Wallet Mouth

Sigg-nificantly disappointing

The internet is abuzz with consumers pissed off about bottle maker Sigg's admission that until recently its liners contained bisphenol A (BPA). The sad thing is, it dissembled about that fact for a looong time, carefully crafting language to imply the bottles were BPA-free and thereby capitalize on the scads of people getting rid of their polycarbonate vessels. Read Z Recommends' excellent reporting about it (as well as how to tell if your liner is old or new) here. Notably, some consumers who have bought Sigg bottles as recently as this month have still gotten the old liners—a testament to how long the supply-chain process can be.

The blog's follow-up post on the subject is also troubling: the supposedly better new Sigg liners have been found to chip away from the necks of the bottles, which are aluminum (cue alarm bells going off).

I have to agree with Real Green Girl: While it's good to be assured that known bad things are missing from a given product, the important issue is what's in the thing. (And frankly, if it's chipping off the inside of my bottle, I don't care what it is—I don't want it!)

The "no poo" movement: it's not what you think

As the mother of a toddler, I think diapers and toilet training when I see the letter "p" followed by a couple of "o"s. But the "poo" in "no poo" isn't Number Two; it's shampoo!

As I recently learned, there's a movement afoot to forgo lathering up your locks with store-bought stuff in favor of using various combinations of things like baking soda, vinegar, and lemon juice. The advantages? You keep the nasty chemicals found in numerous shampoos away from your body and the environment, you use less plastic, and you save money.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Gross!" But here are a couple women who swear by it: link, link (though this woman had less success). And here's an Instructables how-to.

I'm already a member of the Church of Not Shampooing Every Day, and I'm considering going "no poo," but I think I'll use up my current bottle first. I'll let you know what happens!

But in the meantime, if you do decide to say adios to your shampoo, don't use Arm & Hammer baking soda—apparently the company conducts some rather regrettable animal testing related to this product. (I have an email in to the company to get confirmation of this, but it seems fairly well established, as far as I can tell.) Bob's Red Mill makes a cruelty-free alternative, though for some reason it doesn't trumpet this fact.

What's in a name? Possibly extinction, if you're a fish

When the professional namers come in, you know you're in trouble. That's the angle a recent Washington Post story took to cover a research article in the July 31 issue of Science on efforts to rebuild global fisheries.

It's a phenomenon suffered by numerous species—including the slimehead, a.k.a. orange roughy (left), and the toothfish, a.k.a. Chilean sea bass (which isn't even a sea bass at all)—that have been given new, hipper names by seafood marketers forced to champion erstwhile "trash fish" because what used to be mainstays of restaurant menus are being fished to death. Then, of course, the pattern is repeated.

The Science article isn't all gloom and doom. Apparently the average exploitation rate has declined in some ecosystems, and, as the abstract notes, "increasing efforts to restore marine ecosystems and rebuild fisheries are under way."

The topic of sustainable seafood is endlessly fascinating—and complicated by the fact that oftentimes we don't know what we're buying, thanks to the naming issue. One of the people I find most articulate in this area is Casson Trenor, who has written a book on sustainable sushi and who is currently in Vietnam taking part in a standards-setting process on catfish, a.k.a. delacata. (Read his interesting blog post about it here.)

The catfish dialogue is part of the creation of a new aquaculture certification body set to be up and running in 2011, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, whose aim is to serve as a credible environmental and social standards maker for seafood. According to the FAQ on the ASC (which lives on the website of the World Wildlife Federation, one of its funders), most existing certification programs in this area "are not effective at making the aquaculture industry more sustainable." ASC says its standards will "be measurable, based on sound science, created by a broad and diverse group of stakeholders, and developed through a transparent process."

I'll be interested to learn more about the process—and about what's wrong with the current certifications—as it develops. Hopefully the ASC will help consumers see through the murky waters of confusion as to what constitutes sustainable seafood.