sustainable
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.
Diapers: Cloth or Disposable?
When I was expecting the Little One, I dreaded this question. For me, it was like the “paper or plastic” question that you feel like you never really have all of the information necessary to make an informed decision (and if you’ve ever felt the same about the ‘paper or plastic?’ question, RUN, don’t walk, to this helpful breakdown). But with ‘Cloth or Disposable?’, I felt even more lost; for one thing, I wasn’t even a mom yet, so hadn’t even honed my diaper changing skills. I didn’t know how much and to what extent diapers would consume my future life, so had no real clue of what information was necessary to make this choice.
As a sustainability-friendly person, my instinct was that ‘cloth’ was the right answer. Much in the same way that many sustainability-friendly folks believe that ‘paper’ is the corresponding right answer among bagging issues. But I soon found, upon the Little One’s birth, that the choice here becomes a far more personal one than which type bag to use. Here is how I found the path to my favorite pick:
My initial response to the dreaded question was that I intended to try cloth, but begin with disposables; I figured the learning curve of caring for a newborn would be great enough without the added stress of trying to manage a new cloth diapering system. Turns out that Whew! I had that right! So, after a little homework on the various options in disposables, I added Seventh Generation diapers to my baby registry. They were hard to find; only one shop offered them locally at the time. The best bet was to buy them online. I’d been happy with both the products and philosophy of the Seventh Generation line, so I was looking forward to giving the diapers a shot. Although they are, like most disposables, essentially a plastic-based product, no chlorine is used in their manufacture, which is helpful in a few ways: Less processing required in manufacture means less carbon footprint; lack of chlorine makes diapers friendly to sensitive baby skin; no chlorine to leach into the groundwater after the diapers are disposed of.
The Little One finally showed up in October, and I was ready with my pick for disposable diapers. My life became a diaper-changing marathon. Any supply of diapers that I had armed myself with disappeared almost immediately. No matter how many new packs I bought, it seemed I was always almost out of them. Having chosen a brand that was difficult to find was not an optimal plan for the time. I ended up supplementing with plenty of Pampers Swaddlers and Luvs, just because they were the ones I could buy at the nearest grocery store. I’m glad that that happened, though, because it learned me something important: The Little One’s bum consistently got rashy when I used any other brand than Seventh Gen.
After a couple of months when I finally felt like I was getting the hang of whole diapering thing, I began to branch out. As a stop between disposable and cloth, I tried G Diapers. This was essentially a 3-part system: Cloth outer diaper, biodegradable/flushable/disposable insert, and protective plastic liner. They were freakin adorable. I loved how they looked on him, and the fit and absorbency was generally right on. I liked that the insert was flushable, but as we have septic system out here, that option was just not for us. The use of the G diaper required a little more planning than the full disposables; there were two outer cloth diapers, which needed to have the plastic liner snapped in place, in order to place the disposable insert, in order for the diaper to go on baby. Fine to plan out for an afternoon diaper change; at 2 am, however, not so much.
And just to wade a little into full cloth, I picked up a Bum Genius set. Super cute, super soft. If I were a baby, this is what I would want wrapping my tush. Aesthetically, it’s like the infant equivalent to Charmin Ultra.
Here, however, was the dealbreaker for me and cloth, and even me and G diapers: the Little One is famous for his consistently huge, runny poops. Even at 2, that kid can fill a diaper. Full. “Man poops” is how is daycare teacher jokingly characterized them. He made an awful mess of the poor Bum Genius. The kind that never quite washed out, and left it discolored. The G diapers would get all three layers saturated, necessitating a frantic run to the washing machine on a regular basis. But the Seventh Gen held it. Sure there were blow-outs, but few and far between as compared to the alternatives.
And now, many more places carry Seventh Generation locally, making them a consistently attractive option. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I used anything else. The Little One is slowly turning his sights to the potty, but I’ve got Kid 2.0 on the way as well; if his/her claim to fame does not include “man poops”, I might be inclined to give cloth another try. Any input or advice is welcome!
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.
Morning Sickness: A Rant
I try to make healthy, balanced and sustainable food choices. That is always my goal in shopping and cooking and selecting restaurants. And one would think, wouldn’t one, that during pregnancy, this goal would only be that much more important? One would. Think.
But here is a sampling of a typical pre-pregnancy menu in this household: Pot Roast of locally raised beef and garden veggies, local greens salad with homemade bread. Or lamb chops with a balsamic reduction and local blue potato wedges with garden squash pie.
Now, during the worst phase of the first trimester: Pizza and cookies. Fast food hamburger and fries. Major-chain restaurant spaghetti and meatballs. Velveeta Shells and Cheese. Seriously, the best (healthy balanced and/or sustainable) that I can do for a satisfying meal is a loaded baked potato, fruit and a green salad, but preferably prepared by someone else. And then I’ll need a cupcake in a couple of hours, and another before bed.
The culprit here: morning sickness. The very mechanism that is designed to help me make safe food choices is the stick in my culinary spokes. Before I was ever pregnant, I envisioned morning sickness as passing waves of nausea, punctuated by some vomiting. The version that I’ve gotten, though, is the constant seasickness that has changed my entire relationship with food. I know that it is temporary, but I am appalled at my food choices lately.
I realize that the biological point of morning sickness and the weird cravings/aversions is also to help my body gain excess fat to store, as well as to keep a safe distance from potentially hazardous things like raw meat. But the things that I’m craving have their definite downsides: The processed food with the preservatives and additives and high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils and food coloring and…….ech……just making myself feel ill. I’m sure you get my point: When you rely on food that someone else has made for you, and that relationship is a distant one, you tend to ingest a lot of crap that is not beneficial to your own body, let alone a tiny vulnerable bean growing inside you.
When I first found out about my first pregnancy, I quickly ordered the book “Eating for Pregnancy” to make sure that my nutritional i’s would be dotted and t’s would be crossed. I never made a single recipe from the book, though – as soon as morning sickness kicked in, I couldn’t even look at a recipe, let alone shop productively in a grocery store. I lamented to my OB, who assured me that my former pre-pregnancy diet would be enough to sustain my body through the first trimester. “If you ate well before you were pregnant”, she said, “you’ll be fine”. I hope to heck she’s right.
Pregnancy: a new category at CIE
If I could choose one event in my life that, more than any other, furthered my awareness of product ingredients and how they affect the human body, it would have been my pregnancy in 2007. Most newly pregnant women are pummelled with the basic information on what to avoid during pregnancy, and in most cases, these things were no surprise: raw/undercooked meat, smoking, illicit drugs, unpasteurized cheese, cat litter……….but aside from the pamphlet list that you get from the doctor, there are actually very many more products and drugs and airborne things to know about; something that I learned slowly over the course of the nine months before the Little One’s birth.
Just this morning, MSNBC ran a bit about the rise in autism rates; it was 1 in 150 during my last pregnancy. Now, just 2 1/2 years later, it is 1 in 91. Although no one can or wants to say definitively what is causing this rise, I think most of the scientific community agrees that, in addition to the genetic factor, it is a result of multiple toxic exposure during pregnancy. Therefore, limiting such exposure when we are trying to conceive and when we are pregnant is the goal here. But how to go about doing that? That standard doctor’s list is a good place to start. I will do my best to continue it here in this category over the coming months; and I am now invested in the subject as well — we are expecting our next little bundle in May.
A Less Toxic Tomorrow?
If you’re like me, you were caught pretty off-guard over the big headlines the last few years regarding toxins in our everyday lives: Melamine in pet food, Bisphenol-A in our plastics, lead paint on our toys………and because I was caught off-guard, I was furious. Prior to our pets dying, I had heard not even a whisper of the potential for my cat’s food to contain a life-threatening toxic chemical, and plastics…….well, we live in a plastic society, for chrissakes, even a good recycler/reuser such as myself was not aware of the dangers of releasing toxic chemicals into whatever the plastic’s contents if it was heated, or gasp……reused too often.
And these were things that I and my family and my pets had previously taken into our bodies without the slightest sense of the havoc that they could wreak. Infuriating. All the more infuriating because I know that for every big headline/melamine/BPA/lead paint story, there are a hundred more that we still don’t know about. And manufacturers who knowingly use such toxic chemicals have not been adequately regulated by a looooong shot. Just taken to task after the fact, which is really not a help to us at all. In fact, I really don’t understand why people, en masse, aren’t far more outraged than they are.
At least help is on the way, in the form of a plan designed to actually regulate the manufacturer’s use of toxins in those products that many of use freely and willfully every day without question: “The Obama administration last night unveiled the broad outlines of a proposal to overhaul the regulation of thousands of chemicals used in consumer products and the workplace, calling for more testing and greater authority to restrict toxic products. The plan, which would require legislation, would replace an existing system that is widely seen as ineffective – so much so that it did not allow the government to ban asbestos, a known carcinogen, decades ago”.
Thank you, Obama administration. This is a gift to my family, my pets, and all of us here in the US. This is exactly how the government needs to take care of its people. Thank you.
Garage Sale Friday
It’s not that I’ve been finding great stuff at garage sales these last weeks and then not posting about it; it’s not even that I haven’t been going to garage sales. I have. Every week, without fail. I just haven’t been buying anything. Some of the sales even had really nice stuff that I thought about buying. But I didn’t. In order for me to buy something at a garage sale, it has to be something that I’ve already identified a need for, or something that is a true Antiques Roadshow find. And those things just don’t come around on a regular basis. Such is the unpredictable and random nature of the garage sale.
In the past, friends of mine have heard about my great garage sale finds, and insisted on coming along with me on a Friday or Saturday morning. After we’ve visited 10+ sales and walked away empty-handed, they sometimes get a puzzled look, as if to say “OK, where’s those awesome finds“? And the answer is that we may need 20 more Fridays. We may have to go to 95 more sales. That’s just how it is. But I always enjoy the ride. I enjoy the heck out of the 95 sales that I have to go to find the treasure hidden in number 96. The people, the clutter, the stuff, the peek into the choices someone else has made in their buying, and, in the case of an estate sale, a true look into the stuff of their lives – their travels, their kids, their memories. In a lot of cases, the stuff that I buy is just an added perk.
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
Dishwashing, phosphate-free
Starting next year, Washington state is placing a ban on all dishwashing detergents that contain more than 1/2% phosphate. This legislation is being enacted due to the seepage of the phosphate into lakes and groundwater, which feeds algae and as a result, diminishes the supply of oxygen for fish. Other states, including Maryland, are considering similar legislation.
Those of you that have dishwashers have probably settled into a comfortable routine with the detergent of your choice, but if that comfortable routine involves a detergent that contains phosphates, I’m afraid a change is due. The market is already littered with a handful of phosphate-free detergents, and as I’ve tried many of them over the course of the last year or two (with a little nudge from my very eco-wise mom), I offer my experiences and my favorite pick from among them.
For comparison’s sake, it’s probably helpful to mention that all of the following detergents were tried with a Fisher-Paykel Dish Drawer:
- Ecover dishwashing tablets. Here is where I began, and was happily surprised by the cleaning power and efficiency of these little tabs. Dishes were consistently sparkling, without residue, and depending on the length of the dishwashing cycle, I could often get TWO uses from one tablet. Awesome!
- Seventh Generation dishwashing powder. Picked up one day when the local shop where I buy Ecover was out of stock. Since I already use many products in the Seventh Generation line, I was happy to give it a shot. As it turns out, though, this was the worst of the bunch. Glasses almost always ended up gritty with residue, and left a thin layer of residue on the Little One’s sippy cups. Ick. I was better off washing these things by hand, which was kind of contrary to the point.
- Seventh Generation dishwashing tablets. As soon as these also came on the market, I was willing to try. I didn’t want to give up on using 7thGen dishwashing products. Again, I experienced similar negative results as with the powder. Ick.
- BioKleen dishwashing powder. Better than 7thGen, but also left a thin residue on the Little One’s sippys. Deal breaker.
- And most recently, Method’s new dishwashing tablets. They do a good job of getting the dishes clean, once in a while leaving the thin residue on the Little One’s sippys, but I just have to remember to check them all before using. I would generally recommend them, but the thing is, the tablets themselves are HUGE! Just to fit the tablet in my dishwasher’s compartment, I have to break it in half. Seriously, Method, did you do research here?
And the winner, by a country mile, is Ecover Automatic Dishwashing Tablets
