Wallet Mouth

Stage presents

I love it when pop culture and ethical consumerism converge.

Last weekend brought one of the best live-music shows I've ever attended: the Swell Season. The music was sublime, and speaking between the songs, Glen Hansard was as honest and unguarded as you'd imagine he'd be among a small group of friends, never mind the nearly full theater's capacity of 3,000.

At the merch table afterward, I was pleased to see that the band was selling organic cotton T-shirts (did you know that conventional cotton is responsible for some 16 percent of global chemical pesticide use?), canvas tote bags, and metal water bottles sporting their cool owl logo. Clearly this is a group interested in promoting greater environmental consciousness.

The water bottles particularly struck me, because I had noticed during the show that the band members were drinking standard bottled water. Wouldn't it be amazing to see major touring musicians sipping from reusable containers onstage instead of plastic water bottles? What a nice quiet statement that would make against bottled water's numerous problems (the wastefulness of its production and disposal, the health issues, etc.). I asked the guy who sold me my T-shirt to pass an encouraging word on to the band.

The following day, there was a coda to the theme. I heard a cool song on the radio called "Garbage," by Chairlift. I'll close by sharing some of the lyrics:

All the garbage that you have thrown away
Is waiting somewhere a million miles away
Your condoms and your VCR
Your ziploc bags and father's car
Dark and silent it waits for you ahead

So much garbage will never ever decay
And all your garbage will outlive you one day
You should sign a fancy signature to your messy messy portraiture
Because dark and silent it waits for you ahead

Making so much garbage each and every day
We make this shit for you to throw away
In plastic rooms in factories for you to dispose of as you please
Because dark and silent it waits for you ahead

Green Fest lust

Stuff I saw at this weekend's Green Festival that I would buy if I had more money:

• An organic mattress, perhaps like those at OMI's booth. Or maybe from somewhere else—I haven't really researched this topic in depth yet—but all I know is that my current one is old and probably contains nasty flame retardants.

• Replacements for my old mercury-containing amalgam tooth fillings from a green dentist like this one. The person I spoke with at their booth told me that the company donates 10% of its profits to charity—that's an impressive figure!

• A soda maker from SodaStream. I love the idea that I could be making my own San Pellegrino using the water that comes out of the tap instead of buying it in those big plastic bottles, which don't even keep the stuff fizzy for as long as I have them in my fridge. On second thought, though, our counter space is already pretty limited, and we don't use sparkling water all that often...

• Lots of bars from Chocolate Conspiracy, two sweet guys from Utah who make delicous raw chocolate. The Wild Spice Bar is to die for.

Amuse-bouche: Green(er) Apple

Just got a note from Greenpeace that Apple has eliminated brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride from its new iMac and Macbook. Furthermore, earlier last month, it joined other companies in leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the latter's opposition to climate-change legislation. Unlike many of its compatriots, though, Apple publicly stated why it left. Nice!