the greener side

Fishy Fiji water

This ad, spotted on a BART train on the way to work in downtown San Francisco this morning, represents what could be one of the best examples of corporate PR BS known as "greenwashing."

How can water flown nearly 6,000 miles from a remote island, and bottled in potentially toxic plastic that can only be downcycled, be eco-friendly? It can't. Check out the Greenwash Brigade's details today, and return there for more about phony "green" claims by corporations.

Even Mayor Newsom derided the appearance of Fiji water  (which he diplomatically didn't mention by name, but was clearly referring to) at a green tech event he attended in Los Angeles a few months ago.

This reminds me of a recent Clorox "green" campaign showing smiling, sunny children on swings. Clorox has a new line of "green" cleaning products, endorsed by the Sierra Club, but chlorine bleach is a nasty thing, as its manufacture releases dioxins. OK, at least chemicals makers say they are reducing the release of dioxins.

Green this

In honor of Earth Day, I wrote what may start off as a pessimistic run-down of how to green your life, as well as a guide to green labels. So there. Everybody guzzle plastics! There's no escaping them. But what do they mean? Still, the planet will probably do just fine without us. Maybe we should have a "People on Earth Day," since the resources we seem to be ruining are what keep us hanging here.

Plastic oysters, housewares, and data centers

Here's some more stuff I wrote recently for work:

San Francisco's greenest home?

Killing the oyster pack: An end to 'wrap rage'? (photos)

Treasure trove for the pocket protector set

How data centers are cooling down (photos)

Mapping the U.S. carbon footprint

Shadow falls on San Francisco solar rebates

International Home & Housewares Show (photos): Housewares makers seek greener products

Tiny, greener kitchen tech

Gadgets to fight germs, fat, and frizz

More green stories for a sunny day

Here's some other stuff I've been working on at work:

'Green' furniture cut out from cardboard

No tech cure for oceans 'damned' by plastic (48:1 plastic to plankton ratio in Africa-sized swath of ocean)

50 minutes with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

More coverage related to the Cleantech Forum

Q&A with Cameron Sinclair, Open Architecture Network
(Photos: Open source housing for those in need)

Ecomodders make fuel good to the last drop

Photos: Green bloggers stash trash

Ecobloggers bring the landfill home

Baking plastic from plants

Photos: A future in bioplastics

Photos: A toxic lie detector test

Software is dead; long live software

Little green gifts

  Here are small, green gifts that I thought about getting people for the holidays:

Motherboard Gifts sells silly stuff made from recycled computer circuitboards—money clips, notebooks, luggage tags, coasters, clocks, and more. You can even get personal engraving.

There are all sorts of handcrafted items made by Etsy's artistes. DIY? You can sell stuff here, too—whether you make morse code laptop sleeves, psychedelic light switch covers, or hand-poured candles.

Vintage jewelry is green--as in chrysropace--also purple as amethyst, silver like Danecraft, and all that glitters in between. I could spend thousands of dollars in about half an hour collecting 1920s through 1950s neclaces here, but I won't. Um, can't.

Typewriter key jewelry. OK, I really want one of these bracelets for myself. Lots of people are making these. You can get one personalized here and here.

Close the Loop's pretty pens, vases, and candle holders are made of shiny, recycled silverware.

I wish that I'd bought this at the Green Festival--a fruit basket that doubles as a rinsing colander, made of chopsticks. Now I can't find it. Can you?

Rosa grimaced when she saw yesterday what I was getting for my dad at Paxton Gate, but I think this mounted mousealope head is awesome, especially for a cat owner. And you could sort of say that it's sustainable, no? It's not wasting a little lab mouse.

LED lightbulbs!  OK, this might seem like a lame gift, until you let your friend know that it could last them a decade and help slim electrical bills.

Subscriptions! Make, Craft, and Readymade are fun for restless geniuses who like to get their hands all over things and remake them. Then there's the more traditional National Geographic, or the excellent On Earth, which comes with a donation to the National Resources Defense Council. Also check out the many green lifestyle magazines listed in the left column of this blog.

Ecoist's candy wrapper handbags--you can even shop online by color, just like at Etsy. Buy a bag, and Ecoist will plant a tree.

I'm not sure how sustainable this is, but it's fascinating. For about $100 per person, you can have family DNA analyzed by the Genographic Project, and find out where some of your ancient ancestors came from.

Better than the rest, you could do some truly unselfish giving this season to make impact around the world without even leaving your chair.

Give me your tired, poisonous electronics

Back in October, I trekked to Burlington, VT, for an annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Plus, one of my bestest friends, Amani, lives within a two-minute jog of the conference center, so I got to hang out with him. Lo and behold, I even ran into Nicole from high school as she spoke about green labeling on products and foodstuffs.

Arguments and emotions were intense in more than one conference discussion, especially those about nuclear power, climate change, and government secrecy. I'd have so much more to show (such as the hydrogen car fueling station) and tell if I'd remembered to bring my camera battery charger. Luckily, though, plenty of journalists did what comes naturally, so you can listen to MP3s of the heated debates and check out slide shows here.

At least I typed up some notes about the well-attended panel on toxic trash. You can blame Moore's Law for chips doubling in power and dropping in price every two years or so, feeding the mad cycle of obsolescence in consumer electronics. Want a phone with a video camera? You'll probably throw away last season's model that only took still pictures. Some 4,000 tons of gadgets and appliances get tossed each hour around the world.

''We're going through the largest industrial expansion in the history of the world,'' said Ted Smith, former executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Lately, however, big stories are piquing the public's interest in electronics waste. For instance, IBM electronics factory workers suffer high rates of cancer. We hear about iPod maker FoxConn's labor rights violations. The SVTC's Toxic Sweatshops report shows how prison labor is used to make shiny, new digital toys.

''It's not a good guys versus bad guys kind of issue," says High Tech Trash author Elizabeth "Lizzie" Grossman, whose book took an axe and gave the electronics industry so many whacks.

The Electronics Industry Alliance's Richard Goss agreed. "There's no desire by industry to use mercury or lead," he said, adding that the alternatives are dubious both in terms of practicality and safety. For instance, what if we learn later, after phasing out lead solder, that the substitute solder falls apart and millions of products need to be recalled? Wouldn't that be a bigger disaster than simply managing and recycling the known toxicants responsibly?

Goss noted that even while Europe bans heavy metals and brominated flame retardants from electronics, there are many exemptions. Flat screen monitors like the one that might be in your lap are allowed to contain 5 milligrams of lead. But that's far better than the four to 6 pounds of lead in boxy CRT monitors that were necessary to shield us from radiation back in the day. Plus, LCD monitors use 10 times less energy than cathode ray tube boxes.

Plastics containing DECA, a brominated flame retardant, are also exempt from Europe's ROHS rules, although manufacturers are phasing out this endocrine disruptor. But little is known about the ingredients in these plastics because NO epidemiological studies exist about BFRS, said Kellyn Betts, an editor at Environmental Science and Technology.

"This is one of the hottest research areas that we write about," she said.

Europe banned BFRs Deca, Penta and Octa. But because the United States and Canada have such high fire safety standards, BFRS and PBDES are 10 times more common in the bodies of North Americans than in people in the rest of the world. Omnipresent, these substances travel in dust, leaking from our supposedly sealed personal computers, televisions, and so much more.

"'They're everywhere,"' Betts said--probably in the cushions you sit on, the carpet underfoot, the drapes you toss open when you rise from the flame-retardant-soaked mattress on which you sleep. And these poisonous flame retardants wind up in our tissues and breast milk.

Next year China will introduce a good housekeeping seal on the bottom of all iPods, cell phones, TVs and all such electronics big and small, with a date stamp spelling when the safety of chemicals contained therein might start to seep outward, said Mark Schapiro of the Center for Investigative Reporting during another panel. He's working on a book to detail that and much more about how the U.S. is no longer the standard bearer for environmental, chemical, product safety (although Californians are fighting the powers that be, as usual).

The European Union and China are going much further to take precautions to protect people and ecosystems from potential hazards. Their new laws will change global industries, so we'll see the effects trickling down, but still the lower standards Stateside could mean more poisonous products for Americans. Just as China is shipping formaldehyde-laced lumber banned there to our shores, so we'll probably see an influx of junky, expired electronics shipped here, oozing chemicals that can cause cancer and monkey with our reproductive systems.

Wash those breasts right in through your hair

You buy organic milk and eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream because it's free of hormones, which can throw your body out of whack in mysterious ways. But what are you rubbing into your scalp? Many shampoos and conditioners--especially those marketed to smooth the hair of black women--are packed with synthetic hormones, which your body easily sucks in through the skin. How about organic brands instead? In test tubes, even lavender oil mimics estrogen.

A debate is raging about why nearly half of black girls and 15 percent of white girls seem to be starting puberty by age 8. (I couldn't find any way around the P word, yech.) Some toddler girls and boys even develop breasts, suffering what the NYT highlights as "preschool puberty." Could it be mom's shampoo--Super Gro being so aptly named? Or plastics, with hormone-disrupting phthalates rubbing into our mucous membranes through pacifiers and sex toys? What about the omnipresent industrial chemicals that monkey with our endocrine systems and so much more? It's been seven years since the government was supposed to take a hard look at how such ingredients mess with the environment and our bodies.

Scientists don't even know enough about how hormones work to endorse them after menopause, or to warn women about a breast cancer link. But the FDA lets drugstore bodycare products contain just as many artifical female hormones as grandmother might swallow in her daily change-of-life horse pills.

The estrogen compounds in the urine of millions get flushed into our groundwater, streams and oceans, probably rendering frogs and other delicate creatures infertile. Yet gynecologists regularly push birth control pills on tweens. Women even take the pill year-round so they'll never have to have a period; a new drug will make that even easier. What to do? Stuntmother puts the lack of an answer better than I can:

Problem is, there's something worrying every time I swing my head around. Water has lead. Shampoo has lavender. Food has growth hormones or has been genetically modified. Our vegetables are sprayed. Our playgrounds have glass in the grass and needles on the swings. Our cars are spewing out carcinogens, as are our factories and air conditioners. Our crackers have preservatives and polyunsaturated grease. Fish is riddled with mercury. George Bush is president. Perverts lurk on the internet and reality television is weird. North Korea has nuclear bombs and the Gulf Stream is slowing. Oil is over sixty dollars a barrel and clothing is sweat-shopped. Children are dying in mines and orphanages and pressure treated wood has arsenic. New paint and carpets off-gas and old carpets have dust mites and old paint has lead. People still think that Paris Hilton is pretty and the authorities (ha!) can't decide whether 10,000 or 600,000 Iraqis have died since we charged into Iraq.

There are dangers everywhere and a thousand more I do not know or that have not yet been discovered. I cannot be a one woman shield against all that is poisoning, threatening, lurking and destroying my children. I want to be -- but I can't. So where is the line?

Whatever floats your...raft

While I was hunting for eco-friendly beach toys (which are nearly impossible to find, so draft your business plan now), Miguel ran across the Recyclers Raft. It cracks me up! You don't need to purse your lips or buy a pump to blow it up. Instead, insert a bunch of 2-liter bottles to keep the $50 raft afloat. Calling it more durable than regular rafts, maker Ron See advertises his product as puppy-proof. He was inspired by a contest in a Pennsylvania resort town that dared people to make and race flotation devices from old bottles. See decided to craft, patent, and sell his own raft that demanded recycling--a practice that he lives by. As he describes via email:

My whole family and I have been living off-grid since 1997. We use solar panels and a battery bank for most of our power supply, propane cook stove and hot water and a diesel generator for back up. I also have 2 windmills for battery charging that we are working towards installing. I run a small metal recycling and hauling business in Hartstown, PA. I have personally cleaned up over 2000 tons of scrap steel, and other metals from farm dumps old fence rows and businesses in the past 13 years.

To play devil's advocate, many LOHAS consumers might be too busy downing dixie cups of organic wheatgrass juice to build up a vast enough collection of 2-liter pop bottles to fill this raft’s 66 by 38 inch frame (though you could collect from neighbors). Nor is the  polyester duck canvas some trendy, sustainably-harvested, biodegradable material. But if the recylers' raft is as durable as See and his three kids attest, that would make it greener than those rafts that you buy on Memorial Day, then trash by the time it's flat on Labor Day. Credit for creativity is due.

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.

CES trumpets eWaste recycling

Like I promised, I did go to Green Saturday at CES (but only after staggering halfway back to the hotel twice before committing); it’s just taken me a while to get over the flu to tell you about it. The hour-long presentation awarded tech companies for their efforts to recycle e-waste. The Environmental Protection Agency bragged about its new Plug-In to e-Cycling Program, which aims to reduce the two million tons of e-waste trashed each year by sponsoring trade-in events with makers and sellers of electronics. The EPA’s trying to create a certification program for recycling PCs, monitors, keyboards, TVs, DVD players and VCRs, cell phones, and so on. Vendors in the room also got props for removing lead and other heavy metals from circuit boards, making flame retardants without halogen, and reducing the amount of waste packaging.

“Anybody who walks through this exhibition hall will realize that we’re making real progress,” said EPA Assistant Administrator Tom Dunne. I sort of beg to differ, but maybe I'm expecting the future to arrive in an unrealistic lightning flash.