Wallet Mouth

Bedeviling details re Wal-Mart's sustainability index

Perhaps I should have read Joel Makower's post on Wal-Mart's new green labeling system before blogging about it last week, as he knows far more about it than the Wall Street Journal does, having seen early versions of it and talked to many parties involved with the effort.

The two big letdowns for me are (1) that the labels will address only product manufacturers, not specific products, and (2) that Wal-Mart isn't actually rating anyone (companies or products), because it hasn't set any performance benchmarks.

Which is not to say that the whole thing is crap, but... You can read his post in full here.

Kicking our plastic habit, one sip at a time

Thanks to Sierra magazine for this one:

I'm not big on beverages that require straws to drink, but if I were, I would get myself a made-in-the-USA reusable sipper from GlassDharma, the brainchild of glassblower David Leonhardt. I would also spring for a bamboo carrying case, because, well, how cool is that? (Answer: very.)

Reusable glass straws? Who woulda thunk? (Answer: more people than you might imagine; Leonhardt got the idea from a glass shop in his town.) And wouldn't a glass straw just break? Well, apparently not as easily as you'd think, because the company offers a lifetime guarantee against breakage.

That's a pretty good reason to opt for a reusable glass straw, which won't leach toxins into your beverage and won't take up space in the landfill. Granted, traditional straws probably don't represent a major percentage of the world's plastic waste, but every little bit helps. Furthermore, I have to believe that having these things in use out in the world has the potential to make observers reexamine the role that plastic plays in their lives.

One lucky café will garner help to get greener—cast your vote today

Last month I blogged about Carrot Mob, a newish consumer-based movement in which businesses are given the incentive to improve their sustainability record.

It had been a while since the last San Francisco event, but I'm happy to report that a new one is in the works. And this time, we the mob get to help determine which of three cafés will earn our business on the appointed day. I definitely plan to get my caffeine buzz on at the winning establishment.

Check out the options here, and vote—today's the last day.
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Guess who just gave green labeling a shot in the arm? Wal-Mart!

Thanks to SmartBrief for giving me the heads-up on this one:

America's retailasaurus rex today told its suppliers to start providing it with the full environmental costs associated with making their products, so that Wal-Mart can start putting "Nutrition Facts"–style labels that give sustainability ratings on all of the products it sells. (Read the full story in the Wall Street Journal here.)

The company says it will take about five years to construct the ratings system and distill all the information from companies into a format consumers will find useful.

I've talked to many individuals who have had this idea and even taken a stab at it (but are often stymied by a lack of financial resources). A multitude of certifications and eco-labels exist, and there are companies such as Patagonia that have come up with their own labels, but this is by far the largest effort in the green labeling arena that I've heard of, and it has the potential to set the template for how future such labels emerge, at least in the U.S.

The devil will be in the details, of course. Standards makers are the new diplomats in today's globalized world. How trustworthy will the data be? Will there be an auditing process to ensure that suppliers are honest?

I will be watching this development with great interest!

Safe sunscreen: Does protecting your body have to cost an arm and a leg?

Mini Mouth is now walking (and running, and climbing), which means she's spending a significant amount of time playing outside these days. And that means I've been thinking about protection from the sun a lot recently.

Thus far I've been dressing her in long sleeves and pants, and, after waiting a little while so she gets some Vitamin D from the sun, covering her face and hands with Rite Aid's zinc oxide (paraben-free!, unlike the Walgreen's version), which I learned about last year when I was searching the EWG's Skin Deep database for safe diaper creams.

The ointment is thick and white and kind of a pain to rub in, but zinc oxide's sun-protecting characteristics are well known (it's a mineral that creates a physical barrier to UVA and UVB rays), and I'm confident that it's nontoxic to humans, unlike the ingredients in chemical-based sunscreens. Plus, at less than $3 for a 2-ounce tube, it's a quite affordable option.

But before we left town for a fun- and sun-filled Fourth of July trip, Mr. Wallet Mouth was doing some online baby-supply shopping and suggested that we take some actual sunscreen with us. So I did a quick search on EWG’s database and had him order a tube of Badger Balm’s SPF 30. It’s one of the two sunscreens in there with the best-possible rating of 0 (as in low/no hazard), and at $16 for a 2.9-ounce tube ($5.52/ounce), it beat out the other one, Soléo Organics' SPF 30+ Sunscreen, which runs $22.99 for a 2.6-ounce tube ($8.84/ounce)—yowch!

By way of comparison, you can get 16 ounces of Coppertone's 30 SPF lotions for $19 ($1.19/ounce) on Amazon. But then, of course, you’d also be getting oxybenzone along with your sunscreen. In the EWG database, all Coppertone sunscreens have ratings that are in either the “Caution” or “Avoid” categories.

On our trip, we used a combination of Badger Balm and zinc oxide (not in any scientific way—it was simply a matter of which one was close enough to grab before we had to go chase our exploration-minded toddler), and I’m pleased to say that Mini Mouth never got a sunburn.

Performance-wise, I didn’t really prefer one over the other. Badger smells nice and is thinner than the zinc (which is odorless, which I kinda like), but strangely, they both required pretty much the same amount of effort to rub in. Or maybe it’s not so strange. Reading the fine print on the labels, I learned that both products contain 20 percent zinc oxide. The difference is that Badger’s other ingredients include beeswax, cocoa butter, and various delicious-sounding oils (olive, lavender, lime… even blood orange!), while the zinc oxide ointment has three other ingredients: light mineral oil, white petrolatum, and white wax.

Petrolatum? Ick, right? And since it comes from petroleum, a nonrenewable resource, it’s probably best avoided. Not only that, but I just learned that petrolatum is banned or restricted in the EU for use in cosmetics, apparently because of contamination concerns. Which brings up the question, why does Rite Aid's zinc oxide ointment score so well on the EWG's database? And why does Vaseline's 100% Pure Petroleum Jelly, which is pure petrolatum, get a 0 (the best rating possible)? Clearly, more research is warranted.

Of course, performance and health concerns aren't the only reasons to buy a product. The manufacturer's ethics must also be considered. On that front, while I was glad to learn on Green America's Responsible Shopper that Rite Aid's founders, the Grass family, have relinquished control of the drugstore, some locations of which used to refuse women's contraception prescriptions (and beyond that, there's the accounting fraud that former CEO Martin Grass is now serving time for), Badger is burrowing a tunnel into my heart. It's a small, family-owned company that supports organic and fair-trade practices with its ingredient sourcing.

In short, Badger is the winner for now. It may cost more than the zinc, but it's quite affordable compared with its peers, and it's a company I feel good about supporting.

Amuse-bouche: Straight talk on plastic

I was recently turned on to the blog Fake Plastic Fish, and today author Beth Terry presents an artist's cogent comment to a representative of the plastics industry. I enjoyed reading it, and I think you will too! [Link]