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Lethal for the birds, that is. And even if you don’t give a hoot about our feathered friends, you should still care about Latin America’s ever-increasing use of toxic agricultural chemicals. This op-ed piece from yesterday’s New York Times explains why.
I was just reading about Porsche buying a controlling stake in Volkswagen when someone sent me this link to Jalopnik’s Automotive Family Tree. Since one of my pet consumerism peeves is how difficult it is to know who ultimately owns the brands we buy, I love such maps of corporate genealogy. Enjoy!
A couple months ago, I blogged about Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles site, which lets consumers see the path taken by five of the company’s products, from origin to distribution center. A new story on Fast Company’s website delves into how the project has “put the company’s design and manufacturing process under the microscope.”
It’s an interesting piece, but I found it odd that the opening description—of Patagonia environmental analysis director Jill Dumain “investigating,” camera in hand, one of the company’s T-shirt suppliers—was never followed up on to reveal what the investigation was for. Had the Footprint Chronicles found a supplier with dirt on its shoes?
Nope, Dumain just told me. The supplier, Nature USA, is a good company. Patagonia is “looking at the impact of a variety of our garments, and the T-shirts made by Nature USA are on the list for next fall. It was just their turn.”
Oh well, no juicy skullduggery to report. But it’s good to know they’re on the lookout.
This article in the “Business of Green” special section in today’s New York Times describes a study by two Dartmouth professors that shows stock performance suffering after companies announced that they had joined a group dedicated to combating climate change.
It reminded me of something I read about in a special report on corporate social responsibility in The Economist a couple months back: the contention that responsible practices may not actually add value to business. The article, titled “The Next Question: Does CSR Work?,” pointed out that two of the best-known sustainability indexes—the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and the FTSE4Good—tend to underperform the market.
I don’t buy the contention—I think it’s simply a question of timescale.
And indeed, the Economist article went on to refer to a recent academic review of 167 studies over the past 35 years that concluded “there is in fact a positive link between companies’ social and financial performance” (albeit a weak one). It also pointed to Goldman Sachs’s GS SUSTAIN model, which considers responsible environmental, social, and corporate-governance practices to be “‘a good overall proxy for the management of companies relative to their peers’, hence indicative of their chances of long-term success.”
That’s reassuring. As our planet starts having to pay the bills for its dwindling resources, responsible practices will undoubtedly enhance value. The time to act is now.
What makes so-called green-collar jobs green? And will they really save the country? I don't know, but this New York Times article puts forth some ideas.
I spent many of my formative years in or around Chicago, which meant that Marshall Field’s loomed large in my early consciousness of consumerism. The department store has since been eaten up by Macy’s, but its iconic Frango mints live on, and soon shoppers will be able to eat organic ones. (Thanks to my buddy Andy Sernovitz, who resides in the Windy City, for sending me this link.)
Last Friday was a bad day for the natural-products industry. At the sector’s ExpoWest trade show, it was announced that a new study found a number of supposedly “natural” and “organic” body-care and cleaning products contain a nasty chemical called 1,4-dioxane (which the EPA classifies as a “probable human carcinogen”) that you won’t see on the ingredients list. (You can read the L.A. Times’ coverage of it here.)
Giovanni Organic Cosmetics, Jason (whose slogan is “Pure, Natural & Organic”), Kiss My Face, Nature’s Gate, and Seventh Generation were among the leading brands called out in the study, which was commissioned by the Organic Consumers Association.
To Seventh Generation’s credit, it has said that it intends to “completely eliminate 1,4-dioxane from all of our products.”
A couple months ago I blogged about learning that a lotion I’ve used for years contains toxins. But that was a conventional product. Wouldn’t you think that skin softeners with the words “natural” and “organic” would tend to be clean? Look at the study’s product list (pdf) and see for yourself.
Some people will probably say, Sure, this chemical isn’t ideal, but we’re talking parts per million here—how bad can that be? But as Adam Eidinger of the Organic Consumer Association pointed out to me, the EPA’s standard for safe drinking water is 3 parts per billion. “Granted, you’re not drinking these things, but you are putting them down the drain and introducing it into the environment,” he said. Not to mention absorbing their ingredients through your skin (pdf).
Here are some tips from the OCA on how to avoid 1,4-dioxane.
Beer Activist recently hosted a roundup of beer bloggers’ comments on organic brew. It’s interesting reading—and it includes lots of recommendations for organic bottles to try this Saint Patrick’s Day.
Also worth checking out on the site: a piece about the controversy about the “organic” designation in the world of beer. Turns out the U.S. government is allowing non-organic hops to be used. Read on for the details...
Last week I stumbled upon a fascinating story in The Independent about a man’s search for the origin of his “Made in Bangladesh”-tagged denims.
I expected Fred Pearce’s account of his Dhaka visit to include Dickensian details about penurious wages and abusive management, and it did—but there were also a couple surprises. Pearce had this to say about three workers he talked to:
[They] all came from villages around Dhaka. Akhi had seven brothers and sisters. Back home there wasn’t enough land, and certainly not enough work, to support so many. So the families sent their young women to find jobs in Dhaka. Aisha and Miriam, sisters-in-law, together sent home 4,000 taka a month (about £30). The alarming truth was that these women, for all their pitiful surroundings, were the rich ones in their families.
It reminded me of something I heard China Road author Rob Gifford say on NPR last year: that while the conditions in Chinese factories are often deplorable to Western eyes, many workers there are content to toil for long hours under harsh conditions, because their jobs represent the key to economic salvation. As peasants in the countryside, their prospects were far worse.
Later in Pearce’s story, he describes how the founder of a Bangladeshi advocacy organization supporting the rights of garment workers looks at the situation: “The jobs, poor as many were, empowered women. Western consumers, she said, should be demanding better conditions for the women of Dhaka, and above all should be willing to pay higher prices. And retailers should stop competing on price. But please, she said, ‘don't stop buying’.”
It’s a great point, but how can we consumers send the message that we’re willing to pay more? Write to the big brands, I suppose, and support certification systems with labels that give consumers assurance about how wares are produced.
Of course, many manufacturers already have their own production standards and codes of conduct in place, but there’s often a disconnect between the standards and reality. Pearce’s story provides yet another example:
The buyers—the brands’ representatives in Bangladesh—make regular inspections of the factory, the women said. But “they always inform the owners first. Before they come, the managers come through the factory with megaphones. We are told to prepare the factory, to clean up. And they instruct us what to say about working hours and holidays and conditions. We have to lie about holidays especially.”
I was excited to learn that the article is an extract from a book by Pearce: Confessions of an Eco Sinner: Travels to Find Where My Stuff Comes From. I’m adding it, and China Road, to my reading list.
Change is good
