Wallet Mouth

Absence makes the Mouth grow louder

Miss me? I haven’t been neglecting you, I’ve just been away. It’s always refreshing to leave the States for a little while and rinse off all that America über Alles. This time it was Venice, where Mr. Wallet Mouth and I just had a romantic getaway to celebrate our last days as a twosome. (In less than three months, we will have another Mouth to feed.)

The city of canals has always been a tourists’ mecca, so I didn’t really expect any mind-altering shifts in perspective. Nonetheless, between our many helpings of gelato (baby needs calcium!) and during our meanders through countless piazzas and ever-narrower streets, a few blog-worthy moments surfaced.

One was encountering this graffito. (OK, I feel slightly self-conscious whipping out the rarely used singular form of “graffiti,” but hey, that’s what it was.) Anyway, it warmed my heart to see that some kindred spirit out there shares my obsession and outrage over the opaqueness of corporate parentage. It almost made me want to add a footnote (pun intended) suggesting No Sweat sneakers as an alternative.

Later, we happened upon this store—sadly, after it had closed for the day. Apparently everything it sells is fair trade, made by artisans all over the world (and there were some neat things inside; my eye was caught by a pair of Mongolian-made slippers with elvish upward-curving pointy tips). The fact that all the wares are fair trade is remarkable by itself, but what really struck me were shop’s appearance—nice, spacious, and emanating a Real Store vibe—and its location: right by the Rialto Bridge, one of the more touristy parts of Venice. It would be the equivalent of having a fair-trade shop in Fishermans Wharf, which I find hard to imagine.

Finally, look at the vegetarian and vegan check boxes on this canister of Pringles. Why don’t we have those on American Pringles? (At least I think we don’t; it’s been a long time since I’ve bought them.)

No doubt because Europe is kilometers ahead of us on the food-labeling front...

(And yes, sigh, I know Pringles are not good for baby. But Mr. Wallet Mouth claims he simply could not resist their Pringley goodness while on vacation!)

Amuse-bouche: potty talk

I found this Salon article interesting in its own right, but it also reminded me of the importance of having widely available public information about corporations. That’s because, in the story, the writer says, “Leading manufacturers, like Georgia Pacific and Kimberly Clark, increasingly use up to 100 percent recycled fiber from the United States.” Only in the fifth page of the comments did a reader correct the writer: As I have mentioned in this blog, Kimberly-Clark is actually under fire for clear-cutting virgin forests to make its Kleenex and paper towels. If info on such corporate misdeeds were more freely available, perhaps the writer would have taken a different tone.

Green ≠ white only

I didn’t anticipate just how long the line would be to get into the San Francisco Green Festival yesterday, but I was still able to catch some of Paul Hawken’s talk. (I recently finished The Ecology of Commerce, and I’m awed by how eloquently he writes about the relationship between business and the environment.)

Hawken ended his speech by saying that the key to the environmental movement’s success is community, and that “there can be no green movement until there is a brown movement, a yellow movement, a red movement, a copper movement.”

That made me think immediately of a new site that recently came to my attention: Black Brown Green is focused on integrating people of color with the environmental movement (while not excluding whites). There are still a couple of holes in the site—it plans to announce itself formally to the public on Dec. 1—but it promises to be a good resource for tips on how to make our daily lives more sustainable, discussion forums, and articles and videos about green issues as they relate to people of color.

S.F. Bay Area beaches need helping hands after oil spill

Many readers have no doubt heard about Wednesday’s 58,000-gallon oil spill caused by a tanker that hit the Bay Bridge. Just in time for the Green Festival. Official calls for volunteers have been lacking, but I encourage San Francisco Bay Area readers with the time to get out to any local beach and help. This post from Craigslist says it all:

Many people, including myself got the impression that we weren't supposed to, or we had to wait until some sanctioned clean - up asked for our help. Nothing seemed to be happening so I went out to a beach in emeryville this morning and just figured it out. There's not much to it, and I encourage everybody to pick a beach and have at it. Get a box of latex gloves, a small bucket or similar, and some garbage bags. The oil is coming onto the beach in tar balls and in a lot of instances can be picked up pretty easily. We got the beach about ninety percent clean this morning after hand picking a couple hundred pounds of the tar up. Just go and do it, if the beach is posted as closed, you'll have to make the call - the one we were cleaning was posted closed and the park service employees just drove by and didn't bother us. The fumes from the tar can be a little intense so be aware and get stop and get some fresh air every so often. the tide is going out now, so more beach will be exposed this afternoon for more access to cleaning. send this on to other folks, and be prepared for the heartbreak of seeing more tar on the beach tomorrow after another cycle of tides.

Addendum: The authorities are apparently telling people not to try to clean beaches unless they are specially trained, since the spilled fuel oil is so toxic. However, that’s not stopping small numbers of individuals, including surfers and Mr. Wallet Mouth, from getting out there. (I stayed away, since I’m pregnant.)

If you do decide to risk the toxic exposure and go, make sure to wear heavy-duty rubber gloves and bring a trowel or kitty-litter scoop, along with heavy-duty garbage bags. Wear real shoes, not sandals, and protect your skin from the stuff as best you can. A respirator mask is probably also a good idea, since there are fumes; Mr. Wallet Mouth picked one up at our local hardware store.

Fair-labor assurances boost sales in retail experiment

A recent article in Slate discusses an intriguing experiment that suggests businesses can increase profits by offering products labeled as having been produced in a socially conscious manner.

More testing is needed, since the trial took place in a New York City store with a progressive reputation and customers who tend to be wealthier than average. But the proposition that there is a quantifiable unmet consumer demand for fairly made products is exciting.

My minor but nagging question—were the items the researchers labeled as fair-labor in the experiment actually produced under fair and safe conditions?—gets an affirmative answer in the research paper itself (pdf). Also notable there is the list of retailers that declined to participate in the experiment for fear of drawing attention to the issue of labor standards: Abercrombie and Fitch, Adidas, American Eagle, Eastern Mountain Sports, Free People, Gap, the Harvard / MIT Coop, J. Crew, Marshall’s, Nike, Patagonia, Target, Timberland, Urban Outfitters, and Wal-Mart.

Not only is your wallet a mouth...

So is your job. How you earn your money is arguably just as important as how you spend it.

I’ve had this thought before, but Desirae’s comment on my Actics post reminded me of it. So did a blurb in the new issue of Sierra magazine about the Graduation Pledge Alliance, which enables college seniors to publicly promise to take into account the social and environmental impacts of any job they consider. Of course, not everyone has that luxury, but it’s nice to know that a significant portion of tomorrow’s workers and leaders are thinking along those lines.

What resources exist to help people find employers that align with not only their skills and interests but also their values—and hopefully treat workers well? That’s a tall order.  SustainableBusiness.com offers a number of links. Another place to look is the corporate-social-responsibility press. As I pointed out to Desirae, Business Ethics magazine publishes the 100 Best Corporate Citizens list, and Ethisphere puts out the World’s Most Ethical Companies list every year.

But there’s a caveat. Such rosters only consider large, publicly traded corporations (because it’s easier to get data on them). And in the world of big business, “best” or “most ethical” doesn’t always mean great or truly ethical. For example, Royal Dutch/Shell, a company that lives in infamy after the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa, can be found on Ethisphere’s list. Kimberly-Clark, a recent addition to my own boycott list because of its reckless disregard of virgin forests, is on Business Ethics’ inventory.

Interestingly, a Harvard Business School paper published earlier this year titled “Do Corporate Social Responsibility Ratings Predict Corporate Social Performance?” determines that the answer is, essentially, Not as much as you’d like.

OK, I’m going to leave this Big Topic at that for now.

Vomit for fair trade: models needed for photo project

San Francisco Bay Area readers: Want to make a statement against Mars Corporation’s unethically sourced cocoa and have fun at the same time? Conceptual artist April Banks is seeking models of varying ages, races, and physical characteristics so she can shoot portraits of them spitting up M&Ms. (Actual vomiting not necessary.)

If you’re interested and free on Nov. 10 or 11, email her at aprilinafrica@yahoo.com. Choose a two-hour time slot between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and indicate your race, gender, and approximate age. Saturday’s shoot takes place in Oakland; Sunday’s is in San Francisco. Wear a white T-shirt.