Lifestyle

In The Blue

scleaver — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:43:40 -0400

You want your barista’s latte spoon clean, sure, but recent news reports accuse Starbucks of wasting as many as six million gallons of water each day. All that water runs down the tap because of a company policy that requires stores to keep water running in the sink constantly, so germs don’t build up.

As Eat.Drink.Better. discussed, all that water would be enough to provide water for two million people in Namibia. In fact, “a single Starbucks tap left running for just over three minutes wastes the amount of water one African needs to survive for a day in drought conditions.”

And, as Eat.Drink.Better. points out, this isn’t just about wasting water, but about corporate responsibility—Starbucks owns Ethos Water that donates money to help water programs around the world and Starbucks itself touts environmentalism as a company policy.

If you want to avoid Starbucks next time you need a cup of coffee, try CoffeeShopFind.com or IndieCoffeeShops.com to find and add your own.

Photo from Big Marketing Blog.

BPA Storage Solution

scleaver — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:28:47 -0400

After the findings of a study about bisphenol A (BPA) plastic was released earlier this week, the debate about plastic bottles rages on. As the Los Angeles Times reported, British researchers found that BPA may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and liver problems (read more at RiverWired). According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately seven billion pounds of BPA are produced around the world each year. BPAs are in everything from DVDs to drinking bottles and eyeglass lenses, but it’s also in food storage containers which means that there is something you can do to reduce the amount of BPA in your everyday life: use glass instead of plastic.

Glass has a few benefits over plastic:

1. Glass containers are easy to see through and, thereby, choose the right food from your fridge.

2. If you use what you have: you’re already buying glass jars in the form of baby food, spaghetti sauce, and other food products. Clean out your jars and use them for storage, serving beverages, or bowls.

3. Green Daily reminds us that glass containers can be boiled or microwaved without chemicals leaching into the food.

Photo of a glass jar for purchase at The Container Store.

Foodie 101

scleaver — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:57:30 -0400

No longer just for agriculture departments, food studies is entering mainstream academia. As The Washington Post reported, Yale, Boston University, and New York University all offer food studies programs, and others, including the University of New Hampshire and the University of California at Davis are starting them. At Yale, the number of food-related courses has increased almost 50 percent over the last five years.

Among the courses you can take in departments from English to economics are “Cultural Foods: Geography of Food and Wine,” “Cooking Up a Storm: Exploring Food in American Culture,” and Yale’s “Psychology, Biology, and Politics of Food.” And you’ll find more than papers and final exams on the syllabus, students observe in restaurants, learn how to make their own dishes, and analyze everything from competitive eating to food memoirs.

Driving the trend is the expanding awareness of food and the environmental implications, the absolute boom in popular food literature (Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser are among the oft-cited), and an acceptance of food as something to be studied and young professors who want to study it. All this makes me want to go back to school—which food course would you most like to take?

Photo from Flickr.

Change In A Bottle

scleaver — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:31:09 -0400

After restricting single-serving bottled water in 2007, Davis, CA is taking the next step in sustainability—losing bottled water entirely. In a new Reusable Water Bottle Initiative partnership with Nalgene, the city is trying to reduce their carbon footprint, waste, and emissions by encouraging reusable bottle use. Nalgene is donating water bottles to employees with the City, and proceeds from reusable bottle sales support the City’s sustainable programs. We’ve known for a while that bottled water produces a ton of waste. But, consider: the average consumer uses 167 water bottles, but only recycles 38 of them. That sends 38 billion bottles a year end up in landfills from U.S. consumers alone. Considering that 24 million gallons of oil is required to produce one billion bottles, it isn’t surprising that if we saved the energy we now use to create water bottles, we could power 190,000 homes. (Learn more at Nalgene's site.) In an era of high-tech filtration, there’s no need for bottled water. Learn more about filtration in general from AllAboutWater.org and figure out which filtration system works best for you at WaterFilterComparisons.com. Once you’re committed, take the pledge to go bottled-water free at Nalgene’s Filter For Good. Photo from: Nalgene.

How to Talk to Your Kids about Global Warming

ProgressiveKid — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:58:22 -0400

A woman I know lives with her family in a house that backs up against a forest. The forest is being clear cut, a not so infrequent occurrence in this part of the country. One day, while the woman was on a business call in the house, her nine-year-old son rounded up his two younger brothers, and the three of them marched out onto the logging road and stood in front of an oncoming logging truck. The truck driver managed to stop in time. At the children’s request, the driver wrote down on a piece of paper the name of the logging company.

The four boys then returned home, and the oldest went to interrupt his mother’s phone call. He told his mother what they had done and said he would keep doing it until she and his father did something to stop what was happening to the planet. He explained to his mother that he and his brothers were the ones who would be living through most of the effects of climate change, but that they needed their parents to help them since they were just children.

The mother got the message. She turned to some friends, and together they formed a climate change response team at their kids’ school. The school now has a series of events and activities planned for the next school year. And they met with some other friends and acquaintances. All of us started Earth Kids Organized (EKO), a networking site and organizational model to help children, parents, and schools and other institutions across the planet communicate and work together to increase their power and effect.

Out of the Mouths of Kids

The point here is that kids know. They already, by age nine and younger, get what is happening, they want to do something about it, and they understand that they need help. But many of our climate change responses are adult centered and exclude kids from the action, which seems downright unfair given that our kids are the ones who are inheriting this situation.

Schools and libraries are logical places to base many kid-focused and kid-led efforts to respond swiftly and effectively to climate change. One elementary school is, at the request of the students, plowing over a grassy play area to make an organic fruit and vegetable garden. A middle school is working with a local organic farm to institute organic lunches one day a week. That same farm is working with local parents to institute organic farming camps for kids this summer. At another middle school library, students have formed one club to care for injured and homeless animals and another club to help the school compost. Two students at this school are making a documentary about the decline of a salmon stream.

Efforts like EKO are important because they expand the reach of children beyond the narrow confines of their own institutions and link children in a wider area, giving them a greater sense of hope and community. Families too need to feel that their efforts are not isolated and unique to their own homes. Joining other families in school- or community-based efforts can give everyone a sense of empowerment and even relief that people are responding appropriately to this crisis.

Five Kid-Sized Steps

Lowering your carbon emissions is important but it is just as important to involve your children in climate change conversation, research, and wider action. Consider taking the following steps at home and at school or the library with your children:

Read together about climate change. Look for Julie’s upcoming book A Hot Planet Needs Cool Kids (Green Goat Books, August 2007) as a good place to start. Be sure to talk about what you have read.
Create a culture of empathy toward all living things. Don’t kill spiders and flies. Relocate them outside if necessary using a bug vac. Don’t use toxic cleaning or lawn care products. Talk about and look for evidence of the animals, plants, and trees that share the space where you live. Turn your yard or school grounds into a Certified Wildlife Habitat.
Get involved in something bigger. Help your kids start or join a climate change response team at their school or other local insitution.
Get involved in something even bigger. Join EKO or another environmental group with a broad focus. The Internet is a great tool for this level of networking.
Socialize with similarly engaged people. Your kids need to feel like they’re not alone in their concerns for and work for the planet. Make sure that at least some of what you do in response to climate change is social. Picnics, potlucks, and informational fairs can make this uneasy business something that we and our children can live with better and more healthfully.

We’re not protecting our children from anything by keeping them out of the business of responding to global warming. They already know and they’re worried. The ways to ease their anxiety are (1) to show them that we are doing something about it and (2) to involve them. Besides, some of the most creative people I know are kids—maybe the answers to many of the planet’s problems rest in some smaller-sized hands.

By Sarah at ProgressiveKid

Freegan TV: Turn Trash into Dinner

scleaver — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Want to know how to turn that huge batch of vegetables that you found in a nearby restaurant’s trash into dinner? Or transform the loaves of bread salvaged from a nearby bakery into bread pudding? We have a TV show for you. The new British online show Ready Steady Skip (Skip is the English term for dumpster diving) will show you how -- taking reality TV to a new online audience this July.

In each episode of the show, airing online, the hosts take ingredients from dumpsters and use them to create a full meal. View the trailer online and pick up some tips from the links on the site.

I think, given that they’re “skipping meals” rather than “dumpster diving,” this is just one more example of how the British are simply more quaint than their American counterparts, and with food prices rising like they are, you might be able to take away some budget-savvy tips along with the recipes.

Photo from a Seeattle blog post about Freeganism.

BPA in Dental Plastic: Are the Fillings in your Teeth Dangerous?

susan — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Just when many of us are getting those old mercury fillings in our teeth replaced with the new plastic fillers we've been told are safer, we find that newer may not be better. BPA (bisphenol A) lurks not only in plastic water bottles, and the lining of canned foods, drinks and baby formula containers, it also can be found in some of the plastics dentists are now using.on our teeth. Studies have found BPA in the saliva of patients after they receive a filling or sealant treatment. This chemical, a hormone disruptor that can mimic estrogen and has been linked to early puberty in girls, breast and prostate cancer and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, may also be present in the plastic used to make night guards for those who grind their teeth.

But whether the levels of BPA that leach out of the plastic pose any significant health risk is harder to answer.

Both the American Dental Association and Health Canada say "Don’t worry." They have issued statements saying that the levels of BPA in dental plastics are not hazardous to health.

In Canada, the federal government has just banned the use of BPA in plastic baby bottles. But so far they have not banned its use in dental plastics, even though the Canadian Dental Association has advised members to start searching for BPA-free dental materials.

Pregnant Women and Babies Are at the Highest Risk

The one thing everyone agrees upon is that fetuses and infants are at the highest risk from BPA exposure. So if you are pregnant, it is wise to consult your dentist and physician about whether to go ahead with dental procedures that involve these plastics.

But even more important, if you can’t do without that night guard or need to take care of cavities while pregnant, at least make sure you minimize any additional exposure to BPA. The ADA says the BPA in other products poses greater hazards than dental products.

Avoid re-using water bottles, avoid Nalgene bottles (hard, colorful plastic bottles marked No. 7 on the bottom) and canned foods that have white plastic liners – especially canned pastas and soups. And use BPA-free products (especially infant formula and baby bottles and sippy cups) for your baby as well.

For more on how to avoid the dangers of BPA for yourself and your family:

BPA: Plastic Products that Are BPA-Free

Your BPA questions, answered

BPA: The Dangers of Canned Foods May Be Greater Than Plastics

BPA: 5 Tips to Avoid the Dangers in Plastics

Where To Find Baby Bottles Without BPA -- and Formula and Pacifiers, Too

Where to Find BPA-Free Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups

How to Get Carbon Free in 10 Years – Reduce Global Warming

susan — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Cutting your carbon footprint is one thing - but becoming carbon free in 10 years? Sounds impossible? Putting out ZERO carbon emissions requires major deprivation and sacrifice, right? Not so. You’d be amazed at how simple, painless changes can help you snag the gold ring -- saving yourself money and saving the planet from fire and (melting) ice.

Now for the details: I found one of the best step-by-step breakdowns of how one family can do it in Yes Magazine. This helpful article takes a hypothetical family of three and proposes changes they’ll need to make each year to go from producing 60,000 pounds of carbon emissions per year to zero.Here’s a sampling of what you can do to make the biggest difference - with the least effort and expense. Remember, even if you can’t do it all and get to ZERO, taking any of these actions will be a move in the right direction.

Year 1

Switch to CFLs
Wash clothes in cold water and air dry them
Turn off the computer when not in use
One adult commutes by bus three days a week

Year 2

Insulate attic and basement
Insulate heat ducts
Patch air leaks around the home

Year 3

Commute by bus daily
Sell second car
Weatherize windows and doors

Year 4

Take train (not plane) when you go on vacation

Year 5

Trade in old car for an electric model

Year 6

Lower hot water heater temp
Insulate hot water heater and pipes
Replace old refrigerator with energy-efficient model
Eliminate second refrigerator

Years 7 to 10

Vacation close to home
Buy energy-efficient washing machine
Convert to solar hot water system
Commute by electric bikes 8 months of the year
Replace furnace with electric heat pump that also cools
Buy certified green, renewable power from their electric company

Now that wasn’t so hard was it?

For more details, see Yes Magazine.

For more on Reducing Your Carbon Footprint:

Carbon Footprints

What Exactly is a Carbon Footprint?

Reducing Your Carbon Footprint From Travel

Wash Your Carbon Footprint Away

The Quest For The Perfect Carbon Calculator

BPA: The Dangers of Canned Foods May Be Greater Than Plastics

susan — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:00:00 -0400

The headlines have focused on the dangers of BPA (bisphenol-A, an endocrine-disrupting chemical) in plastics. But it turns out that the BPA in the plastic lining of canned foods may pose even greater dangers.

Many canned foods are lined with a plastic coating (it looks like a solid lining) made from BPA, which can leach into the food. The longer a can sits on your shelf, the more BPA is likely to leach out.

The highest levels of BPA were found in canned pasta and soups, according to a report last year by the Environmental Working Group, . a nonprofit research group based in Washington, D.C.

“Independent laboratory tests found a toxic food-can lining ingredient associated with birth defects of the male and female reproductive systems in over half of 97 cans of name-brand fruit, vegetables, soda, and other commonly eaten canned goods,” according to the EWG’s report.

Which specific canned foods were the most dangerous?

Chicken soup, infant formula, and ravioli came out highest in risk, according to the EWG. “Just one to three servings of foods with these concentrations could expose a woman or child to BPA at levels that caused serious adverse effects in animal tests,” according to the report.

About 17% of the average American diet consists of canned foods, according to Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) estimates. EWG reports that the last time the FDA examined BPA exposures from food was in 1996 -- but they failed to set a safety standard.

What Can You DO?

· Cut down on canned foods -- eat fresh foods instead. Save the canned stuff for emergencies.

· Choose canned foods from makers who don't use BPA, such as Eden Foods (www.edenfoods.com), which sells certified organic canned beans and other foods.

· Choose soups in cardboard cartons (such as those by Tetra Pak and SIG Combibloc) which are made of safer layers of aluminum and polyethylene (#2) and are also recyclable. Or buy foods packaged in glass jars.

Background on BPA: Why Worry?

BPA, or bisphenol-A, has been linked to various cancers (breast and prostate cancer), early onset puberty, Type II diabetes and neurobehavioral changes in offspring exposed in the womb, according to the EWG. This chemical, used in many plastics, such as polycarbonate plastic (hard, colored water bottles and water coolers) and the lining of most food and beverage cans, leaches into foods. Even more of the chemical is released when it's heated. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control found BPA in the bodies of 93 percent of the people they tested.

For more information on BPA, check out these stories:

BPA in Dental Plastic: Are the Fillings in your Teeth Dangerous?

BPA: 5 Tips to Avoid the Dangers in Plastics

Where to Find Baby Bottles Without BPA -- and Formula and Pacifiers, Too

Where to Find BPA-Free Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups

BPA: Plastic Products That Are BPA-Free

Your BPA Questions Answered

BPA: 5 Tips to Avoid the Dangers in Plastics

susan — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

You’ve probably seen the news reports about the dangers of chemicals such as BPA (bisphenol-A, an endocrine-disrupting chemical) and others in plastic. Now it’s time for you to do something about it.

I know you’re trying to do the green thing by re-using your plastic water and juice bottles instead of being like 80% of the rest of the world who toss them in the garbage and don’t even recycle.

But cut it out. BPA has been linked to various cancers (breast and prostate cancer), early onset puberty, Type II diabetes and neurobehavioral changes in offspring exposed in the womb. And BPA is not the only danger lurking in your plastic containers.

Here are some simple steps you can take to stay healthy and safe. These tips are advisable for everybody – but especially for those most vulnerable to the effects of these chemicals -- infants and young children, as well as pregnant women or anyone even thinking about getting pregnant.

1. Do not re-use plastic water – or soda or juice -- bottles.

The danger here is not BPA -- these containers do not contain BPA as they are made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), a petroleum-based material. (Turn them upside-down and look for the number #1 inside the tiny triangle.)

The primary danger is bacteria. With those small mouths, they are almost impossible to wash properly.

Danger Number 2: Once you’ve put those bottles in the dishwasher and they’ve gotten scratched and dented, this degraded bottle allows a trace metal, antimony, to leach into whatever you are drinking, according to one of the leading researchers on plastics, University of Missouri’s Frederick S. vom Saal, in a recent New York Times article.

2. Avoid hard plastic Nalgene containers, made from polycarbonates -- #7 on the bottom.

Yes, those cool, colorful, rigid transparent plastic bottles that are labeled Number 7 – or PC on the bottom -- contain BPA. This plastic is also used for hard plastic baby bottles, toddlers’ sippy cups, 5 gallon water cooler bottles, plastic silverware, and Lexan products, according to a report by The Environmental Working Group.

“Some polycarbonate water bottles are marketed as 'non-leaching' for minimizing plastic taste or odor, however there is still a possibility that trace amounts of BPA will migrate from these containers, particularly if used to heat liquids,” according to the EWG.

When possible it is best to avoid #7 plastics, especially for children's food. Plastics with the recycling labels #1, #2 , #4 and #5 on the bottom are safer choices and do not contain BPA.

3. Use stainless steel containers – there’s a sippy cup adapter for toddlers.

And make sure you pick ones that do not have a plastic liner. That plastic liner can contain – you guessed it – BPA.

Here’s a web site – KleanKanteen -- with a selection of stainless steel bottles —one even has a sippy adapter for kids – instead of those plastic sippy cups.

4. Do not microwave or heat foods in plastic containers.

That means any plastic – even if it is a safer variety. When you heat liquids or foods in a plastic container, it causes even more BPA (and possibly other chemicals) to leach out.

Don’t use plastic wrap in the microwave either. Though the American Chemistry Council reports that phthalates stopped being used in any US plastic wraps in 2006, companies aren't required to list what's in their plastic wrap. So why take chances?

Use glass containers in the microwave. And cover with a paper towel or a glass cover.

5. If you must use plastic containers, hand wash them.

For times when you can’t use glass – like when you’re out running or biking – and you must use plastic, at least make sure to wash your bottle by hand. Use a mild dishwashing soap – and do not put it in the dishwasher as this will degrade the plastic and allow more BPA (or trace metals iin the case of single-use pplastic water bottles) to leach out.

For more information on BPA, check out these stories:

BPA in Dental Plastic: Are the Fillings in your Teeth Dangerous?

BPA: The Dangers of Canned Food May Be Greater Than Plastics

Where to Find Baby Bottles Without BPA -- and Formula and Pacifiers, Too

Where to Find BPA-Free Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups

BPA: Plastic Products That Are BPA-Free

Your BPA Questions Answered