the greener side

Life by chocolate: an organic Valentine's countdown

Dark chocolate is the new red wine. It often leads to sex, plus it's loaded with antioxidants that keep you kicking. Sadly, unless you shop carefully, you might get cocoa that's picked by child slaves or full of pesticides.

Happily, gourmet chocolates with a conscience are getting easier to find; even Hershey's and  Cadbury are finally getting in on the game. I try to support the smaller brands, whose expertise in crafting shade-grown, slave-free, organic chocolates is in high demand lately.

So where do you find the best guilt-free-but-sinful stuff? Over these next two weeks leading to V-Day, I'll be tasting and rating some of the world's greatest organic, fair trade, sexual chocolates. In the end, I'll pick a favorite and make an obsessive comparison chart.

But first, please be aware of such hardship: I bought a stack of rich, dark chocolate bars (above) at a local organic food co-op this weekend. But after I innocently snapped a picture of the rack of chocolates for this blog, a store employee demanded that I erase the photo. Despite feeling humiliated after spending $80 on chocolate, I played nice, but it was tricky to erase the picture because my camera is set to Spanish. This woman took the camera from me and also fumbled, but her friend finally did the deed. What, did she think I was going to steal corporate secrets from the co-op? As if Whole Foods doesn't already know what they've been up to for decades.

"I'm sorry, but don't you think that's going a little too far?" I asked employee #1. "It's okay," she said, as if I were apologizing.

Instead of getting good PR in the blogosphere for its stock of chocolates, our vegetarian, employee-run, San Francisco grocery store shall remain unnamed. When I got to the car and described the ordeal to Miguel, he walked up to their window and took this forbidden, Weegee-style shot.

Coming next: chocolate test results, day #1.

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.

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.

Eco-paddles beat the rest

Treehugger readers are linking sustainability with sex, or at least with snickering. They voted overwhelmingly for John Unger's recycled rubber paddles to win the blog's "Weird Eco Habits" contest. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but it wins over the sound of "bath water reuse" for sex appeal. What motivated the winner?" Well, cutting down on wooden paddles does save trees," Unger told Treehugger. Read more about eco-friendly props here.

Phthalates, shmalates

I wrote recently about the murky ingredients that make up sex toys. Emily Gertz takes a closer look in a Grist story today. Boing Boing points to her piece, noting that the surgeon general six years ago insisted that phthlates are safe. But that's why—I repeat—you should read Ms. Razorblade's article on how little long-term testing is done on such products. Okay, so maybe you're not going to drop dead inserting a phthalate-laden prop into your nether regions. But why make your compromising positions any more so? There are so many ultra-safe alternatives, after all.

Sweating another organic t-shirt

Lots of green thinkers like that American Apparel uses organic cotton and pays stateside workers fairly, but many call company founder Dov Charney a sexist, union-busting yuppie in hipster threads. Charney haters should check out this  Sustainable Industries Journal interview of a labor-friendly organic t-shirt maker. No Sweat hires union workers around the world. A shop just opened at Harvard Square.

[CEO Adam Neiman] says he visited with Charney in the past to discuss unions. “Dov only saw this as a marketing ploy,” says Neiman. “And as he says repeatedly, people are much more interested — and clearly he’s more interested in — sex and soft-core porn than in worker’s rights.”

But do No Sweat's tees fit as well as those made by American Apparel? AA posted $250 million in sales this year so far for good reason, 83 times more than what little No Sweat sells.

Carnival of the Green #5

Cheers to Great Green Goods for last week’s recap of the highlights in the green blogosphere. This fifth Carnival of the Green--a roving weekly display of what's on the minds of green bloggers--started with a bang. Francois, aka the Radical Libertarian, submitted his "top 10 list of signs you are a Greenie." Noted among his "top 4 activities of greenies" was: "Having sex and making children... while believing that human activity is inherently harmful. Perhaps they think it's okay as long as you can brainwash your children to become "caring" Greenies like they are." (Not what green bloggers such as Common Ground have in mind when we talk about making sustainability sexy.)

Triple Pundit fired back with this message for the Radical Libertarian: "Although amusing, these complaints expose a woefully outdated way of looking at "environmentalism" that is held by those who choose to see extremists as representative of the entire movement, and possibly mask their own concern for wellbeing with an aloof front." Thanks to Nick for taking the words out of my mouth.

Speaking of gratitude, George at Dirty Greek lost sleep cooking for 24 hours but relished his organic Thanksgiving meal. The morning after, many green bloggers rolled out of bed with the intention to observe Buy Nothing Day rather than race to the mall for the busiest shopping day of the year.

Others geared up for holiday gift giving by looking at greener ways to shop.

• Green LA Girl urged us to "Fuck Amazon—Buy Local!" and cited a study finding that “local stores returned $68 for every $100 to the local economy, while chain stores returned only $43 of $100."
• City Hippy spotlighted green shopping at a discount.
• Greenthinkers posted a fun gift idea guide.
• Dee's Dotes put up an evolving list of "out of the norm holiday gift giving ideas that are more friendly to our planet."
• Great Green Goods picked out ways to wrap presents without wasting paper.
• Urban Eco came up with a handy Eco-Electronic Buying Guide.

The gadget on my gift wish lift? The battery-free Pedalite bike light found by Unplugged Living. For a faster, green two-wheeler, check out plans by Micah Glasser of Event Horizon to build an electric motorcycle with the chassis of a Suzuki GS500E.

If you celebrate Christmas but don't want to breathe in pesticides along with the aromatherapeutic pine when you bring home a tree, check out the Blue Voice's guide to organic tree shopping in "How Toxic Are Thy Branches?" And don't leave wildlife out in the cold this winter; TreehuggerMum provided parent-friendly tips on feeding backyard birds in chilly climes and times.

Catch up on news you may have missed at Groovy Green, which summarized "This Green Week in U.S. Politics." Look for Carnival of the Green #6 at Jen's Green Journal next Monday. Find out more about the carnival through its founders, City Hippy and Triple Pundit.

Sex is natural, but not always

You could sound like a big sourpuss by wondering outloud about eco-sexism as I did recently. That’s okay. “Sexuality is not a bad thing, its (sic) the misuse of sexuality that is,” said Miss Mo. True, and as Mike D. pointed out, “sexuality is the greenest free-energy technology...sex has to be returned from the gutter to the altar.” Hallelujah. “Your body is a temple,” reminds my mother.

However, to tap into their erotic nature, people are cluelessly polluting their bodily houses of worship with some unnatural and poisonous props. Most sex toys are toxic to the ecosystem, not to mention the human body’s environment. Side effects of a dirty mind shouldn’t include knocking your hormones out of whack, toxic shock syndrome, haplessly feeding the oil industry, or torturing widdle bunnies.

You already avoid petroleum-based lubricants because they eat holes in condoms. But did you realize that most sex toys are made from black gold? And jelly props are loaded with phthalates, which Europe outlawed four years ago in kids' toys. Many in the U.S. say phthalates are safe but the ingredients may cause cancer, lower sperm counts, and thwart childhood development.

Ms. Razorblade of The F Word has written the best rundown about this stuff, so read it all the way through (part 2, too). She suggests splurging on pricier props made of glass, pyrex, silicon, wood, or stainless steel. Nontoxic lubes are increasingly easy to find, such as...

...Angelic Aromas, organic Sensua, herbal O'My, and aloe and chamomile lube from Jason cosmetics. For animal rights activists who shun leather goods due to cruelty to animals (don't get started on the inhumane treatment of humans in the *mainstream* porn industry),  Green LA girl found the Veg Sex Shop stocking animal-free products; another is Vegan Erotica.  PETA members who like to watch can stare at VegPorn while neo-hippies can ogle silly exhibitionist Swedes.

Greener sources for accessorizing your bedroom include Womyns' Ware,  Blowfish,  fair trade sex shop Coco de Mer.  Check out the high-end EcoBoudoir, which Inhabitat just covered.
Aside from the potential health hazards, there's the issue of sex-toy trash to add to the world's e-waste stockpiles. Unless your solar-powered vibrator is soaking up its seven-hour charge on your windowsill, you're dealing with batteries loaded with toxic heavy metals. Forget about recycling your tired accessories (though I’ve seen alley pickers happily score discarded dildos, and there are some random second hand S&M shops). Surely you won't take up Fausto’s (left) suggestion: "Let’s set up a system of condom recycling."

Cutting the paper trail of junk mail

Emailers like to spit about spam, so Congress passed laws to fight the impossible torrent of virtual junk mail and protect "legitimate" direct marketing. But no laws serve to slim the more than 4 million tons of direct mail envelopes, postcards, and catalogs and political tracts sent each year (direct mail pseudoscience wields so much influence that its grand poobah, Karl Rove, is "Bush's brain")—which arguably cause more of a personal nuisance and obviously harm the ecosystem more than spam.

People relish full-color, glossy catalogs and magazines, which Forest Ethics' Victoria's Dirty Secret campaign this winter tried to make unsexy. How does one lingerie peddler get the cojones to waste trees on a million unrecycled catalogs a day? Playboy's circulation is triple less than that, but at least it has articles. Still, smart companies can groom their brand and save money by greening their catalogs, as GreenBiz suggests:

If the entire catalog industry made the simple step of shifting to just 10% recycled content, the annual environmental benefits would be enormous, saving enough wood to build a six-foot fence stretching seven times across the United States.

Jeff of Sustainablog wonders "if paper catalogs aren't outdated to some degree, since the same thing can be done on the Web." Luckily for magazines, that industry's Folio prize just introduced the Aveda Environmental Award. Winners use post-consumer recycled paper, soy inks, and no chlorine; they include (no surprise) Plenty and Natural Health. Joel Makower applauds but notes, "The acid test will be if Aveda can infect the mothership -- that is, get its parent company, Estee Lauder, to adopt a similar policy for its myriad consumer brands."

Does eco-sexy = eco-sexist?

How can sustainability seduce the masses? Just stick a pretty face in the picture and sell, sell, sell! It's the cheapest trick in the marketing book. Take Metaefficient's silly "Radiant flooring is sexy" headline last week. Today Treehugger flaunts a model and urges us to "Get Eco-Sexy" with her. Harmless and light-hearted enough,and done as part of an ongoing effort to smash the dowdy image of environmentalism. After all, women's bodies have sold hotrods for decades--not hybrid cars.

But do we have to make Mother Earth into a hot mama for people to treat her right? Is that what all those ancient goddess fertility icons were about? There's a fine line between sex-positivity and raunch culture, as well as between free expression and exploitation. Does slapping T&A on green products defeat the purpose of an environmentally- and socially-friendly marketplace?

Just look to the lovers and haters of Dov Charney, the pervy founder of the sweatshop-free organic t-shirt shop American Apparel. He’s a busy man, facing sexual harassment suits from employees, speaking at a sustainable conferences, and so on. Oh, and last year he pleasured himself more than a handful of times in front of a Jane magazine reporter (she said she didn’t mind). The un-airbrushed looks of American Apparel’s models hearken back to the “classic porn” heyday of Hustler magazine—the era when a woman couldn’t get a credit card or mortgage without her husband’s permission. But enough of those media-hungry 'hos.

What do you think? How sexy—or sleazy—does sustainability need to be?