Wallet Mouth

Help CA say "See ya!" to PFCs

Some years ago, I started avoiding Teflon-coated cookware after hearing that the nonstick chemicals, while awfully convenient for cooking, are awful for human health. They're called perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), and it turns out that they're awful for the environment, too (especially if you're this species of turtle, or a pet bird).

So today, when I got an email from the Environmental Working Group informing me that PFCs are used in various types of grease-resistant food packaging (for things like microwavable popcorn, fast food, and pizza)—and that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to veto a bill in the California state legislature that would ban the use of PFCs in food packaging—I did the email's bidding, calling the gov and signing the petition. If you'd like to do the same, click here.

To me, the most irksome thing this battle has revealed is the fact that we have no way of knowing which specific packages contain PFCs. As this page from the Environmental Working Group's site puts it, "consumers are unfairly deprived of their essential right to know and to make informed, independent decisions.... [A] consumer going to the store would not know which brands to avoid because manufacturers are conveniently withholding this crucial information."

How about some legislation requiring transparency in this arena?

Amuse-bouche: How kosher is Kosher?

Yesterday's All Things Considered included this interesting piece on efforts to expand the Kosher certification to encompass ethics such as treatment of workers and animals.

A guilty pleasure no more

This week I've been pumping copy at one of my favorite clients, ReadyMade magazine. One of the great things about working there, as I do every couple of months during the production deadlines, is the office's proximity to VIK's Chaat Corner, a purveyor of delicious Indian food (the menu even includes masala dosas, much to my delight).

But there has always been a downside to my lunches there: no matter whether you were eating in or taking your food to go, the treats would always come in a nonrecyclable #6 polystyrene compartmentalized container. I tried washing off the containers and saving them, thinking perhaps I'd find some use for them later, but I never did. And since the editor-in-chief's attempt to get the restaurant to reuse one of its own containers was rebuffed, I never tried that, either.

Every time I ate at VIK's, I would look at the garbage can full of those plastic plates and despair. Then I'd toss my own and feel a terrible wave of guilt. But the food was so good and so cheap, I couldn't stop patronizing the place. I fantasized about starting a petition, but images of getting shooed away and told never to come back haunted me.

Once I asked the guy at the register why they didn't use real plates and a dishwasher. Too expensive, he replied. "But look at all this plastic that's just going to the landfill," I protested. "I for one would be happy to pay a little more, and I'm sure lots of other people feel the same way." This was, after all, Berkeley, the high altar of environmental activism. But he just gave me the Indian head nod/wiggle and suggested that I call the manager.

That was months ago. I've been busy with this parenthood thing. And besides, I first wanted to get info about Berkeley's composting program, because I'd heard from another restaurant that they actually got paid for their food scraps. So I emailed the city. Turns out, businesses get a 20 percent price break if they can use food waste recycling rather than refuse service. Fantastic! Hmm, but does that mean they can't have any non-food garbage? Clearly a phone call was in order.

But now comes the exciting part of my story: When I ate lunch at VIK's today (hunger having drowned out the little voice telling me to resist the restaurant's magnetic pull and stay true to my Wallet Mouth ideals), the food came in a ... paperboard container! My curry tasted so much better without the side order of guilt.

I didn't see any compost bins, however. Next time I'm there I'll make sure VIK's knows about the food-waste discount.

Cows: carbon culprits

In a better world, Mr. Wallet Mouth and I would not be quite as addicted to cheese and yogurt as we are. Which is to say, we'd be vegan. As it is, we are hardly in a position to cast stones, but it's good to be reminded that an animal-product-free diet is much lower impact than any other, as this analysis by Adam Stein at the TerraPass blog makes plain.

If, like Mr. Wallet Mouth and me, you can't quite go all the way, perhaps you take the carbon footprint of your meal is as one more reason to go easier on the more sinful choices at the dinner table. Or to try cutting back on meat and dairy a set number of times per week. Or, following the chart, resort to a diet of only oils, sweets, and condiments. (Ha!)

Garbage patch kids

I've been thinking about bags—and, more generally, plastic—a lot lately, and not just because of BPA.

For one thing, the final phase of San Francisco's plastic-bag ban just went into effect: as of yesterday, pharmacies can no longer hand out their heretofore fave kind of sack. For another, I just read this post from Sightline Daily (via Terrapass's blog), which contends that the importance of the paper vs. plastic choice is dwarfed by the choice of what you put in the bag.

That may be true in the embodied-energy sense—embodied energy being what's required to manufacture, supply to the point of use, and disassemble or dispose of something. But the unfortunate fact is that lots of bags and other plastic items never get properly disposed of (whatever that means) and instead end up polluting our oceans. A great number of them congregate in what's known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Two web videos explore that floating dump in compelling ways. The first episode of "Gorilla in the Greenhouse," SustainLane's web-video series for kids, raises awareness about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the evils of plastic pollution at the same time as it promotes eco-consciousness and action on the part of the next generation.

For the grown-up set, there's "Garbage Island," a 12-part VBS.TV series in which a group of "non-hippie environmentalists" takes a three-week boat trip to the North Pacific Gyre to find the garbage patch and analyze its waters. What surprised them (and me as well) was that the patch is not actually a visible clump the size of Texas; rather, it's a dense accumulation of debris (the size of Texas). "I came out here expecting to see a trash dump, with pieces you could pull out of the water," the narrator says. "But what I got was an even ruder awakening. Looking out, you don't see the garbage; most of the time you just see the water. But what's in the water is 1,000 times worse than a Coke bottle. It's every part of a Coke bottle busted down into a little digestible morsel."

The plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch disintegrates into its component polymers, and those broken-down bits act as a sponge for persistent organic pollutants. The horrifying realization is that the garbage patch represents much more than pollution; our castoffs have actually changed the composition of the ocean, in not-so-nice ways. As the narrator puts it, "It's not a matter of pulling shit out [of the water]; it's preparing our systems for the change that's on its way. It's part of the ocean now. We've consigned ourselves to eating our own shit." 

Pretty sobering stuff. In fact, you might want to watch the more-upbeat "Gorilla" afterward. That way you can imagine all the kiddies of today getting inspired, and then becoming savvy, and growing up to find ways to deal effectively with the change that's on its way.

A formula for confusion?

Speaking of sugar, today's New York Times features a story about a controversy surrounding Similac's organic infant formula. I found it interesting because it represents another angle on the question of what "organic" means, something I'm currently exploring in the area of personal-care products.

Consumers associate the word "organic" with "healthier," but that's arguably not the case here. That's because Similac's formula is sweetened with sucrose, as opposed to lactose, and pediatricians worry that it could increase the risk of childhood obesity. 

In Europe, the article points out, formulas sweetened with sucrose will be prohibited by the end of 2009, thanks to the recommendation of the EU's Scientific Committee on Food, "which found that sucrose provided no particular nutritional advantages, could, in rare cases, bring about a fatal metabolic disorder, and might lead to overfeeding."

Technically speaking, Similac's product is organic—the sugar cane was grown in accordance with the USDA's standards, after all—but does the choice of organic sucrose over organic lactose as an ingredient violate the spirit of "organic"? And if it does, would it be desirable or even possible for the "organic" designation to try to control such things?

How sweet it isn't

Last weekend Mr. Wallet Mouth and I bumped into a friend at a concert, and we invited him back to our place for a nightcap—by which we meant a slice of locally made banana cream pie with organic chocolate syrup. On our walk home, our friend prepared himself with dinner from one of our neighborhood tacquerias and a bottle of Coca-Cola, which he bought with some excitement, since it was Mexican Coca-Cola. Mexican Coca-Cola is still made with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, and pop purists insist that the American franchises' recipes, which almost always use the latter to save money, just don't taste quite right.

Taste is just where it begins. These days it seems just about everyone is aware of the manifold problems with corn syrup, the high-fructose variety in particular. And not just for its health consequences—the stuff is being singled out (perhaps a tad unfairly) as the root of America's obesity epidemic—but its economic ones as well; according to this piece by Linda Joyce Forristal, "just four companies control 85 percent of the $2.6 billion business—Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Staley Manufacturing Co. and CPC International."

Nowadays, of course, the big story is how those same companies, a.k.a. Big Corn, are pushing hard for a patently misguided ethanol-centric answer to our country's energy woes. Corn—and HFCS—just can't seem to get any respect. No wonder no self-respecting (read: marketable) "whole" food would contain it.

But it appears consumers with a sweet tooth are caught between a rock and the hard candy. Though not for her precise reasons, it seems my mother wasn't wrong to scorn sugar. Partway through Fred Pearce's Confessions of an Eco Sinner, a provocative firsthand account of the British author's attempt to find the moral high ground in a wide range of personal lifestyle decisions of the paper-or-plastic variety, I encountered this eyebrow-raising pair of paragraphs:

Sugar is the ultimate monocultural crop, and it is grown on a prodigiously large scale. In seven countries, including Mauritius and Barbados, it covers more than half of the entire land area. In many more, including Swaziland, sugar occupies most of the cultivated land. Rainforests and wetlands and rich pastures have all been cleared for the crop. Elsewhere, from India to Queensland and Barbados to Fiji, sugar is one of the major causes of the emptying of rivers and aquifers. In the Indian state of Maharashtra sugar covers just 3 percent of the land, yet takes 60 per cent of the state's irrigation water.

Sugar is the main cause of the rampant soil degradation in Cuba and the almost complete deforestation of Haiti. A study by the environment group WWF concluded that 'the production of sugar cane has probably caused a greater loss of biodiversity on the planet than any other single crop.' Sugar is a menace...

I'm enjoying, and highly recommend, Pearce's book, but ouch. And we were just rediscovering the joys of banana cream pie, too.

More BPA resources

Two BPA-themed e-newsletters just landed in my in-box. The Center for a New American Dream’s dispatch mentions a helpful site, the Bisphenol A Portal, which compiles news reports about the endocrine-disrupting chemical. Particularly helpful is the site’s Smart Plastics Guide (pdf), which breaks down what all those numbers on plastic containers mean and gives tips on how to avoid BPA.

The most recent e-newsletter from the Environmental Working Group’s points to the BPA cheatsheet on its Enviroblog. Interestingly, the central graphic used on that page is a water bottle made by Nalgene, which recently announced that it will phase out production of BPA-containing bottles.

Amuse-bouche: PETA bites

It’s inspiring to see a values-based organization like PETA doing a large-scale project like this that emphasizes the carrot rather than the stick, so to speak.

The announcement of a prize for the development of commercially viable in vitro meat delighted Mr. Wallet Mouth, who like me is a vegetarian who has spent many a barbecue slinking around the grill with puppy-dog eyes, talking hopefully of the day when he can again indulge in a bacon cheeseburger...

I like the idea of this X Prize–like initiative just as it is, but I did wonder whether the reward is enough to light any fires... which led me to an idea of how to add more fuel: Why not let individuals with an interest in the outcome of such challenges put their money where their mouth is and add to the kitty? I do believe I’ll write PETA to suggest it (and natch, I’ll let you know if anything comes of it).

BPA blowup

Finally the mainstream media is talking about bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in many plastics, in light of a new brief by the National Toxicology Program that expresses concern over the substance. As the report puts it, “the possibility that bisphenol A may impact human development cannot be dismissed.”

It’s especially nice to see more light being shed on the fact that the FDA based its sketchy “BPA is safe” stance on two studies funded by the plastic industry [link], ignoring hundreds of government and academic studies that raised red flags about BPA.

In my recent post about the chemical, I expressed surprise to learn that it’s found not only in baby bottles but also in aluminum food cans and beverage cans and bottles. Turns out it’s in numerous other everyday objects, such as CDs, too. Today's Washington Post story on the issue quotes an overseer of the report as saying, “It’s everywhere.... Your cell phone is probably made out of it.”

In Canada, as the New York Times reports, the government is expected to label it toxic in the coming days. Meanwhile, big retailers there, such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot, are already pulling BPA-containing products from their shelves.

Much of the focus in recent reports is on BPA’s presence in baby bottles, sippy cups, and infant formula containers. That’s as it should be, since developing bodies are more affected by endocrine disruptors than adult bodies are.

The Washington Post story points out that BornFree, a company that makes BPA-free baby bottles, can’t keep up with demand. I don’t know about other parents, though, but I’m sticking to glass bottles. Today it’s BPA, but tomorrow...?