons, offers a comforting, nourishing, and collegial safety net when times get tough.

This safety net can be a particular boon for those who live far away from friends and extended family. When we make a point of forming relationships in our communities across socio-economic and racial or cultural lines, we help increase tolerance, understanding, and mutual respect, and decrease fear.

In addition, we’ll likely end up with a closely knit set of neighbors, friends, associates, and community members who are organized enough to respond to—and influence—events, threats, or opportunities that impact all the individuals within that community. In other words, we’re stronger together. Sounds good? How do you sign up to build community in your own location? Before you begin on the journey of getting more involved with your own chosen community, here are three tips to keep in mind.

Tip: Know that each of us makes a positive difference in the lives we touch.

While we each may feel lost in a digitally overloaded, heavily scheduled, complex daily routine, know that each of us truly makes a difference in the lives of others. A kind word, a loving gesture, and a thoughtful act all ripple out in waves of generosity and impact. Even five minutes of mindful conversation have an opportunity to make a measurable change in someone else’s life,,,and it builds community!

Tip: Time, talent, or treasure—measure out what works.

There will be varying levels of involvement from a retiree, a young adult, a working parent or guardian, a teen, or anyone at a transitional stage in their life. Time, for some, is the limited and precious resource that cannot be shared. For others, personal skills, talents, and gifts are not available for sharing, but time or money is available. For still others, financial resources are limited, but there is an abundance of hours available. A wise course of action is to identify what works best for you and your dependents or loved ones at any given time, and allocate your time, talent, or treasure accordingly.

Tip: Learn how to give as well as to receive.

An important lesson in building community is to learn how to give, but also how to receive. Part of the cycle of community means we are sometimes cultivating our relationships, and sometimes we are harvesting the benefits that accrue from those relationships. Pain and grief can be halved, and  joy doubled, in the process of sharing with another individual.

Keeping the above tips in mind, here are ten ways that we've gathered from friends and associates outlining how to get involved in your community.

10 Ways to Build Community

Neighborhood Involvement

Anyone in a local neighborhood, cul-de-sac, condo association, or collection of townhomes may consider reaching out to neighbors to build ties and strengthen bonds.

1) Build a Community Garden—Starting a community organic garden not only provides a way to connect with others in your community, but it also helps build local resilience by encouraging more local, organic food production. The American Community Gardening Association has plenty of resources and locally based programs to help you get started.

Consider getting the kids involved by setting aside a special children’s corner of the garden that kids can explore and plant at their own pace. And Christopher Bradshaw, who works with the nonprofit Dreaming Out Loud in Washington, DC, to build a healthy, equitable food system in the city, advises making a point to bring in older folks as well:

“Respect the agricultural knowledge already present within communities,” he says. “Engage the elders; they’ll teach you more than a book ever could.”

2) Start an Ongoing Conversation—Book clubs, hobby groups such as jewelry-making, knitting, strategy gaming, language conversation groups, or other topical gatherings are a great way to connect with kindred spirits on a regular basis. Typically held in public spaces, or restaurants, cafes, or community centers, these drop-in events may be held monthly, bimonthly, or weekly, and don’t require too much in the way of start-up costs. Oftentimes materials will be made available, so all that is needed is your presence. If you decide to organize one, publicize it at the library, community center, school, or religious center, on social media, or on community-submitted billboards.

You can even start a conversation group to help you meet new people and get new perspectives on facing the challenges in your city or town.

The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Common Good teamed to up launch a curriculum for “Resilience Circles,” or community groups that come together regularly to work on increasing personal security during these economically challenging times. Resilience circles have three purposes: learning, mutual aid, and social action for the greater good. IPS and Common Good provide resources and can help you find or start a circle in your area.

Conversation Cafes are another type of community-building group. The intention of these open, hosted groups is to “transition from small talk to big talk,” and to have “conversations that matter.” What the topic is is up to each group, though the website has plenty of ideas to get you started.

You can also meet to discuss politics. MoveOn.org or local political parties often convene informal discussions on local and national politics. Or, combine the Conversation Cafe idea with politics and meet with people whose views differ from your own, with the aim of finding areas of common ground and combating political polarization.

James Hoggan’s book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, has an abundance of advice on talking to people with different ideas and values, with civility and compassion.

3) Time Banks—Organized tools to exchange time are emerging as an excellent local way to share resources with others nearby. Research Time Banks and Hourworld for a timebank to join. This model is built on the sharing economy where time, or the “person-hour,” is used as currency. Members receive and provide gifts of time and talent with other members of the exchange. The banking software “tracks” your hours and allows you to access someone else on a need that you have: typical time-banking activities include house-painting, moving, home improvement, gardening, babysitting, elder care, computer advice, and other similar tasks. You can even volunteer to teach a skill, like carpentry and knitting, or a language.

4) Volunteering - Volunteering with a neighbor, hospital or clinic, community center, library, or nature center gives the volunteer a great sense of accomplishment, involvement, and fulfillment, and supports the community in many wonderful ways. Consider what you may offer as a volunteer: tutoring, mentoring, language practice, literacy, skills development, legal aid, food bank coordination, and translation are some of the many ways in which you reach out to your community and become an integral part of it.

For Parents/Guardians of Young Children

New parents, parents of under-fives, and first-time parents often benefit from the help and mutual aid that comes with connecting together to navigate those early years of childhood.

5) Mommy and Me/Daddy and Me—Consider joining or starting a parent-and-me group that gets together on a regular basis, both with and without children, for mutual support and knowledge sharing. Meetup.com is a great place to start: search for “Parent Groups”, or “Mommy and Me” within 5-10 miles of your location, in order to connect with other parents in a similar situation. Typical events for these include holiday gatherings such as Valentine’s Day parties, Independence Day picnics, Halloween “trunk-or-treating”, and outings such as trips to zoos and museums, weekend playdates, or nature hikes. These types of events are easy to manage, require minimal advance planning, and can usually be dispersed through different organizers within the group.

6) Babysitting Co-op—A more intentional community-building opportunity with other parents is to invites 5-7 families to set up a skills cooperative. Take turns making dinner for each other (or hold regular potlucks); providing child, pet, or elder care; or making simple household repairs. You can even band together to purchase solar panels, and save a ton of money in the process. Green America has seven more ideas for co-ops you can start yourself.

7) After-school and Extra-curricular Events—Girl Scouts and soccer are the place to be for school-aged kids. Are you able to be a co-leader, a coach, or an assistant parent? After-school gatherings such as girl groups, boy groups, or hobby groups such as computer coding, art, or nature clubs always need adults to invest a few hours to support youth. If you’re able to reach out on a leadership level, consider getting involved with your local inclusive scouting organization, such as the Girl Scouts and Navigators USA, or with local recreational sports associations or the YMCA.

8) Parent Teacher Association—The PTA, or sometimes the PTSA (Parent Teachers Student Association), provides standard ways to get involved with your children’s school. Typically duties include board and committee leadership positions for fundraising, activities, end-of-the-year events such as dances or festivals, and investments in the school’s infrastructure and supplies. Meetings are typically monthly. Find the schedule at your school website, or call the school office.

Business Outreach

Local businesses have a unique role to play in building community through their purchasing, hiring, and supply-chain decisions.

9) One-day Events—One-day events provide a focal point for private-public partnerships to congregate around a particular theme. Options can be community-wide, such as “Bike to Work Day” or “Beach Cleanup Weekend,” or they can be targeted to a specific organization like a school, clinic, or extracurricular program. Community-building might look like an organized Fun Run, with a pancake breakfast afterwards, where all proceeds going towards a specific beneficiary, and the staffing can be employees and team members from the business: everyone benefits.

10) Charity Events—Carnivals, canned food drives, holiday gift baskets, and similar charitable events may become a signature part of how a family-owned or locally-owned business integrates with their community. Consider aligning the business with a cause that closely reflects what the business offers. For example, a local pizzeria runs a canned food donation for a food bank, a bicycle shop organizes a ride to raise funds for a kids’ sports program, or a yoga center, dance studio, or fitness gym coordinates a benefit event for a local children’s hospital. Opportunities arise when business leaders decide how to best reach out around certain events and support their community, as well as provide a space and time for community members to come together.

The Walmart economy is the opposite of sustainable.

There can be no place in a sustainable economy for a corporation like today’s Walmart that advances a business model riddled with negative repurcussions—from its low-wage, environmentally destructive factories in developing countries, to shuttered local businesses all across America.

“Walmart makes the corporate business model even more destructive,” says Erin Gorman, director of Green America’s Walmart Action Campaign. “Their push to lower their costs year after year has driven down wages here and abroad, sent American manufacturing jobs overseas, rapidly expanded toxic industrial production in countries that lack rigorous labor or environmental protections, and contributed to a host of other social and environmental ills. It’s a race to the bottom where everyone loses.”

Until Walmart, the trend in the American marketplace had been to increasingly internalize the costs of doing business, from paying decent wages and offering health-care benefits, to limiting the work-week to 40 hours, to curbing environmental impact. While the job of internalizing business costs was nowhere near complete, the trend was in the right direction.

In its relentless pursuit of ever-cheaper products and ever-larger market shares, Walmart reverses that trend. Walmart externalizes its costs any way it can—by pushing its health-care costs onto local communities, for example, or by soliciting taxpayer dollars to subsidize its sprawl.

These costs, then, are born by all of us, including the low-income consumers supposedly assisted by Walmart’s “low prices.” What’s more, for individuals stuck without retail options—whether because of poverty or because big-box stores have killed off local businesses—the truth is that Walmart’s “low prices” aren’t always exactly that. Concerned consumers need to take an encompassing view of the retail situation in the US and work to provide other choices for people in our communities who are struggling economically.

At the same time, concerned consumers can use the power of their dollars to force Walmart, the largest corporation in the world, to use their infrastructure more for good than for ill. Already, Walmart rings up more sales than any other company in a host of retail categories, including toys, books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, dog food, diapers, jewelry, and groceries. Imagine if those products were all sustainably produced by workers making fair wages using processes that protect the environment.

That day is not yet here, but the good news is that the market is beginning to wake up to the problems with the Wal-Mart way, and together we can advance the momentum for change.

As Business Week reporter Roben Farzad put it, “Leave it to Walmart to double its profits to more than $10 billion in five years, blanketing the globe with more $20 DVD players than you can shake a $2 broomstick at, only to see its share price fall 13 percent over the same period.” In other words, the Walmart way won’t hold up over the long term, and Walmart needs to completely reform itself or be put out of business. Its current business model is unsustainable every step of the way.

Sweatshops: The Starting Point

The problems with Walmart begin with its supply chain, where many of the workers who make its products pay the price for low-cost items by toiling in sweatshop conditions.

Outlets as diverse as the National Labor Committee (NLC) and the Wall Street Journal continue to produce new reports on sweatshop abuses connected with Walmart’s supply chain. In 2004, NLC reported on a Chinese leather goods factory where nearly half of the workforce earns no wages at all (working instead to pay off debts for training, food, and lodging), and the Wall Street Journal exposed a Walmart toaster producer where workers’ wages were 40 percent below the minimum wage.

Chinese workers filed a class-action lawsuit against Walmart last September, alleging a range of sweatshop abuses, including “forced overtime, payment below the minimum wage, and [denial of] full overtime pay, holidays off, weekly days off, or daily rest periods.” The sweatshop problem, however, is not limited to one country. The Chinese plaintiffs were joined by plaintiffs from other countries, including the US, all alleging the same thing—that Walmart ignores its own “standards for suppliers” and tolerates abuse of workers in its supply chain.

“As the world’s largest retailer, Walmart has the power to set higher [labor] standards within the industry,” says Maquila Solidarity Network president Ian Thompson. “Instead, it continuously pressures its suppliers to produce cheaper and quicker, encouraging sweatshop abuses.”

That pressure can be devastating to suppliers that don’t or can’t bow to Walmart’s demands. Frank Garson, the last president of the Georgia-based Lovable Company, which had supplied apparel to Walmart since the retail giant’s earliest days, told Fast Company in 2003 how the shifting terms of his contract cost him his business.

“Walmart has a big pencil,” Garson said.”They have such awesome purchasing power that they write their own ticket. If they don’t like your prices, they’ll go vertical and do it themselves—or they’ll find someone that will meet their terms.”

Although the Lovable Company had once been the sixth-largest in its field, Garson’s loss of Walmart as a customer was “irreplaceable,” and the company closed its doors within three years. “Walmart chewed us up and spit us out,” he said.

US Workers: Low, Low Wages

In 2004, Walmart earned $10 billion in profits. CEO H. Lee Scott took home a salary of more than $17 million, and yet the majority of Walmart associates made wages that would place them below the poverty line for a family of four.

In 2003, the New York Times reported that Walmart’s clerks make around $14,000 a year, about $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of four. Even using Walmart’s own numbers from 2004, which claimed that a full-time Walmart worker averages $9.64 per hour, take-home pay would total around $18,000—still $1,000 below the family-of-four poverty line, as explained in John Dicker’s book The United States of Walmart.

A 2005 study by the University of California–Berkeley found that from 1992 to 2000, the total earnings of US urban workers in the general merchandise and grocery sectors were reduced by 1.3 percent after Walmart showed up in their areas. In 2000 alone, study authors estimated that Walmart depressed total earnings of retail workers nationwide by $4.7 billion. Plus, Walmart spends less per worker on employee health care than its competitors. A Harvard Business School study found that Walmart spent $3,500 per employee on health care in 2002, while the average corporation spends $5,600.

Furthermore, high premiums and limits on eligibility mean that fewer than half of Walmart workers are insured under the company plan. Full-time, non-management Walmart employees must wait six months to be eligible for the company health plan, and part-time workers must wait two years, compared to an average 2.5-month wait for retail companies as a whole. Once they are eligible, many employees decline the plan because they are unable to afford premiums and deductibles, which exclude or limit coverage for certain routine necessities like check-ups and vaccinations.

Last fall, the company proposed modest improvements to its health care plan, in the face of rising public criticism. But shortly thereafter, the New York Times published internal Walmart memos that admitted the company would try to offset its now slightly better plan by screening its pools of job applicants for only the healthiest workers.

Walmart doesn’t stop at keeping wages low and benefits inadequate. Workers in more than 30 states have sued Walmart for failing to pay overtime wages, and it currently faces a class-action lawsuit for discriminating against women in pay and promotion. In December, a California jury ordered Walmart to pay $172 million to 116,000 of its employees who had been illegally and routinely denied meal breaks.

“[L]awsuits are pending in six states accusing Walmart of forcing employees to work off the clock, to work without breaks,” states a 2005 report by the nonprofit American Rights at Work. “Walmart expects its employees to be at its beck and call. Workers at a store in West Virginia were recently informed they would be fired if they could not commit to working any shift between 7 am and 11 pm, seven days a week.”

Taxpayers: Footing the Bill

When workers can’t afford their employer’s health plan, those costs often shift from both the employer and the employee onto the taxpayers.

Three states where the Walmart effect on public health insurance programs has been measured have seen Walmart workers costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year. For example, in Georgia, Walmart employees cost taxpayers an estimated $6.6 million in 2002, with nearly 10,000 children of Walmart employees enrolled in the state’s “PeachCare” program—ten times more than from any other employer. In Wisconsin, the bill for Walmart employees depending on “BadgerCare” ran to $4.75 million in 2004, and the Knoxville News-Sentinal reported in 2005 that 25 percent of all Tennessee Walmart employees were enrolled in “TennCare.”

“Social safety net programs are, in effect, the employee benefit plan for much of Walmart's workforce,” says Phil Mattera of the nonprofit Good Jobs First. In fact, federal taxpayers spend an average of $420,750 for each 200-person Walmart store because many of its employees receive Section 8 housing assistance, low-income tax credit, low-income energy assistance, free or reduced school lunches, food stamps, and other assistance, according to a study by the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Furthermore, taxpayers often subsidize Walmart’s expansion into new towns, as the company actively shops for incentive packages from local governments, promising new jobs and other benefits. As of 2004, Phil Mattera and his colleagues had identified many different types of Walmart subsidies, including free or low-cost land, road construction projects, and income tax credits, totalling more than a billion dollars in assistance to Walmart—the largest corporation in the world.

Since there’s no single source of information on this topic, Mattera says Good Jobs First pieced its information together through painstaking research of news articles and interviews with local officials. Because the group couldn’t research every single Walmart (there are more than 3,500 in the US alone), Mattera acknowledges that the billion dollars in subsidies is likely only “the tip of the iceberg.”

Local Businesses: Shut Out

As early as 1989, when the New York Times Magazine profiled the decline of local businesses in the town of Independence, Iowa, observers were already sounding the alarm about the cost of Walmart to local economies. A year after Walmart came to town, a dozen of Independence’s local businesses—some of which had thrived downtown for more than 100 years—had folded and closed their doors.

“Walmart just cannibalizes Main Street,” a retail analyst told the Times about the transformation of Independence. “They move into town and in the first year they’re doing $10 million. That money has to come from somewhere, and generally it’s out of the small [businessperson’s] cash register.”

Unfortunately, the town felt it had no choice but to accept Walmart’s advances. “Walmart threatened us,” the Independence mayor told the Times. “They told us if they didn’t build here, they’d build nearby, and that would have been equally hard on us.”

By 1995, University of Iowa researchers looked at the impact of Walmart stores on Iowa communities in the decade since Walmart established its first Iowa store, in 1983. They found that between 1983 and 1993, the home-grown businesses of Iowa’s small towns tended to lose between 16 and 46 percent of their sales after Walmart came to town, causing many of them to collapse.

Today, local communities are still feeling the effects when Walmart comes to town. When the first Walmart Supercenter (a gigantic Walmart that also sells groceries) moved into La Quinta, California, in 2004, it took only eight months for the Los Angeles Times to begin reporting wage and benefit losses to other workers in the local economy.

The Environment: Exporting Pollution, Importing Sprawl

When the once-vibrant city-centers of towns like Independence, Iowa, fade away, and consumers start driving to big-box developments on the edge of town, you’ve got sprawl.

Sprawl threatens air and water quality, reduces wildlife habitat and open space, and creates requirements for expensive new infrastructure. Also, with the average Walmart Supercenter generating 7,000 to 10,000 car trips each day, each new Wal-Mart store can represent massive new emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants with a devastating effect on local communities.

The nonprofit Sprawl-Busters also calls attention to Walmart’s habit of closing one of its smaller stores to build an even bigger one close by—then often standing in the way of their abandoned buildings’ reuse. A 2004 Wall Street Journal article quoted real estate agents and community officials asserting that sometimes, Walmart “creates roadblocks when other discount merchandisers or supermarkets have expressed interest in its shuttered buildings.” As a result, by the end of 2004, Sprawl-Busters reported that it had found 356 empty buildings that Walmart had available for sale or lease—enough empty space to fill 534 football fields.

In the US, Walmart has been fined for multiple violations of environmental regulations like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, but it is perhaps the Walmart business model, with its emphasis on seeking ever-lower prices, that fuels the most disastrous of Wal-Mart’s impacts on the environment. Heather Rogers, author of Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, told Grist magazine, “The real environmental impact comes from what Walmart sells: cheap commodoties that are designed to wear out quickly.”

What’s more, Walmart’s pursuit of cheap labor around the globe has exponentially increased the amount of fossil fuels needed to get a product onto a Walmart shelf. While sourcing locally dramatically reduces fuel and energy use, Walmart focuses on distributing goods shipped from overseas via the nation’s largest company-owned fleet of trucks (which averages around 6.5 miles per gallon). Walmart doubled its Chinese imports in the first five years of the 21st century, and in countries like China, Walmart’s environmental impact is felt even more acutely because the company can take advantage of weaker environmental standards.

According to Elizabeth Economy, author of The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future, 400,000 people die in China every year because of respiratory infections related to air pollution. She told “Talk of the Nation” host Neil Conan in December that China now contains 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, and that nearly three-quarters of the country’s rivers are polluted with toxins, acid rain, and erosion.

As Conan remarked, “Those factories in towns that churn out everything from your latest sneakers to the shiny new bicycle under a Christmas tree also pump out toxic chemicals and waste.”

Pushing a Political Agenda

With its ever-increasing market share, Walmart profits have allowed Walton family members to claim four of the top ten spots in the Forbes list of wealthiest people, and they’re using their money to support controversial causes such as school vouchers and the repeal of the estate tax.

The St. Petersburg Times reports that in 2004, Walmart made $2.7 million in political contributions (about 80 percent of which went to Republicans), and Sam Walton’s family donated $3.2 million during the 2004 election cycle, with most of the money going to pro-Bush groups.

Even beyond the political arena, many find that Walmart pushes an ideology in its stores, using its influence to determine what products are available to consumers.

For example, AlterNet reports that the company pulled a T-shirt reading “Someday a woman will be president” from the sales floor because “the message goes against Walmart values.” And Business Week notes that Walmart has banned popular books like talk-show host Jon Stewart’s America: The Book, refuses to stock the morning-after pill, Preven, and yet continues to stock inexpensive firearms. 

According to AlterNet, “The political bias inherent in Walmart’s criteria becomes clearer when Wal-Mart’s merchandiser for films found Robert Greenwald’s acclaimed documentary, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, inappropriate for Walmart. For no conceivable reason could a documentary involving no gratuitous violence, expletives, or sex be inappropriate, other than its criticism of a conservative political administration.”

Beyond the Wal-Mart Economy

With Walmart’s cost of doing business so high, can any of us really afford to shop there?

More and more, US consumers are saying they’ve had enough of Walmart. In fact, as of July 2005, nearly 300 communities nationwide had successfully kept Wal-Mart out—a number that’s growing all the time.

With the word clearly spreading on the costs of the Walmart economy, Walmart CEO Lee Scott gave a speech in October saying that last summer’s Hurricane Katrina opened his eyes to Walmart’s responsibilities to both local communities and the larger world. He announced small steps forward for Walmart in areas like employee health care and his stores’ environmental footprints. While praising a co-manager of a Mississippi store who handed out emergency supplies from flooded Walmart to needy evacuees during the hurricane, Scott called her actions “Walmart at its best” and asked, “What would it take for Walmart to be that company, at our best, all the time?”

Right now, while Walmart appears to be at a crossroads, is the critical moment for concerned consumers to step forward and tell Lee Scott the answer to the question.

Together, we can increase the pressure on Walmart and demand real improvements. We can work to protect communities that will be hurt by Walmart's presence, and most of all, we can refuse to buy products whose journey from the factory to the check-out line is tainted by externalized costs to workers, communities, and the environment.

Together, we can say “no” to Walmart’s business model and start moving beyond the Walmart economy. 

If you’re using a credit card issued by a mega-bank such as Citi, Bank of America, Chase, or Wells Fargo, each credit card swipe could be supporting destructive pipelines, fracking, tar sands, predatory lending, fraudulent foreclosure practices, and outrageous CEO salaries.

Instead, you could be supporting a clean environment, local and green businesses, fair housing loans, and more with a Green America credit card!

Green America partners with TCM Bank, N.A. to issue their own Visa cards, as well as affinity cards affiliated with non-profit organizations that support various progressive missions. TCM Bank is owned by ICBA Bancard, a subsidiary of the Independent Community Bankers of America.

These cards offer competitive terms and rewards points with no black-out dates for travel.

If you are an existing card holder and you have questions about your account, please contact a TCM Bank customer service representative at (800) 883-0131 and press "0" for operator, or email TCMBank@tcmbank.com. 

Find out more about how you can manage your Green America credit card at TCM Bank. 
Green America's member services are not able to answer any questions about your account.  

In addition to the Green America credit card, there are many more responsible credit cards and financial institutions to choose from.

The place where we spend time with family, eat meals, and sleep is a special place. Whether you're planning a remodel or just tidying up, incorporate green into your life at home.

This is the fifth blog of a series describing the five methods that make up regenerative agriculture—perennial plants & diverse crops, zero/low tillage & mulching, cover cropping & crop rotation, composting, and managed grazing. Implementation of these methods is site specific and depends on soil characteristics, crops grown, and local climates. Practices are rooted in organic methods and can be integrated into farms and pastures transitioning from conventional to organic. They also have a role in smaller-scale climate gardens, where individuals do their part to sequester carbon and contribute to a local, sustainable food system. 

All agriculture sequesters carbon from the air through photosynthesis. But, regenerative agriculture ensures more carbon is stored than released and keeps the drawn down carbon underground. This effectively reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increases the amount of soil carbon available for healthy crops.

In agriculture, there is major potential for managed grazing to provide beneficial outcomes both for the climate and beyond. There are many types of grazing systems that rotate livestock to maximize animal and soil health, with different schedules for grazing and quantity of animals allowed on the fields.

Adaptive multi-paddock grazing (AMP) is considered one of the most regenerative systems for grazing livestock, in which the animals are managed to mimic the constantly moving, vast herds of wild herbivores that once grazed the prairies. That is, the animals stay to graze for a short period of time before being moved to the next field, with the rest/recovery period being relatively long before the animals return for subsequent grazing. This is quite different from conventional grazing practices, which often allow for continuous grazing and no time for regeneration.

AMP grazing draws down and stores carbon, but it also has vast implications for the health of livestock, land, and soil microbial communities. Under truly regenerative and holistically managed systems, living soils can be diverse and healthy enough to mitigate the methane produced by the livestock in real time. 

AMP grazing and other methods of intensely managed grazing decrease the need for conventionally grown, annual feed crops that emit carbon and other greenhouse gases, because the animals are eating directly from the land in ways that restore ecosystem functions and health. This high-quality and naturally-occurring feed reduces methane emissions from livestock, as it is easier for them to digest (also decreasing the need for antibiotics). It lessens the need for energy intensive petroleum-based chemical fertilizers and herbicides, because the animals are enriching the land naturally as they forage and leave manure and urine behind. Their impact on the land restores a healthy soil microbiome, increases the density of plants that cover the land surface, and—when incorporating perennial and native forages or trees—are able to store even more carbon deep underground, increasing its long-term stability. Other benefits include reduced erosion, improved biodiversity, and decreased air and water pollution from inefficient manure management. 

Many methods in regenerative agriculture can be implemented on any scale, including that of a climate garden. But, we recognize that many household-level operations do not keep livestock or have sufficient space for rotational grazing. Because of this, we have a slightly modified suggestion for climate gardens. If you don’t have animals, see if there’s a way for you to source manure locally to incorporate into your compost (remember, certain plants prefer certain types of manure). If you do have animals, do your best to source off-farm feed from organic (and even regenerative) producers.

Whether you’re a consumer, farmer, or climate gardener, holistic grazing and livestock management are important. It is just one of many tools and practices that make up a regenerative agricultural system and bring many benefits to local ecosystems and the people involved from production to consumption. Meat is one of the food system’s highest polluting sectors, so even small changes here can lead to big impacts.

If you’re unable to implement these practices directly, use your consumer power and speak with your dollars to show your support. Demand grass-fed beef. Research the methods used to produce the meat on your table, and buy from those who use AMP grazing and other climate-aware approaches. Without strong signals from consumers, not enough farmers and ranchers will switch to these practices in the timeframe needed to reverse current climate trends that threaten food security and the future of our planet. 

Even when the economic climate is foggy, there’s reason to be hopeful for some sunshine: according to the World Economic Forum, green skills are in high demand this year, and “green” job postings are growing nearly twice as fast as the number of people with the right skills. 

London Stock Exchange’s 2024 “Investing in the Green Economy” reports the green economy–including but not limited to renewable energy, clean transportation, green buildings and water management–as the second-highest performing industry with a market capitalization of over $7.2trn in 2024.  

With Baby Boomers retiring in huge numbers, increasing concern about the high cost of energy, and green career training programs popping up across the country, there are more and more opportunities for people interested in employment that also makes a difference in the world. 

What is a Green Job? 

Before you start your journey to find a green job, it’s important to know what to look for. A green job is any job that supports environmental and social responsibility. 

This includes solar panel installers and engineers, organic landscapers, holistic health care providers, advocates for social justice and poverty reduction, socially responsible investment advisors, community organizers, and more. 

In addition to focusing on environmental sustainability, green jobs are often financially sustainable. Many of them—especially clean tech—are jobs that “pay well and provide job security,” says Todd Larsen, Green America’s director of corporate responsibility. They pay well because they require specialized skills, and they’re secure because many of the jobs can’t be outsourced overseas. According to a 2010 report published by Clean Edge Inc. in partnership with Green America, it’s more cost-effective to manufacture products like wind turbines close to where they’ll be used, because of shipping costs due to the sheer size. Plus, jobs like retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient must be done where the building is physically located. 

Where Do I Start? 

There are many resources to assist you in finding a green job. The clean tech report lists the leading resources for green-job seekers in an index. Whether you’re new to the job market or are looking for a change of pace, there’s a tool out there to help you snag a green job. 

Now is the perfect time to take advantage of college courses or training programs related to green jobs. In addition to the growing need for these jobs, many current employees—especially in the energy sector—will retire soon, according to the Clean Edge/Green America report. With so many people leaving the workforce while so much technological advancement is taking place, it’s the perfect time for job seekers to learn new green skills. Career training and educational opportunities are blossoming, even in the face of an economic crisis. 

“Education booms when the economy goes bust, so this is a great time to go back to school and retool for the future,” says Jill Bamburg, a co-founder of the Pinchot University in Seattle (formerly Bainbridge Graduate Institute) and author of Getting to Scale: Growing your Business without Selling Out (Berrett-Koehler(m), 2006). Here are some different educational opportunities that will put you on the path to a greener career: 

College degrees 

Check out local community or four-year colleges, or graduate schools for green programs of study that interest you. These could range from sustainable agriculture to wind energy to green business degrees. Colleges like Pinchot also offer students a great network for finding a job after graduation, as well as what Bamburg calls “credential”—proof you are serious about green employment. 

“The credential is a door-opener—something that appears on your resume and indicates that your interest in doing ‘green’ things has gone beyond the talking stage,” says Bamburg. “You’ve actually pursued training to make yourself useful to an employer—and it gives you something to talk about in an interview.” 

Whether you’re headed to college or grad school for the first time, or going back to learn new skills and information, you’ll be ahead of the game by focusing your education on an environmentally and socially responsible career. 

“Many of our students are mid-career professionals or people who are looking for a second career that is more aligned with their values than their first career was. They simply add their new sustainable business skills and credential to the rest of their resume,” says Bamburg. 

RESOURCES: See below a list of colleges with a sustainability focus that are approved Green America Business Network™ members, and search "education" on GreenPages.org. 

Certifications, Trainings, and Apprenticeships: 

Whether you’re new to the workforce or a seasoned vet, certifications and training programs are valuable resources, and they are especially prominent and necessary in the energy sector. 

When you complete a certification or training program, you learn skills directly related to energy efficiency and sustainability. You might learn how to install a solar panel, how to reuse or salvage construction materials, or how to sell a house and emphasize positive environmental attributes. There are plenty of sectors where knowledge about energy efficiency is becoming essential, so these programs are especially great for people who want to take a green step forward in their jobs. 

On-the-job training is a great way to learn skills, and there are many apprenticeships available across the country. 

RESOURCES: Visit Apprenticeship USA to search for apprenticeships by state, and look for apprenticeships that support environmental sustainability and social justice. 

The Job Hunt 

As the green job market grows, more job fairs, job boards, websites, and career centers are offering guidance toward green jobs. Here are some leading green job resources: 

• Job boards: There are many sites devoted to green jobs—Green Dream Jobs, Green Jobs Network, GreenBiz Jobs, Renewable Energy Jobs, ZeroHero.net, and Idealist are also full of nonprofit jobs that support sustainability and social justice, no matter what your field of knowledge may be. 

• Career centers: One-stop career centers offer a comprehensive set of resources for job seekers. At these centers, people can access a variety of work-related resources: resume writing guides, career counseling, the Internet and telephones, employer referrals, and more. Meet with a representative at the center to talk about how to accomplish green career goals. 

• Networking: Get your foot in the door toward a green job through networking. Key networking avenues are job fairs and green-job conferences, where you can meet employers and learn more about green jobs, and networking and social media sites, where you can connect with people online in the green marketplace. Don’t be afraid to contact people even if they can’t give you a job—having a quick chat with someone from a business or nonprofit you like could provide valuable information and contacts. 

• Volunteering is another great way to get acquainted with and make contacts in different green job sectors; prove yourself as a reliable, hard-working employee for possible job openings in the future; and help organizations support worthwhile causes. 

RESOURCES: Visit Career One Stop for more information, and its Find Local Help tool to find a nearby career center. Also, try contacting a green career-consulting firm like the Center for Meaningful Work to help you on your quest for a green job. 

LinkedIn is a great social networking tool for job seekers who want to connect with people in the green job world. Aside from posting your professional experience for prospective employers to see, you can join LinkedIn groups specific to green jobs, such as: Green Jobs & Career Network, Cool Climate Jobs, Clean/Green Opportunity, Clean Edge Jobs, and Green Energy and Sustainability Careers and Jobs. LinkedIn allows job seekers to find employers, employers to search for possible employees, and people to make contacts in the green business world and learn more about green jobs. 

Find volunteering positions at Idealist or VolunteerMatch. 

Green Your Current Job 

If you want a job that supports sustainability and social justice but don’t want to leave your current career, then green your current job instead of looking for a new one. Or, if you own a business, try greening that, too. 

“It’s important to know you can do almost anything in a green way,” says Larsen. “There’s clothing that’s green, house cleaning that’s green, investors that are green—whatever your skills are, there are things anyone can do to contribute to a greener workplace.” 

Whether it’s working to increase your workplace’s energy efficiency, starting a carpool at work, or looking at the core business and trying to make it more environmentally and socially responsible, you can also take steps in your current job to make it and your workplace greener. 

Updated September 2024

Agriculture and Climate Change

Agriculture and forestry practices account for at least 24 percent of global carbon emissions and 9 percent of U.S. carbon emissions (1). Under current land management practices, agriculture remains one of the leading contributors to global carbon emissions. However, it is the only economic sector with the potential to transform itself from a net carbon emitter to a net sink using practices broadly classified as “carbon farming”. These practices can help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and store it for long periods of time in soil, microorganisms, and plant matter. Climate scientists estimate that 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide would need to be removed from the atmosphere to halt and begin to reverse the effects of climate change (2). The world’s agricultural soils can meet this challenge if change the way we grow food (3).

What is carbon farming?

Carbon farming is a broad set of agricultural practices across a variety of farm types that result in increased storage of atmospheric carbon in the soil. Many of these practices are common in organic farming, regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and other approaches to food production. When plants photosynthesize, they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. When they die, this carbon is either released back into the atmosphere or it is stored for long periods of time in the soil. Many conventional agriculture practices result in the release of carbon, while practices classified under carbon farming aim to do the opposite.

Some examples of practices that farmers (or even gardeners) can employ to help sequester carbon and improve soil health include:

1. Leftover biomass is returned to the soil as mulch after harvest instead of being removed or burned.
2. Conventional tillage practices are replaced by conservation tillage, no till, and/or mulch farming.
3. Cover crops are grown during the off-season instead of leaving croplands bare.
4. Continuous monocultures are replaced by high diversity crop rotations and integrated farming practices.
5. Intensive use of chemical fertilizers is replaced by integrated nutrient management and precision farming.
6. Intensive cropping is replaced by croplands integrated with trees and livestock.
7. Surface flood irrigation is replaced by drip, furrow, or sub-irrigation.
8. The indiscriminate use of pesticides is replaced by integrated pest management techniques.
9. Marginal and degraded soils are restored to their natural states instead of being used as cropland.

Many of these practices can be used in combination with one another or applied one at a time. Almost all cropland can be improved with these practices and more. We have the science and technology; the real barriers to changing our agricultural system are economic, social, and political barriers.

Benefits of carbon farming

In addition to offsetting emissions, carbon farming practices have the added benefits of restoring degraded soils, enhancing crop production, and reducing pollution by minimizing erosion and nutrient runoff, purifying surface and groundwater, and increasing microbial activity and soil biodiversity. It is important to recognize the value of these other benefits, so they don’t aren’t overlooked when implementing policies that encourage carbon sequestration in soil.

The added benefits of carbon farming mean that more food can be produced with less pollution while building soil and sequestering carbon dioxide. If accomplished at a large enough scale, carbon farming practices have the potential to begin to reverse the catastrophic effects of climate change. Promoting and growing the use of these practices is one of the best avenues for meeting carbon emissions reduction goals and mitigating climate change (3).

(1) “Greenhouse Gas Emissions." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, Web. 23 Nov. 2016.

(2) Hansen

(3) Lal

Diamonds, rubies, and other gems have long been prized for the beauty they bring to engagement rings and other fine jewelry-but in recent years, more and more people have become aware of the ugly story behind some of the world's most precious stones. Read on to learn more about the concerns associated with precious gems, and what you can do to support ethical jewelry, reducing gems' cost to workers, communities, and the Earth.

Worker and Community Hazards

Gemstone mining can be hazardous to the health of workers and communities alike. Diamond miners often work in cramped and unsafe conditions in tunnels, and dust from the mines can cause respiratory diseases in workers and residents of nearby communities. Mining of colored gemstones, such as rubies and emeralds, is generally done on a smaller scale than diamond mining, but still holds risks. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), many small-scale miners are unable to invest in the tools and equipment that could prevent accidents. Because mining involves moving large amounts of earth, it can also alter local ecosystems and damage watersheds. And, although many of the countries where gems are mined have laws setting a minimum age for workers in hazardous occupations, the ILO has also documented child labor in mines.

Child labor is also a problem in the cutting and polishing phase of both diamond and colored gemstone production, much of which takes place Asia; according to the ILO, India alone polishes 70 percent (by weight) of the global diamonds yield. In her book Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Empire (The Disinformation Company, 2003), Janine Roberts explains, "Child labor is illegal in India, but this law is much ignored. Sharp young eyes are much prized by Indian diamond traders."

The human suffering linked to gem production doesn't end with those who mine and cut the stones. In Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, profits from diamond sales have funded weapons purchases for armed opposition groups such as Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front, which perpetrate human rights abuses.

Conflict Diamonds

The nonprofit human rights group Global Witness first brought international attention to the issue of 'conflict diamonds' fueling and prolonging violent conflicts in 1998. Along with Physicians for Human Rights and other groups, they raised consumer awareness of diamonds' link to war and called on diamond dealers to stop buying stones from countries where diamond sales are used to fund armed conflicts. The United Nations Security Council officially recognized the role of conflict diamonds in prolonging violent conflicts in some countries, and then urged the diamond industry to develop a global tracking system that would confirm the origins of uncut stones and establish a paper trail of ownership.

Michael Fleshman, writing in the UN magazine Africa Recovery in 2001, credits NGO campaigns with making the diamond industry more receptive to the UN's call for a global tracking system than it otherwise would have been.

Members of the diamond industry began meeting about the issue in 1999, and in 2002, the industry launched the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. The Kimberley Process, which entered into force in January of 2003, requires countries exporting rough diamonds to ship them in tamper-proof containers along with certificates guaranteeing the packages' origins and contents. Countries receiving the shipments must certify that they have not been tampered with. Only countries that belong to the Kimberley Process can legally trade in rough diamonds.

Several human rights groups have acknowledged the Kimberley Process as a step in the right direction while criticizing its lack of independent monitoring and verification. Groups such as Global Witness and Amnesty International continue to press the diamond industry to add auditing, verification, and oversight components to the Kimberley Process. Other advocacy groups are drawing attention to the way people, many of them indigenous groups who've lived on the same land for centuries, can face eviction when gem deposits are discovered in their areas.

Ethical Jewelry is Changing the Gem Industry

According to Brian Leber, president of Leber Jeweler Inc, "The diamond industry tried to stonewall when the 'conflict diamond' story first broke, but they responded once the public pressure got strong enough." Now, Leber and Eric Braunwart, president of Columbia Gem House, Inc./Tri-Gem Designs, are working to get the colored gem industry to join the diamond industry in moving toward fair, sustainable practices and produce ethical jewelry.

Before the US banned imports from Burma in 2003, Leber urged the colored gem industry to stop buying Burmese rubies, which were funding the abusive military junta in power there. According to Professional Jeweler magazine, major retailer Tiffany & Co. will begin purchasing Burmese rubies again, since rubies mined in Burma but cut elsewhere are exempt from the import restrictions. Leber says his company will continue to refuse to sell Burmese rubies, and will instead support the Jewelers' Burma Relief Project, founded by Leber in 2004, which works with the Foundation for the People of Burma to provide direct medical, educational, and micro-business development assistance to the Burmese.

Braunwart, meanwhile, has developed a system that applies fair trade principles to the production of colored gemstones. Columbia Gem House's extensive protocols include "environmental protection, fair labor practices at the cutting and jewelry factories, and a tight chain of custody," Braunwart explains. As an example, he describes Columbia's relationship with the Chimwadzulu Mine in Malawi, where rare Nyala ruby is found: the company pays above-minimum wage and offers health benefits to workers, and it has built a school for the workers' children. Uncut stones go directly from this mine to Columbia's Chinese cutting factory, where workers are paid three times the minimum wage and receive benefits that include room and board, food allowances, paid vacation, and medical and disability insurance.

"This isn't just good for the workers," says Braunwart. "It's good for business, too, because satisfied workers put more effort into improving the quality of the product. Turnover is low, so workers become very experienced and skilled. As a result, the quality of our products rivals any in the world." Gem retailers and jewelry purchasers will pay more for high-quality products, and it seems they'll also seek out gems that are more socially responsible than standard offerings: Braunwart says that Columbia Gem House's sales have surged 20-30 percent annually since he introduced his Fair Trade Gems Initiative in 2001.

Some of Columbia's gems are turned into jewelry at its Tri-Gem Design subsidiary, while others are sold to jewelry retailers such as Leber Jeweler Inc. and Sumiche Jewelry Co.. "Ideally, we'd be able to deal directly with the people who mined the stones, so we could be sure that they were being produced under fair conditions, but for a business as small as ours, it just isn't feasible," says Sumiche president Miché Onaclea. "I need to find suppliers I can trust to perform the oversight, like Columbia Gem House."

Onaclea notes that customers have responded well to her company's responsible gems. "Some people had been avoiding buying gems because they'd learned about the conditions some of them were produced under, so they were glad when we started offering alternatives."

As the current president of the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA), Braunwart has convinced the organization's board to consider ways to adapt AGTA’s code of conduct to include "best practices" for gem sourcing. "The industry is slowly becoming more aware of the issues around where our gems come from," he says-and notes that at February’s AGTA conference, three presentations were on issues related to fair trade, making it "the buzz of the show."

What You Can Do To Support Ethical Jewelry

You can help improve conditions for miners, cutters, and communities around the world:

• Seek out responsible alternatives: Buy ethical jewelry from companies that have taken steps to ensure that their gems were produced responsibly. Green America’s National Green Pages™ lists several such companies, including some that get their products directly from fair trade cooperatives. Some also offer jewelry made from recycled or responsibly mined metals. (See "Gold Loses Some Glitter," Real Money Jan/Feb 2005, to learn about concerns around gold.) Or, get your jewelry secondhand.
• Ask questions: "Consumers play the critical part," says Braunwart. "Most businesses won't change their policies because it’s the right thing to do; they’ll change once they see there's a demand for more responsible products." Let jewelry retailers know that you're concerned about issues surrounding gemstone production and ask what they are doing to address such concerns. Also ask where stones came from and what kind of documentation they have to trace them. The trade association Jewelers of America has developed a "Social, Ethical, and Environmental Statement of Principles" that its members can use to guide their business practices. If your jewelry retailer is a member, you can ask whether it has adopted these principles. Also, Leber cautions consumers not to assume that synthetic gems are necessarily more responsible-these gems, like real ones, may be cut under unhealthy conditions by workers paid starvation wages. Ask where and under what conditions synthetic gems were cut.
• Support campaigns: Learn more about the issue of conflict diamonds and support human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Global Witness that are pressuring the diamond industry to make the Kimberley Process an effective tool.
• Spread the word to your friends and family. Together, we can make the production of gemstones safer and more ethical for all involved.

Share rides to work, school, worship, and more to cut pollution and build community.

When Anne Benson took a colleague’s suggestion and joined a long-standing daily carpool from Shirlington, VA, to downtown Washington, DC, she wasn’t looking for romance. She was just hoping to share gas costs with three other colleagues, to take advantage of Virginia’s faster “HOV” highway lanes for cars with more than one passenger, and to benefit from her employer’s reserved parking spaces for carpoolers.

Three years later, after Anne and her three carpool-mates, including Andrew Miller, had shared many conversations on the afternoon drives home, carpooling turned out to have another perk: Anne and Andrew fell in love.

“We met and got to be friends through the carpool,” recalls Anne. “It was funny when we told [the other two carpoolers] that we were dating! And we have a picture of the ‘carpool table’ at our wedding.”

Now living in Annandale, VA, Anne and Andrew still ride to work together, now with two little passengers—their four- and five-year-olds, in carseats—as well as one colleague from the original carpool started 16 years ago.

Setting up a carpool isn’t guaranteed to lead to true love. But even without any prospect of romance, ride-sharing offers a win-win-win proposition for people, planet, and your pocketbook. Many cars have seats for at least four or five passengers, and yet fully 44 percent of the almost a billion personal car trips each day in the US are driven with only one of those seats occupied, according to the US Department of Transportation.

Every empty seat in the hundreds of millions of cars on the road represents a missed opportunity to save money, reduce traffic and pollution, and build community through a shared ride. While the idea of carpooling isn’t new, several new Internet sites and applications make it easier than ever to publicize open spots in your car and to safely seek out promising carpool partners.

The Perks of Carpooling

Ridesharing websites have reported that rising gas costs have inspired a recent spike in interest in carpools. Forming a shared ride is a great strategy for splitting your current gas costs in half or even three or four ways.

Sharing rides also means that participants drive less, which has a major environmental benefit. Cars produce carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gasses that cause global warming. Closer to the ground, cars produce smog that contributes to asthma and other public health problems. For trips where walking, biking, or public transportation aren’t an option, ride-sharing is a powerful way to cut down on car miles driven.

And as Anne and Andrew discovered rather dramatically, sharing rides is a way of connecting with people. Scholar of “social capital” Robert Putnam, the author ofBowling Alone (Simon & Schuster, 2001), has documented that across the population, every ten minutes of additional commuting time is correlated with a ten percent lower level of social connectedness. Ridesharing introduces good company into what otherwise might be solitary car trips. In carpools, neighbors can meet, sharing stories and conversation.

Share Rides to Work, School, and Worship

If you don’t have a friend or co-worker ready and willing to carpool with you, new online tools can make finding carpool partners easy and safe.

Interested riders can click on the ride offers to see the routes illustrated on an online map, and can e-mail each other through the system anonymously to begin coordinating a carpool. Happy carpoolers can even give a “thumbs up” approval rating to their ride companions online to let other ride seekers know that a particular driver is safe behind the wheel, or a particular rider is punctual or makes for pleasant company. (Use caution in making initial contact with strangers, as you would in responding to any Internet or print classified advertisement.)

 A number of other companies offer similar ridesharing internet services that employers can make available to their employees, including RideShare.com, ZimRide.com, and carpool groups at Carpoolworld.com.

Facebook users can coordinate rides with friends and those in their school or workplace-based network by downloading its free Carpool application, powered by Zimride. 

Share Rides to Events

Next time you’re planning a car trip to a large gathering such as a conference, concert, sports game, festival, or celebration, look for an opportunity to share rides there and back.

SpaceShare.com develops customized ridesharing applications for large festivals, conferences, and community events.

AlterNetWays Company will provide a customized ridesharing application for the Web site of an event of any size, including a private wedding or commitment ceremony, for $50. AlterNetWays’ existing institutional customers, such as universities, can purchase a package of ten events for $100.

“Think about football games,” muses AlterNetWays’ Evanoff, noting that universities could help organize ridesharing to both home and away games. “Somewhere on the university’s Web site about upcoming football games, there will be the date, who they’re playing, and a link to click to buy tickets. Universities could add just one more link that says ‘click here to carpool to this game.’”

For private events like weddings or family reunions, there are a variety of free technologies that can help participants find a ride. For example, hosts can set up a spreadsheet online through a Google Docs spreasheet with columns for name, contact information, rides offered, rides needed, origin and destination, and “match made,” and create a public URL for the document that you can share with guests by e-mail (http://docs.google.com, select “Anyone can edit this document without logging in at”) For events to which guests are invited using the electronic invitation service Evite.com, guests can indicate when they RSVP if they would be interested in offering or accepting a ride.

Share Rides in Town

Many local ridesharing resources serve particular metropolitan areas. Many lively local Web sites, sometimes established by the municipal transportation authority, help citizens share rides.

 For example, in Central Texas (www.commutesolutions.com) neighbors collaborate locally to set up carpools for one-time and recurring car trips.

AlterNetWays Company also works directly with local transportation authorities to provide a customized application that allows residents to coordinate ridesharing through the city or county’s transportation Web site. Check your municipality’s transportation department Web site to see if there’s a carpooling Web site in your area.

Share Rides Out of Town

Heading out of town for the weekend? A number of national ridesharing Web sites help carpoolers find each other for trips between cities. For example, from your local Craigslist, choose “rideshare” under community to see a chronological list of rides sought and offered. Other national rideshare resources for inter-city trips include eRideShare.com, Carpoolworld.com.

While not everyone who carpools will be as lucky as Anne Miller, who found not only a lift but love as well, AlterNetWays’ Mark Evanoff does envision a day soon when cooperatively sharing car rides will become a routine part of planning how we get to everything we drive to.

“We want this woven into the fabric of everyday life,” he says. “There will come a day when a person comes to church on Sunday, and they announce from the pulpit that they have a new rideshare program for the church. Then at work the next day, they hear about a rideshare program for commuting to their job, and that afternoon, their child brings home information about a rideshare site for the school. And then, when they’re signing up to attend a football game, or a conference, there’s a rideshare option right there.”

Global climate change is a huge issue facing our planet. This problem has been caused in large part by humans interfering with the carbon cycle. For years, scientists have pointed out how the burning of fossil fuels has released an excess of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse gas effect and warming the earth. One component of the carbon cycle which is now gaining attention as a prospect for improving the crisis is soil. Here's the rundown on how regenerative agriculture and carbon farming could be our salvation.

What is regenerative agriculture? 

Regenerative agriculture* is an approach to agriculture which focuses on improving and revitalizing soil health.  This movement is gaining momentum at a time when it is greatly needed. Poor soil stewardship has led to a troubling decrease in arable top soil available for food production. Because conventional farming practices have stripped so much carbon from the soil, it now exists as a potential carbon sink to take in excess carbon contributing to climate change. The best way to enact this strategy is through sustainable agriculture practices like carbon farming.

What is carbon farming? 

Carbon farming is the practice of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into plant material and the organic matter that makes up soil.

Carbon farming works through agricultural methods like not tilling (or disturbing the soil), using organic mulch, composting, rotating livestock, and cover cropping all allow carbon sequestration to occur in the soil. Unfortunately, conventional agriculture does not typically employ these practices. Despite this, there is cause for hope. A growing number of sustainable farmers are adopting these regenerative practices and mitigating climate change while producing healthful and delicious food for their communities.

What is the goal for addressing climate change?

The global climate solution is not possible without addressing the impact of the food system as a whole, which contributes upwards of 1/3 of the global greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Regenerative agriculture is key to transition agriculture from contributing to the climate crisis to helping solve it. According to Ohio State soil physicist Dr. Rattan Lal, “A mere 2 percent increase in the carbon content of the planet’s soils could offset 100 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions [currently] going into the atmosphere."

How do I get involved in the regenerative agriculture movement?

You can support farmers that are pioneering regenerative agriculture by shopping at your local farmer’s market. Have a conversation with the farmers in your community about regenerative agriculture and what they are doing to improve soil quality. By asking if they use any chemical pesticides or fertilizers, if they till the land frequently, if they cover crop, use organic mulch, rotate livestock, or compost you can get an idea of what they are doing to encourage carbon sequestration on their farms.

If you are not able to make it to the market, co-ops and natural food stores usually sell locally grown produce. This produce may or may not have been grown through regenerative practices but still has a lower carbon footprint, as it has not been transported across the country.

Green America's Soil & Climate Health Initiative Verified label can help you find products that support regenerative agriculture in your grocery aisle. Products that carry this label have been independently verified to uphold commitments and actions to support and promote regenerative agriculture in the ingredients. In order to earn verification, farms track soil health outcomes, use practices that protect and nourish the soil, and commit to continuous improvement.

You can also write to food companies you frequently buy from and ask them to prioritize regenerative agriculture in their sourcing practices. With enough consumer demand, we have the power to effect the changes we want to see in the food system. Find out about more actions you can take to improve the food we eat.

Doing some regenerative agriculture of your own in your yard or a community garden is an exciting, active way to get involved. Investigate the options in your area and improve the environment in the most enjoyable way possible, by eating delicious, fresh food!

Looking for a deeper dive? Check out our Regenerative Agriculture FAQ!

Performance fabrics that offer anti-bacterial and anti-odor qualities, as well as sun protection, may contain nanoparticles that are largely untested for human health effects.

If you’ve been shopping for workout clothes lately, you may have seen labels making some extraordinary claims—namely, that you can work up a sweat and your clothes won’t smell when your exercise session is over. Sound too good to be true?

You may want to think twice about buying clothes making such claims, because the anti-bacterial properties are brought to you by nanotechnology. While certain nanoparticles in clothing can kill off bacteria, as a whole they are largely untested, barely regulated, and may pose serious risks to your health and the Earth.

Nanotechnology: Tried but Untested

Nanotechnology involves the use of very small particles, called nanoparticles, to bring certain characteristics to a product. Nanoparticles are defined as being between the range of 1-100 nanometers in size. A billion of them can fit on the head of a pin. Nanomaterials are currently used in body care products, as well as consumer products like cutting boards, towels, food, and, yes, clothes.

The most common nanomaterials in clothing are nanosilver and nano-titanium dioxide. Nanosilver is woven into fabric to give it anti-bacterial properties, fending off the bacteria that make those clothes smell after you sweat. Nano-titanium dioxide adds sun protection to clothing just as it does in sunscreen.

The use of nanoparticles to achieve fresh-smelling clothes and UV protection may not be safe.

“Concerns from the human health perspective are that these different-shaped/-sized particles may behave differently within the biological systems of our bodies,” says Dave Andrews, senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), an environmental research nonprofit. “Different sizes may be more likely to be transported … through skin and through organs, or cause toxicity effects in body.”

Take carbon. In its normal form, it’s a building block of life and nontoxic to humans and the environment. But since 2003, several studies, including one from 2008 conducted by the University of Edinburgh, found that carbon nanotubes—one-billionth of an atom wide—reacted in the lungs of mice in a similar manner to asbestos, which causes the deadly lung cancer mesothelioma.

But because of the ways in which products and ingredients are regulated in the US, manufacturers have not been required to demonstrate the safety of nanomaterials prior to using them in consumer products.

“Our [regulatory] system does not consider nano-versions to be different materials, so [consumers] are left trying to catch up to understand the risks and hazards,” says Andrews.

Nanosilver and the Environment

Nanosilver may harm the environment when it moves through the wastewater system. Silver, which has anti-bacterial properties, is used in its nano form in clothes through a variety of methods, from actually spinning textile fibers together with silver nanoparticles to sticking the nanoparticles to the fabric through an electrostatic process.

The nanosilver in the fabric then works to kill off bacteria lingering in sweaty gym clothes, keeping them smelling fresh.

Studies have found that some of the nanosilver washes off of your clothes and goes into your wash water, where it is then captured in sewage sludge and ends up in biosolids, or sludge that has been treated and processed for use. About 60 percent of such biosolids are applied on farmland, forest, or wetlands as fertilizer. The rest is incinerated or landfilled.

The nanosilver in that sludge may disrupt ecosystems by lowering soil quality. A 2010 study presented at the Ecological Society of America found that soil with a concentration of nanosilver found in biosolids had reduced growth of one of the tested plant species by 22 percent and reduced the microbial biomass—the good microbes needed to aid plant growth—by 20 percent.

In addition, silver is toxic to aquatic species: Fish exposed to nanosilver particles washed into waterways have lower rates of growth and reproduction, according to a study published in May 2015 by the Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences.

Nanosilver and Health

When it comes to human health, some scientists are concerned that too much silver in the environment could make this metal’s anti-bacterial benefits less effective when society truly needs them.

“I would rather avoid [clothes treated with nanosilver] ... to prevent the release of too much silver into the environment and onto my skin, which may result in the loss of silver’s antibacterial activity,” says Natalie von Goetz, a researcher ETH Zurich University who has been studying clothing treated with nanomaterials. “Silver is a potent antibiotic that can be used when bacteria strains are resistant against organic antibiotics, and it would be a shame to lose that in times when many ‘old’ antibiotics have already lost their potency.”

Also, what about the environment of your body when you sweat during a workout? Studies replicating workout conditions have found that nano-silver particles in clothing can be released from the fabric into sweat. Dr. von Goetz’s study, published in Environmental Science and Technology in 2013, demonstrated that nanosilver is released from the fabric through sweat, and that those particles can be absorbed through the skin.

Though silver as a metal is considered low-toxicity, scientists know little about how even small exposures to nanosilver will affect human health. One 2014 study from the University of Southern Denmark, published in the journal ACS Nano, found that if nanosilver enters a human cell, it can cause the development of cell-damaging free radicals. Over-production of free radicals, in turn, can lead to cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s, note the researchers in a press statement.

“We don’t know how much is needed, so we cannot conclude that nanosilver can make you sick. But we can say that we must be very cautious and worried when we see an overproduction of free radicals in human cells,” note study researchers Frank Kjeldsen and Thiago Verano-Braga.

Sunscreen in Your Shirt

It is common to find nanoparticles of titanium dioxide in sunscreens, and you can now find them in the fabric of certain types of clothing, giving them a higher ultraviolet protection factor. Studies out of Europe, including one by von Goetz, that replicated the wear and tear a garment containing nano-titanium dioxide would go through during a workout found that the nanoparticles “barely released from fibers into sweat,”says von Goetz.

That said, if your skin absorbs even a little nano-titanium oxide, it may lead to health issues. The American Cancer Society’s Dr. Kenneth Portier published a fact-sheet online that warns, “Recent research has shown that [nano-titanium dioxide particles], when injected in low dose under the skin of mice, produce a significant, but reversible, inflammatory response. This could be a concern given what we are learning about the negative health effects of chronic inflammation.”

The EWG says that the potential effects of nano-titanium dioxide on the environment “have not been sufficiently assessed.”

As a precaution, avoid clothing with nano-titanium dioxide.

What to Watch For

No US laws require manufacturers to label clothing that uses either nano-silver or nano-titanium dioxide.

Watch for labels making claims like “anti-bacterial,” “odor-eliminating,” or “hygienic,” which may indicate the presence of nanosilver. Clothing labeled as offering sun protection may contain nano-titanium dioxide. Contact manufacturers and ask questions before purchasing. And let them know you want them to avoid nanoparticles in their products.

“Consumers are the ones driving the market and having power,” says Andrews. “Asking questions of manufacturers—that’s where change will come in the market.”

(m) Designates a certified member of Green America’s Green Business Network®

Parents, scientists, and environmentalists have debated long and hard about the diaper question: Are disposable plastic or reusable cloth diapers better for the environment and for the babies themselves? The answer isn't always easy. We researched the best options and came to the conclusion:

Organic cotton cloth diapers are still the best option, unless water conservation is a big concern in your area. If it is, choose a diaper with the most biodegradable content possible (see the end of the article).

Disposable v. Cloth Diapers

Americans throw away 27.5 billion disposable diapers a year, with the EPA estimating that 4.15 million tons of diapers went to the landfills in 2017. Imagine the amount of petroleum-based plastic and wood pulp that goes into manufacturing those diapers, and then think about the super-absorbent polymers and deodorizing chemicals many companies add to the mix. Cotton, reusable diapers probably sound like a much better choice.

But are they? Cloth diapers must be washed in hot water after each use—and some sources recommend washing your diapers twice to kill germs. That’s a lot of water, energy, and detergent, which could be an issue in areas where water is scarce and must be carefully conserved. And if that cotton isn’t organic, tons of harmful pesticides were undoubtedly used to grow it.

So what’s a concerned parent to do?

After looking carefully at the available research and considering both the environmental and health impacts, we still pick cloth, except in extenuating circumstances: Here’s why.

The Studies

Back in the early 90s, disposable diaper manufacturers and cloth diaper services each commissioned studies aimed at pinpointing whether cloth or disposables were the most eco-friendly. Not surprisingly, the studies commissioned by the single-use diaper companies concluded that disposables were no worse for the environment than cloth diapers. The studies sponsored by the National Association of Diaper Services showed that cloth had the clear environmental advantage.

A 1993 study sponsored by The American Paper Institute (disposable diapers are made from paper and plastic) found that the ecological differences between the two types of diapers were less dramatic than in earlier studies. After analyzing the results, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) encouraged people not to “waste a lot of time or energy trying to decide which type of diapers to use based on environmental considerations,” since the differences aren’t particularly dramatic. If you live in an area with landfill issues, choose cloth, and if your community suffers water shortages, choose disposable, they say.

Paula DeVore, who started an organic cotton cloth diaper company Babyworks (no longer in business online) in 1990 to combat the landfill problem, disagrees. “If the environmental impact of disposables really is the same as that of cloth diapers, then why haven’t comparable studies been done for other products? Why aren’t we using more paper plates and cups instead of washing our reusable dishes, for example?”

New Info on Diapers and Health

What the 1993 study didn’t take into account, DeVore says, is the use of potentially harmful chemicals to bleach disposable diapers and enhance their super-absorbent capabilities.

Those of us who have recently changed an infant may have noticed a gel-like substance in the diaper that definitely didn’t come from the baby. That gel is a result of the sodium polyacrylate crystals, a superabsorbent polymer (SAP) that is used in disposable diapers for absorbency. Sodium polyacrylate can hold up to 300 times its weight in water and to date, no studies exist as to whether it is dangerous to children when absorbed through the skin. However, some experts have pointed to the SAPs in tampons as the possible cause of toxic shock syndrome, so some consumers are wary.

Of greater concern to many is the presence of dioxin, a highly toxic carcinogen and endocrine disruptor, in disposable diapers. Dioxin is a byproduct of the chlorine bleaching process, and the Archives of Disease in Childhood reports that trace amounts of dioxin are present on disposables. Some diaper services use chlorine bleach to whiten their cloth diapers, but conscientious consumers can ask questions to avoid those services.

A study published in late 1999 by Anderson Laboratories found that lab mice exposed to various brands of disposable diapers experienced asthma-like symptoms, as well as eye, nose, and throat irritation. Cloth diapers did not cause respiratory symptoms.

Dr. Rosalind Anderson, lead author of the report, says chemicals like xylene and ethylbenzene, suspected endocrine, neuro-, and respiratory toxins; styrene, a suspected carcinogen and respiratory toxin; and ispropylene, a suspected neurotoxin; were among those released from the disposable diapers. Anderson notes that human surveys will be needed to determine how important the link between diapers and asthma is to infants and asthmatic parents, but parents should be cautious.

In addition, a 2001 UK study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood suggests that infant boys who wear disposable diapers could experience impaired fertility as adults. The researchers found that the temperature of the scrotum was almost 2oF higher in boys who wore disposables diapers rather than cloth. This temperature increase, they say, may negatively impact future fertility. Experts agree that disposables do keep babies warmer because of the plastic and insulation, but the link to infertility has not been further studied.

In short, there may be reasons to be concerned about the health effects of disposables, though we’re still years away from hard evidence that can tell us once and for all how serious these concerns are.

Cloth Diapering Tips

You may be leaning toward cloth diapers but fear the added costs and inconvenience. Here are some ways you can ensure the best diapers for your baby—and the most convenience for you:

• Go Organic: Organic cotton diapers are available from several small, responsible retailers. By going organic, you’ll ensure that no toxic pesticides or herbicides were used to grow the cotton for your diapers. And, since organic cotton diapers are unbleached, you don’t have to worry about dioxin exposure.
• Go Leak-Free: Cloth diapers, if you look for quality product, can approximate the absorbency of any disposable brand,” says DeVore. Cloth diapers come in different sizes, with snap and velcro closures and fitted leg openings, and can be tucked inside a cloth and vinyl diaper cover for extra leak protection. (The diaper covers should last through several changes.)
• Take Advantage of Liners: Although throwing human waste in the garbage is prohibited by law, most parents don’t shake the contents of their baby’s disposable diapers into the toilet. With cloth diapers, you pretty much have no choice—you have to wash them properly. To make that chore easier, some parents choose to line their baby’s cloth diapers with thin, unbleached, 100 percent biodegradable paper liners. These liners are flushable, and they make cleaning messy diapers a snap. Just remove the liner and flush it down the toilet, and the diaper itself is ready to be washed.
• For overnight protection, many companies sell organic cotton “diaper doublers,” a thick piece of cloth you can tuck inside a cloth diaper for extra absorbency.

Another Option

If you’re committed to disposables, consider purchasing from an environmentally responsible company like Naty by Nature Babycare. This woman-owned company manufactures Nature Boy & Girl diapers, which are made of GMO-free plant-based plastics and are 70 percent biodegradable. (Most disposables are no more than 40 percent biodegradable.)

People are already able to compost used diapers. Earth Baby and Tiny Tots both have diaper pickup and composting services available in San Francisco. gDiapers sells flushable and compostable diapers, available anywhere. A quick search of "diaper composting in [region]" can be fruitful.

Around the world, the garment industry is notorious for exposing workers to abusive sweatshop conditions, from poverty-level wages to forced overtime to verbal and physical abuse. Consequently, many concerned Americans have vowed to only buy clothes with the “Made in the USA” label, to avoid supporting companies tied to sweatshops.

But that label isn’t always enough to ensure that the workers who made your clothes weren’t exploited. While few would argue that conditions in US clothing factories rival those found in countries like Bangladesh, sweatshop garment factories do exist inside US borders—and the overwhelming majority of their workers are immigrants.

Immigrant workers in the clothing industry, in the US as well as around the world, “tend to have temporary legal status that is dependent on their relationship with their employer, meaning that workers can become easily ‘illegal’ should that relationship be terminated,” states a 2009 report from the Clean Clothes Campaign. “That insecurity is magnified by the fact that ... many have incurred substantial debts in the process of acquiring work and/or papers,” and so they’re willing to tolerate abuse for fear of losing their “already precarious” livelihoods.
 

Domestic Sweatshop Factories

The US Department of Labor (DOL) defines a sweatshop as any factory that violates two or more labor laws, such as those pertaining to wages and benefits, working hours, and child labor. In 1996, the DOL estimated that at least half of the 22,000 garment shops in the US fit this definition.

Today, most documented cases of US sweatshops occur in California and New York. Between 2008-2012, for example, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division investigated over 1,500 employers in the garment industry in Los Angeles, San Diego, and surrounding areas, finding labor law violations in 93 percent of cases. Most of the workers involved were immigrants from Asia and Latin America.

The most prominent violation was that factory workers routinely weren’t making the federal minimum hourly wage, because they were paid by each piece they sewed and cut, rather than by the hour. For most workers, this meant a wage of around $5 $6/hour as opposed to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 and the $8/hour state minimum in California). The DOL also reported that most workers were often putting in 10-12 hour days, seven days a week, with no overtime pay.

In 2012, the DOL raided ten garment factories in the fashion district of Los Angeles and determined that due to wage and overtime violations, the factories owed more than $326,200 in back wages to 185 employees.
 

Turning a Blind Eye

“It is illegal to sell garments made in domestic sweatshops, but many retailers will turn the blind eyes and feign ignorance of labor problems in their supply chain,” says Elizabeth O’Connell, director of Green America’s Fair Trade program.

For example, the clothes made in L.A. facilities investigated by the DOL in 2012 were destined for more than 30 US retailers, including the Burlington Coat Factory, Dillard’s Inc, Forever 21, Ross, TJ Maxx, Urban Outfitters, and Wet Seal.

“The extent of the violations discovered by these investigations was disappointing,” said then-Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis in a statement after the DOL’s 2012 investigations. “Retailers need to actively ensure that clothes produced in the US for sale to the American public are made by workers who are paid at least the US minimum wage and proper overtime.”

And since 2008, DOL investigators have uncovered dozens of companies producing garments for popular clothing retailer Forever 21 under “sweatshop-like conditions.”

DOL investigations also find dozens and health and safety violations in the garment industry every year. Tuan Phan, a worker at an American Apparel facility in California, died in 2012 after a circular weaving machine turned on while he was trying to remove a jammed roll of fabric. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health cited the company for failing to train workers in proper procedures to follow when repairing such machines.

-- Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist

How to Find Sweat-Free Clothes

1. Buy green: Green America screens clothing companies in the National Green Pages to ensure transparency and due diligence in their supply chains both in the US and abroad.

2. Buy union-made: Labor unions are largely credited with lifting garment workers out of the sweatshop conditions of the early 20th century, and while union membership has decreased in recent decades, unions continue to protect worker’s rights. Today garment workers are represented by UNITE HERE and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Search for union-made clothing at Labor411.org or look for the union label.

3. Buy sweat-free: The International Labor Rights Forum publishes the Sweat-Free Shopping Guide, which includes retailers selling clothing made in the US and elsewhere. Companies must have a demonstrated history of giving workers a significant voice, either through labor unions, worker co-ops, or other means.

4. If you can't find a particular clothing item you need through one of the above options, buying “Made in the USA” is still preferable to buying clothes made in developing countries, like Bangladesh, with known labor problems.

Look for These Labels

SA8000
A designation from the non-governmental organization SAI, which is applied to factories and farms to show they meet standards for social responsibility and labor rights.UNION-MADE PRIVATE LABELS
These labels indicate that your clothes were made by workers who were allowed to organize and advocate for better wages and working conditions.FAIR TRADE
(Fair Trade Certified, FLO International, Fair Trade Federation, IMO Fair for Life)
These independent certification and membership systems ensure that workers who grow raw materials or who make clothing earn a living wage, labor under healthy conditions, and earn a premium for community development.

Even though most toxins used in clothing manufacture will affect workers far more than wearers, it’s still a good idea to be cautious and avoid exposure to toxic clothing as much as possible. These seven tips can help you stay safe at home.

1. Buy less toxic clothing.

The more new conventional clothing you have hanging in your closet, the more chemicals were used in its production—and those chemical may still be lingering.

2. Buy used

Used clothing has generally been washed many times, meaning that most of the toxic finishes have already been scrubbed away. In addition to scouring your neighborhood thrift stores, garage sales, and online auction sites like eBay, you can search the Green Business Network directory for a list of our favorite eco-friendly clothing websites.

3. Make what you have last longer Empty heading

With a little extra care, you can extend the life of the clothes you already have and won’t need as many new items with new chemical dyes and finishes. See "Make Do and Mend" for some practical suggestions for how to do so. Don’t forget to wash your clothes less, and hang dry them instead of using the dryer. The more you run them through machines, the faster the fabrics wear out.

4. Beware of the “new clothing smell.”

Green-living expert Annie B. Bond, author of Home Enlightenment (Rodalem, 2005) says that distinctive “new clothing smell” is actually a sign of toxic chemical finishes. If you already have clothing bearing the telltale smell, Bond advises: “Place the clothes in the washing machine with enough water to cover. Sprinkle one small-sized box of baking soda (or 1 cup) into the washing machine. Soak the clothes overnight. When convenient during the soaking, agitate the machine for a few minutes. Launder as usual. Repeat the method until the clothes don’t smell anymore.”

Some strong-smelling clothes are coated in potent formaldehyde residues that are nearly impossible to get out. If the “new clothing smell” is overpowering on a given item, don't buy it, says Bond.

5. Buy green and high-quality.

Clothing from green companies listed in the Green Business Network directory is made from eco-friendly fabrics, without toxic dyes and finishes. It’s also often made to last much longer than clothes sewn in a sweatshop for a big-box store like Walmart. Green America staff members generally feel that it’s easy to tell which clothes in our closets are from sustainable companies: The fabrics are often thicker, the stitches tighter (meaning it’ll take a minor act of nature to make a seam fall apart), and they still look almost as new as the day we bought them.

6. Forego toxic detergent and fabric softener.

Conventional detergents, dryer sheets, and fabric softeners, even when “fragrance-free”, contain a whole host of chemicals—and they’ll coat your clothes with those chemicals when you use them. To avoid toxins, use eco-friendly detergents and fabric softeners from certified green companies. Or, make your own detergent. Find an easy recipe here.

For fabric softener, simply pour half a cup of white vinegar into the fabric softener dispenser in your washing machine (or put it in during the rinse cycle if your washer doesn’t have one). To get your clothes smelling extra sweet, add six drops of essential oil like lavender or lemongrass to a scrap of cotton from an old shirt, and toss in the dryer.

7. Don’t dry clean.

Conventional dry cleaning requires the use of perchloroethylene, a nasty recognized carcinogen that’s also a suspected neuro-, reproductive-, respiratory-, developmental-, kidney-, skin-, and gastrointestinal-toxicant. You can get away with washing silk and wool items at home, and you can always have them professionally pressed at the dry cleaner without toxic cleaning. If you need to have an item professionally cleaned, look for wet cleaners and CO2 cleaners, which use less-toxic, perc-free methods. Find one at nodryclean.com.

Toxic clothing is close to our skin and it affects the safety of our homes. Clothing with toxic finishes are also dangerous to the workers and communities in which they are manufactured. Visit the Green Business Network directory for a list of our favorite eco-friendly clothing websites.