EPA Considering A Triclosan Ban

If you have ever tried to find a liquid hand soap which doesn't contain triclosan, you know how ubiquitous it is.  Unfortunately it's also an irritant, an endocrine disruptor, and a toxic residue in wastewater.  Triclosan has already been banned in Japan and Canada, and the EPA is finally considering a ban on it here in the States.

The most frustrating aspect of triclosan's ubiquity is that it is useless.  It has little to no impact on germs in the (very weak) concentrations you find in over the counter liquid soaps. 

And there is little need for an antibiotic in hand soap anyway; the mechanical action of washing your hands, combined with the surfactant (making things not stick to each other) action of the soap itself is what does the trick.

I became concerned about triclosan when I moved to a home with a septic system.  You don't want to pour antibacterial substances down your drain, when bacteria are what eat your poop!  (I eventually went to good old Dr. Bronner's liquid soap, diluted 50/50 with tap water, in a ketchup style squeeze bottle.)

According to the FDA, as quoted here in the Wikipedia article, "there is no evidence […] that triclosan provides an extra benefit to health in other consumer products."  It's true that a 2% concentration of triclosan in soap is effective against bacteria like MRSA.  But over the counter soaps (the kind we buy at the grocery store without a prescription [!!]) have a concentration between .10% and .25%.  Far too weak to do any good.

The overuse of triclosan can also contribute to the formation of resistant germs.  Ages ago I was told that this couldn't happen, because "triclosan isn't a real antibiotic like penicillin - it's like bleach."  This turns out not to be the case. 

Triclosan kills bacteria by binding to an enzyme which bacteria need to absorb fatty acids.  However, some bacteria (including strains of staph and e. coli) have become resistant to triclosan binding to their enzymes.  Other bacteria like pseudomonas have developed the ability to "pump triclosan out of the cell."

Compounding the evilness, when exposed to sunlight triclosan degrades into dioxins.  Not all dioxins are toxic, although many are.  The jury is still out on which dioxins triclosan turns into, and how dangerous they are.  But this is a serious cause for concern, because dioxins don't tend to break down.  Instead, they stay in your system for a very long time.  The effect of dioxin exposure is cumulative.

As to the endocrine disruptor effects, so far these have only been observed in animal subjects - frogs, rats, fish, and so forth.  But there is no reason to assume that triclosan doesn't disrupt the endocrine systems of humans, and once again, its ubiquity raises this to a higher level of concern.  Triclosan acts to block thyroid hormones, which can throw your entire system out of whack.

Long story short, even if the EPA decides not to ban triclosan (which would be thanks largely to corporate lobbying, mark my words), it is a substance which is best avoided. 

Anything labeled "antibacterial" probably contains triclosan - but to be sure, check the "Active Ingredients" list on the label.  Instead of triclosan, use regular soap (another plug for Dr. Bronner's!), and alcohol-based hand sanitizers.  And check your toothpaste, because triclosan is often included as an anti-gingivitis measure.  (Flossing prevents gingivitis better than triclosan ever could!)

Photo credit: Flickr/Jack Black's Stunt Double

Seattle Breaks Up With The Yellow Pages

Seattle has instituted some tough restrictions on yellow pages, those commercial phone books filled with ads for local businesses.  White pages will continue to be printed and distributed free to all Seattle residents, because it is a state law.  (Raise your hand if you didn't know that!  I did not know that.)  But in a significant move towards becoming a Zero-Waste City, Seattle is requiring that the yellow pages be delivered on an opt-in basis from now on.

This is an important move, and it was made with a surprising degree of finesse.  Despite significant push-back from the producers of yellow pages, like Dex and The Yellow Pages (it's a trademarked name).  From the publisher's perspective, commercial phone books are a big money-maker. 

As a yellow pages producer, you charge every company for the ability to appear in your pages.  And your rates are linked to circulation rates.  The more homes you deliver your phone books to, the more you can charge your clients. 

Unfortunately for the city, but in a lucky break for the producers, there is no end-of-life cost accounting.  When a Seattle resident recycles their old phone book, it costs the city money.  Money which comes from taxes, which are ultimately paid by Seattle residents.  In a way, we are all paying to recycle our own unwanted phone books.

Not having to pay for the back end makes phone book production a lot more profitable.  And if you just blindly distribute your phone books to every Seattle resident, you can claim wildly inflated numbers for your circulation.  You may be delivering phone books to half a million people, but a lot of those people will never even crack the cover.  It's a huge waste, no matter how you slice it.

From this point forward, the city will require phone book producers to only deliver commercial phone books on an "opt in" basis.  Meaning that if you want a phone book you can still get it, but you have to ask for it specifically.  Furthermore, phone book companies may have to pay a fee per book to help defray the cost of their inevitable recycling.

This is a big victory for the "end of life" crowd.  A lot of people are saying that manufacturers should take responsibility for disposing of their products once they are done.  Annie Leonard's latest movie hits this message hard, insisting that computer manufacturers take responsibility for the toxic waste which is a dead computer.

It also sets an interesting precedent.  Imagine if junk mail could only be delivered on an opt-in basis.  Every time I go to the post office to pick up my mail, I end up tossing 75% of  it into the recycling bin beside the front door.  And that bin is always full.  We think of junk mail as being free, but we're the ones paying to recycle it in the end.  And since when did I ask to get a fistful of advertising circulars every week, anyway?

Photo credit: Flickr/Trevor Coultart

Bees Don't Need This Poncho

So it turns out that for the last few years, while we have all been scrambling to find the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder, and blaming everything from cell phones to the modern industrialized nature of bee husbandry, the EPA had knowingly approved a bee poison for use on crops.

Isn't the EPA a government agency designed to prevent this kind of thing from happening?  From killing all the bees with a bee poison?  Isn't that why it's called the Environmental PROTECTION Agency, instead of (say) the Environmental Destructo Agency?

In a whistleblower leak worthy of Wikileaks itself, an EPA employee has leaked documentation to the effect that the EPA knew that Bayer's pesticide clothiandin (sold under the brand name "Poncho") would kill bees.  But they approved it anyway, even though it has been banned for use in many European countries (because it kills bees).

Poncho is sprayed on seeds, to prevent them from being eaten by insects.  When the seed germinates and turns into a plant, the plant absorbs the Poncho and eventually expresses it through its pollen.  You know; the stuff that bees go around collecting and eating. 

Poncho is most often used to pre-treat corn seeds before planting, although it's also used on "canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat."  Unfortunately, these are all crops which bees like to frequent.  Sales of Poncho have been brisk, raking in a sales figure of $262 million in 2009. 

In the classic example of Colony Collapse Disorder, a hive of bees heads out to forage one day, and just never comes back.  The most likely scenario, we now know, is that the bees all converge on a field which has been sprayed with Poncho.  And then they die.

Bayer's pesticide has been responsible for millions of bee deaths, but Bayer cares not.  In Germany, Poncho was linked to the deaths of 11,500 bee colonies since the spring of 2008.  This devastation is what led Germany to ban the pesticide.

Our country recently ruled that a corporation can legally act as a person.  What kind of person makes $262 million in profits on a pesticide that they know is killing bees?  That can only be sold in the United States because a government agency looked the other way?  That has been banned in many other countries for having killed bees?  Clearly, Bayer is a psychopath.  Would that this were an unusual situation.

The EPA actually raised some suspicions about Poncho back in 2003.  But their suspicions were allayed in part by a "botched" Bayer toxicity test, in which the control and the Poncho-dipped crops were planted practically side by side.  Talk about a fox running the hen house!  How can the EPA possibly expect to get decent results out of studies which are funded by the companies producing the product?

This is the kind of thing that drives me into the arms of the conspiracy theorist circles.  There's so much arguing and strife between Liberals and Tea Partiers, between Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart, MSNBC and Fox… but you know what?  It's gigantic faceless corporations like Bayer that are the real enemy.  When will we stop fighting amongst ourselves, and take on the real threat?

Photo copyright Fox/Matt Groening

10 Ways to Reduce Your Garbage Output

Many of us are charged per bag or pound of garbage we make. Lots of us are also simply concerned about generating too much trash and want to stop doing so. There are some people in this country who generate no trash! But how do we get there? Here are ten ways we can at least start to reduce how much garbage we put out each week.

10. Buy in Bulk When Appropriate

This often means less packaging (as well as cost!). Just assess your own purchases and see which items are better in bulk when you shop.

9. Re-Fill

If you can buy refillable items, such as ink pens and soap dispensers, all the better! Our soap refills come in recyclable pouches that are really easy to use.

8. Don’t Toss Paper

There’s almost always a good use for it! Lay it out to use under painting projects, then use it again as filler for papier mache. Use the back of your paper. If you have tiny pieces left from projects, keep it in a little box or baggie to use as confetti or for collage projects.

7. Choose Recyclable Materials

This one is usually easy enough; just look for the coded for recycling symbol. That said, you also want to check with your recycling plant to make sure they recycle it, too.

6. Don’t Toss Things That are Still Useable

This is a given. Clothing, electronics, baby toys—whatever you’ve got can be sold, traded, donated, or given away.

5. Don’t Use Styrofoam

This is usually our hardest item, since it can’t be recycled. If you go out to eat, bring a container with you for leftovers. It might seem weird at first, but you’ll get the hang of it; it’s just like using reusable bags. See if you can find a coffee or drink source that will let you use refillable cups, too.

4. Use Eco-Friendly Diapers

If you can use washable diapers, go for it! If not, try going for chlorine-free ones. It won’t reduce your output, but it will create a lighter impact. You can also dump out fecal matter into the toilet rather than putting it into the trash.

3. Go Paperless

If you can, get e-statements and bills rather than paper ones to cut down on the amount you have to toss.

2. Re-Use

We rarely toss toilet paper tubes in our home because they come in handy for so many projects and other uses, from bird feeders to these cool poinsettia crafts.

1. Don’t Throw Food Away

We throw away about a third of what we buy, which is just unbelievable! When I was a kid, I used to tell everyone that a starving child would be happy to eat the rest of that food (of course, this led me to eat past when I was full, which was a bad, lasting habit…), and I still maintain that. You can compost food, save it for later, make a plate for an elderly neighbor, invite friends over to eat… There are so many solutions to this one that there are just very few excuses for throwing food away.

Annie Leonard's "The Story of Electronics"

Annie Leonard is at it again, with a spin-off from her amazing "The Story of Stuff" movie called "The Story of Electronics."  This latest seven-minute semi-animated feature is specifically about electronics.  This is a topic which was certainly covered in "The Story of Stuff," but here it is fleshed out and the point brought home even more effectively: electronics are bad for the planet.

It's hard to imagine, as you look at a cell phone, television, or iPod, that it represents a vast swath of environmental devastation.  Sadly, the electronics industry has one of the worst environmental records. 

For example,  Silicon Valley which "thanks to the electronics industry is one of the most poisoned communities in the United States."  IBM's internal studies found that the workers who assembled their chips had 40% more miscarriages, not to mention skyrocketing rates of cancer.

The heart of the problem is that, as Leonard puts it, "today's electronics are hard to upgrade, easy to break, and impractical to repair."  Each big old clunky television (which people are ditching left and right in order to upgrade to a spiffy new flatscreen TV) has about 5 pounds of lead in it.  Our electronics are incredibly toxic to produce, and incredibly toxic to dispose of.

Ever wondered where e-waste goes?  I never had, until I watched this movie.  Leonard actually visited Guiyu, a town in southern China which specializes in "recycling" e-waste.  America ships its e-waste to Guiyu, where workers (without any protective gear) sit on the ground and break open electronics one by one.  They remove the valuable metals, then cart away the rest of it and either throw it away or BURN IT.  Thus releasing that "5 pounds of lead per television" into the environment along with mercury, toluene, and dozens of other horrors.

Unfortunately, the final portion of the movie is Annie's call to arms regarding "extended producer responsibility" or "product take-back."  Basically saying "You made it - you deal with it."  While at the same time completely overlooking the issue of personal responsibility. 

Her theory is that requiring product take-back will encourage companies to design their products to last longer, be more recyclable, and less toxic.  I can pretty much guarantee you the only thing that would happen is the cost would go up. 

The items would be just as toxic and flimsy as always, but it would cost more to buy them, because the manufacturers would tack on a hidden "take-back fee."  An extra $10 or $20 to cover their costs at the end of the item's life.  When they have to take the item and pay to have it shipped to China to be dismantled and burned.

In other words, just like today, but more expensive.

Near the end, Leonard remarks that, "We are never going to shop our way out of this problem."  Truer words were never spoken.  If only there were an effective way to brag about not owning an iPad, or having upgraded to the latest smart phone. 

Personally, I'm engaging in a one-woman war of anti-bragging.  Whenever someone mentions their newest electronics toy, I whip out my 2nd generation iPod Nano (pictured above). 

It doesn't play video or have wireless, it has "only" 2GB of storage space.  But it works perfectly, and does everything I need it to do - and has done since I bought it new in 2006.  And keeping it has saved me at least $800 over the cost of buying new ones since then!

Lead Found in Reusable Shopping Bags

Boy, if anything in this world were safe for us to repeatedly use, you would think it’d be reusable shopping bags. We’ve been converting to them, slowly but surely, and ditching the plastic that ends up serving as the surface area for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the chokehold for a massive dying whale as we strive to live a little bit greener, a little bit more consciously, with this simple act. We all think that we’re doing a great thing by using reusable bags—indeed, it is a good thing—but it turns out that sometimes it’s just about as bad as plastic bags.

A recent study has confirmed that many of these reusable bags are chock full of lead! Not only is this lead leeching into the environment when the bags are discarded—which wholly defeats the purpose of using such eco-friendly bags in the first placed—it’s also seeping into our food as we carry it home.

Can we not get SOMETHING without lead in this country? Is it too much to ask for some damn safety standards to be put into place to protect us from crap like lead? Are we asking too much when we demand lipstick, reusable bags, or baby supplies without freaking LEAD in them?

I think not. In fact, I think we aren’t asking enough of our country and its addiction to bright and shiny happy lead; if we were, we would have already nipped this problem in the bud. The fact that this has been discovered and is still allowed to occur just points out the fact that our government could care less about what’s going on or into our bodies, and that since we’re not pressuring them enough to make it different, they’re going to keep allowing our systematic body poisoning.

Hey, it keeps the medical industry alive and well, right! And since we didn’t get the public option many of us were hoping for, we have to keep that capitalist sick system going.

Folks, it’s time we stood up and demanded a government that puts our best interests at heart—and this includes not letting us get poisoned on a regular basis from the crap we buy, the crap they encourage us to buy to “keep the economy going.” I’m the first person who will advocate buying less all around, but even what little we have to buy should be safe for us to use.

Paying for Pee in South Africa

The city of Durban, South Africa has done something extraordinary—one of those things that you wish wouldn’t be considered extraordinary at all, since you’d rather it be a mundane occurrence all over the globe, simply taken for granted in its sustainable simplicity, like you wish for recycling or bans on plastic bags. They’ve installed 90,000 dry toilets in the city, as they’ve deemed water too precious of a resource to waste.

And indeed it is. Water is rapidly becoming the new oil. As population numbers, cities, industrialization, and other processes that require water grow, so does the issue of water scarcity. 1 in 3 people are currently affected by water scarcity, and about 20% of the world lives in areas where water is physically scarce to the point where many do not have safe, clean water to drink, cook with, or bathe in. Water borne illnesses are also common in these areas, resulting in dehydration and death from something people in the western world take severely for granted.

Durban has the right idea—to stop using this invaluable, dwindling resource as a means to flush our bodily waste and instead to conserve it. If this idea took across the globe, imagine how much water could be saved! Literally flushing water away is one of the most wasteful things we do with the resource, and remedying this with such a device could be one of the soundest solutions to water scarcity we’ve seen yet.

The only problem is that the people of Durban aren’t taking to the idea so well. In fact, the idea of using toilets without water seems disgusting to them—as it surely does to many other people. There is a taboo about handling body waste—even though it, itself, is a valuable resource that can be used as fertilizer—as well as a notion that it’s not only unsanitary but also beneath people. Using water feels more civilized and advanced—and, like many traditions, it is hard to kill.

In order to promote using this form of toilet and to encourage the people of Durban to really take part in the conservation project, the city is considering paying people to use the toilets. Rather than making people handle their own sewage to simply conserve water, the city plans on paying residents for their waste to use it as fertilizer. If the “pee for profit” idea works, millions of gallons of water can be saved—and perhaps the rest of the world will finally take the hint and join the water saving revolution as well.

Get on Board the Greenpeace Ship!

On my list of things to do before I die, I have “Work on a Greenpeace ship.” I’m not so sure that’s ever going to happen, since I have a young child now. I’d also like to think that when she’s old enough to be on the ship herself, there won’t be a need for such activism anymore because the world will have already woken up.

One can dream!

Greenpeace has a new website, however, where you can at least pretend you’re on the ship with them, being an activist with regular assignments to take part in as often as you can. The Greenpeace Virtual Ship is a place where volunteers and activists can find the tools they need to bring the spirit and work of Greenpeace into their own communities (as well as get involved with communities across the globe) without needing to board a ship. Each week features a new toolkit with ways to start taking direct action for a greener planet immediately.

For example, in The Galley, this week Greenpeace is highlighting a “Less is More” toolkit. This is designed to help people assess their home energy use and needs, balancing them to create a greener impact on the environment while not sacrificing any personal comforts. Their simple tips to reduce your carbon footprint, from showering smartly to buying locally, are easy to implement into your lifestyle. They’re also in an accessible file suitable for downloading and sharing with friends.

In addition to the weekly toolkit, the Virtual Ship also lists other ways to get involved and be an activist for the environment. Right now, an action against Arctic drilling is featured on the homepage, along with a few other ways to get involved.

If media is your pleasure, you can visit the ship’s Radio Room for audio clips, video footage, and other pieces of media that will help you feel as if you’ve really boarded a ship with Greenpeace (well, almost). At the Bridge of the ship, you can locate information on various campaigns, look at maps, and really brief yourself as you would do if you were working in the field.

Nearly 8,000 crew members have already joined. I highly encourage anyone who wants to be an activist for the environment to check it out! When you do sign up, you even take a pledge to start an Energy [R]evolution by stopping our addiction to dirty fuels.

Starbucks' Hunt For The Recyclable Cup

Fast Company has a surprisingly nuanced article about the difficulties Starbucks has faced in creating their holy grail: a 100% recyclable paper cup.

Paper cups have a wax coating so they can't be recycled with the regular paper.  They would need to be sorted out, in an entirely separate box.  Or - more likely, given the current technology - picked out of the conveyor belt by hand. 

(I have my own solution to this problem: a travel cup system that works the same way as glass bottles for milk.  When you buy glass bottled milk you pay a deposit - usually around $2.50.  The next time you buy milk you bring the old bottle in and exchange it. 

If you forget to bring the old bottle in, you just pay another $2.50.  Inevitably you end up with a bunch of extra empty bottles - just bring them into the store and get $2.50 back for each of them.  The fee is enough to cover the expense of carting away the old bottles and sterilizing them. 

This system would be awesome for Starbucks mugs, because it doesn't necessarily require you to remember to bring your travel mug.  Which is always my big problem.)

Starbucks has started a pilot program in Chicago.  In partnership with Georgia Pacific, Starbucks cups from Chicago will be trucked away, pulped, and turned into napkins for Starbucks stores. 

Of course, as you may have noticed, if you're at a Starbucks store (and you forgot your travel mug, you naughty thing) there is no place where you can recycle your cup.  Part of this project towards complete recyclability by 2015 is installing recycling bins at every Starbucks store.

This effort is admittedly something like tilting at windmills.  Recycling a cup may be the smallest of all the possible environmental concerns.  For example, that cup had to be produced in the first place - which involved a lot of fuel burned in transportation, trees pulped in fiber mills powered by electricity or possibly coal, chemicals used to bleach the paper, and on and on. 

But the white Starbucks cup is iconic, and it's the part of Starbucks that the customer actually holds in their hands.  If we can be made to feel good about the Starbucks to-go cup, presumably Starbucks is hoping those feelings will transfer to the company itself. 

(If I were a more cynical person, I might say that the whole point of the exercise is to greenwash the company as a whole.  But I have a good friend who works in the Starbucks corporate offices, and I know that as a company, their hearts are in the right place.)

It's true that more good could be done by outfitting Starbucks stores with solar panels than by making their cups recyclable.  But why be churlish?  Maybe the best thing about this whole deal is that, by making such a public effort out of finding a way to recycle their cups, Starbucks impresses upon its customers that this kind of thing is important.

Starbucks has become, for better or worse, a cultural leader.  And if they can lead us to recycle more, then all the better. 

Photo credit: Flickr/Louis Abate

Return of the Chestnut Tree

The Washington Post has an article about "chestnut aficionados" who are working to bring the chestnut tree back to America.

The story of the chestnut is an all-too-familiar one, and a warning to anyone who doubts the danger of invasive species and diseases.  The American chestnut was central to life in the 1700s and 1800s. 

It grew quickly and large, and dominated the forests of the Eastern seaboard from Appalachia to Maine.  Its wood and chestnuts were critical to the economic success of the families in its range, and its beautiful spreading shape was the pride of many towns.

The chestnut blight was first identified in 1904.  Chestnut blight is a fungus which was accidentally introduced around 1900, possibly through imported chestnut wood used in the lumber industry.  The fungal spores spread on the wind, and destroyed the American chestnut within a shockingly short space of time. 

Chestnut blight enters the tree through any cracks or break in the bark.  It then multiplies, creating a lump called a "canker."  As the canker grows, it girdles the tree, which kills every part of the tree above the canker.

It only took about 40 years for the American chestnut to be wiped out.  An estimated four billion trees were killed by the fungus, reduced to stumps which still occasionally send out shoots.  Sadly, the shoots all succumb to the fungus before they can grow very large.

Some very small stands of American chestnut survived.  They were far enough away from the blight that they remained uninfected.  These small stands in California and the Pacific Northwest, as well as a tiny colony recently discovered in Georgia, form the basis of the new hybridization program.

(Note: the American chestnut is not the same as the Horse chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum, which is an unrelated tree with a similar-looking nut.  Horse chestnut trees are common in the Pacific northwest.  However, the nuts of the Horse chestnut are poisonous.  Not to be roasted and eaten, over an open fire or otherwise!)

The American Chestnut Foundation is working to restore the American chestnut, by hybridizing it with Chinese chestnut trees which seem to be immune to the blight.  Their work is slow, because a generation for a tree can be a very long time indeed.  Luckily, the American Chestnut Foundation has an ample supply of patience.

There is also some interesting work being done with a virus which kills the blight fungus.  If this research pans out, chestnut trees could be inoculated with the virus - similar to a human vaccination.  This virus can also be directly injected into the cankers caused by the fungus, to beat it back and allow the infected tree to survive.

The story of the American chestnut is also, sadly, the story of a monoculture.  The chestnut's success was its very undoing, as it was so common that it grew in long stretches unbroken by any other tree species.  Its narrow genetic makeup, and its sheer overwhelming numbers, made it a natural target for a devastating disease.

Photo credit: Flickr/silverfox09

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