Wallet Mouth

U.K. retailer bans child-labor cotton, tracks CO2

In another rendition of “Look how much farther ahead of us the U.K. is,” Tesco, the world’s third-largest retailer, will no longer sell items containing cotton from Uzbekistan. The reason? Forced child labor. According to this article from the Environmental Justice Foundation, tens of thousands of Uzbek children are withdrawn from school to pick the cotton that funds President Karimov’s government.

Tesco is also starting to track the carbon footprint of 30 of its private-label products, using a draft standard developed by the Carbon Trust, in an effort to provide labels that will better inform consumers about the CO2 outputs of different items.

Ah, England...

Baby steps

Nothing like a new baby to slow down your blogging! Our new Mouth to feed is a joy, but it’s safe to say that the first two weeks of parenthood have kicked my butt.

Speaking of butts, one bloggable nugget has emerged from the recent haze of sleep deprivation and poop overload. It has to do with the derriere—specifically, what to cover the soft, newborn bum with. (And don’t even talk to me about elimination communication. At least not at this stage of the game.)

Anyone who has even thought about procreating is probably aware of the environmental debate over disposable vs. cloth diapers. Disposable nappies aren’t very earth-friendly to produce and take forever to biodegrade; cloth ones require water and electricity to clean—and if you use a diaper service, you have to factor in the transportation factors as well. It’s a classic case of the importance of considering embodied energy.

Now there’s a new entrant to the debate: gDiapers, which feature a reusable cloth outer layer and a biodegradable liner that you flush down the toilet. According to the company’s site, the liner has been given two thumbs up from the Cradle to Cradle guys. Now, gDiapers are old news to parents with diaper-wearing kids, but Mr. Wallet Mouth and I only recently learned of them, and I’m happy to report that (a) they fit our infant’s bum fairly well (they don’t work for every baby) and (b) we’ve not found them to be too much of a pain in the ass, though they are more work than disposables.

Also, the gDiapers website says the company works with China Labour Watch “to keep an eye on the mill we use to ensure workers are treated fairly and working conditions are constantly being improved.”

Still, I can’t help but feel guilty about all the extra water we’re using with all these additional flushes, especially since we live in an apartment with a regular, non-low-flow toilet. One of these days I’ll get around to rectifying that, but probably not until I’ve had more sleep.

Valentine’s Day preparedness, Part 3: condoms with a conscience

Rubber can be a pretty dirty industry. I recently learned that Bridgestone Firestone’s tires come to us thanks to alleged labor exploitation on rubber plantations in Liberia (more info can be found here, here, and here).

I don’t know if most condom brands are made from unethically harvested rubber—that’s a research project for another day—but French Letter’s offerings seem particularly socially responsible: they carry the Fair Deal Trading logo (similar to fair trade) and are made from rubber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

So when Cupid’s arrow strikes this Valentine’s Day, amorous ethical consumers can make their love spread far and wide.

Amuse-bouche: The salmon of doubt

California consumers can sue over farmed salmon that’s artificially colored to make it appear wild. Link.

Valentine’s Day preparedness, Part 2: chocolate without a dark backstory

I was going to try to include in this post a summary of the recent history of efforts to clean up the cocoa industry, but that will have to wait till later—it’s too complex.

Also, I just had a baby! Which means my pace of posts is going to slow down for a while.

But in the meantime, get your ethically made chocolate at Divine Chocolate and Sweet Earth Chocolates.

Addendum: Following are more sources of ethical chocolate (thanks, Co-op America!).

Fair Trade Certified chocolate can be found  at health food stores and specialty markets across the country. To find a fair trade retailer near you, visit the TransfairUSA website. If you can't find the brand you want locally, an excellent one-stop online source is the Global Exchange Store.                   

The following companies all sell fair trade chocolate products.  Most (though not all) are also organic:

Dagoba Organic Chocolate - Chocolate bars, baking chips, chocolate syrup, hot chocolate, and baking cocoa (non-alkali).

Dean's Beans - Organic hot cocoa and baking cocoa, also kosher.

Equal Exchange - Organic hot cocoa, baking cocoa (with alkali) and fair trade, gourmet chocolate bars.

Ithaca Fine Chocolates - Organic chocolate "Art Bars."

La Siembra Co-Operative - A Canadian worker-owned co-op. Dark chocolate bars are available in the USA.

Sjaak's Organic Chocolates - All organic and fair trade chocolate bars, gift boxes, holiday items, vegan selections

Theo Chocolate - Organic, fair trade premium chocolate.

Yachana Gourmet - Chocolate, tropical fruit spreads and other food products made from organically grown raw materials from the Amazon rainforest region in Ecuador.

Valentine’s Day preparedness, Part 1: flowers whose ethics don’t stink

What could be more romantic than a dozen roses on February 14th?

Unfortunately, that bouquet starts to smell less sweet when you consider that it was most likely grown using toxic pesticides and handled by workers who probably weren’t given adequate protection against those chemicals. Oh, and those employees could easily have been children, or women illegally required to take a pregnancy test every month (and fired if they get a positive result).

The vast majority of flowers we Americans send our sweeties on Valentine’s Day are imported from Colombia and Ecuador, where it’s common for farms engage in the less-than-fragrant practices mentioned above, plus others. (For more info, check out the International Labor Rights Forum’s Fairness in Flowers campaign. While you’re there, sign the petition telling Dole to stop union-busting at flower farm Fragrancia—the link is in the third sidebar on the right.)

Only within the past couple of years have I been made aware of these ethical considerations. Many people, I think, have no idea. And the biggest U.S. company in the cut-flower industry, FTD, isn’t helping.

If you visit FTD.com, you’ll see that it does have an  “Eco-Friendly” product category. But it looks like nothing more than greenwashing to me. Emblazoned across the webpage is a logo that features a recycling logo and the words “Go Green Living,” along with this meaningless copy:

In an effort to embrace the ever-changing needs of our consumer and our society, FTD proudly presents “Go Green Living.” A movement that is making us aware of the way we have and continue to effect our planet, we recognize the need for natural, fresh, sustainable or organic products to be made available to our customers. Send these stunning bouquets, gourmet treats and gorgeous gifts to not only delight your recipient, but make a statement about the importance of protecting the beautiful earth we inhabit.

I called FTD to ask what, if anything, the Go Green Living designation means. Under what conditions are Go Green flowers grown? Are there publicly available standards I can read? Is this a certification program?

“They are certified sustainable,” the customer-service rep I spoke with said.

“By whom?” I asked.

“Um... [keyboard sounds] It doesn’t say by who,” she replied. “I believe Go Green is a service provided by FTD.”

“But you guys are the ones selling the flowers,” I pointed out. “Of course you’re going to say they’re sustainable.” For a certification system to have any teeth, I added, it has to be operated by an independent party.

The sad thing is that North America does have a highly regarded certification system for sustainable flowers, and I’m sure that FTD’s executives know this. It’s called VeriFlora. Its website discusses its criteria (which span environmental and social responsibility categories), and it’s managed by Scientific Certification Systems, a certification company that specializes in audits across a number of industries.

According to an interesting article on ethical flowers in the new issue of Plenty magazine, about 30 percent of the stems sold by Canada’s largest floral distributor, Sierra Flower Trading, are VeriFlora-certified. Why is FTD lagging?

I told the customer-service rep that I and countless other consumers would love to see FTD offer VeriFlora bouquets. She promised she’d put a recommendation into the company’s system. While you’re at it, tell them to get rid of that Go Green Living nonsense, I added.

So where is a conscious consumer to go for flowers? Here are some options:

Organic Bouquet (the flower arm of eco-boutique Organic Style) has some VeriFlora offerings; a search on the term yielded 43 results.

Even more selection might be found at California Organic Flowers, which sells stems grown in the Golden State that are certified as organic by both the USDA and the more stringent California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF).

Diamond Organics’ floral offerings are also mostly from California, and a company rep told me the flowers are definitely USDA-certified and probably also CCOF-certified organic.

Meanwhile, Flowerbud.com has 22 VeriFlora bouquets, though strangely it doesn’t trumpet that fact very loudly.

Lastly, mainstream 1800flowers.com sells one lonely fair-trade rose bouquet, certified by TransFair USA.

Lead astray

We’ve all heard that you shouldn’t drink hot water out of the tap, and most of us know why. As a story from this past week’s New York Times explains, contaminants from pipes, such as lead, are easily dissolved into hot water. But the article goes on to state something I didn’t know: “even newer plumbing advertised as ‘lead-free’ can still contain as much as 8 percent lead.”

What?

Sure enough, if you dig around in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website, you can learn all about the Lead and Copper Rule. Paragraph D of section 141.43 states that the term lead free, “[w]hen used with respect to pipes and pipe fittings refers to pipes and pipe fittings containing not more than 8.0 percent lead.”

I’m reminded of the “0 grams of trans fat” language approved by the Food and Drug Administration. As I’ve ranted about here before, products can claim to have 0 grams but actually contain .49 grams—nothing to sneeze at when you consider that the American Heart Association recommends consuming less than 2 grams of trans fat a day (assuming a regular 2,000-calorie diet).

The Lead and Copper Rule has been in force since 1991, and apparently it’s an improvement over previous regulations, so that’s good, but still. Eight percent is not “lead free,” in my book.

Can any doublespeak experts out there shed light on this?

“Mass Nausea” chocolate photos featured in art exhibition

In November I encouraged readers to take part in a photo project highlighting the ills of unethically sourced cocoa. Mr. Wallet Mouth and I did, and we had a great (and messy) time spitting up M&Ms.

Now the artist behind the portraits, April Banks, is showing the first installment of the ongoing project as part of a group exhibition at the Headlands Center for the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. The opening reception takes place this Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. (plenty of time to make it to your Superbowl Sunday party before the game).

The Headlands Center for the Arts is located at 944 Fort Barry, Sausalito, CA 94965.