Don't Buy This!
CIE Holiday Shopping Guide
News recently broke (and unbroke) about the unsafe levels of the toxic compound antimony on this Holiday season’s hottest new toy, Zhu Zhu Pets. Until then, it seemed like a great gift for the times: inexpensive, simple, and oh so cute. But the alarm raised by the exposure of a certain fireproofing chemical used in its manufacture should not be dismissed. Standards for toy manufacture, and, for that matter, product manufacture, remain at once lax and rather unregulated. Fortunate thing we have groups like GoodGuide that are helping the consumer to navigate the waters of safe/unsafe in a wide range of products, from toys to food to personal care items.
Similarly, we have publications such as The Blue Pages: A Directory of Companies Rated by Their Politics and Practices 
In that vein, my Holiday Shopping Guide is a compendium of companies recommended by both GoodGuide and The Blue Pages. Get out your shopping lists and get ready to edit!
Greenest Toy Companies of 2009 — Good Guide
The Blue Pages: 10 Best Brands to Buy this Holiday Season (via Air America):
- Gap
- Tiffany and Co.
- Best Buy
- Hewlett-Packard
- Kenneth Cole
- Campbell Soup Company
- Naked Juice
- The North Face
- Ben and Jerry’s
The Blue Pages: The Top Ten Companies to AVOID this Holiday Season (via Air America):
- The Children’s Place
- Hanes
- JC Penney
- The Limited Brands
- IBM
- Albertson’s
- Chiquita
- L’Oreal
- Target — ouch! That one’s gonna hurt!
- Wal-Mart
One Small Step to a Sustainable Holiday
Amid all of the pre-Thanksgiving buzz last week about Black Friday, a TV news reporter stood in the middle of a well known Big Box store, holding up some of the great deals to be had. Among her selected items, a toilet seat cover with Santa’s face. No really, I’m not kidding:
Most of us would agree that, especially in these economic times, something like this is unnecessary. But what if the price quoted by the TV news anchor was a low low $13? For the whole set! Even those among us who would normally snort at such outrageous decor might think “hmm…that might be kind of adorable, and Aunt Stella would get such a kick out of it when she comes out for Christmas dinner”! Something seems to happen to our judgment when things we wouldn’t be inclined to buy turn out to fall comfortably in our price range.
Let’s all please, please this holiday season start here: reclaim that judgment. If there’s one thing we don’t need on this planet, it’s a toilet seat cover with Santa’s face on it. The sooner manufacturers are aware of this (by lack of sales), the less burden our planet will have to bear for their production. In fact, how about we all, as consumers,
Buy no new holiday decor this year
Yep. It’s simple. Here’s what to do instead: Use what you have. Use what your friends and family have, but are not currently using. If you must obtain something that isn’t available to you in this way, thrift shops and antique stores are packed to the gills with holiday decor that’s already out there. If there’s something that absolutely must be purchased new, like candles, please patronize local artisans, in your town or online (a la Etsy).
We tend to think of recycling as the glass and paper and plastic that we sort out from our trash, but really, using what we have and relying on secondhand sources is just as powerful a way to recycle, if not more so. And the next time you see a $3.99 price tag on the silliest little thing that you almost can’t resist, please, take yourself out of the moment. The fewer new $3.99 silliest things in your life, and in the life of the planet, the better.
Hair care during pregnancy
I blame the pregnancy message boards. At the outset of my first pregnancy, I was blissfully oblivious to the potential hazards of shampoo. Then, the posting was clicked: “Shampoo?“, then, the link followed: “Pregnancy Alert: Shampoo Ingredient Could Damage Developing Brain Cells“. It should have carried a warning: “Danger! Can of worms about to be opened“! Because what unfolded was a long lesson in the vile substances in personal care products that could, key word: could, have the potential of harm to a developing baby.
If you think about it, our skin is our largest organ, so concern about hazards during pregnancy should not stop with what we simply ingest. We do, like it or not, absorb many additional things through our skin, intentionally or no. Here’s the main thing to take away from the link above: shampoo often contains an ingredient called methylisothiazolinone, a substance that acts as an antimicrobial agent, to give the shampoo a long shelf life. Here’s the thing, though: methylisothiazolinone is a neurotoxic chemical. It really shouldn’t be used in shampoo at all. But it shows up in far more than just shampoo. The Household Products Database has it listed as an ingredient in a wide variety of products: house paint, shampoo, conditioner, hand soap, hair color…….See the list here.
In addition to the Household Products Database, coming to the rescue to help us sort through the maze of ingredients on our personal care products is the Cosmetics Database, who warn: “Major gaps in public health laws allow cosmetics companies to use almost any ingredient they choose in everything from sunscreen and mascara to deodorant and baby shampoo, with no restrictions and no requirement for safety testing. To help you navigate your store’s aisles, Environmental Working Group researchers have scoured thousands of ingredient labels to bring you our top recommendations for what not to buy — products with worrisome or downright dangerous ingredients that don’t belong in your shopping cart or on your skin”.
They do a commendable job of rating personal care products based on the safety of their ingredients. And it’s clearly not just methylisothiazolinone that is of concern here. The database also singles out Placenta, Lead, Fragrance, Animal Parts, Hydroquinone Skin Lightener, Nanoparticles, Phthalates, and Petroleum By-products as the ingredients causing the highest concern. Yes, these products really are in the personal care products we use every day without question.
But no despair necessary: being pregnant does not condemn one to a 9 month avoidance of personal care products. My picks for a low-chemical personal care routine, having already done the work of hashing through the Cosmetic Database’s findings and trying a wide range of the green-lighted products:
Shampoo: Burt’s Bees – widely available; does a good job with far fewer ingredients of concern.
Conditioner: Aubrey Organics – for my fine, dry, wavy hair, the Island Naturals conditioner can’t be beat.
Cosmetics: 100% Pure – amazing products. The tinted moisturizer, eye shadows, and blush all get big thumbs up.
Skin creams and shower gel: California Baby – I hate to say it……….as good as Kiehl’s. It’s true. The Calendula cream kicks Kiehl’s Abyssine cream’s butt, and it’s so much kinder to the wallet. And with far fewer ingredients of concern.
Nail Polish: Priti Polish – nail polish and remover is one of the leading offenders in chemical content. Priti, astoundingly enough, offers a great product without the harsh ingredients that throw out the red flags.
As far as hair color goes: Better to wait until after the first trimester, and thereafter, better to go to a stylist, who can apply the coloring so that it does not make contact with your scalp.
Fisher Paykel Dish Drawer: A Review
Because the repairman will be here this afternoon, and not, as I was told yesterday, this morning; I find myself with a little time to burn in which I’d like to write about my experience with the dishwasher that warranted the aforementioned repair call: The Fisher Paykel Double Dish Drawer.
We bought it in 2004, in the midst of our whole house renovation, for our newly constructed kitchen. We chose it because it was not only innovative and beautiful, but liked the idea of being able to run two loads of dishes simultaneously. We entertain a lot, and because of our renovation project, we had been without a dishwasher for long enough that two loads at once sounded like heaven. At the outset, we loved it. It looks great in our kitchen and is nearly quiet as a mouse. For a three year stretch, we would have had only positive things to say about it. Then came 2007, and our troubles began. Sadly enough, by this time our two-year service warranty had expired.
The plastic brackets holding up the top drawer broke, causing the drawer to stick and rendered the top unit unuseable. We had them replaced. Within a month, they broke again. We had them replaced again. But this time, the weight of the top drawer on the bottom had caused some leakage, and the resulting water spill resulted in the frying of the sensor and control panel underneath both units. We had it replaced. The following year, the motor on the top unit broke. We had it replaced.
This time, this year, today, the plastic brackets have broken again. In fact, they broke two weeks ago, and though I called for the repairman immediately, the parts have been agonizingly slow to arrive. I understand the brackets are now made of metal, which, fingers crossed, will offset this pesky problem from happening in the future. But in the meantime, we have invested at least twice the purchase price of the Dish Drawer in its repair, and I find myself fantasizing about an alternate reality in which we just chose another make of dishwasher back in 2004.
In my experience, in this case, sometimes expensive is expensive, too.
09/24: edited to add: According to the serviceman last night, the brackets (though he called them “actuators”) are not now being made from metal. We get the same plastic ones. Again. And we were his second F-P Dish Drawer repair of the day. That might not be a big whoop in, say, Chicago, but we are very much downstate. According to him there are only about 25 Dish Drawer owners in his service area. Doesn’t bode well.
02/16/10, edited to add: a few weeks ago, the actuators broke again. Yep, the same ones that we had replaced in September. Guess how long the warranty on the new parts lasted? 90 days. How long did it take for them to break on us? Just over 90 days.
Smart Choices?
Advertisers are very keen on making consumers feel good about their purchases: smart, beautiful, trendy, healthy, knowledgeable. Problem is, for us consumers, that the market is flooded with choices, and actually making well-considered choices from among our options would be at least a full time job. And who among us can take on another full time job? So advertisers operate in the business of shorthand, assuring us that we don’t really need to look into our options, because what they’re offering is the best choice anyway.
I can’t begrudge advertisers for this. I can, however, begrudge the food industry for this; for teaming up with nonprofits in the so-called “Smart Choices” program, wherein certain food items receive a big green check mark on their labeling, leading the consumer to believe that by purchasing the product that bears the check mark, they are making a smart choice (and the implication is: smarter choice than the products that don’t bear the green check). I can understand that food choices, in large part, do govern our health, and agree that measures taken to nudge the consumer towards healthier options are well worth the effort. But the criteria for selection of the “smart choices” foods is simply wrongheaded.
As reported in the New York Times, the following paragraph alone ought to illustrate just how wrongheaded the standards are: “Froot Loops qualifies for the label because it meets standards set by the Smart Choices Program for fiber and Vitamins A and C, and because it does not exceed limits on fat, sodium and sugar. It contains the maximum amount of sugar allowed under the program for cereals, 12 grams per serving, which in the case of Froot Loops is 41 percent of the product, measured by weight. That is more sugar than in many popular brands of cookies.” Hmmm…..is it that Froot Loops naturally contains those ingredients that help it to meet the Smart Choices standard? Nope. They are additives.
In fact, this type of program only incentivizes the food industry to add synthetic vitamins and fiber to processed foods that have been stripped of any nutritional value, a practice that has long made my head spin. Conversely, there seem to be no guidelines for the questionable additives that are placed in store bought food: preservatives, sugar substitutes, flavor enhancers, GMOs, food coloring, and the like. Wonder if Morgan Spurlock would do 30 Days on a Smart Choices Program diet and monitor his results?
Read all about the Smart Choices program on their website. And for added fun, do a search among the product categories. This is the telling part — how very few products are listed, represented by even fewer corporations that manufacture almost exclusively processed food. Among the few that are in my pantry at the moment: Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Quaker Instant Oatmeal (maple and brown sugar). Not exactly shining beacons of healthy food choices.
The only true shorthand I can think of that might be worthy of such labeling practice is this: Don’t eat anything with ingredients that your grandmother wouldn’t recognize. But the food industry wouldn’t be very gung-ho on that one, would they?
Updated 10/26: Success! Kudos to the news media for staying on top of this story, and to Gaga for the link: Food Label Program to Suspend Operations
Simple Shoes: A larger footprint than I expected
Recently, I bought a brand new pair of toddler Simple Shoes for the Little One. They are stinkin adorable, and I liked, at first blush, the philosophy of the company…..at least the one printed on the box: It starts “with all of the overbuilt, over-hyped products out there, it’s pretty hard to find sustainable shoes that you can live with…..” Awesome! You’re speaking to me! It isn’t often that I buy new shoes simply for this reason – I do go out of my way to buy them second or third-hand when I need them, especially for the Little One, who will just outgrow them or wear them out beyond recognition in a month’s time.
It goes on: “HOW we make our shoes is just as important as WHY we make them. That means finding more sustainable ways of doing business so we can make a gazillion more”. Okay, okay, the gazillion figure is a little troubling, but still, you had me at ’sustainable’. The salesperson at the store gushed about how Simple uses all recycled products in their shoe lines, ie soles made from rubber tires, and I am seriously digging this company. Maybe I’ll even buy a pair new for myself.
The shoes look great on the Little One. But about the third or fourth wearing, as I was putting them on his little feet, I noticed the sizing tag under the tongue of the shoe: “Made in China”. My heart drops. Simple, you lost me. I go on to wonder what else is hiding behind the philosophy of the Simple Shoe manufacturers. Recycled goods shipped to China, shoes made at a low low cost, shoes shipped back to the US? Honestly, this is a much larger (carbon) footprint than I imagined, especially given your marketing keywords. Please do not make a gazillion of them in this manner.
Back to the consignment shops I go.
Is your cat overweight? One simple step to a leaner and healthier feline.
I wish that I had a time machine. To be able to take all that I’ve learned about cat food back to 1998; back to one Cap’n Crunch, an almost 20 lb. (hence more than a little overweight!) 6 year old cat. I was at a loss about how to bring his weight back to a comfortable range; an orange tabby, he looked like a basketball. For one year, I fed him only a dry, premium brand “lite” food. Rather than lose weight, he actually gained it. I just resolved that he must be genetically programmed to be that large. Surely the food that I’d so carefully selected would have otherwise done it’s implied job, right?
As it turns out, WRONG. Poor Cap’n went on to eventually develop hyperthyroidism, then Chronic Renal Disease. He passed away earlier this month. If I had known, in 1998, that the food that I had been feeding him with the intention of helping him with a weight problem had most likely been a culprit in his condition in the first place, I might have saved him years of health problems. I just want to tear my hair out at the thought of it.
Enter into my 2009 life the book “Your Cat: Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life
If your cat is overweight, here’s what you can do TODAY: Switch any cat currently eating dry food to canned food. That’s right, the single most effective thing is to STOP the dry food intake. Even among the widely available brands of canned food (read: what you buy at the grocery store), there are relatively low carbohydrate options, so you shouldn’t have to shell out big bucks for the higher-end natural pet food. Dr. Hodgkins provides a good guide about how to read a label for carbohydrate content. Otherwise, there are national brands that market themselves as all-meat/no grain, such as EVO and Feline’s Pride. I plan to investigate these options with my two youngster cats and report back. Keep posted.
In the meantime, you can read up on more of these and other findings here and here. I invite your comments and experiences.
