Wallet Mouth

Help CA say "See ya!" to PFCs

Some years ago, I started avoiding Teflon-coated cookware after hearing that the nonstick chemicals, while awfully convenient for cooking, are awful for human health. They're called perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), and it turns out that they're awful for the environment, too (especially if you're this species of turtle, or a pet bird).

So today, when I got an email from the Environmental Working Group informing me that PFCs are used in various types of grease-resistant food packaging (for things like microwavable popcorn, fast food, and pizza)—and that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to veto a bill in the California state legislature that would ban the use of PFCs in food packaging—I did the email's bidding, calling the gov and signing the petition. If you'd like to do the same, click here.

To me, the most irksome thing this battle has revealed is the fact that we have no way of knowing which specific packages contain PFCs. As this page from the Environmental Working Group's site puts it, "consumers are unfairly deprived of their essential right to know and to make informed, independent decisions.... [A] consumer going to the store would not know which brands to avoid because manufacturers are conveniently withholding this crucial information."

How about some legislation requiring transparency in this arena?

Amuse-bouche: How kosher is Kosher?

Yesterday's All Things Considered included this interesting piece on efforts to expand the Kosher certification to encompass ethics such as treatment of workers and animals.

G, thanks!

Here's another case of a company changing a less-than-perfect behavior on its own just as I was starting to get a bee in my bonnet about it: We've been happily using gDiapers, which I've blogged about before, for six months now, but the other week, I noticed that the plastic packaging used for the product's flushable inserts had some misleading text on it. It said, "This Bag Is 100% Recyclable."

Um, no it's not.

Even in San Francisco's single-stream recycling system, plastic bags and films are a big no-no. And while some grocery stores accept plastic bags for recycling, the all-encompassing language in the gDiapers text was probably causing well-meaning but clueless parents to throw the bags into their curbside bins and gum up the machinery.

So I wrote gDiapers and asked what was going on. I pointed out that (as I blogged about in a recent post) the FTC's "Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims" consider calling plastic garbage bags recyclable to be a deceptive claim.

I got a nice reply from gDiapers acknowledging that yes, #4 plastic are tricky and are generally not intended for curbside programs. The statement also explained that the company knows plastic bags are not ideal from an environmental standpoint and is actively searching for a cost-effective compostable alternative that can stand up to the elements.

Meanwhile, the copy on the packaging changed! (I don't claim to take any credit for it, but what a coincidence!) It now reads, "For a happy planet, please recycle in communities where available." Much better.

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.

Amuse-bouche: more greenwashing fun

Some of these are laugh-out-loud funny. [Link]

Legal newspaper's message to business: Don't greenwash

It's nice to come across references to ethical-consumer savvy in unexpected places.

Someone recently gave me a story from the San Francisco Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, warning California companies that if they portray their products as eco-friendly or not harmful to the earth, they must be prepared to verify those claims, on demand, to any member of the public who asks. Although the relevant statute has so far not been interpreted by the courts, "[t]his may change, as a rising tide of consumer disgust with 'greenwashing' ... makes lawsuits for unfair competition or false advertising increasingly likely," writes litigator Robert S. Hule.

Yes, California has an environmental marketing statute. It's part of the state's law on false advertising (California Business & Professions Code Section 17580), and it both prohibits deceptive claims and requires record-keeping and disclosure measures for companies that make environmental claims.

What's a deceptive claim? Ah, just refer (as the law does) to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's "Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims," a.k.a. the Green Guides, which spell out numerous types of chicanery and provide lots of helpful examples. Like this one, on the need to distinguish between product and packaging:

A box of aluminum foil is labeled with the claim "recyclable," without further elaboration. Unless the type of product, surrounding language, or other context of the phrase establishes whether the claim refers to the foil or the box, the claim is deceptive if any part of either the box or the foil, other than minor, incidental components, cannot be recycled.

Or this one, which illustrates overstatement of environmental benefit:

A package of paper coffee filters is labeled "These filters were made with a chlorine-free bleaching process." The filters are bleached with a process that releases into the environment a reduced, but still significant, amount of the same harmful byproducts associated with chlorine bleaching. The claim is likely to overstate the product's benefits because it is likely to be interpreted by consumers to mean that the product's manufacture does not cause any of the environmental risks posed by chlorine bleaching.

Now, is it just me, or do you also feel like you encounter such deceptive claims all the time?

But I digress... The point is, it's heartening to see the legal community telling the business community to be truthful, or else face the wrath of enlightened consumers.

Broad claims are the most vulnerable to lawsuits, the article states. In general, companies would be wise to avoid using far-reaching phrases like "environmentally friendly" and instead to "state in the advertisement or on the label exactly what environmental benefit the product has." Oh, and be prepared to substantiate any claims with reliable documentation when asked.

That's an approach I can get behind.

Still alive, just parenting

Now that Mini Mouth has surpassed the five-month mark and is ever more interested in the world around her (sigh, gone are the days of one-handed net surfing while the cute one slumbers in my lap), I'm finding it much harder to keep up with Wallet Mouth (not to mention other things, like email, my copyediting work, and, ahem, personal hygiene). Please accept my apologies for the lag. I shall persevere, however slowly.

This will be a short post. It's mainly just to say that yes, I'm still here; I'm just not e-here. It's also to barf out a few random bits, such as... I bought a new yoga mat after seeing two or three different stories within the same week talking about the fact that most yoga mats are phthalate-y (for more on phthalates, you can read my post on the sadly-now-defunct Alonovo Review here). I opted for Jade Yoga's "travel" mat, which is the same thickness as my previous, PVC mat and suits me just fine. I picked Jade's because (a) conveniently, I could buy it in person at my yoga studio, which is a member of the Green Yoga Association, and (b) Jade has partnered with Trees for the Future, which plants a tree for each mat sold. The natural rubber is a bit smelly, but it's not a horrible smell, and it should dissipate over time.

Uh-oh, Mini Mouth awakes. I guess that'll just be one random bit for this post, then.

Until next time...

Eating really locally

We've all heard why it's good to eat locally: doing so lets us pump money back into the local economy, combat global warming, and get in touch with the seasons, all at the same time. One way to eat locally is to take advantage of farmers' markets. There's also community-supported agriculture (CSA), in which you can "subscribe" to a farm and have a box of food delivered to your home every week.

Recently an interesting twist on the CSA model has emerged in which the "farm" is actually a network of backyards in your city. The first company I'm aware of to do this is two-year-old Your Backyard Farmer, in Portland, Oregon. To sign up, clients need a plot of land that gets at least six hours of sunlight a day. After an initial consultation, a team of two farmers sets up the garden, planting a range of vegetables based on the client's preferences, and handles all the maintenance, including composting, via weekly visits. The client gets a basket of freshly harvested veggies from his or her garden every week.

In San Francisco, a new venture called MyFarm operates on the same principle, but with an added benefit: It will be open to people without green space, who will be able to subscribe to MyFarm as they would to any other CSA farm. The vegetables sold to the yardless will come from the gardens of participants who have space to grow more food than they can eat (and who, in return, receive a discount on their weekly fee).

Speaking of fees, there is a hefty setup cost—between $600 and $1,000 for MyFarm—but the weekly fee is comparable to what you'd pay for an organic produce box, between $20 and $35 a week, for food grown in your own yard. And it's even possible to earn money from one's mini-farm by selling the produce using a system like SPIN Farming.

Such services are a boon to people who would like to grow their own food but don't have the time or gardening knowledge to do it. Another advantage to this model, emphasized by both Your Backyard Farmer and MyFarm, is self-sufficiency: decentralized urban farms decrease dependence on larger food systems and enhance food security.

It will be interesting to see how widely the concept spreads. Our Backyard Farmer is sold out through 2008, so indications are good that this is an idea whose time has come.

For Mercedes-Benz, the future will not be petroleum-powered

Last month, I blogged about clean diesel on the Alonovo Review.

And now comes this even more exciting car-related tidbit from EcoGeek: Mercedes-Benz plans to be petroleum-free by 2015! [link]

Following up on the carcinogenic-cleaners kerfuffle

It's been more than two weeks since the California Attorney General's Office filed suit against four manufacturers of green-branded products for not warning consumers that they contain a toxic chemical [link], and I'd like to share with you the responses I got from the companies.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I contacted all four companies the same day I broke the story, two of them—Avalon and Whole Foods—have not responded to me. I am distinctly unimpressed.

I did speak to both Beaumont and NutriBiotic, however.

Beaumont, which makes Citrus Magic 100% Natural Dish Liquid, deserves a pat on the back. It forwarded me a statement from marketing VP Bill Stone saying that in March, after finding out about the Organic Consumers Association study that blew the lid off the 1,4-dioxane affair, Beaumont sent samples of the dish liquid to an independent laboratory, which verified the OCA's results. Further tests revealed that eliminating a surfactant called Sulfochem ES-60 would eliminate the problem, so the company immediately reformulated Citrus Magic sans the offending ingredient.

"In summary," the statement says, "upon being notified that there was a problem with our product, we verified that the problem existed, then took immediate action. We reformulated the product and are currently producing and marketing the product, Citrus Magic® 100% Natural Dish Liquid, having eliminated the problem in the new formula. There are no ethoxylated ingredients in the new reformulated product."

NutriBiotic, whose Super Shower Gel Shampoo with GSE was found to contain 32.2ppm of 1,4-dioxane, appears to be headed down the path of doing the right thing. I spoke with Pam Lausten, part of the company's marketing team. After repeatedly telling me that "we wouldn't knowingly put [1,4-dioxane] in there," she said that NutriBiotic had commissioned its own study, "and obviously, if the ingredients are in there, we intend to eliminate them."

Which means that for the time being, Super Shower Gel Shampoo with GSE presumably still contains 1,4-dioxane (assuming the OCA study's results are valid).

And, of course, so do Whole Foods' 365 Everyday Value Dish Liquid (1.6ppm) and Shower Gel (20.1ppm), and Avalon's Alba brand Passion Fruit Body Wash (18.2ppm) and Replenishing Shampoo (.7ppm). Your guess is as good as mine as to whether those companies will reformulate.