Are Green Products Really Green? April 21, 2009

This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine issue is devoted to green issues and it has some interesting articles.

One of the pieces which coincided with Sunday’s Magazine that drew my attention evaluated the eco-footprint of stainless steel drinking bottles versus plastic bottles on a very basic level.  The point was obviously to uncover some of the hidden environmental costs of producing things that we commonly consider to be green.  I think there are a couple of things to note whenever determining the environmental impact of what we buy.  First, the measure of the environmental impact of consumer choices can change significantly depending on what criteria we’re using to judge.  In this comparison, stainless steel bottles were far worse, environmentally speaking, than plastic bottles when pitting one stainless steel bottle against one plastic bottle.  Yet, when the cumulative impact of the production and waste of hundreds of plastic bottles is taken into account, the steel bottle is much greener.  The consumer’s actions also matter.  For example, less energy is used when the bottle is washed in cold water and less waste results when the bottle is recycled after it can no longer be used.

Second, we need to question any product’s claims to environmental sustainability.  As people become increasingly environmentally conscious, companies are going to want to cash in on that popularity.  Indeed, this is already occurring.  For example, both Clorox and Scott recently introduced “green” lines of products.  And we certainly shouldn’t just take their words for it.  The problem with not taking a company’s word for it is that it takes a lot for the consumer to research the product’s environmental footprint.

I think it basically comes down to consumers making some common sense decisions.  Opt for purchasing the product that will give you the most volume with the least packaging (assuming of course that you will use what you buy).  Opt for buying products made with recyclable materials.  Consider the purpose (and the need) for the product and buy only what you know you will use.  Opt for the non-toxic alternative and use toxics sparingly and only when necessary.

The Environmental Benefits of Recession Era Food Shopping April 5, 2009

 

They say every cloud has a silver lining.  And in these tough economic times, that lining may actually be green.  As more and more people feel the effects of the recession, there is increasing demand for low-cost food.  Interestingly, the most cost-efficient foods oftentimes just so happen to be those that are the least processed.  I’ve come across a number of websites and magazines that offer suggestions for consumers to tighten the budget belt at the grocery store. 

 

Here are the most common suggestions I’ve encountered:

 

Tip Number 1:  Shop the periphery of the grocery store where you’ll find the fresh, generally less processed food.  Grocery stores tend to place less perishable items in the aisles.  It just so happens that those items are typically also the most highly processed, packaged, and preserved “food” in the grocery store.  The environmental costs incurred in producing products like these are obvious.  There’s the transport of the produce from the farms to the factories.  There’s the use of energy by the factories in processing the produce into some other form.  There’s the environmental impact of the production and shipping of the plastics used in the packaging.  There’s the shipping of the product from the factories to the grocers.  Then, after the “foods” are consumed, the packaging is thrown away and finds its way into the landfill.  Obviously, there are transportation and environmental costs related to the shipment of fresh produce, but generally, many of these layers are cut out.  And, if you compost, you can use all of your food, rather than throwing away voluminous amounts of plastic packaging. 

 

Tip Number 2:  Try dry beans and grains (preferably from the bulk section).  Bulgur, who knew?  Couscous, you’re so easy to make.  Polenta, how fulfilling and easy.  And the beans!  With just a minimal effort at planning, using dry beans in place of canned is so easy.  Using dry beans and grains cuts out the increased transportation costs of shipping heavier canned products, as well as reducing the use of cans.  And when beans and grains are purchased from the bulk section of the grocery store, packaging and its related environmental costs are reduced. 

 

Tip Number 3:  Consume less meat.  The financial and environmental impact of consuming less meat is substantial.  Meat is expensive and unless you’re buying your meat directly from the free-range, environmentally sustainable farm, it’s likely that the environmental costs of the meat are huge.  First, the corn has to be grown and shipped to the factory farms to feed the cows.  The feedlots are often huge fenced areas without shade where cows wallow in their own excrement.  Their waste is then washed off the land by rain and often finds its way into waterways, contaminating the ecosystem.  After the cows are large enough, they are trucked to a slaughterhouse, then packaged and shipped again to a distributor.  Finally, the packaged meat makes its way to grocery store shelves.  The same questions of environmental cost and humane treatment arise with chicken and pig production, as well.  For more information, read this article from a 2002 edition of E The Environmental Magazine.   

 

Tip Number 4:  Shop with an open and creative mind.  Buy produce that is on sale, rather than shopping directly from a recipe list.  When perusing the produce choices, try to be creative in coming up with multiple combinations using the same basic ingredients.  By using a little creativity, you can reduce the amount of waste from purchased but unused food.

 

 

Tip Number 5:  This isn’t really about shopping, but it does help to conserve money and environmental resources.  Consider growing some of your own food.  Even if you don’t have a backyard suitable for gardening, there are many online resources with instructions on how to grow vegetables and herbs in containers.

 

Tip Number 6:  Buy fruits and vegetables from local farmers’ markets.  This is where real bargains–and real freshness–can be found.  Plus, you get the chance to speak with the people who grew the food, allowing you to learn a little about their farming practices.  To locate a farmers’ market, go to www.localharvest.org.

Food Choice: The Good and Bad of Organic and Local March 8, 2009

Mother Jones magazine has an ambitious article by Paul Roberts in its online edition (I’m assuming it’s also in the print edition) discussing the many varied difficulties in converting from industrial to sustainable agriculture.  It’s quite a good article in its entirety, but I wanted to focus on one particular part:  the use of relatively easy, recognizable methods for identifying “good” food over the standard industrial based “bad” food. 

In the article, the author rightly condemns the use of tags like “organic” or “local” as a quick way to identify truly sustainable food.  Increasingly, we use words like these as checklists of sorts to determine what’s sustainable.  While I believe selecting organic or local food is better than selecting the standard agribusiness product, the problem with these tags is they are not, standing alone, very reliable methods of really ensuring that our food choices are sustainable.  For example, the author points out that other social costs, like underpaid farm laborers and the travel miles associated with trucking manure to organic farms, are present even when producing organic or local food and are not taken into account when consumers employ a tag like organic or local in their purchasing decisions.

I agree that using these types of easily recognizable checklists can be bad in the long term (or at least do not solve the entire problem of sustainable food choice).  But, I think their use is essential right now as a way to get people thinking about food alternatives and sustainability.  Sustainable food is one of the most complex and diverse environmental problems I think we are facing right now.  I rank it right up there with global climate change.  There are so many factors, on so many different levels of justice, that identifying workable solutions is not easy. 

But, I think that checklists are, right now, probably a good thing because they help people evaluate their choices and reconsider their eating habits.  I think perhaps the biggest challenge to adopting a more sustainable food production model is for people, on an individual or family level, to change how they have been purchasing, consuming, and thinking about food for generations.  In my view, checklists are a beginning, not an end.  Once people begin to think about choosing organic or choosing local, they begin to think about why those choices are better.  The challenge will be to ensure that those checklists do not become entrenched and limit the next steps in the progress of food sustainability.  

The Pacific Garbage Patch—Yet Another Reason to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle August 24, 2008

In the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii is a monstrous garbage dump. True, it’s not like a landfill; people who have seen it describe it as more of a plastic soup, albeit a very large soup. It’s estimated at being close to one and a half times the size of the United States. Nightline recently aired a segment on the garbage patch (apparently a repeat from a March 2008 broadcast) and Discover has an article about it here. Alan Weisman discusses it in his book The World Without Us, highlighting the fact that plastic now permeates many layers of the ocean’s water column.

The existence of this mega dump should reinforce calls for a reduction in the amount of plastic and other materials in packaging as well as the need to recycle and reuse as much as possible. I think the more people become aware of their effects on the environment, the more they will be willing to change behavior to prevent harm.

Are Electric Cars Better? March 28, 2008

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Ford and other big car companies are testing plug-in hybrid SUVs that would get about 120 miles per gallon.  The engines would work just like current hybrids, with a gasoline motor and a battery, but the car would be plugged into an electricity source when not in use.  Now, aside from the fact that Ford is testing this on an SUV, the idea of plug-in hybrids is not that much better than what we have now, with our reliance on gasoline.  The reason is the source of the majority of the nation’s electricity generation: coal.  Far more than any other energy source, coal accounts for a huge amount of the electricity generation in the United States.  Unfortunately, that means greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants.  By running after electric hybrids, we’re trading one greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuel for another.  In the end, what are we really trying to accomplish?  Without changing our nation’s energy generation system from one based in fossil fuels to one based in renewable sources, the electric hybrid is a wash. 

In Praise of Tap Water March 12, 2008

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the environmental problems associated with bottled water.  Well, San Franciscans have another reason to ditch bottled water and turn on the tap.  Scientists conducted tests of drinking water around the country and found that San Francisco’s water supply lacks any of the contaminants they were testing for.  So San Francisco, recycle those plastic water bottles and let the tap flow. 

Collecting Seeds February 27, 2008

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, designed to house a huge variety of seeds in the protected Arctic environment, is officially open. The need for the Seed Vault arose from the vulnerability of seed storage facilities around the world to war, disease, and mismanagement, among other threats. The Seed Vault is a tribute to biodiversity and an important step in ensuring the viability of various plant species.

One threat to biodiversity that I did not see raised in the articles discussing the christening of the Seed Vault is the decreasing biodiversity of our food supply resulting from a standardization of our food choices. As farming becomes increasingly centralized, the same type of crop is grown and the same type of animal is raised for meat by all of the food producers in the country. As a result, we are given fewer and fewer alternative varieties of foods, and we risk losing the many varieties of plants and animals that we do not happen to be eating now.

In her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver makes the point dramatically. She and her family move to a farm in Virginia and vow to do their best to live off of the land for one year. Her family decides to raise turkeys for meat. In her research, she discovers that in the not-too-distant past, a huge variety of turkey was available to the average consumer. (In fact, she said the variety her family chose to raise tasted like lobster!) Yet, today, we are limited to one type of turkey produced by every major poultry company in the country.

To make matters worse, we bred this type of turkey to be super-efficient as food, rather than as being a turkey. We engineered it to be able to pack on so much meat that it cannot support its own weight as it grows making it unable to stand on its own legs, let alone mate, which now requires artificial insemination.

This increasing standardization is not limited to turkeys. It exists at nearly every level of our food consumption. But, like the seed vault, there are some people and companies who are working to ensure continued biodiversity. Heirloom tomatoes are becoming popular again, and other companies are devoting themselves to ensuring the continued existence of heirloom varieties of plants and animals. Hopefully, with efforts like these around the world, we will not forsake diversity for efficiency in our food supply.

Vegas 911—Lake Mead May Be Dry by 2021 February 18, 2008

The southwestern United States could be considerably dryer (and darker) in the coming decades according to a report authored by a marine physicist and an analyst with the highly respected Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Lake Mead, home of the Hoover Dam and producer of an average of 4.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, has an astonishing 50% chance of drying up by 2021. And that’s a conservative estimate based on the authors’ assumption that the effects of climate change on the Colorado River basin began in 2007.

According to the report, the problem for the Colorado River is due to a combination of over-use of water resources, evaporation, and the effects of human-produced climate change. While the federal government is currently considering measures to mitigate the problem, the authors of the report conclude that Lake Mead could be dry by 2021 even if the mitigation measures are implemented. Obviously, considerable re-evaluation of the situation is in order.

The outlook for hydroelectric generation is even worse. The report estimates that by 2017, there is a 50% chance that water levels at Lake Mead could drop too low to permit electricity production. To put this into perspective, if Hoover Dam becomes non-operational, Los Angeles loses about 15% of its power, Nevada loses about 23% of its power, and Arizona loses about 19% of its power. This comes, of course, at a time when the southwest consistently faces annual strains on its electricity supply.

This report demonstrates yet another reason why everyone must be conscious of their environmental footprint. We must individually and collectively work to reduce consumption, reuse what we can, and strive to live a bit more simply.