Wallet Mouth

Amuse-bouche: Food fraud

With the rise in popularity of origin-protected and organic comestibles, food fraud has become big business. The European Union is fighting back with a host of new technologies. Link.

Pangea deserves props for unabashed support of fair labor

What a great feeling to find an e-commerce site that states in big letters on its home page that it sells “only goods made in countries where labor laws or unions are in place to protect the workers! We don’t sell any products made in China or other countries known for sweatshops.”

The site is Pangea, a.k.a. the Vegan Store. I’m not a vegan, but I buy vegan shoes (and avoid leather in general) because of my deep antipathy toward industrial cattle operations and their harmful effects on the environment. Plus, quite frankly, I feel bad for the cows.

Pangea sells not only shoes but all sorts of things: cleaning products, pet supplies, cruelty-free cosmetics and body care, etc.

How does it vet its merchandise? I traded email with Pangea employee Phil, who told me that the company’s main source of information is its founder, Shari Kalina. “Over the past 11 years she’s had to do so much research and have so many discussions with various experts that she has probably learned more than can be found at any single website,” he wrote. “For any unfamiliar ingredient, she’ll use the internet as a starting point and then get in touch with as many people as necessary for us to be confident about the ingredient.”

Which tells me that Pangea must be a pretty small operation. But it’s one I’m happy to support. In fact, I’m eyeing a pair of red No Sweat high-tops right now...

Wouldn’t it be COOL to know where your food comes from?

Most Americans think so. According to a study released today by Consumers Union, the nonprofit behind Consumer Reports, 92 percent of us support country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for food. Ninety-two percent!

I would be surprised at that number were it not for all the recent problems with tainted goods from China. But I was surprised to read that the federal government mandated COOL way back in 2002 for nearly all food products. However, “implementation has been delayed until October 2008, with the exception of seafood.”

What gives?

Hitting the nail on the head

Cole Hardware, my local purveyor of all things useful, publishes a newsletter every month, and the new issue has an article about its attitude on stocking earth-friendly products versus not-so-green goods. Here’s the gist: Cole carries and heavily promotes environmentally responsible items but doesn’t refuse to carry less-green products, since there’s still such a high demand for them.

Meanwhile, the store is doing what it can to showcase the “good” goods in its advertising, signage, and shelving policies. When it comes to garden chemicals, for example, “we do stock all of the usual poisons, but we don’t promote them and we keep them up high or down low on our shelves, giving the non- or less-toxic products the eye-level space.”

It’s also initiating its own in-store labeling campaigns: Green stickers with a “Cole Hardware Earth Friendly” logo are appearing on the price cards for responsible products throughout the shop. And, interestingly, another set of stickers will soon identify goods that are made domestically, a response to what Cole says is the number one request it receives: to minimize the number of products it carries that are not made in the U.S.A. (“If we did, unfortunately, our shelves would be near-empty,” the newsletter states.)

I think this is a good approach to take: Stock the necessary merchandise to meet customer demand and stay profitable, but encourage, educate, and inspire your shoppers to think before they buy, and to buy better.

Dental damns

Did you catch the FDA warning about toxic toothpaste a couple weeks ago? I didn’t, thanks to an insanely busy (albeit fun) weekend. But when I fired up my computer this morning, my eye was caught by the New York Times’ interesting follow-up (“FDA Tracked Tainted Drugs, but Trail Went Cold in China”) on the story.

“Provenance” is a word I’m going to be using a lot more from here on out (I’ve also added it to my categories for this blog). The general inability we as consumers have to know the provenance of so many of the things we buy represents a huge problem.

Provenance blindness is the underlying theme of my recent posts on apparel and bedding, but it takes on a whole new urgency when it comes to something like poisonous toothpaste—or tainted food or pet food, also from China. It’s one thing to care about the working conditions of the people who labor in those nameless factories over there; it’s another to realize that our own safety is in danger when we use products of uncertain origin.   

I found an interesting parallel in the toothpaste story with my recent bedding conundrum with Gaiam. In both cases, we have entities refusing to divulge their product sources because they’re worried about being undermined in the marketplace.

So, does global capitalism preclude transparency? Whose job is it to police these supply chains? And if the FDA wasn’t able to find out the origin of toxic products being sold in the U.S., how are we consumers to do so?

Invisible bedfellows

Speaking of Gaiam, while shopping there, I noticed that none of its bedding product descriptions included a brand name. Which is less than shocking, given that things like comforters and sheets belong to that humongous class of objects whose faceless manufacturers bear no relation to whatever brand ultimately gets slapped onto them.

But since the site presents itself in such a green light, I wondered what Gaiam could tell me about where its bedding products come from. The answer is, not a lot. The friendly customer-service rep I got on the phone said that manufacturer names are not shared, lest the competition find out.

So, did he have any idea where, say, Gaiam’s organic cotton sheets were manufactured? “Some are made in India,” he said. “None are made in China, I believe.” Hmm. OK. And were they made in an environmentally sustainable way? “Yes. All organic cotton has to be. You can’t have an organic cotton label if pesticides were used.”

What about working conditions? “Well, that’s one of the most difficult areas to track down,” he said. “We try to participate in the global marketplace in a responsible way, but it’s really hard to know these things. You kind of have to take companies at their word, unless you go there.”

Understandable, but it still sucks.

Keep in mind, he added, that we’re still in the beginning stages of this new emerging global economy, and more and more consumers are starting to demand sustainably produced goods. “As demand picks up, even companies that are lying [about their practices] will be forced to be accountable.”

All right, then. Let’s pick up the pace.

I’ve made my bed and lain in it; now tell me if I should feel guilty

Ever woken up with a feather in your mouth? I have. Can’t recommend it, really.

After one too many downy-lipped morns, I decided it was time to replace our beloved old comforter with one that wasn’t leaking at the seams. The search took a while, mostly because Mr. Wallet Mouth and I discovered how picky we both were, particularly when it came to the puffiness factor.

After trying a couple comforters from über-greeny online store Gaiam, we ended up with one called the Blackburn, by Charter Club, which is just an in-house Macy’s brand; the actual tag on the thing reveals that it’s made by Down Lite International, in Mason, Ohio. The tag also says the shell—which was filled, sewn, and finished in the States—was made in China. Which, of course, makes me start asking all the same questions I was pondering the other day when I witnessed the Marshalls stunt in the subway station.

Down Lite’s website talks about how it’s the premier down bedding manufacturer in America, founded by two brothers who vowed not to compromise on quality and workmanship, yada yada. But that’s about it. So I emailed them asking what their deal is when it comes to corporate social responsibility. I’ll let you know what I find out.

Red-flag sale

On the subway in San Francisco this morning, I did a double take as we pulled into one of the downtown stations. Milling around among the other commuters were three women dressed in business casual, but something was slightly ... off. First of all, I could tell by their body language that they were promoting something. Then I saw that attached to every article of clothing they wore—even their shoes—was an oversize price tag bearing the Marshalls logo. As I watched, of of them handed a flyer to a woman who was clearly intrigued by the gimmick. The prices were pretty low: $12.99 for a blouse, if memory serves.

As the train pulled away, I started wondering what sort of person might have stitched that $12.99 blouse, and how old he or (more likely) she is. Does she earn a fair wage? Does she get to use the toilet when nature calls?

That reminded me of an article from the current issue of ReadyMade (which happens to be one of the magazines I freelance for) about a Dutch organization called Made-By that’s both an umbrella label for companies that aim to produce their garments in a socially responsible, sustainable way, and an initiative that’s working to create greater transparency in the supply chain and helping clothing companies to clean up their production process. Especially cool is the Made-By labels “Check it out” tracking feature, which lets you type in the garment’s bar code to find out where it was made.

It’s less of a jungle out there

I’m done with Amazon. Well, sort of.

Instead of buying stuff on Amazon, I’ve started using Alonovo, an online shopping outlet that provides ratings of its merchants (some of them, anyway) in such categories as social responsibility and business ethics. Users can customize those ratings (which come from KLD Research & Analytics and the U.S. Federal Elections Commission) according to their own values—for example, assigning more importance to how well a company complies with environmental regulations and less to how generous its charitable giving program is. In addition, Alonovo donates a portion of its revenue to nearly 100 nonprofits and activist organizations (such as the ACLU, the Breast Cancer Fund, and Unicef); shoppers choose which group their purchases will benefit.

Here’s how it works: Alonovo is a member of Amazon’s Associates program, so it’s basically a portal through which Amazon’s wares are sold. Shoppers get the same selection and price as they would on the e-commerce giant—in fact, Alonovo’s site is powered by Amazon, and the checkout process takes place on Amazon—but with the added benefit of the ratings and donations.

For each purchase on Alonovo, Amazon pays Alonovo a referral fee of up to 8.5% of the revenue associated with that purchase. Alonovo donates either all or half of that commission to the beneficiary organization chosen by the shopper. The group gets 100% if it’s an “active” partner of Alonovo’s (active partners promote Alonovo in their newsletters, websites, and email campaigns); otherwise it gets 50%. There are currently 22 active partners and 73 passive ones.

Registration on Alonovo is free and not required; Alonovo adds no fees to the products purchased through its site. It also offers forum discussions and links to CSR-related news stories.

I only wish the site could provide ratings on more companies and products—as does Alonovo itself, I’m sure—but acquiring and streamlining the data required to do that is hugely complicated, to say the least, so I’m not going to blame them.