Wallet Mouth

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.

The long neck of the law (of supply and demand)

Ah, the drive to consume. Is anyone immune? I'm certainly not, as this anecdote shows.

Last week, after going to mom-and-baby yoga class, a friend and I, infants in tow, stopped in at Natural Resources, our local pregnancy-and-baby-stuff shop, so I could pick up a pacifier. As we stood at the register, my friend inquired about a toy called Sophie the Giraffe. "We don't have any in stock right now, but we're expecting some soon," the employee told her. "Do you want to put yourself on the waiting list? They tend to fly off the shelves once they come in." Soon a binder appeared on the counter, and my friend was adding her name to the list.

"What's Sophie the Giraffe?" I asked her.

"Oh, they're just these cute toys that are popular," she replied as the cashier put the binder away. "They're supposed to be all-natural and safe for babies."

"Excuse me, can I see that binder?" I heard myself say. "I think I'll put my name in too."

That night as I told Mr. Wallet Mouth about my succumbing to consumer whim, I was forced to admit that I had no idea why Sophie the Giraffe was all the rage, nor did I even have the slightest idea what she looked like. I just figured that any toy with a waiting list at Natural Resources must be worth something. Besides, our cub needed a new enrichment item.

"We call it baby crack. Infants just love it, for some reason," the cashier told me yesterday when I asked what the deal was with Sophie. The order had come in, and the giraffe was now in my hot little hand. While Sophie is cute and soft and made in Europe of safe materials (and endowed with a squeaky noisemaker inside), I wouldn't necessarily have pegged her as the be-all-end-all for babes. But what do I know? The true judge will be Mini-Mouth, who was presented with her new treasure this morning.

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.

Envious on Earth Day, or, The limits of pocketbook activism

Do you ever feel like you’re in the Twilight Zone? Between learning about all this BPA stuff and finishing the book Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, I’m having a touch of reality disconnect. 

You see, most of the time when I blog about the unsavory side of commerce, it has to do with the environment or labor abuses—stuff that’s “out there”—not physical harm that potentially threatens me personally, as well as my loved ones and most everyone else who lives in the U.S.A. Yet here is Stacy Malkan’s book, a well-written account of how most mainstream cosmetics and personal-care products are contributing to pollution “in here”—inside our bodies, women and men alike—and how nobody is protecting us from this contamination, because the industry polices itself. (And it polices itself without concern for the long-term health effects of chemicals, testing only for short-term things like skin irritation.)

I’ve blogged about this issue before, in the context of the Environmental Working Group’s helpful Skin Deep online database (which is discussed in the book). But as I read the screed, the surreality of the situation really started to sink in. After all, these are normal, familiar products that have been sold on the shelves of normal, familiar stores for years and years. Are we all crazy? 

Thankfully, there’s a reality check: the fact that the European Union has banned scads of chemicals regularly in use in the U.S. (and not just in cosmetics, by the way) through its Cosmetics Directive and REACH legislation—both reflections of Europe’s embrace of the precautionary principle. Why, oh why, can’t the U.S. get hip to this eminently reasonable approach? Here’s where my EU envy starts to kick in with a vengeance (Down, EU envy! Down!). 

Of course, it’s not really about where you are. A couple years ago, I spent an afternoon on a gem of a beach in a Mexican eco-reserve that was stunning—except for the waves of garbage that came in with the tide. My sister, Mr. Wallet Mouth, and I made a game of collecting the trash and putting it in a neat pile on shore so that the people who ran the place could have it taken away. Then we found out from them that there wasn’t any “away” where it could be disposed of. This happens every day, they told us. The litter rides in on currents from places as far away as Australia and China. It was a good reminder that the world isn’t such a big place after all, that you can’t necessarily escape the ills of one region by traveling to another.

It’s the same thing with chemicals. Once they’re let loose in the world, we can’t avoid them—a point Not Just a Pretty Face drives home with its opening anecdote about a 2004 study in which randomly selected newborn babies in the U.S. were found to have hundreds of toxic chemicals in their blood.

So on this Earth Day, I’m contemplating the limits of pocketbook activism. It’s simply not always enough. We need to actively pressure companies to do the right thing and actively pressure our government to strengthen its regulatory muscle to keep us and our environment safe.

Happiness vs. products

A story in today’s New York Times—about mounting evidence that U.S. consumers across all income levels are cutting back on spending and how that plays into the specter of recession—got me thinking about the wisdom (or lack thereof) of measuring progress with dollars and cents.

As I read about big chain stores like Nordstrom and Target experiencing a drop in business, and about high-end leather-goods purveyor Coach having to resort to offering coupons, I couldn’t help but think to myself, Well, isn’t this good in many ways? After all, it’s better for the environment when fewer resources are consumed.

The problem, of course, is that when businesses are squeezed, they tend to lay off workers. And people are part of the environment too. But as the authors of Cradle to Cradle (which I’m currently reading) put it, “GDP as a measure of progress emerged during an era when natural resources still seemed unlimited and ‘quality of life’ meant high economic standards of living. But if prosperity is judged only by increased economic activity, then car accidents, hospital visits, illnesses... and oil spills are all signs of prosperity.”

In recent years a new metric for progress has emerged: gross national happiness. There was just a conference held on the subject in Thailand a couple months ago. I keep seeing books and media coverage of the emerging field. And the Brookings Institution predicts that policymakers and governments may use GNH “to track a country’s happiness in the same way we now monitor economic conditions.”

Now, wouldn’t that be happiness-causing?

Amuse-bouche: consumers getting hip to sustainability

As if in response to my New Year’s rumination about a tipping point in consumer attitudes on values and spending, SustainableBusiness.com just published a piece about a recent study indicating that conscious consumerism is catching on.

Looking a gift horse in the (wallet) mouth

In thinking about all of last week’s Christmas presents, I realized that most of them probably wouldn’t qualify as being up to snuff when it comes to ethical consumerism. Many were no doubt manufactured in countries with subpar labor standards, or were purchased at big-box retailers or huge department stores that don’t give back to their local communities, or are not organic or fair trade, etc.

This points to the fact that when it comes to many types of popular gift items, ethical concerns are just not on many people’s radar—even people who share the values espoused on this blog.

I think that’s because it takes a long time for humans to internalize such issues. Time, and repeated exposure to succinct messages. Remember the “Give a Hoot! Don't Pollute” campaign?

Interestingly, that internalization process has happened in a big way with one large product category: food. But think about it. We’ve had years of exposure to various food labels. In the U.S., the law mandating the Nutrition Facts chart was passed in 1990. A variety of certification logos—mostly for organics but also for standards like Dolphin Safe—have been stamped onto edible products for years and are now ubiquitous. Then there are farmers’ markets and restaurant trends emphasizing seasonal ingredients and sustainable practices. 

Of course, one reason for the widespread lack of consideration of the responsibility (or irresponsibility) of non-food products is the fact that third-party certifications simply don’t exist for most of those items like they do for comestibles. That said, there are still plenty ways to align your ethics with your purchasing, many of which I’ve discussed on this site (check out the “Shopping with a Conscience” category, or the research resources on my Tools for Consumers list). But they’re not all available to everyone, and they’re not mainstream. Yet.

Call it new year’s optimism, but I have a feeling that consciousness around these issues isn’t going to take as long to penetrate consensus reality as the environmentally friendly food movement did. In fact, I think the momentum created by that movement has produced the conditions for a tipping point in consumer attitudes about all the other stuff we buy. Time will tell...

Know your stuff

Although this blog focuses mainly on how we as consumers can make the world a better place through spending our money more wisely, it goes without saying (I hope) that I don’t believe we can buy our way to a revitalized planet.

In fact, consuming is a large part of the problem. That, plus the fact that the global systems underlying all the things we purchase and use are not designed for sustainability.

The ins and outs of those systems are broken down articulately in a gem of a short movie called “The Story of Stuff.” The simplicity of its endearing stick-figure animation mirrors the succinctness with which narrator Annie Leonard lays out the hidden costs behind the extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of all the stuff we buy.

Highly recommended viewing. Also make sure to check out the resources and other links on the website.

(Thanks to my Crank Ensemble bandmate Lena, who works for the Tides Foundation—one of film’s the funders—for alerting me to this.)

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.

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.