the greener side

Engineering a greener world

Ahead of his time, visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a green thinker, Prof. Cliff Davidson told the Science and Society podcast (mp3). “A lot of his buildings were designed with not only some green design aspects in mind but also aesthetically to blend with their environment...The architectural community today is attempting to make some changes to bring some of these issues to bear.”
Davidson, a civil and environmental engineer at Carnegie Mellon U., wants his field to become greener too, so he’s helping to set up the Center for Sustainable Engineering, a joint effort by Carnegie Mellon, Texas at Austin, and Arizona State universities.

“Engineers make decisions based on what's best for their clients …But in the future those engineers are going to have to think about not only what's best for their clients, but what's best for future clients and future society. There aren't any incentives for engineers to do that right now.”

Desperately seeking organic clothes in San Francisco

Siel, aka GreenLAgirl, is in town! We introduced ourselves Saturday at a notorious fair trade cafe and hunted through drizzle for eco-friendly, sweatshop-free clothes. Thanks to Siel for posing the challenge.

You'd think that of all places in the country, the SF Mission might have the most to offer. We skipped the many terrific second-hand and vintage shops; I wanted to see what textiles local designers use. This was no comprehensive survey, but our jaunt found that jewelry, gift cards, and accessories made from recycled or organic materials are common at area boutiques, while eco-friendly clothing is not.

For example, at Otsu, a vegan store on 16th near Guerrero, Siel found a bracelet made from spoons. Otsu had sweatshop-free silkscreened tees and hoodies, but only from American Apparel, which we were trying to avoid. More ideal products included organic cotton socks (which I got), belts from recycled scraps and tires (above, Siel bought one), and Speesees baby clothes. Unfortunately, some materials were synthetic, such as pleather-like wallets and vegetarian shoes. Still, there were some hand-knit "neck nooshes" (left) and  organic baby hats.

Down the street, Candy Store had sweets, clothes and more. I liked their stuff, but AA tees were hiding underneath some boutique labels and no organics were in sight. Heading down Valencia, we found a shop (I'm spacing on its name) hawking wares made by 71 artists. Again beautiful clothes, no sign of organic textiles. Yet there were bracelets made from legos as well as lite-brite pegs. Siel walked out with a neat Nif brand bracelet made from dolls' eyes by the nice woman at the counter.

Finally, we trekked to Fabuloid (right) in Hayes Valley. While the fabric, often bought from remnants in L.A., isn't organic, these irreverent SF designers make everything in town. The store also sells vintage pieces cherry-picked by two Mission dwellers who scour estate sales. Siel walked out with a pair of rosy, hot vintage shoes and I got a synthetic-but-second-hand, creamy-sheer 50's top.

Verdict: Organic clothes are easy to find online, but most are for fitness or have a heavy hemp feel. You can't try that stuff on, and then you have to deal with shipping. So even walking around San Francisco, if you're trying to dress yourself on a budget without feeling guilty about sweatshops and pesticides or annoyed by supporting American Apparel, your best bet is still to buy used clothes.

Wait, maybe that judgment is premature. Now that the weekend's over, I find this list of organic local clothing stores that we missed. Plus, Patagonia deserves credit--not just for its underwear recycling program. Do you think you could dress yourself from head-to-toe, night and day, work and play, at these places? The mission has just begun. Have any tips?

Update: Siel checked out the list I just mentioned above, and reported on her NoCal hunt for eco-friendly clothes here and here.

We’re (not) all going to die!

Aren’t you sick of all this doom and gloom news about the planet and how it's too late to save ourselves? Face it, we’re riddled with poisons to the core, and the end of the world is inevitable. Go enjoy Vegas, let your kids watch network TV, whatever. Well, maybe not, says the United Nations. Its Millennium Ecosystem Assessment explains how we might just turn things around within the next half-century. But we'd better hurry TF up--and keep the oceans from rising, coral reefs from dying, and Atlantic ** current from shutting down! Maybe that leaves enough time for me to be optimistic by the early elderly years (judging by family DNA, expect a solid nine decades...mercy mercy me).

ReadyMade, set, go

Quirky DIY rag ReadyMade launched in the scrap-pile days of the dot-com bust. Four years later, it’s self-sustaining. CEO Grace Hawthorne and Editor in Chief Shoshana Berger (left) talked at Compostmodern 2006 about creative reuse, in the spirit of Duchamp's urinal fountain, celebrated by their magazine and new book.

“Our magazine’s Jedi mind trick is really about being resourceful,” said Hawthorne. In a nutshell: You can turn anything into a lamp or a clock.

They want to serve the masses who are tired of mass-produced culture, yearning to use their hands in a world where machines crank out crap at the expense of craftsmanship. Berger describes ReadyMade as “open source design tips for customizing your environment…We wanted to share this peer-to-peer databank of instructions for making stuff.” In other words, reconsider junk, retool broken things, get your hands dirty, rediscover how to darn a sweater, change your car’s oil instead of stopping at Jiffy Lube. And do it with a sense of irony and humor, like Make magazine. Which leads to projects like:

iPod speakers out of Altoids tins, room dividers made from shoeboxes, woven rugs from grocery bags, a loft staircase out of trucking palettes, room divider out of Tecate cans, toilet paper holder from a clothing hanger, an Absolut bottle oil lamp, a chipped wine glass chandelier, a fireplace screen from a BMW dashboard, a martini glass bird feeder, a dog bed out of old jeans.

Some of the projects aren’t eco-pure; some use toxic glues, like a chunk of lace hardened and shaped to serve as a fruit plate. A story that featued power tools in the kitchen would make any EMT or ER doc balk. Still, said Berger, “It’s not like we’re gonna deplete landfills by doing these little projects.”

“This is the Martha Stewart empire for the next generation,” said Hawthorne.

Making Teflon's poisons stick less

DuPont's Web site boasts: "When you see the Teflon® logo or "seal," you are guaranteed to get the quality, durability and performance you need for easier cooking and cleanup." And thanks to Teflon, like 95 percent of Americans you're probably also guaranteed to carry a poison in your blood. You don't cook with nonstick pans? Neither do sea creatures and polar bears, whose bloodstreams also contain perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which is used to make Teflon and may help to cause cancer.

PFOA fights grease. You'll find it in non-staining clothing, frozen food containers, and microwave popcorn bags. The clunky stovetop popper my mom used for her popcorn has never seemed so clean—and she's always shunned Teflon cookware for the kind of cast-iron pans that cartoon characters use to whack each other on the head.

Today the EPA and chemical giants, including DuPont, agreed that PFOA can't be released so much into the environment via factory waste—though it can still be used in products in smaller amounts. People who worked around PFOA in factories have sued after developing cancer and having kids with birth defects. 

DuPont has a dark environmental history and just had to pay the EPA for failing to be straight about PFOA's dangers. But DuPont's taking bigger steps than most chemical companies to develop clean alternatives to its products. Maybe you're convinced to jump on the cast-iron cookware bandwagon, though the vintage Griswold pieces are already fetching high prices on eBay. Can you safely recycle Teflon pans? Not where my mom lives, at least. Do you know what to do with this junk? (via the Washington Post)

Bamboo, biodiesel, and solar power at American Apparel

American Apparel’s eco-image handler, Roian Atwood, delivered a charming propaganda slideshow at Compostmodern 2006. We toured pictures of cotton fields, ginning and spinning, and the downtown L.A. factory complete with smiling seamstresses and designers. OK, it’s not fair to call his presentation propaganda, because spin is the job of any “coordinator of community relations, organic and environmental programs.” Yet because Atwood effectively portrayed the clothier as sweatshop-free and eco-positive, and even minimized my annoyance with some of its ads, I feel spun, cheated of curmudgeonhood. Highlights:

• Within the next month, five American Apparel trucks will chug along on biodiesel coming from a processor designed by an east L.A. high school student.
• Organic cotton is tricky to grow. The company’s got its eye on alternative fabrics made from bamboo, even corn sugars—and foresees using more blends, such as equal parts organic and conventional cotton with bamboo and recycled ingredients (all of its scraps get recycled, by the way). Don’t expect to see tees of coarse hemp, which is better for jeans. On AA’s wish list? A sustainable spinning mill that works with multiple fibers. For now, bamboo and soy fibers are too tough for the few remaining U.S. mills to deal with.
• The company uses 5 to 7 percent organic materials, but crosses its fingers to make that 80 % within a few years.
• Freestanding solar panels now top American Apparel’s facilities, which show off the ASE-300 “Cadillac of solar panels.” Next comes a green roof.

Atwood described the staff in verbal snapshots similar to the vital stats in the company’s ads, i.e.: This is ______ the office manager, 19, from Los Angeles. As for the controversial ads? “We’re celebrating the best of human sexuality…Our subjects are our friends, lovers, employees…Society is accustomed to a more stale sexuality…Everything we do is spontaneous.”

Yay for anti-Puritanism. But while Atwood says the company is “not a patriarchal network of old boys smoking cigars," some see CEO Dov Charney's hand-down-the-pants antics as an abuse of power. Guess I'd cheer more for a former sex worker starting her own clothing line (but would that include Heidi Fleiss?).

Overall, though, if you're trying to be a green consumer, you'd be dull to boycott AA just because its ads don't fit your stiff ideal of gender equality. AA wouldn't have gone this far with JC Penney-style marketing (left), and others have um, beaten this subject to death, so let me stop. Plus, if you like stuff made in the USA in a world where up to 98 percent of clothing is not, then AA's the easiest and best-fitting option. Ingredients include:

An 8,000 square foot factory; 4,000 employees; average $13.50/hour wage with health and dental benefits plus onsite massage; 12 product designers; 25 graphic artists; 200,000 pieces of clothing made daily; 125 styles; $1.3 million poured weekly into the L.A.-area payroll; 500 stores in vibrant downtowns (not stale malls); 125 knitters working 24/7; 400,000 gallons of water a day for dyeing; 45 customer service order-takers, 8 company-sponsored employee soccer teams.

This is the poster child for how sustainable practices can add value to a brand, even if altruism isn't  the initial goal; no coincidence that American Apparel's growth rate best mirrors that of Whole Foods.

Am I pandering? Check out non-AA sustainable textiles and clothes if you think so.

Dwell Home II is green. What's next?

Showcase homes gross out Dwell Magazine senior editor Andrew Wagner (on the right). On the way to the Compostmodern 2006 conference, he read an article about the Reality House and the sprawling New American Home that reminded him of how lame show-off houses can be. Dwell's focus on liveable, eco-friendly homes, "rather than showing shots of pristine architecture devoid of signs of life," has earned its 250,000 circulation in just half a decade. Now Dwell wants to make green design disgestible to people with very real concerns, such as children and a budget.

The magazine is busy making its Dwell Home II a reality for a couple in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. Architect Frank Escher (above, left) designed the solar-powered, green roof home with tunnels in its floor that help to regulate the temperature without a/c or heat most of the year. The 2,000 square foot abode also uses sturdy flyash concrete (made with waste from coal power plants) and a porous driveway that lets water seep back into the ground. The $500,000 project is expected to be finished this spring. See more at Escher GuneWardena's site.

Will the future Dwell Home III be green too? Wagner said that the next contest may be an urban infill project, one that would develop forgotten city property in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. We need to make the average homebuyer and builder aware that green homes aren't just for elites, and the construction industry will respond to the heightened demand, said Escher.

Be green or else, says futurist

Should we forget about how hot and sexy sustainability can be--and start to hustle in a long-overdue effort to survive as a species? Futurist Paul Saffo ended the Compostmodern 2006 conference half an hour early, mincing no words about the need for clean design. This isn’t about virtue, hipness, or decoration, he said. Saffo's gist:

“I’m appalled by how slow progress has been while all the while problems grow faster…Were still stuck in this do-good, save-the-world pattern. Goddammit, we’re killing ourselves. We’re killing the planet.” Take the myth of Silicon Valley as golden producer of clean technology, and pin that picture next to the toxic e-waste mills and landfills in Southeast Asia.

Yet every three decades or so, a change in science turns technology on its head. “Each wave inspires a worldview.” Circa 1900 it was chemistry (every boy wanted a kit), then the age of physics around the 30s, followed by information technology. “These foundations were not just answers; they were questions.”

Now we’re in the age of biology—and it’s not just about drugs, bunnies that glow in the dark, or the losing (though earnest) battle against GM foods. Eco-thinking, an outlook that sees the world in terms of symbiosis, sustainability, and so on—“All that stuff is going to go mainstream, and it’s not just gonna be a handful of visionaries talking about it.” Mindfulness about the ecology will soon become more commonplace than we can imagine now, Saffo said.

In the meantime, we Americans carry on biting off more than our share of what the world can chew. If we don't wake up to reality, we'll be like the doomed, “blind Venetians,” to whom change “would mean breaking the pattern to which they had been crystallized.”

Saffo has called designers "the conscience of our artifacts." He told the graphic designers in the crowd to be hopeful that at least they might innovate in forward-looking California, which continues its five-century tradition of being regarded as an island.

Vintage wraps for modern gadgets

Chic 1940s pastel flower prints and eye-popping psychedelic paisleys may not come to mind when you’re toting a gunmetal gray laptop. But under the home-cooked Rebe label, Debra Weiss and daughter Hillery make gorgeous laptop cases, iPod purses, and shoulder bags from vintage fabrics. The Southern California business brings in several hundred thousand dollars annually, using mostly recycled materials unearthed via second hand sources such as swap meets and eBay. While they’ve considered hemp and organic fabrics, none are practical or affordable as the aged classic textiles. I checked out the clutches and sacs at Macworld two weeks ago. Debra says she strives to keep the business thriving, but modest enough that she’d never need to ship production overseas. Since founding the business five years ago with her then-15-year-old daughter, Debra (left) has also kept her job as an ultrasound technician.
I drooled over the laptop sleeves in patterns lush enough to shimmy out of a Rita Hayworth movie. These cases come in four sizes and cost $78, $88 with a handle. The $66 pill-shaped Maude style purse has an outside pocket for a phone, PDA, or mp3 player—and it’s big enough to hold a wallet, sunglasses, keys, and doc kit. Everything will fit in the Connie Sac, $250 and up. Shiny Shiny and Techie Diva like Rebe, and so do Penelope Cruz and other movie stars.

Plastic bottles poison pop and water

People chug bottled water as if it's healthier than what spills from a sink. But evidence is piling up that plastic bottles are not only bad for the environment, but they might also make you sick. Have you ever noticed an odd taste in, say, a water bottle left in the car on a hot day?

More than half of plastic bottles that hold water and soda pop are made from the polyester PET (polyethylene terephthalate). In heat, PET breaks down and gives off a slightly fruity flavor. It also leaches the toxic metal antimony, which poisons the body in similar ways to arsenic. An antimony overdose can be fatal; you certainly  won't die drinking from a PET-based bottle, but it might cause a headache, dizziness, or a foul mood.

Reports Ontario's London Free Press: a German study tested 15 types of bottles common in Canada, and 48 sold in Europe. At a German water bottling plant, researchers found merely trace amounts of antimony in the H20 before it was bottled. Once the water was inside a PET bottle, the amount of antimony multiplied by 90 times, and nearly double that amount was found in the same brand of water bought in a store.

Bottles made of heat-resistant vinyl polypropylene, common in flip-top packaging and microwaveable containers, had only trace amounts of antimony. Glass-bottled water was safer, and tap water was the best. You might want to check out Biota water, which comes in corn-based plastic, compostable bottles—but note that bioplastic can also slowly leak chemicals too. If you're bottle-feeding a baby, you should shun plastic for other reasons--here's more about the dangerous phthalates and Bisphenol-A that you might want to avoid. More on phthalates here.