Dear
EarthTalk: I’ve been hearing
a lot about all the recycled materials being turned into handbags
and purses. Are these bags actually fashionable?
-- Mary-Beth Johnstone, Cos Cob, CT
("Bags and purses have become inventive
outlets for all kinds of recycled materials. Pictured here is a
purse made from old license plates by Littlearth Productions.”)
Eco
fashion, especially in the world of bags, purses and carriers, has
proven to be an inventive outlet for all kinds of recycled
materials. And yes, most of these bags—even those made from such
unlikely materials as candy wrappers (by Ecoist) or carpets (CarpetBags)—not
only look good, but would probably draw looks of admiration from
fellow bag aficionados.
The Canadian
website, www.eco-handbags.ca
, carries a large assortment of creatively adapted materials
turned to wearable art from green handbag companies. There are
bags made from old books, sailboat sails, juice boxes, aluminum
cans, plastic bottles, neckties, cigar boxes, skateboards, candy
wrappers, chopsticks, soda pop tops and bicycle tire inner tubes.
And these don’t look like they’ve been knit together from a trash
bin: They are impeccably sewn one-of-a-kind accessories. The juice
box cooler bag, handmade by a cooperative in the Philippines for
Bazura Bags, is a great all-purpose carry-all, while the sleek
Roadster Handbag made of truck tire inner tubes by English
Retreads makes for a stylish everyday purse.
Ava DeMarco and her
husband Rob Brandegee one day looked at used license plates and
saw handbags. The couple had launched their company, Littlearth
Productions, in 1993 with a mission to match style with
eco-consciousness. At first, license plates were used as ornaments
on recycled rubber bags. Then they became the bags themselves,
twisted into colorful cylindrical purses. Now Littlearth’s
recycled license plate handbags can be found in more than 1,000
retail outlets and in the clutches of everyone from Oprah to
Chelsea Clinton. “Everything we make is one of a kind, because all
license plates are unique,” says DeMarco. In one year, Littlearth
recycled more than 15 tons of rubber and 40,000 license plates.
And why not turn
all that old tire rubber into something eminently wearable? The
material is completely durable and effective for everything from
men’s messenger bags to women’s clutches. “I’ve always been aware
of the tire situation,” says Robin Gilson, president and founder
of Vulcana, a company that makes bags out of recycled car tires.
“They collect water; they are breeding grounds for mosquitoes. I
thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you could melt car tires down
and reshape them?’”
After taking a
leave of absence from her job as an attorney in 1995, Gilson
tracked down a company that would take recycled car tire crumb and
mix it with natural rubber to create a material suitable for
stitching into bags. Vulcana launched its product line in 2001.
The company takes 30 to 50 percent of its material from recycled
car tires. The rest is virgin rubber, mostly from small,
family-owned plantations in Malaysia. Some products are
hemp-fused, which means the rubber is cured directly onto a hemp
fabric.
For animal-lovers
the new range of handbags has been especially welcome—whether
they’re made from tires, records, hemp or chopsticks, these bags
are a great alternative to leather and an easy way to make a
fashion statement.
CONTACTS:
Bazura Bags,
www.bazurabags.com ; Eco Handbags,
www.eco-handbags.ca ;
Ecoist, www.ecoist.com ;
English Retreads,
www.englishretreads.com ; Littlearth Productions,
www.littlearth.com; Vulcana,
www.vulcanabags.com .
Dear
EarthTalk: What are the
environmental consequences of leather? Are there any good
alternatives? -
Brianna Jacobs, Somerville, MA
Copyright:www.vegetarianshoesandbags.com
Leather
is everywhere—from shoes and belts, to purses, wallets, jackets,
furniture and car seats. Most probably assume that the leather
that finds its way into our wardrobes and living spaces is a
byproduct of the meat industry. But while cows are certainly the
most popular animals to use for leather goods, in truth most of
our leather is sourced from overseas, from countries like China
and India, where a host of animals may be raw material for our
bags and belts, including horses, deer, sheep and, in more exotic
cases, alligators or snakes. All of which may make an animal-lover
or vegetarian queasy.
But
environmentalists have reason to forgo leather, too. Processing
leather requires copious amounts of energy and a toxic stew of
chemicals including formaldehyde, coal tar, and some cyanide
containing finishes. The tanning process is just as
pollutant-laced, and can leave chemicals in the water supply (as
described in the best-selling book and popular movie, A Civil
Action) and on the hands (and in the lungs) of developing
world workers.
Tanneries are top
polluters on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA)
“Superfund” list, which identifies the most critical industrial
sites in need of environmental cleanup. Due to their toxicity,
reports organicleather.com, “many old tannery sites can’t be used
for agriculture, or built on, or even sold.” That website is the
home of Mill Valley, California, retailer Organic Leather, which
offers a return to the tanning practices of old—using animals that
are organically fed and humanely raised and a tanning process that
uses plant tannins, vegetable tannins or smoke to cure the leather
with zero toxicity in the process.
But with the wealth
of fashionable faux leather alternatives, there’s no need to ever
wear animal skins. So-called “cruelty-free” fashions have advanced
in leaps and bounds, with variations on every style of handbag,
wallet, belt and boot. Online “vegan boutique”Alternative
Outfitters even has a version of the ubiquitous Ugg boot made with
microsuede “shearling” on the outside and synthetic wool inside,
while Iowa-based Heartland Products sells western-style
non-leather boots and non-leather Birkenstock sandals. Science has
come up with plenty of comfortable, durable alternatives to
materials made with animal products. These include vegan
microfiber, which claims to match leather in strength and
durability, and Pleather, Durabuck and NuSuede.
Products made with
these synthetic materials tend to be less expensive than their
leather counterparts and are being produced by major manufacturers
like Nike, whose Durabuck athletic and hiking shoes “will stretch
around the foot with the same ‘give’ as leather... and are machine
washable,” according to company sources. And you won’t need to
adjust your style, either. Vegetarianshoesandbags.com offers
everything from purple faux snakeskin peep-toe pumps for hitting
the clubs to hemp sneakers with recycled outsoles that look skate
park-ready, to distinctive Pleather bags and versatile woven
belts.
CONTACTS:
Alternative Outfitters, www.alternativeoutfitters.com; Heartland
Products, www.trvnet.net/~hrtlndp; Organic Leather,
www.organicleather.com; Vegetarian Shoes and Bags,
www.vegetarianshoesandbags.com.
Dear
EarthTalk: As an
online gamer, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer.
What’s the environmental impact? And are “greener” PCs available?-
Bob Grant, Burlington,
VT
Online
gamers and other heavy computer users are definitely leaving an
environmental mark. Depending on when it was made and how it was
designed, a standard desktop PC can use anywhere from 60-300 watts
when in use, while an inefficient gaming PC with powerful graphics
card, multiple hard drives and optical drives, flash memory reader
and a 30-inch LCD might consume as much as 750 watts, or about as
much as a typical refrigerator. Until July of 2007, government
Energy Star requirements only measured a computer’s energy use
while in standby mode, which allowed the majority of brands to
carry the label.
New stricter
efficiency requirements have brought greener models.
You’ll find the largest selection from companies like Dell and
Hewlett Packard. Many businesses use the Electronic Products
Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) to assist in the purchase of
greener computing systems, and the evaluations can be useful to
consumers, too. EPEAT evaluates and rates computing equipment on
28 efficiency and sustainability criteria, awarding them bronze,
silver or gold for overall performance.
Technology company
VIA is well regarded as an industry leader in low-wattage
processors (central processing units or CPUs), with some barely
sipping only a dozen or so watts from the power supply. Some
typical VIA designs can outperform competitors using only 23
watts, or less than half the power called for by Energy Star
specifications. Of course graphics cards used by PC gamers are
serious energy hogs. Your top-end ATI or nVidia card will render
great graphics, but use 300 watts or more. Newer cards are better,
but much depends on their use. The best advice is to buy only the
graphics power you need.
One of the easiest
ways to save on computer power is to use technology that
automatically rests when you do, and to shut your computer down
when you’re not using it. Windows XP allows users to configure
power management settings, and Vista Ultimate lets you configure
power-saving options in even more ways. Vista can actually
throttle its power consumption for some tasks and power down at
other times. If you’re just typing a Microsoft Word document,
performance will back down, whereas if you are editing video in a
powerful program like Adobe Premier Pro, Vista will use all the
processing power available.
Bear in mind that
screen savers are not energy savers. In fact, power-down features
may not work if you have a screen saver activated. Happily, LCD
color monitors do not need screen savers. In terms of shutting
down, while PCs use a small amount of energy when they start up,
it’s considerably less than the energy used when they are on for
long periods of time. Consider turning off the monitor if you
aren’t going to use your PC for more than 20 minutes, and both the
CPU and monitor if you’re not going to use your PC for more than
two hours.
If you’re concerned
about the “wear and tear” of turning PCs on and off, don’t be.
Most PCs reach the end of their “useful” life due to advances in
technology long before the effects of being switched on and off
multiple times can have a negative impact on their service life.
CONTACTS:
Energy Star,
www.energystar.gov ; EPEAT,
http://epeat.net ; Recycling an old monitor,
www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm ;
VIA, www.via.com .
THE NEW GREEN U
Major Green Initiatives are Sweeping College Campuses,
E – The Environmental Magazine
There’s a new
green force on college campuses, says E – The Environmental
Magazine in its March/April 2008 cover story (now posted at:
www.emagazine.com ). In
“Cleaner, Greener U.,” E examines the many facets of the new
campus environmental movement that’s being compared to the
passionate anti-war and equal rights activism of the 1960s.
“Climate change is our generation’s civil rights movement,” says
Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director for the Energy Action
Coalition, which backed PowerShift 2007 at the University of
Maryland last November. Drawing over 5,500 students, the event was
the largest gathering of college students ever assembled to talk
about solutions to global warming, a weekend of non-stop
workshops, speakers and rallies. “We’re at a crucial moment in
history,” Cotter said. “Climate change is an issue that’s already
impacting us, from the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains to
the wildfires in California. We get that the steps taken today
will end up being the future for tomorrow.”
She is not alone in her enthusiasm. The green movement has become
a force to be reckoned with on campuses, says E. Students are
demanding changes - energy conservation, waste reduction,
sustainable course offerings, organic food choices, and real
climate legislation from Congress beyond the campus confines. So
far, 497 school presidents have signed the American College and
University President’s Climate Commitment, which commits them to
implementing a plan to go “carbon neutral” within two years of
signing.
While the progress is encouraging, not all are convinced that the
green campus movement has arrived yet. As Nina Rizzo, the
California Freedom from Oil campus organizer for Global Exchange,
says, “The movement is potent, but we’re not there yet. I don't
think people are angry enough.”
Michael M'Gonigle, author of Planet U, a professor of
environmental law and policy at the University of Victoria and a
co-founder of Greenpeace International, agrees that the
incremental changes he’s seeing on campuses have yet to resemble
the sustained force of 1960s activism. “But the anxiety about
climate change is really palpable - students feel it,” he says.
“And there’s an overarching social anxiety, something we have to
act on... We can do something right here and right now at this
institution.”
And students are doing something. In 2001, Pennsylvania State
University made the nation’s largest retail purchase of wind
energy, buying 75 percent of what two local 24-megawatt wind farms
produced annually. In 2005, wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa
decided to locate its headquarters in the state, bringing with it
1,000 new jobs. The school had changed the market price for wind
in the state, and other schools are following suit. According to
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Green Power
Partnership” rankings, Penn State now ranks third among schools
for green power purchasing, with 20 percent of its electricity use
coming from wind power. Its fellow state school, the University of
Pennsylvania is now second, at 29 percent. New York University is
number one, with an incredible 100 percent of its electricity use
generated by wind.
Smaller schools have jumped in, too. Vermont’s Middlebury College
offers the complete package, from its natural landscape design to
its fully composted dining hall waste to its “yellow bike”
borrowing system for on-campus commutes. The school’s $11 million
bio-mass facility is scheduled to open late fall 2008, with the
capacity to burn enough wood chips to displace the use of $1
million gallons of fuel oilcutting the school’s fuel needs in
half.
Minnesota’s Carleton College is another small liberal arts school
with green might, installing its own wind turbine on campus,
engaging in “dorm wars” to encourage low energy use, and
committing to green building retrofits and composting of all food
waste. A similarly focused school, Maine’s College of the
Atlantic, has achieved near perfection in its student-led green
pursuits, eliminating or offsetting all its greenhouse gas
emissions, supporting on-campus watershed preservation and
following the highest standards of green building in all new
campus structures.
These initiatives are reaching beyond the campus, too, as students
begin to realize their collective might. A coalition of students
in Virginia has teamed up to fight a new Dominion “clean coal”
plant in Wise County, Virginia. “No new coal” has become a battle
cry among college greens, particularly those in the Southeast
confronted with the devastation of mountaintop removal mining,
including polluted water, filthy air and land stripped of life.
Ryan Hasty, a junior at Emory and Henry College in southwestern
Virginia, who became president of The Greens on his campus last
year says, “It’s an old technology, it’s very dirty and it isn't
worth sacrificing the health and well-being of those who live near
the mine sites and the power plant. Not to mention the destruction
of some of the cleanest and most bio-diverse waterways in the
world.”
There are changes underway inside the classrooms, too. Duke
University has a new Energy and Environment track (combining
business and environmental management) that prepares students to
remake their worlds in very concrete ways. Erika Lovelace of
Duke’s Office of Enrollment says, “The degree prepares you to come
up with sustainable ideas to assist local communities.” At the
University of Colorado in Boulder, 22-year-old environmental
studies major Paul Chase says working environmental education into
the broader curriculum is a major campus goal.
It is not only in purchasing wind power, adding bike lanes and
greening the cafeteria offerings that these schools do the
essential work of curing the nation’s fossil-fuel dependency and
other environmental ills. It is in educating students about the
importance of creating and supporting a new green economy, in the
process turning out leaders. In that respect, the campus
sustainability movement is already a resounding success.
Dear EarthTalk:
As I understand it, coal that is used to fuel power plants and
other industrial activity is a key culprit in pollution and
climate change. So what is “clean coal” and is it really?
- Matthew Oliver,
Minneapolis, MN
The
term “clean coal” describes various processes that remove
pollutants from coal, our cheapest, most abundant—and dirtiest—energy
source. By reducing coal’s environmental footprint through
technological wizardry, the coal mining industry and the Bush
administration hope to keep coal, which currently produces more
than half of all U.S. electricity, a big part of our energy
picture for many years to come.
Clean coal proponents also want to
liquefy coal to turn it into a form of automotive fuel that,
according to the industry-sponsored Coal-to-Liquids Coalition,
costs less and burns cleaner in some ways than the traditional
diesel fuel it could replace. Several members of Congress from
coal states are keen on having the government subsidize the
production of so-called liquid coal—which can be used anywhere
diesel fuel currently goes—as a “homegrown” alternative to foreign
oil. Industry analysts say there is enough coal in America to last
hundreds of years, saving us untold expense and trouble obtaining
regular petroleum from unfriendly foreign governments.
But major
environmental groups, from the Sierra Club to the Natural
Resources Defense Council, say that “clean coal” is anything but.
The process involves heating coal to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and
mixing it with water to produce a gas, then converting the gas
into diesel fuel. Although the Coal-to-Liquids Coalition says that
carbon dioxide emissions from the entire production cycle of
liquid coal are “equal to, or slightly below, those of
conventional petroleum-derived fuels,” its claims are based on a
single federal study, now six years old, that environmental
leaders disagree with profoundly.
Jim Presswood, federal
energy advocate of the Natural Resources Defense Council says,
“Liquid CO2 emissions are twice as much as emissions from
conventional petroleum-derived fuels.” He says that even if CO2
emissions were captured as part of the process, at best liquid
coal would be 12 percent worse than the gasoline equivalent. As
some environmentalists have put it, liquid coal can turn any
hybrid Prius into a Hummer.
The Washington Post
editorialized, “To wean the U.S. off of just one million barrels
of the 21 million barrels of crude oil consumed daily, an
estimated 120 million tons of coal would need to be mined each
year. The process requires vast amounts of water, particularly a
concern in the parched West. And the price of a plant is estimated
at $4 billion.” Also, in recent years, particularly in Appalachia,
mining companies have gone from simple excavation to blasting off
the tops of mountains in an ecologically devastating process known
as “mountain top removal.”
For their part, greens acknowledge the
importance of cleaning up coal and other dirty energy sources, but
would rather see more funding devoted to researching, developing
and implementing alternative and renewable energy sources that
don’t come with so much environmental baggage.
CONTACTS:
Coal-to-Liquids Coalition,
www.futurecoalfuels.org;
Sierra Club’s “Stopping the Coal Rush,”
www.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/coal
Dear EarthTalk:
Everybody says stop using plastic bags, but what about all the
plastic, cellophane, cardboard and other materials used for
packaging the food itself? What can we do to reduce how much of
this unnecessary stuff comes wrapped around our food?
- Sunil Sreedharan,
Mumbai, India
Yes,
food packaging is a big problem in North America as well as
elsewhere around the world, with landfills filling up and
recyclers facing a glut of materials to process. It’s hard to say
just how much of the 130 million tons of paper, plastic and metals
that get tossed or sorted for recycling in major U.S. cities is
from food packaging, but the percentage is no doubt sizable. The
main problem is in the psychology of marketing: Manufacturers know
that products in big flashy-looking packages attract more buyers.
A 1994 European Union directive requires companies
operating in its 27 member nations to take back and recycle (or
otherwise deal with, taking the burden off of local communities)
at least 60 percent of their packaging waste, including that used
for food items. But no such “producer pays” laws, which provide
incentive for manufacturers to cut back on waste to begin with,
exist in the United States or Canada. As such, it falls to
consumers to patronize stores and manufacturers that minimize
packaging.
One way to take a bite out of packaging is to buy
as much in bulk as your family can keep up with. It may take
longer to get through that gigantic box of cereal you got at
Costco, but think of all the cardboard and plastic your bulk
purchase saved over buying several small boxes. Similarly, instead
of sending the kids off to school every day with a new juice box
in the lunch bag, how about a safe metal or plastic reusable,
washable container that you can refill each morning from the
gallon jug you keep in the fridge?
Another way to forego packaging is to reduce time
spent in large supermarkets, where wasteful product packaging
rules. Most natural foods stores have large bulk-buying sections
so you can haul away in large paper or plastic bags the equivalent
of many containers of beans, pastas, rice or other staples.
Frequenting local farmers’ markets—armed with your reusable
shopping tote, of course—is another way to keep food packaging out
of your home. The website Local Harvest offers a free searchable
database of farms across the U.S. that run Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) programs and participate in farmers’ markets.
It’s worth noting that we tend to toss way too much
food packaging where a quick rinse would make the same cans, jars
and jugs useful storage containers or quality recycling fodder.
Soup cans, for example, can easily be recycled into new steel and
are collected universally by municipal recycling programs. And
while you’re buying soup, opt for the family size cans and save
leftovers instead of buying single-serving containers. Even when
packaging material is recyclable, there’s no reason to waste it,
as even recycling uses resources and costs money.
Beyond shopping and sorting more responsibly,
individuals also have the power of their voices to pressure food
makers to cut back on packaging. You can also try to persuade your
elected officials to look into the feasibility of enacting
“producer pays” laws in your community, city or state. And you can
talk to co-workers, friends, relatives and others about the
importance of buying in bulk and reducing waste.
CONTACTS:
European Union Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive,
http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l21207.htm; Local
Harvest,
www.localharvest.org.
Dear EarthTalk: I've been reading
about various green festivals going on around the country and I
want to attend some and get up to speed on environmental issues
and products. What are some good ones and how do I stay on top of
all the wheres and whens? -
Alex, Chicago, IL
Whether
you’re a consumer in search of green products and healthy organic
foods, an environmental advocate looking to network, or a
businessperson who wants to “green up” operations, there is an
environmental event out there for you.
One of the best is
the Green Festivals series, which appears in an increasing number
of U.S. cities every year and is growing in leaps and bounds in
attendance. Co-sponsored by two leading national nonprofits,
Global Exchange and Co-Op America, these so-called “parties with a
purpose” bring together businesses, environmental groups and
community organizations working toward the collective goal of
“forging a just, sustainable, inclusive economy—a green economy.”
Hundreds of
thousands of people from all walks of life have participated in
these festivals over the last decade to peruse aisles packed with
exhibits, hear speakers, make connections with like-minded folks
and indulge in green-themed music, art, culture and food. In 2008,
events will take place in Seattle (April 12-13), Chicago (May
17-18), Washington, DC (November 8-9) and San Francisco (November
14-16).
Another event geared toward the green-leaning general public is
EcoFest, held every September for the last two decades in New York
City. This free event also features myriad commercial and
nonprofit exhibits and celebrity speakers and performers.
Attendees at EcoFest’s 2008 event will get to check out prototypes
of alternative energy vehicles, watch a green-themed fashion show
and participate in environmental education workshops, among other
events.
One very educational event is the
yearly DC Environmental Film Festival, which takes place March 11
– 22 this year in Washington. The festival features 115
documentary, feature, animated, archival, experimental and
children's films, shown at various locations around Washington,
including museums, libraries, embassies, universities and
theatres. Most are free and many include discussions with the
filmmakers and/or scientists and environmental leaders.
Many environmental festivals are broad with regard to topics
covered, but several issue-specific and business-to-business
events take place throughout the year as well. To key in to these
events, go to the Green Fairs and Festivals page at the
EcoBusinessLinks Environmental Directory. Examples include Texas’s
Renewable Energy Roundup, Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Sustainable
Living Fair, Georgia’s GreenBuild Expo, Vermont's SolarFest, and
Croton-on-Hudson, New York’s Great Hudson River Revival, which has
been raising funds to protect New York’s Hudson River since the
late 1970s.
Green events take place all year long, but a large number happen
in the spring to coincide with Earth Day (April 22). Many school
and community environmental groups hold Earth Day events every
year. To find an Earth Day event near you this coming spring,
consult Earth Day Network’s free online database.
CONTACTS:
Green Festivals,
www.greenfestivals.org ; EcoFest,
www.ecofest.com ;
EcoBusinessLinks Environmental Directory,
www.ecobusinesslinks.com
; Earth Day Network,
www.earthday.net
Dear EarthTalk: Is it possible to
landscape my property in a green-friendly way? I would like to
create a more natural and wildlife-friendly backyard, but I don’t
want to break the bank doing it. Are there any tax incentives for
completing such projects? - Michal Avraham, Olive Branch,
MS
One
common misperception about adopting green practices around the
home is that doing so will cost more money. But this may be true
only in the short run. There are certainly some up-front outlays
to converting a conventional backyard into a more environmentally
friendly space (like any landscaping job), but homeowners should
be able to make their money back within a few years through
savings on their water and yard service bills alone.
Landscapes designed with the principles of
nature and wildlife habitat in mind are often referred to as
“naturescapes” (or “xeriscapes” when they also require little
water to maintain). They usually replace most lawn grass and
instead populate space with native plants that are attractive to
wildlife for food or shelter.
According to the nonprofit PlantNative,
maintaining a green backyard can cost up to 90 percent less than
keeping up a traditional lawn-based landscape. “Since naturescapes
effectively take care of themselves, there is little or no
maintenance and hence little or no maintenance cost,” says the
group. The average American lawn costs about $700 yearly to
maintain, says PlantNative, which also points out that the average
household lawnmower is used upwards of 40 hours a year, the
equivalent of a full work week.
Melissa Santiago, a researcher with Ohio
State University who authored a fact sheet on the benefits of
managing property for wildlife, couldn’t agree more: “Maintaining
wildlife habitat or other natural areas can be a cost-effective
approach to land management.” She recommends that landowners with
room to spare plant one or more rows of native trees and shrubs as
so-called “shelterbelts” that provide wildlife habitat and also
provide shade in summer (to reduce air conditioning costs) and
wind resistance in winter (they have been shown to reduce heating
costs by as much as 30 percent)
Tax breaks for greening up your residential
landscape are few and far between, but do exist. The state of
Indiana offers tax breaks to landowners who convert a minimum of
15 acres over to habitat suitable for native wildlife. Many other
state governments offer landowners similar assistance for
maintaining habitat for threatened wildlife. And municipalities
across the arid southwestern U.S. offer various incentives for
homeowners who cut water use, whether through xeriscaping or any
other means.
To get started converting your yard over,
contact a local nursery well-versed in native landscaping to lend
some informal or professional expertise. To find a nursery in your
area that fits the bill, consult PlantNative’s free online
directory of native plant nurseries. Or, if you want to do your
own homework, check out the National Wildlife Federation’s free
online Native Plant Guide (which covers the 50 U.S. states) or the
Canadian Wildlife Federation’s guidebook Backyard Habitat for
Canada’s Wildlife (available in print for $19.95 plus shipping).
CONTACTS: PlantNative,
www.plantnative.org ;
National Wildlife Federation,
www.nwf.org; Canadian
Wildlife Federation,
www.cwf-fcf.org.
Dear
EarthTalk: What’s a “land
trust” and how does it help the environment?-
Sam Stout, Darien, CT
A
land trust is an organization that works with landowners to
conserve their land, either by buying it from them or obtaining it
as a donation. Legal agreements between the trust, the landowner
and the local government are then created in order to permanently
limit development of the land. Land trusts are usually nonprofit,
and their purpose is to provide long-term stewardship of not just
land, but sometimes areas of historical or archeological
significance.
The need for land
trusts arose out of public concern for the loss of open space,
wildlife habitat and scenic beauty in the face of rampant
development on private land during the latter half of the 20th
century. More than 1,600 land trusts have since sprung up in a
variety of communities across the U.S. Together they have
protected some 37 million acres of land, according to the Land
Trust Alliance, a Washington, DC-based umbrella group formed in
1981 to help land trusts share information and work more
effectively.
When a land trust
acquires land, it may retain ownership in perpetuity in order to
protect the parcel from development. When landowners donate
parcels to a land trust outright, they can take advantage of state
and federal income tax deductions—similar to any tax-deductible,
non-profit donation—while saving considerable money on property
and estate taxes moving forward.
Whether a land
trust buys a parcel or gets it donated, it can either hold onto
the property or, depending on the arrangement with the former
owner, sell it to a third party—often a local or state government
that commits to turning it into a protected area. Land trusts also
sell land to private buyers, usually with strict restrictions on
future development. The benefit to keeping the land under private
ownership is that it can then stay on local property tax rolls and
thus continue to provide revenue for the local government.
Another way land
trusts work is through “conservation easements,” whereby
individuals can protect their land but still retain ownership and
the option of selling or passing it along to heirs. Future owners
of the land are also bound by the easement’s terms, which restrict
development and use and are often monitored by a land trust.
Conservation easements usually lower the financial value of their
land (by limiting development potential), but landowners benefit
because their property taxes go down accordingly. Likewise, if and
when heirs inherit the land, the conservation easement lessens
their estate tax burden.
Every conservation
easement is different, but most include provisions limiting or
forbidding construction or resource extraction. Often they protect
especially sensitive lands such as wetlands. Some easements allow
specific parcels to be used for agriculture, ranching or logging.
Many allow hiking, camping, bird watching or even hunting (though
some specifically ban hunting and are created for that purpose).
Another nonprofit
group, the American Land Conservancy (ALC), functions like a
national land trust working nationwide to ensure that large or
exceptional pieces of property stay out of the hands of
developers. Some of ALC’s work has led to the creation or
expansion of national parks in Colorado, Hawaii and elsewhere.
CONTACTS:
Land Trust Alliance, www.lta.org; American Land
Conservancy, www.alcnet.org.
Dear
EarthTalk: I heard a
reference to “Earth-friendly chocolate” and was wondering about
what goes into chocolate that would raise environmental concerns. -
Ben Moran, Providence, RI
Like
coffee beans, the cacao seeds from which we derive chocolate can
only be grown successfully in equatorial regions—right where the
world’s few remaining tropical rainforests thrive. As worldwide
demand for chocolate grows, so does the temptation among growers
to clear more and more rainforest to accommodate high-yield
monocultural (single-crop) cacao tree plantations. What are left
are open, sunny fields with dramatically lower levels of plant and
animal diversity. Adding environmental insult to injury, most
cacao plantations use copious amounts of chemical fertilizers,
pesticides and fungicides that further degrade the land that once
teemed with a wide variety of rare birds, mammals and plants.
Another problem with chocolate production, although not
specifically an environmental concern, is the conditions endured
by workers that pick and process the cacao seeds. The
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture has documented
some 284,000 children between the ages of nine and 12 working in
hazardous conditions on West African cacao farms. In Africa’s
Ivory Coast, for example, where more than 40 percent of the
world’s cacao is grown, underage cacao workers are routinely
overworked, performing often-dangerous farming tasks in a setting
that some liken to slavery. As a result of these and other related
injustices, so-called “fair trade” advocates have targeted large
producers of cacao to improve working conditions and pay living
wages that allow workers to get their kids out of the fields and
into school.
Some cacao farmers have enlisted the help of scientists and
environmental groups to find ways to produce chocolate more fairly
and more sustainably. The nonprofit Rainforest Alliance, which
works on similar issues with coffee growers, is now partnering
with cacao growers in Ecuador to develop environmentally and
socially responsible cacao production and processing standards.
The standards seek to maintain critical conservation areas, reduce
pressures to convert more forestland to cacao plantations, and
provide social and economic benefits to local communities. As a
result, some 2,000 cacao growers in five Ecuadorian communities
have now formed cooperatives that help find new markets for their
products while overseeing adherence to fair labor standards and
environmental protection measures. Rainforest Alliance hopes to
expand the program to other cacao growing regions of the world in
the coming years.
Those looking to get their hands on some organically grown fair
trade chocolate have more options than ever before. Leading brands
include Dagoba, Endangered
Species Chocolate, Equal
Exchange, Green & Black’s,
Sjaak's,
Sunspire, Terra Nostra
Divine, Theo, Sweet Earth, and Yachana
Gourmet. Actor Paul Newman has gotten in on the act, too, with his
Newman’s Own brand. Like Newman’s Own, many of the companies
donate money to environmental and other nonprofit efforts. Whole
Foods and other natural foods retailers stock many of these
brands, which are also available via various Internet-based
retailers including Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Online Store.
CONTACTS:
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, www.iita.org;
Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Online Store, www.gxonlinestore.org.
Dear EarthTalk:
What are some of the best online sources of environmental
information? -
Hip2bGreen, Seattle, WA
One
of the best places to start in venturing out into eco-cyberspace
is the website of a green group you already know—perhaps one for
whom you have donated money or volunteered. Most groups use their
websites to keep their supporters updated on the issues they
cover, and provide links to many other green websites. Beyond such
groups, several independent “third-party” sources also provide
useful information on a wide range of environmental topics, from
consumer tips to news to action alerts.
One leading green website is Grist
(www.grist.org ), which reports environmental news in a witty and
engaging manner, billing itself as “gloom and doom with a sense of
humor.” Checking out Grist’s daily rundown of environmental
news is de rigueur among eco-activists, and many regular
folks keep tabs on it, too. Other excellent news sources include
Environmental News Network (www.enn.com ), and
Environmental News Service (ens-newswire.com). And one new kid
on the block is The Daily Green (www.thedailygreen.com ),
which bills itself as the “consumer’s guide to the green
revolution.” Owned by major magazine publisher Hearst, The
Daily Green offers news, green tips and advice, and a plethora
of green home, food and lifestyle topics.
The Green Guide
(www.thegreenguide.com ), run by
National Geographic, is probably the best online source for
green consumer information, specializing in green living tips,
product reviews and environmental health news. Looking for
guidance on saving water around the house, choosing among
non-toxic paints or packing greener lunches for your school-age
kids? The Green Guide would be a good place to start.
If you’re interested in more
comprehensive looks at green issues and topics,
www.emagazine.com posts much of the content of its
flagship E – The Environmental Magazine, along with weekly
news and commentary. Visitors can also access 18 years worth of
in-depth articles—the magazine has been turning out bi-monthly
print issues since 1990—on just about every green topic
imaginable.
Those interested in social networking
and the environment should look to Care2 (care2.com), the
world’s largest online environmental community. The site offers
its eight million members free e-mail accounts and provides lots
of background information on just about every environmental issue.
A handful of green ‘blogs are starting
to get a lot of media attention and web traffic. The king of them
all is Treehugger (www.treehugger.com ), which offers
several posts each day from a stable of thinkers committed to
environmental issues. Its coverage is not comprehensive, but
Treehugger excels at tapping into trends in environmental
thinking and culture. Another source of environmental tips and
culture online is IdealBite (www.idealbite.com ), a blog-style
site offering up “bite-sized ideas for light green living.”
And then there are the “click-to-donate”
websites, where visitors can read up on a variety of conservation
campaigns and then contribute money via credit card. Ecology Fund
(www.ecologyfund.com ), the Rainforest Site (the
www.rainforestsite.com
) and Red Jellyfish (www.redjellyfish.com ) are some of the
leaders in this category.
So cue up that browser and start
clicking. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn, let alone
accomplish!
Dear EarthTalk:
My uncle worked for over a decade on the top floor of an office
building with cell phone towers directly above him. He was
recently diagnosed with cancer. Is there any scientific evidence
of links between exposure to cell phone tower radiation and
cancer?
- Jennifer L., Wellesley,
MA
No
one doubts that cell phone towers give off low-level
radio-frequency radiation (similar to the microwave oven in your
home), but scientists are still debating the health effects of
long-term exposure. Some people are genetically predisposed to
certain types of cancers, while others are not (for example, some
lifelong smokers get lung cancer while others don’t). And with so
many different chemicals, pollutants and other substances around
us in our air, food and water, it is very difficult to determine
with certainty if a particular environmental influence (such as a
cell phone tower) is the culprit when health problems, such as
cancer, arise in a particular locale or among certain populations.
But that hasn’t stopped many communities from
worrying about this issue and taking cautionary measures. In San
Francisco, for instance, concerned individuals and neighborhood
groups have formed the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free
Union (SNAFU) for the purpose of preventing “the placement of
wireless antennas on or near residences, schools, health care
centers, day care centers, senior centers, playgrounds, places of
worship, and other inappropriate locations…”
SNAFU is worried that San Francisco is “already
immersed in a sea of electromagnetic radiation” from, among other
sources, some 2,500 licensed cell phone antennas at 530 locations
around the city. The group is distributing petitions calling on
local public officials to increase “restrictions on the number and
location of cellular phone antennas and other wireless
transmitters.” Other controversies have erupted in communities in
Connecticut and elsewhere over churches renting their rooftops and
steeples to cell phone companies for placement of antennas. And
parents in Ossining, New York waged an unsuccessful battle in 2000
to ban revenue-generating cell towers from school grounds.
Still, the American Cancer Society (ACS) does not
seem concerned, stating that limited epidemiological evidence
suggests no link between cancers and living or working near a cell
phone tower. ACS says that the energy level of radio waves coming
off cell towers is too low to cause any noticeable human health
impacts, and that a person would have to stand right in front of
an antenna to pick up even trace amounts of radiation. And unlike
X-rays or gamma rays, radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation is
“non-ionizing,” meaning it lacks the gusto to break the bonds that
hold molecules (like DNA) in cells together.
Still, cell phones and their towers are a fairly
new technology, and very few studies of their health effects have
yet been conducted. And the bulk of the research cited by the
American Cancer Society has focused on direct and prolonged
exposure to radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation in general,
not on cell towers and their effects specifically. SNAFU reports
that “no systematic attempt has been made to determine what
current cumulative exposures to this radiation are….” Lingering
public concerns about the issue surely means that more research on
the topic is to come.
CONTACTS:
American Cancer Society,
www.cancer.org ; San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union
(SNAFU),
www.antennafreeunion.org.
Dear
EarthTalk: Where do the
leading presidential candidates stand on the issue of climate
change and other environmental issues? -
Max S., Seattle, WA
The
outcome of the 2008 presidential election could very well have a
big impact on a wide range of environmental issues, especially
climate change.
All of the Democratic candidates—Hillary
Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Dennis
Kucinich—support reducing carbon dioxide emissions nationally
upwards of 80 percent by 2050 in order to stave off global
warming. Likewise, each would like to see fuel efficiency
standards for cars and light trucks raised to at least 40 miles
per gallon within the next few decades. Meanwhile, only one of the
major Republican contenders, John McCain, has even articulated a
position on the issue of global warming, with most favoring
expanding our base of greenhouse gas-spewing coal-fired power
plants.
As for specific
track records, Clinton has an impressive record of introducing
pro-environment legislation into Congress, and for her time in the
Senate scores a 90 (out of 100) on green voting from the
nonprofit, non-partisan League of Conservation Voters (LCV). Obama
is newer to the politics of the environment, but scored a 96 for
his two years in the Senate from LCV, and has garnered kudos from
environmental leaders for the aggressive climate and energy plan
he unveiled in October 2007.
Ohio Congressman
Dennis Kucinich wants to launch a Works Green Administration
similar to the Works Progress Administration of the Great
Depression, only this time to benefit the environment through the
development of alternative energy technologies and
infrastructures. Bill Richardson, who served as Secretary of
Energy under Bill Clinton and more recently as governor of New
Mexico, wants to be the “energy president,” and has an 82 lifetime
rating from LCV to back it up. He has proposed the most ambitious
carbon reduction plan of any of the candidates (90 percent by
2050). John Edwards was the first candidate to make his campaign
carbon neutral in March 2007, and greens consider him perhaps the
most progressive of all the Democrats on the climate issue.
On the Republican
side, the environmental bright spots are few and far between.
McCain is really the only choice with any declared concern for the
environment. In 2003 he co-sponsored the first Senate bill aimed
at mandatory economy-wide reductions. While the bill didn’t garner
enough votes to pass, it set the stage for future iterations that
could put the U.S. on par with European nations as leaders in the
fight to cut carbon emissions. McCain is also the only Republican
candidate specifically opposed to drilling for oil in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
Mike Huckabee
scores some points with greens for his willingness to consider a
specific increase in automotive fuel efficiency standards and for
his (limited) embrace of alternative energy. Mitt Romney is
willing to consider a cap on emissions, but only if enacted on a
global basis (including China and India, that is). The remaining
Republicans (Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Ron Paul) have best
been non-committal on climate change and environmental issues in
general.
CONTACT:
For more detailed information on
specific candidates’ positions and track records on environmental
issues, check out the League of Conservation Voters’ Voter Guide,
www.lcv.org/voterguide.
Dear EarthTalk:
Green groups don’t seem to discuss human population growth, but I
think the biggest issue confronting the planet is the collective
demand we put upon it. And what is the difference in impact
between population growth in Third World countries, which are
poor, against that in the U.S., where we consume and waste so much
more? - Ronald Marks, via
e-mail
The global rate of
human population growth peaked around 1963, but the number of
people living on Earth—and sharing finite resources like water and
food—has grown by more than two-thirds since then, topping out at
over 6.6 billion today. Human population is expected to exceed
nine billion by 2050. Environmentalists don’t dispute that many if
not all of the environmental problems—from climate change to
species loss to overzealous resource extraction—are either caused
or exacerbated by population growth.
“Trends such as the
loss of half of the planet’s forests, the depletion of most of its
major fisheries, and the alteration of its atmosphere and climate
are closely related to the fact that human population expanded
from mere millions in prehistoric times to over six billion
today,” says Robert Engelman of Population Action International.
According to
Population Connection, population growth since 1950 is behind the
clearing of 80 percent of rainforests, the loss of tens of
thousands of plant and wildlife species, an increase in greenhouse
gas emissions by some 400 percent and the development or
commercialization of as much as half of the Earth’s surface land.
The group expects that half of the world’s population will be
exposed to “water-stress” or “water-scarce” conditions feared to
“intensify difficulties in meeting…consumption levels, and wreak
devastating effects on our delicately balanced ecosystems” in the
coming decades.
In less developed
countries, lack of access to birth control, as well as cultural
traditions that encourage women to stay home and have babies, lead
to rapid population growth. The result is ever increasing numbers
of poor people across Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and
elsewhere suffering from malnourishment, lack of clean water,
overcrowding and inadequate shelter, and AIDS and other diseases.
And while
population numbers in most developed nations are leveling off or
diminishing today, high levels of consumption make for a huge
drain on resources. Americans, who represent only four percent of
world population, consume 25 percent of all resources.
Industrialized countries also contribute far more to climate
change, ozone depletion and overfishing than developing countries.
And as more and more residents of developing countries get access
to Western media, or immigrate to the U.S., they want to emulate
the consumption-heavy lifestyles they see on their televisions and
read about on the Internet.
Given the overlap
of population growth and environmental problems, many would like
to see a change in U.S. policy on global family planning. In 2001,
George W. Bush instituted what some call the “global gag rule,”
whereby foreign organizations that provide or endorse abortions
are denied funding support. Environmentalists consider that stance
to be shortsighted, that support for family planning is the most
effective way to check population growth and relieve pressure on
the planet’s environment accordingly.
CONTACTS:
Population Action International,
www.populationaction.org;
Population Connection,
www.populationconnection.org.
Dear
EarthTalk: How much of an
effect, if any, does the carbon dioxide in carbonated beverages
have on global warming? -
Michael Holmes,
Shenandoah, VA
A typical 12-ounce
can of soda contains up to six grams (.013 pounds) of carbon
dioxide (CO2) gas, which either escapes into the atmosphere from
the liquid upon opening, or from your body after you consume the
contents. So yes, drinking carbonated beverages does contribute to
your “carbon footprint,” but only ever so slightly.
To provide some
context, every time you burn a gallon of gas driving from point A
to B in your car, about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide wafts skyward
(if you find this hard to believe, visit the U.S. Department of
Energy’s fuel economy website at:
www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml).
So, extrapolating out, a typical car commute to work produces
upwards of 700 times the greenhouse gases as drinking that can of
Coke.
But cans and
bottles of carbonated (or non-carbonated) drinks are still no
friends of the environment. The production and distribution of
single-serving beverages of all kinds generates untold millions of
tons of greenhouse gases and other pollutants every year, while
also wasting billions of gallons of fresh water. And once the
drinks have been consumed, all those cans and plastic bottles have
to go somewhere.
Some communities
are diligent enough to capture more than half of all such
containers for recycling—an activity which itself generates
significant amounts of greenhouse gases—but that still means that
more than 40 billion cans are ending up in landfills each year, or
even worse, as litter, according to data compiled by the
non-profit Container Recycling Institute (CRI).
Each un-recycled
can or bottle then must be replaced by an equivalent one made from
virgin materials. CRI reports that just the manufacture of these
replacement aluminum cans each year generates about 3.5 million
tons of greenhouse gas emissions, while also causing other
environmental damage from the extraction of the bauxite from which
aluminum is made. Even a larger amount of resources are used
(petroleum-based in this case) and greenhouse gases emitted from
the significant number of plastic single-serving drink bottles
that are thrown away and not recycled each year.
Consumers can take
a bite out of all this resource waste and pollution by remembering
that, first and foremost, water is the least costly and healthiest
beverage of all (on virtually all personal and ecological counts).
And water drawn from the kitchen faucet requires no disposable
packaging or shipping to get there, thanks to the highly efficient
water-delivery systems that have been in place in developed
countries in the vast majority of communities for a very long
time.
For those who
cannot get by without their soft drinks—carbonated or
otherwise—the best way to lower that carbon footprint is to buy
them in large containers and parse out servings in cups or
glasses. A typical two-liter (67.6 ounce) plastic soda bottle
holds five and a half times the liquid of a 12-ounce container and
over four times that of a 16-ounce container, so it is easy to
imagine the resource savings over time.
CONTACTS:
Container Recycling Institute,
www.container-recycling.org,
fueleconomy.gov, www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml.
Dear
EarthTalk:
We just started an environmental club
at our high school. What issues and activities do you recommend we
get involved with to make the most difference?
- Kurt Perry, Cedar Park, TX
Participating
in an environmental club is an excellent way for high school
students to learn about environmental issues while providing
measurable benefit to their community.
Given their local
focus, most clubs focus on issues close to home. Many undertake
hands-on activities like cleaning up local riverbanks and beaches
strewn with litter, restoring degraded wildlife habitat and
planting and managing a community organic garden. Other worthy
ideas include starting a recycling program (or setting up a
compost bin) on school grounds, involving the school or community
in measuring and lowering their “carbon footprint,” organizing
energy- and emissions-saving carpools for students who drive, and
asking school officials to print all documents double-sided (to
save paper).
Another way for an
environmental club to get involved is to offer assistance to a
local green group already working on a project, be it an effort to
preserve a threatened parcel of open space, promote bus ridership,
get a wind turbine installed in town or pressure a local polluter
to clean up its act. Polling club members on what issues matter
most to them is a good way to get started on picking projects and
activities.
Several national
nonprofits also help environmental clubs find focus areas and
accomplish their goals. One of the leaders is EarthTeam, formed in
2000 with the mission of “creating a new generation of
environmental leaders” by introducing teens to inspiring
environmental experiences. The group’s website offers up extensive
resources for starting an environmental club, finding resources
and getting going on various environmental projects. The group
also helps facilitate collaboration among clubs.
Some popular events
among EarthTeam clubs include tree plantings, river and beach
clean-ups, visits to local wetlands and nature preserves, and
holding environmental awareness days at schools. Movie nights are
also popular. Showing a relevant environmental documentary on the
big screen in a school auditorium or some other venue is a sure
way to get a larger membership base and stir up student interest.
Some recent releases that might stimulate discussion and ideas
include: The Cost of Cool, an in-depth look at the
environmental consequences of excessive consumerism, hosted by
former Baywatch star Alexandra Paul; A Crude Awakening,
about the impact of global oil dependency; and Al Gore’s An
Inconvenient Truth.
Another great
resource is Earth Tomorrow, a national network of high school
environmental clubs administered by the National Wildlife
Federation. Through the network, clubs gain access to a wide range
of resources on which they can base projects. Examples include the
Schoolyard Habitats How-to Guide, which walks high schoolers
through the steps involved in enhancing wildlife habitat and
ecological health on school grounds, and the Science and Civics
program, which shows students how to use science, economics, the
law and politics to address a local conservation issue and
implement an action plan. Beyond these pre-packaged resources,
Earth Tomorrow members can tap each other for project ideas, help
and general guidance to help make their club experience as
productive and rewarding as possible.
CONTACTS:
EarthTeam,
www.earthteam.net; Earth
Tomorrow,
www.nwf.org/earthtomorrow
Dear
EarthTalk: My New Year’s
Resolution is to reduce my “carbon footprint” to help fight global
warming. Do you have suggestions for ways I can make good on my
promise? -- Carrie, via
e-mail
There’s never been
a more urgent time to reduce your carbon footprint. With the U.S.
government still opting out of mandatory emissions cuts, it’s up
to every individual, business owner and city or state government
to take steps. So here are 10 ways to get you started in the new
year:
(1) Step-up
Recycling and Composting. Recycling prevents carbon dioxide
(CO2) emissions by saving the energy it takes to make products
from new materials and by saving the energy it takes to
incinerate or landfill what we discard. And composting food scraps
turns organic material back into fertile soil, which itself is an
efficient carbon “sink.” To get started, see:
www.earth911.org and
www.howtocompost.org.
(2) Stay close
or stay put: About half the CO2 we generate comes from our car
trips, so walk, bike or take mass transit instead. Air travel also
produces huge amounts of CO2, so the less you fly, the smaller
your carbon footprint. See:
www.culturechange.org.
(3) Eat organic
and local: Stick to foods produced organically and you prevent
harmful pesticides and fertilizers from polluting air, waterways,
soils and family members. And if the food is grown nearby,
thousands of pounds of CO2 weren’t emitted getting it to your
grocery store. See:
www.100milediet.org.
(4) Buy green
power. Your power company might just source part of its supply
from renewable sources like hydro-electric or wind, and will sell
it to customers who know to ask for it. See:
www.green-e.org.
(5) Change out
your lightbulbs. A compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) uses
less than a third of the energy of an incandescent bulb to produce
the same amount of light—and it lasts 10 times longer. And
some CFLs now have 3-way capabilities and can be dimmed. Visit
Energy Federation, Inc. at:
www.efi.org.
(6) Upgrade and
unplug: Upgrading any appliances (including computers and
TVs)? Be sure to look for the “Energy Star” logo, which only
energy efficient models can wear. Also, turn off appliances when
not in use to prevent wasting so-called phantom energy coming in
off the grid. See:
www.energystar.gov.
(7) Adjust your
thermostats: If you don’t need a sweater indoors, your heat is
too high. Likewise, in hot weather turn down the AC. Also, keeping
your hot water at no more than 120 degrees—the minimum temperature
to keep the water bacteria-free—is another way to save energy,
money and the environment.
(8) Plant a
tree…or 300! An average tree stores 13 pounds of carbon per
year; a mature tree can absorb upwards of four times that amount.
Just 300 trees can counterbalance the amount of greenhouse gas
pollution that one person produces in a lifetime. So get to work!
See:
www.americanforests.org/planttrees.
(9) Buy offsets:
Many organizations sell “carbon offsets,” whereby you pay a
voluntary fee to offset your daily CO2 emissions. The money
usually goes to develop alternative, renewable energy sources,
such as wind or solar. See:
www.climatetrust.org,
www.nativeenergy.com and
www.my-climate.com.
(10) Get
involved: Donate time or money to groups working to fight
global warming. Just about all green groups devote some work to
climate change, and they need your help. See:
www.volunteermatch.org.
Dear
EarthTalk: I can’t understand
why it is not mandatory to recycle in the U.S. In my home we
recycle 80 percent and toss 20 percent and I am trying to improve
those percentages. What needs to happen to make recycling the law
of the land?
-- Vicki,
Geneva, NY
Mandatory recycling
is a hard sell in the U.S., where the economy runs largely along
free market lines and landfilling waste remains inexpensive and
efficient. When the research firm Franklin Associates examined the
issue a decade ago, it found that the value of the materials
recovered from curbside recycling was far less than the extra
costs of collection, transportation, sorting and processing
incurred by municipalities
Plain and simple,
recycling still costs more than landfilling in most locales. This
fact, coupled with the revelation that the so-called “landfill
crisis” of the mid-1990s may have been overblown—most of our
landfills still have considerable capacity and do not pose health
hazards to surrounding communities—means that recycling has not
caught on the way some environmentalists were hoping it would
However, many
cities have found ways to recycle economically. They have cut
costs by scaling back the frequency of curbside pickups and
automating sorting and processing. They’ve also found larger, more
lucrative markets for the recyclables, such as in developing
countries eager to reuse our cast-off items. Increased efforts by
green groups to educate the public about the benefits of recycling
have also helped. Today, dozens of U.S. cities are diverting
upwards of 30 percent of their solid waste streams to recycling.
While recycling
remains an option for most Americans, a few cities, such as
Pittsburgh, San Diego and Seattle, have made recycling mandatory.
Seattle passed its mandatory recycling law in 2006 as a way to
counter declining recycling rates there. Recyclables are now
prohibited from both residential and business garbage. Businesses
must sort for recycling all paper, cardboard and yard waste.
Households must recycle all basic recyclables, such as paper,
cardboard, aluminum, glass and plastic. Businesses with garbage
containers “contaminated” with more than 10 recyclables are issued
warnings and eventually fines if they don’t comply. Household
garbage cans with recyclables in them are simply not collected
until the recyclables are removed to the recycling bin. Meanwhile,
a handful of other cities, including Gainesville, Florida and
Honolulu, Hawaii, require businesses to recycle, but not yet
residences.
In perhaps the most
famous case of a city putting recycling to the economic test, New
York, a national leader on recycling, decided to stop its least
cost-effective recycling programs (plastic and glass) in 2002. But
rising landfill costs ate up the $39 million savings expected. As
a result, the city reinstated plastic and glass recycling and
committed to a 20-year contract with the country’s largest private
recycling firm, Hugo Neu Corporation, which built a state-of-the
art facility along South Brooklyn’s waterfront. There, automation
has streamlined the sorting process, and its easy access to rail
and barges has cut both the environmental and transportation costs
previously incurred by previously using trucks. The new deal and
new facility have made recycling much more efficient for the city
and its residents, proving once and for all that responsibly run
recycling programs can actually save money, landfill space and the
environment.
CONTACTS:
Franklin Associates, www.fal.com; Recycling in Seattle,
www.seattle.gov/util/Services/Recycling; Hugo Neu Corporation,
www.hugoneu.com
Dear
EarthTalk: I’m looking for a
job and would like to find a position at a company that is either
marketing a green product or service or that is seriously trying
to improve its ecological “footprint.” Where do I look?
- Beth, via e-mail

With just about
every company trying to green its products, services and internal
operations these days, there has never been a better time to find
a green job. Jobs in eco-advocacy and in “hands on” environmental
work such as pollution cleanup and land use planning are more
abundant than ever. And green issues are driving the creation of
new jobs in many other vocations as well.
The
November/December 2007 issue of E – The Environmental Magazine
reports that some of the hottest sectors for new green jobs right
now are: travel and hospitality, planning and land use,
alternative health and medicine, renewable energy, environmental
law, information technology, environmental education, design and
construction, corporate responsibility, and food and farming.
Those with experience in any of these fields should find plenty of
opportunities that can help marry their skills with their green
principles.
Analysts point to
the alternative and renewable energy sector as offering perhaps
the most opportunities. “Solar and wind are already
multibillion-dollar industries,” says Peter Beadle, who launched
the website greenjobs.com in 2005. Hydrogen and fuel cell
technologies also offer many opportunities, he says. Technical
personnel—engineers, installers, etc.—form the backbone of such
industries, but marketing, sales and communications specialists
are needed to get the technologies to market.
Congress also wants
to make sure there are green jobs for disadvantaged and
disenfranchised Americans. In August 2007 the House of
Representatives passed the Green Jobs Act as a vehicle to use the
green economy as a “pathway out of poverty.” The bill calls for
spending $125 million for job training in renewable energy,
energy-efficient vehicles and green building. One-fifth of the
money would be earmarked for those most difficult to hire: at-risk
youths, former inmates and welfare recipients.
The Senate passed a
similar bill earmarking $100 million for “green collar” job
training in various sectors of the economy. Both bills have been
rolled into the larger Energy Bill recently passed by the House
and now under consideration by the Senate. If the bill passes,
President Bush could still veto it, in which case its sponsors
would likely reintroduce the green jobs provisions once a new
administration takes office.
Regardless of what
comes out of Washington, green job seekers should have no trouble
ferreting out good opportunities on their own. Checking in with
the websites and human resources departments of companies you
already know and patronize is a good strategy. There are also
dozens of websites that post green job opportunities, including
ecojobs.com , EcoEmploy.com , environmentalcareer.com,
environmentaljobs.com, greenenergyjobs.com, greenbiz.com,
sustainableindustries.com and sustainablebusiness.com.
Dear
EarthTalk: The impacts of all
the paving that is done for new roads and parking lots must be
considerable. Other than Joni Mitchell’s “They paved paradise and
put up a parking lot” issue, what else is this activity doing that
will come back to haunt us? --
Libby Morse, via e-mail
The
history of paving dates back to Roman times if not earlier, but
our modern society has taken the practice to the extreme.
Originally conceived as a way to make dirt- and mud-covered
thoroughfares passable, roads (and parking lots) now cover the
majority of urban and suburban areas around the world. In the U.S.
alone, pavement covers some 60,000 square miles, or about two
percent of the nation’s total surface area. One out of every 10
acres of arable land is paved over.
Beyond larger
issues like urban sprawl and the loss of farmland, paving itself
is an environmental scourge, preventing the natural seepage of
rainwater at the soil surface, and increasing the volume and speed
of water run-off. The result is often severe soil erosion on
adjacent unpaved areas. Also, paving reduces the total area
through which the soil absorbs rainwater, forcing pollutant-laden
run-off quickly to lower ground, increasing the risk of flooding
accordingly.
Another
environmental problem created by our overzealous application of
asphalt is that, because the soil underneath paved areas absorbs
very little water, natural aquifers below can dry up, reducing the
overall amount of potable water available to people, wildlife and
the larger ecosystem. Paving also prevents the growth of plant
life and destroys wildlife habitat.
According to the
nonprofit American Farmland Trust, which works to preserve
farmland and promote healthier farming practices, Americans lose
three acres of productive farmland to new paving every single
minute of every day. The group reports that since the first Earth
Day in 1970, the U.S. has lost more than 40 million acres of
farmland to development. With Americans now spending upwards of
$200 million a day building and rebuilding roads, such problems
are only getting worse
In response to such
concerns, a diverse coalition of 170 community groups, individuals
and businesses came together in 1990 as the Alliance for a Paving
Moratorium (APM), with the goal of addressing the “tremendous
environmental, social and economic damage caused by endless road
building.” The group charges that our society’s obsession with
paving and road-building draws public funds away from alternative
transportation projects in service to the automobile, destroys
inner cities as it promotes sprawl, fouls the air and water,
contributes to global warming and—because most asphalt is a
product of fossil fuels—plays into ongoing conflicts in the Middle
East.
Jan Lundberg, a
former oil-industry insider and transportation policy analyst who
helped create APM, sees a bright future in putting less emphasis
on paving and roads: “Money would immediately become available for
public transportation and making cities more walkable. It could
also go toward refurbishing existing downtown buildings so that
people could live in them. Parking lots could be de-paved to make
gardens and parks. Cities can be pleasant places, you know.”
CONTACTS:
American Farmland Trust,
www.farmland.org ; “The High Costs of Paving,”
www.culturechange.org/issue19/high_costs.htm
Dear EarthTalk:
Where does all the medical waste from labs, doctor’s offices
and hospitals go? Does it just get put in a barrel and buried? Do
they dump it in the oceans? With all the waste that is probably
generated, it would be interesting to know where all those vials
of blood and stuff go. - Lee Senat,
Haverford, PA
Medical waste is defined as the
“biological byproduct of the diagnosis, treatment or immunization
of human or animal patients” and includes so-called “sharps”
(needles and scalpels), lab cultures and stocks, blood and blood
products and any other wastes generated from sick patients or
patients with infectious diseases. Such wastes have traditionally
been disposed of by burning, either onsite at large medical or
veterinary facilities, or offsite by licensed contractors that
specialize in handling infectious materials. In most cases,
incineration has been found to be effective in neutralizing
potentially infectious agents.
But incineration, whether for
medical or other purposes, doesn’t come without its health and
environmental risks. The process generates some highly noxious
pollutants, such as mercury and dioxin. Despite modern pollution
control equipment on smokestacks, some of this discharge becomes
airborne where it can foul the air and end up in waterways. And
the incinerator ash left over after burning is usually sent to
local landfills, where the pollutants can seep into soils and
groundwater if not properly contained.
Given such problems, many of the
nation’s largest medical waste incinerators have been shut down in
recent years in the face of more stringent regulations promulgated
under the U.S. Clean Air Act. In their place a wide assortment of
alternative methods, including autoclaving (steam sterilization),
chemical disinfection, irradiation and enzymatic (biological)
processes have emerged. Today more than 100 different technologies
are in use in place of incineration. Once medical waste has been
decontaminated by any of these methods, it usually ends up in
landfills alongside regular municipal solid waste.
Most of us never even thought about
medical waste until it started washing up on beaches in New Jersey
in 1987 and 1988 in an event that became known as the “Syringe
Tide.” The event hit the New Jersey tourism industry hard, costing
it almost $1 billion in lost revenues. It also served as the basis
for Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, “The Great Syringe Tide” and
reportedly was the inspiration for the line “hypodermics on the
shores” in Billy Joel’s 1989 hit, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
While there were few if any cases of
people getting sick from exposure to such waste on beaches—medical
waste poses a far greater risk to health care workers than to
casual beachgoers—the events served as a wake-up call to federal
and state governments charged with ensuring public safety. In
response, Congress passed the Medical Waste Tracking Act (MWTA) in
1988, which classified different types of medical waste and called
for the creation of a “cradle-to-grave” tracking system requiring
medical facilities and waste haulers to account for the proper
handling and whereabouts of the waste they handled.
Congress only funded MWTA for two
years, but various states have since enacted their own laws and
protocols based on standards set by the original legislation. Not
surprisingly, the toughest laws are in place in New Jersey and
other Northeast shoreline states.
CONTACT:
Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988,
epa.gov/epaoswer/other/medical/mwpdfs/mwta.pdf
Dear EarthTalk:
I have been alarmed at recent
news about dangerous substances in kids’ toys shipped to the U.S.
from China, though I doubt that such concerns are limited to
Chinese products. What are the major issues associated with
chemicals in child toys? --
Carla M., Chicago, IL
Copyright: Getty Images
Recent
concerns surrounding toxic chemicals in children’s toys have
focused on “phthalates” (pronounced THA-lates), a group of
chemical compounds typically added to plastics to increase their
softness and flexibility, and bisphenol A (BPA), a building block
for polycarbonate plastic that is used primarily in
shatter-resistant baby bottles. Phthalates are found in numerous
industrial and consumer products, including plastic intravenous
(IV) bags used in hospitals, fishing lures and nail polishes. One
phthalate, diisononyl phthalate (DINP), is commonly used in the
manufacture of soft vinyl products made for babies, such as bath
books, rubber ducks and teething rings.
Studies have linked BPA to the
disruption of hormone function in rats, and to increased breast
and prostate cancer cell growth, early puberty and obesity in
humans. Other studies have linked phthalates like DINP to rodent
cancers and genital abnormalities, especially in males.
The city of San Francisco would have
been the first U.S. jurisdiction to ban phthalates and BPA from
children’s toys and feeding products under a “Stop Toxic Toys”
bill signed by mayor Gavin Newsom in June 2006, but lawsuits
backed by chemical and toy manufacturers (and filed by a coalition
including the California Retailers Association, the California
Grocers Association and the American Chemistry Council) stalled
the initiative, which had been set to take effect December 1,
2006.
Then on October 15, 2007, California
governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 1108 (also known
as the California Toxic Toys Bill), making California the first
state in the country to ban the use of phthalates from children’s
products. “We are thrilled that California is taking action to
protect our kids from dangerous chemicals,” said Dan Jacobson,
Legislative Director for Environment California, which
co-sponsored the legislation along with the Breast Cancer Fund.
“This bill is so important because as children’s minds and bodies
go through the delicate processes of growing and developing, they
are particularly vulnerable to chemicals that could affect proper
development.”
The European Union considers
phthalates dangerous enough to ban them from children’s products,
and has ordered the removal of many variations from children’s
products and banned still others, including DINP, from anything
that kids might put in their mouths. Environment California and
other groups see the EU ban as evidence that alternatives to these
plasticizers exist and must be explored in the U.S. “Many places
in the world have to comply with restrictions on phthalates,” says
Rachel Gibson, an attorney for Environment California. “It’s a
mystery why we sell toxic toys to American kids.”
Until more stringent regulations are
passed, consumers can use the recycling codes on plastic products
to determine content. If it’s marked #7, it’s polycarbonate
plastic and contains BPA; if it’s marked #3, it’s polyvinyl
chloride (PVC) plastic and contains potentially harmful
phthalates.
CONTACTS:
Environment California,
www.environmentcalifornia.org/environmental-health/stop-toxic-toys;
Breast Cancer Fund,
www.breastcancerfund.org/site/pp.asp?c=kwKXLdPaE&b=3486437
Dear EarthTalk:
What are the best sources out there for environmentally friendly
consumer products? I don’t want to have to drive all over creation
for green laundry and other cleaning products or to find carpets,
bedding and other necessities that won’t bring chemicals into my
home. - Vanessa G., via
e-mail
Copyright: Getty Images
Although
green-friendly goods are starting to show up just about
everywhere, finding all the right products is still not as simple
as a one-stop trip to the mall or major grocer. However, there are
several reputable websites, mail order catalogs and storefront
retailers that cater to the eco-motivated consumer.
Online shoppers need not steer their
web browser any further than Gaiam.com. The company sells, via its
website and a printed catalog, a wide range of green items—from
phosphate-free detergents and organic cotton bedding to compact
fluorescent light bulbs and backyard composting kits. In 2000
Gaiam acquired RealGoods, the nation’s foremost retailer of “solar
living” products, including solar water heaters, energy-efficient
lighting and household battery chargers. Beyond mail order
endeavors, the merged company also gets green goods out into
mainstream retail outlets via partnerships with Target, Borders
and others.
Another good one-stop shop for green
consumer goods is Green Home, which sells thousands of
environmentally responsible home products online. From bedding and
table wear to paper goods and lunchboxes, Green Home has the green
consumer covered. Green Home was founded by Linda Mason Hunter,
author of The Healthy Home: an Attic-To-Basement Guide to
Toxin-Free Living, because she was having trouble sourcing
environmentally friendly home items. Green Home also publishes the
online magazine Living, a repository of feature articles on
various aspects of living a greener lifestyle.
If you’re more inclined to browsing
store aisles than websites, natural foods markets like Whole Foods
and Wild Oats (now being acquired by Whole Foods) carry a large
number of green lifestyle products on their shelves. These stores
aren’t just about organic produce anymore, and now stock
everything from green detergents to cookware.
Looking for more durable kinds of
goods? The best one-stop source for green building materials is
Ecohaus (formerly the Environmental Home Center), which stocks and
ships a wide range of building materials, household equipment and
supplies, kitchen and bath fixtures, flooring, countertops and
cabinets, paints, finishes, wall coverings and home energy
systems. The company has three stores in Portland and Bend, Oregon
and Seattle, Washington, and also sells online.
For those harder-to-find green goods,
check out EcoSeek.net, which bills itself as “the Internet’s first
green product search engine.” The site includes links to and in
some cases reviews of more than 6,500 different green products
from over 300 merchants. While it’s no one-stop shop—users
purchase individual items direct from individual merchants—it does
make for some interesting browsing. Another good online stop is
EcoMall, which lists thousands of socially responsible
manufacturers and distributors of just about every type of green
product imaginable.
CONTACTS:
Gaiam,
www.gaiam.com; Green Home,
www.greenhome.com; Ecohaus,
www.ecohaus.com; EcoSeek,
www.ecoseek.net; EcoMall,
www.ecomall.com.
Dear EarthTalk: We’ve all seen the
current generation of hybrid cars, but what vehicles do the
automakers have coming out that are even greener? - Brian
Smith, Seattle, WA
Copyright: Getty Images
No longer just the domain of the Japanese,
greener cars are forthcoming from just about all of the major
automakers. Toyota will improve on its hot-selling Prius by adding
a plug so owners can juice up the batteries overnight and make it
at least six miles before switching over to the car’s
gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. Toyota’s president
hinted that the plug-in hybrid, though still in the prototype
stage, could attain double the fuel efficiency of the current
Prius, which gets 46 miles per gallon.
While gas-electric hybrids are all the rage
today, carmakers are also looking at other technologies, though
none are on the market yet. Mitsubishi’s new concept car, the
iMiEV, runs for more than 120 miles exclusively on electricity
stored in high-capacity lithium-ion batteries, and sports small
electric motors on each of the front wheels, as well as another
propelling both back wheels. Nissan is also getting into electrics
with its Mixim concept car, which can reportedly go 155 miles on a
single rapid-charge (20-40 minutes only). While Nissan says it has
the technology to mass-produce the Mixim today, costs remain too
high to make feasible from a marketplace perspective.
General Motors (GM) recently released a
prototype of its futuristic Chevrolet Volt. This concept car is
designed to go 40 miles on just its batteries, but it has an
onboard gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine (not connected
to the wheels) that can recharge it on the fly. GM hopes to make
the Volt available to consumers within three years, but because of
slow lithium-ion battery development, competitors wonder if such a
timeline is too ambitious.
On the fuel-cell front, Honda already has a
few dozen of its zero-emission hydrogen-powered 2007 FCX sedans on
the road, and plans to lease 100 or so more of the sleeker 2008
model. Honda will only lease the vehicles to a few lucky
individuals, since each FCX costs hundreds of thousands of dollars
to produce.
General Motors is launching a “test” fleet of
a 100 fuel-cell powered Chevrolet Equinox SUVs in select cities
across the U.S. in 2008. The company will also set up hydrogen
refueling stations in the same locales. The program will last two
years and GM engineers hope to glean important information on how
to improve its fuel cells to perform better at lower cost.
South Korea’s Hyundai is also getting
involved in fuel cells, launching a U.S. test fleet of some 300 of
its Tucson SUVs. The company also recently unveiled its i-Blue
concept car, a decidedly space-age vehicle that reportedly can
cover 372 miles before needing to refuel. The company says that it
will put fuel cells into mass production by 2015, if not sooner.
Automakers are responding to growing
environmental concerns—and consumer demand—by producing vehicles
that our grandparents would not recognize as cars. The dream of
futuristic vehicles may just yet become a reality.
CONTACTS: Toyota,
www.toyota.com; Mitsubishi,
www.mitsubishi.com; Nissan,
www.nissanusa.com; General
Motors,
www.gm.com;
Honda, http://automobiles.honda.com;
Hyundai,
www.hyundai-motor.com.
Dear EarthTalk: I recently had an argument with a friend who
says that if we pollute and cut down the forests, it doesn’t matter
because the Earth will take care of itself anyway. How would you
counter such an argument? -- Alison Berglof, via e-mail
It is
true that Mother Nature has amazing powers to restore her
ecosystems, and most scientists agree that it would be nearly
impossible for humans to destroy the Earth itself, despite our
success at wreaking environmental havoc. Short of a catastrophic
meteor strike or some other unforeseen galactic trauma, the Earth
will likely continue to spin in the solar system, perhaps as long
as there is a solar system
Example
after example from distant and recent history underscore the fact
that the Earth can recover from just about any trauma—including
the meteor strike 65 million years ago that many believe caused
the extinction of the dinosaurs. Whether subjected to tidal waves,
volcanic eruptions or nuclear bomb blasts, landscapes reform anew,
even if it takes years, decades, centuries or eons.
But what
is at stake if we don’t clean up our act may be life itself
as we know it, both our own and that of other species with which
we share the planet. We are already witnessing what may be an even
larger species extinction than occurred with the dinosaurs—but
this time thanks to various human activities. Eminent
Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson predicts that human-caused
environmental destruction will lead to the extinction of half of
all species on the planet within 100 years. Such species loss is a
big problem for humans. That incredible diversity of life keeps
our water, soil and air healthy, our stomachs full and our
ailments in check (many modern medicines originated as herbal
plant remedies).
And
regardless of the fate of other species, the destruction of our
environment also impacts us directly. Though early
conservationists sought largely to preserve nature for its own
sake and beauty, most environmentalists today see a direct
correlation between environmental protection and human health.
Modern environmental problems like fast-paced habitat destruction,
toxic chemical releases and global warming (which is exacerbated
by cutting down forests) raise concerns about the spread of
diseases for which we have not evolved proper defenses.
According to a 2002 Princeton University study published in the
journal, Science, “Pathogens that have been restricted by
seasonal temperatures can invade new areas and find new victims as
the climate warms and winters grow milder.” That trend is already
underway and has, so far, primarily impacted non-human animals.
However, said Andrew Dobson, a co-author of the study, “The
accumulation of evidence has us extremely worried. We share
diseases with some of these species. The risk for humans is going
up.”
“Epidemics of Rift Valley fever, a deadly mosquito-borne disease,
rage through northeastern Africa during years of unusual warmth,”
said the study. “If the climate becomes permanently warmer and
wetter…Rift Valley fever epidemics will become frequent…Malaria
and yellow fever may become more common as milder winters permit
the seasonal survival of more mosquitoes, which carry these
diseases. A warmer climate also could enable them to move into
areas where the cold once kept them out.”
CONTACT: World Health Organization “Climate and Health Fact
Sheet,”
www.who.int/globalchange/news/fsclimandhealth/en/index.html.
Dear EarthTalk:
I would think that the glossy paper used by most magazines is bad for
the environment, yet most publishers still use it, even the outdoors
and environmental titles. What’s the scoop? Is paper made glossy by
using chemicals that are not safe? -
Kellina Higgins, via e-mail
Copyright: Getty Images
It’s no secret that
glossy coatings on magazine covers make pictures really “pop” and
attract the eye, thus helping publications compete for attention
on ever more crowded newsstands. According to Jerry Stranahan of
Lane Press, a Vermont-based printer that produces some 350
different magazines, publishers are increasingly putting the
emphasis on graphics and photography, and glossy papers have
become the industry norm, for both covers and interior pages. And,
yes, this includes many outdoors and nature titles.
The basic glossy
finish of a magazine cover or inside page is usually built into
the paper itself at the time of manufacture, and is typically made
of either clay or calcium carbonate. From a materials perspective,
clay-based kaolin is the more environmentally friendly of the two,
though clay makes the re-pulping of paper “gunkier” and thus more
difficult to work with in the subsequent recycling process.
Calcium carbonate also has its pros and cons: “The calcium is
lighter, thus it takes less fuel to transport it, and it acts as a
whitener, so less chlorine is needed to bleach the paper,” says
Frank Locantore, who directs the WoodWise program for the
nonprofit Coop America. “But it drives the destruction of mountain
tops in Vermont and elsewhere in order to get at the mineral.
Other glossy
coatings are sometimes applied later at the printer as the last
step in the printing process. In addition to enhancing the look of
the cover, these coatings are used for the purpose of reducing the
scuffing covers endure in handling and through the mail.
Publishers generally have three choices: “varnish,” “aqueous” or
“UV” coatings.
“Varnish” is
essentially a clear petroleum based ink (no pigment), and is
similar to the other inks that have already been applied to the
paper. “Aqueous” coatings are water-based clear inks that use few
chemicals but need a lot of heat to dry them, thus entailing
greater energy usage. Another option is “UV coating,” a very
glossy finish applied usually to heavier cover stocks and often
used by fashion magazines and others going for a very slick
appearance. The “UV” refers to the ultra-violet light used to dry
it after application. It consumes less energy than heat, though
the UV coatings themselves contain large amounts of
petroleum-derived chemicals
“Magazines want to
be competitive on the newsstands, and most need to have a glossy
cover in order to do so,” says Locantore. “Government,” he says,
“should create incentives for R&D that develops hazardous
chemical-free processes for papermaking and printing.” Locantore
also says that consumers can play a key role in moving the
industry forward by making their preferences for sustainable
choices known to the magazines they read and subscribe to. Emails,
phone calls or letters to publishers urging greener sourcing and
operations will not go unnoticed, he says.
CONTACTS:
Lane Press,
www.lanepress.com; Coop
America’s WoodWise Program,
www.coopamerica.org/programs/woodwise
Dear
EarthTalk: In lieu of federal
action in the U.S. to combat global warming, have any states taken
local measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? -
David, Monterey, C
Though the Bush
administration has been slow to even admit that global warming is
a serious issue, and has rejected the terms of the Kyoto Protocol
(an international agreement calling on developed nations to curb
greenhouse gas emissions), more than 30 U.S. states have passed
legislation and/or formed regional coalitions on their own to
promote energy efficiency and reduce the emissions that cause
global warming.
The leading state
in the battle against climate change is California, which as early
as 2002 began calling on carmakers to reduce the greenhouse gases
generated by new vehicles sold there. In 2003, California joined
neighbors Oregon and Washington in laying out a set of
recommendations for how states could combat global warming by
setting emissions reduction targets for state vehicle fleets and
enacting energy efficiency standards for a wide range of other
products. By the end of 2004, the west coast triumvirate had
jointly adopted the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
upwards of 15 percent by 2015.
Always pushing the
envelope, California then adopted a controversial measure
requiring automakers to reduce their vehicles’ greenhouse gas
emissions 30 percent by 2016. Since then, 14 other states—Arizona,
Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey,
New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont
and Washington—have adopted California’s tough standards. With
Canada’s government following suit in 2004, some 40 percent of
North America’s new car fleet could be much cleaner within a
decade—although carmakers are fighting the proposal tooth and
nail.
Beyond automotive
emissions, California is leading the charge against global warming
in other ways. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive
order in 2004 calling for reducing overall greenhouse gas
emissions statewide by 80 percent over five decades. And in 2006
the state assembly passed its landmark Global Warming Solutions
Act limiting the output of greenhouse gases there to 1990 levels
by 2020. California is the world’s sixth largest economy and 12th
largest producer of greenhouse gases, so its proactive stance
should have a large impact on overall efforts to mitigate climate
change.
Other efforts are
underway as well. In 2006, seven northeastern states formed the
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to create a system of economic
incentives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Each
participating state—Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, New York and Vermont—has agreed to stabilize current
emissions through 2015 followed by a 10 percent reduction over the
following five years. Meanwhile 18 states, led by New York,
Hawaii, Maine and California, have legislated that some of the
electricity they consume must come from non-polluting renewable
sources.
Given the
groundswell of action to mitigate global warming at the state
level—more than half of the U.S. population lives in states where
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are or will become
mandatory—America may be able to meet the requirements laid out by
the Kyoto Protocol, even without federal participation.
CONTACTS:
California Climate Change Portal,
www.climatechange.ca.gov;
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,
www.rggi.org.
The New “Green Collar” Economy
E – The Environmental Magazine Asks:
“Can Sustainable Jobs Save the American
Middle Class?”
With rising costs, outsourced jobs and a struggling economy, the
American middle class is feeling the squeeze. But new green
opportunities across every business sector may provide the well-paying
manufacturing, management and entrepreneurial opportunities needed to
bring security to American workers. E Magazine’s November/December
2007 issue (now posted at: www.emagazine.com and sporting a Lisa
Simpson cover cartooned for E by The Simpsons) looks at the
possibilities for this new “green collar” economy.
The fate of the Green Jobs Act is dependent on enactment of federal
energy legislation, which is stalled as House and Senate conferees
attempt to reconcile their versions of the bill, which also faces a
veto threat from President Bush. The Green Jobs Act includes $125
million that would be set aside for job training in renewable energy,
energy efficient vehicles and green building, $25 million of which is
earmarked specifically for those most difficult to hire, including
at-risk youths, former inmates and welfare recipients. Bernie Sanders’
(D-VT) and Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) Energy Savings Act of 2007 in the
Senate allows for $100 million in training for “green collar jobs,”
but is not geared specifically toward low-income Americans.
Says Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, “The work of
saving the polar bears and poor kids is the same work. If we give the
jobs to the people who most need them, we solve two problems.”
In the upper tiers of the business world, CEOs and other top-level
employees are already “entering the environmental field in droves,”
says Rona Fried, founder and president of
www.SustainableBusiness.com , which includes a “Green Dream
Jobs” online directory.
Existing environmental managers at companies are being upgraded in
terms of status, according to Dan Esty, director of the Center for
Business and Environment at Yale University. “There are many more jobs
today focused at managing the business-environmental interface,” he
says.
The future of employment in the U.S. is looking increasingly green.
Kate Gordon, Program Director for the Apollo Alliance, a nonprofit
that strives for American energy independence through an ambitious
investment plan for sustainable energy sources over the next decade,
says, “There’s been a wholesale loss of manufacturing jobs, which are
union-protected, high skills jobs. But with wind turbines, solar
panels and energy efficient retrofitsthere’s a whole world of green
jobs. It’s pretty exciting if you can harness it.”
E Magazine’s 10 Industries with Great Green Potential:
1) Green Tourism and Travel
2) Green Building
3) Alternative Health Care
4) Renewable Energy
5) Environmental Law
6) Environmental Education
7) Information Technology
8) Planning and Land Use
9) Corporate Social Responsibility
10) Organic Food and Farming
The Ravages of Mountaintop Removal Mining
Also in the November/December 2007 issue of E is a major feature on
mountaintop removal mining (MTR), an increasingly common practice that
has destroyed a million acres in the Appalachians, with only two
percent of that land half-heartedly “reclaimed.” MTR mines produce the
“clean coal” that southern legislators say can be turned into liquid
to help America achieve energy independence, but experts point out
that even if the carbon is captured the overall process is still far
dirtier than gasoline refining.
In a typical MTR operation, the “overburden”everything from trees to
topsoilis scraped from the mountaintop, which is then removed
entirely by giant cranes, exposing the coal seam. Debris is dumped
into the valleys, creating dead zones and crushing the alpine streams
that residents depend on for drinking water and recreation.
Remarkably, the industry produces few jobs because MTR is a largely
mechanized process.
In E’s story, rural West Virginians and Kentuckians offer
heart-rending testimony about being displaced from the “homeplaces”
their families have inhabited for centuries as their house foundations
crack from incessant blasting, the air fills with coal dust, and
streams and wells are polluted or run dry.
As an example, Brenda Urias, now an anti-MTR activist with Kentuckians
for the Commonwealth, remembers walking barefoot in the creeks among
minnows and tadpoles. “It was peaceful and quiet and beautiful,” she
says, “but we woke up one morning 20 years ago and found that the well
dug by my husband’s grandfather was almost dry. What came out had an
oily sheen. Now our water has an arsenic level of 2.0 per million,
when they tell us that anything above 0.1 is unsafe. My three-year-old
granddaughter still has to bathe in that water. When she gets in her
kiddie pool, it’s full of black specks.”
Last August, the Bush Administration proposed a new regulation that
would “reform” existing mining laws by validating all the industry’s
MTR practices, including valley fills. “It’s a giveaway to the coal
industry, absolutely,” says Margaret Janes, senior policy analyst with
the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment (ACEE). The
activist groups will fight the new regulation, but the outcome is
uncertain.
E – The Environmental Magazine distributes
50,000 copies six times per year to subscribers and bookstores. It’s
website, www.emagazine.com ,
enjoys 600,000 monthly visitors. E also publishes EarthTalk, a
nationally syndicated environmental Q&A column distributed free to
1,500 newspapers, magazines and websites throughout the U.S. and
Canada (
www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek ). Single copies of E’s
November/December 2007 issue are available for $5 postpaid from: E
Magazine, P.O. Box 2047, Marion, OH 43305. Subscriptions are $19.95
per year, available at the same address.
Dear
EarthTalk: Please help settle
the debate about whether or not my cats should stay in or go out.
My neighborhood is relatively safe for cats, vis-à-vis car
traffic, and I think it is more natural for them to be outside and
not always inside. They do kill wildlife, including birds, but
aren’t they just taking the place of natural predators that once
did the same? - Bill
Thomson, Bangor, ME
Copyright: Getty Images
Most environmental
advocates believe that keeping cats indoors is better for both the
health of the felines themselves and for their prey. Scientists
estimate that the typical free-roaming housecat kills some 100
small animals each year. This means that the 90 million domestic
housecats living in the U.S. alone are killing hundreds of
millions if not billions of birds, small mammals, reptiles and
amphibians every year. And while housecats on the prowl may serve
to replace the natural predators long ago extirpated by humans,
their popularity as pets puts their population density far ahead
of those that came before them.
“Cat predation is
an added stress to wildlife populations already struggling to
survive habitat loss, pollution, pesticides and other human
impacts,” says the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), which in 1997
launched its controversial Cats Indoors! campaign to educate
animal lovers about the benefits of keeping Tabby inside. ABC also
points out that free-roaming cats are exposed to injury, disease,
parasites and collisions with cars, and can get lost, stolen or
poisoned. Cats can also transmit diseases and parasites such as
rabies, cat-scratch fever and toxoplasmosis to other cats,
wildlife or people. To help drive its point home, ABC produces a
wide range of educational materials (including a brochure,
“Keeping Cats Indoors Isn’t Just For The Birds”) and public
service announcements in the service of their ongoing campaign.
Nonetheless, many
cat lovers believe that it is inhumane to confine felines indoors,
since they have evolved as hunters and thrive on the natural
stimulation only available outside. To help soften the blow and
wean your cat off of the outdoors slowly, ABC suggests gradually
curtailing your cat’s out-of-doors time over the course of a few
months until it is eventually not let out at all. In doing so, you
will need to provide your cat with a lot of attention and play
indoors. New scratching posts and toys are a good bet as they may
entertain cats that ordinarily occupy themselves chasing birds and
rodents. ABC suggests hiding various toys around the house so cats
can sniff them and not miss so much the thrill of the hunt
outdoors.
One last bit of
important advice: Many fear that confining their cats indoors will
lead to more shredded upholstery. But de-clawing your cat should
never be an option. According to Veterinarian Dr. Christianne
Schelling, cats’ claws are a vital part of their anatomy.
De-clawing is not simply fingernail trimming but the removal of
the last joint in a cat’s “toes.” It is a painful procedure and
can lead to serious physical, emotional and behavioral
complications.
Alternatives to
de-clawing include providing scratching posts in various locations
around the home, and trimming your cats nails occasionally. This
involves trimming only the clear tip of the nail (never the pink
or dark fleshy parts, which are skin) and should be done only upon
first consulting with a veterinarian. Another option is a product
called Soft Paws, lightweight vinyl caps that you apply over your
cat’s own claws. They have rounded edges, so your cat's scratching
doesn’t damage your home and furnishings.
CONTACTS:
Cats Indoors! www.abcbirds.org/cats/; Declawing Cats: More Than
Just a Manicure,
www.hsus.org/ace/11780; Soft
Paws,
www.softpaws.com.
Dear
EarthTalk: The hospital I
work at doesn’t recycle at all, not even plastic bottles and cans
or food service trays. I was wondering how to get the facility to
start up some kind of recycling system?
- Adrianna Schultz, via e-mail

Copyright: Getty Images
Getting a large
institution or corporation on board with recycling is no easy job,
especially when you are starting from scratch. A good place to
begin is to get permission from higher-ups to solicit bids from
waste haulers and recyclers interested in new business. Such
service providers can provide you with both the supplies needed to
gather recyclables as well as regular weekly or daily pick-ups,
depending on needs.
If convincing your
employer to look into recycling in the first place is a stumbling
block, there are many resources available to help turn that tide.
The Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC), a state
agency dedicated to helping Ocean State businesses manage solid
waste in environmentally sound ways, publishes “In the Workplace,”
a print and online pamphlet that outlines the steps for setting up
a workplace recycling and reduction program. According to RIRRC,
wannabe workplace recyclers need to start by securing
organizational support and commitment and educating fellow
employees about the importance of recycling. The pamphlet also
includes useful tips about reducing waste altogether.
The Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental Protection’s “Recycling Works” program
offers a similar set of guidelines specifically for recycling at
hospitals and health care institutions. Additionally, New York
State’s Department of Environmental Conservation publishes a free
guide showing health care facilities how to evaluate their
performance in preventing waste and pollution and identify
opportunities for recycling and for cutting back resource use
Another good
resource for information on hospital recycling is the website of
the nonprofit Waste Reduction
Resource Center, which offers case studies detailing how several
small and large health care facilities coast-to-coast have
launched successful and money-saving recycling and waste reduction
programs. Examples include a Vermont hospital
with no budget for recycling that set up
a self-sustaining, money-saving system for organics collection and
composting, and a Pennsylvania hospital that now saves $150,000 a
year due to the implementation of its recycling program.
Those looking to
reduce waste in hospitals should be sure to consult the
“Plan-Do-Check-Act” section of the Sustainable Hospitals website.
The summary provides useful tools for getting management approvals
and enlisting the support of employees in both recycling and
lowering disposable product consumption. It also has a section on
how to reduce energy usage.
Implementing
recycling and waste reduction programs at hospitals makes sense
not only for local ecology and for institutional bottom line, but
also for the examples that can be set for the millions of patients
and workers that pass through the health care system every day.
CONTACTS:
Waste Reduction Resource Center, http://wrrc.p2pays.org; RIRRC “In
the Workplace,” www.rirrc.org/documents/10221%20Workplace%20Brochure3.pdf;
“Recycling Works,”
www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/airwaste/wm/RECYCLE/Recywrks/recywrks1.htm;
Sustainable Hospitals,
www.sustainablehospitals.org/HTMLSrc/PlanDoCheckAct.html.
Dear
EarthTalk: I’ve heard about
the die-off of coral reefs due to global warming. I’ve also read
that coral reefs themselves store carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the
main global warming gases. So if coral reefs are dying out, isn’t
that a double whammy that increases the CO2 in the atmosphere?
- Tom Ozzello, Maplewood,
MN
Copyright: Getty Images
According to marine
scientists, the world’s coral reefs—those underwater repositories
for biodiversity that play host to some 25 percent of all marine
life—are in big trouble as a result of global warming.
Data collected by the international
environmental group WWF (formerly World Wildlife Fund) show that
20 percent of the world’s coral
reefs have been effectively destroyed and show no immediate sign
of recovery, while about 50 percent of remaining reefs are under
imminent or long-term threat of collapse.
Most scientists now
agree that global warming is not a natural phenomenon but a direct
result of the continual release of excessive amounts of CO2 and
other “greenhouse” gases into the atmosphere by human industrial
and transportation activity. And the small but prolonged rises in
ocean temperature that result cause coral colonies to expel the
symbiotic food-producing algae that sustain them. This process is
called “bleaching,” because it turns the reefs white as they die.
But researchers
working with the Coral Reef Alliance have found that while coral
reefs do store CO2 as part of photosynthesis, they tend to release
most of it back into the ocean (so they are not what are known as
“carbon sinks”). As such, the release of CO2 from dying coral
reefs is not a major concern.
Of course, the
ocean itself is a large carbon sink, storing about a quarter of
what would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. Landmasses (and
their plants) soak up another quarter of all the CO2 emanating
from the Earth’s surface, while the rest rises up into the
atmosphere where it can wreak havoc with our climate.
Recent findings
indicate that the Antarctic Ocean is getting less efficient at
storing CO2, and this raises serious questions about the ability
of our oceans to handle everything we throw at them. The study’s
authors fear that “such weakening of one of the Earth’s major
carbon dioxide sinks will lead to higher levels of atmospheric
carbon dioxide in the long-term.”
Not everyone is
forecasting gloom and doom. Some Australian researchers believe
that coral reefs around the
world could expand in size by up to a third due to increased ocean
warming. “Our finding stands in stark contrast to previous
predictions that coral reef growth will suffer large, potentially
catastrophic, decreases in the future,” says University of New
South Wales oceanographer Ben McNeil, who led the controversial
2004 study that was published in the peer-reviewed scientific
journal, Geophysical Research
Letters.
“Our analysis suggests that ocean warming will foster considerably
faster future rates of coral reef growth that will eventually
exceed pre-industrial rates by as much as 35 per cent by 2100,” he
adds.
In spite of such
theories, the majority of marine scientists remain pessimistic
about the future of coral reefs in a warmer world. One can only
hope that the optimists are right.
CONTACTS:
WWF, www.panda.org; Coral Reef Alliance,
www.coralreefalliance.org; “Coral reefs
may grow with global warming,” New Scientist,
www.newscientist.com/article/dn6763.html.
Dear
EarthTalk: Short of buying a
new hybrid or other “green” car, are there ways I can make my
existing vehicle more eco-friendly? I bought my car recently and
am not quite ready to give it up.
'- Bettie Hilliker,
Lansing, MI
Copyright: Getty Images
Choice of vehicle
may well be the biggest factor in determining the environmental
impact of your automobile-based travels. But a considerable amount
of energy is used—and pollutants emitted—in the production of any
new vehicle, including hybrids and other more fuel-efficient
options. As a result, many environmentalists believe that
practicing good driving habits and performing adequate maintenance
on an older car are probably better options for the environment
than causing the production of a new vehicle.
According to the
website GreenerCars.org, there are many ways to green up one’s
driving habits. Obeying speed limits, utilizing cruise control and
avoiding jackrabbit starts will maximize fuel economy and minimize
tailpipe emissions while also preventing unnecessary
wear-and-tear. Staying off roads during rush hours is also
advisable, as stop-and-go driving burns excess gasoline and
promotes smog. Opening vents and windows to cool off instead of
using the air conditioner, an inherently inefficient appliance
that consumes more fuel and leads to more emissions, is also good
advice.
Drivers can also
help minimize their environmental impact by keeping their cars
well maintained. According to GreenerCars.org, getting regular
tune-ups—where a qualified mechanic changes fluids and checks for
and corrects problems such as worn spark plugs, under inflated
tires, dragging brakes, misaligned wheels and clogged filters—can
significantly improve fuel economy and minimize harmful emissions.
GreenerCars.org also recommends seeking out low-rolling-resistance
(LRR) replacement tires, which are specifically designed to
improve a vehicle’s fuel economy, when the original ones wear out.
Beyond regular
maintenance, a handful of small companies now sell green-friendly
fuel additives that purport to increase fuel efficiency while
reducing emissions. Such products—including Bluestar
Environmental’s Omstar D-1280X gas additive and Suntec
Bio-Energy’s diesel additive—are normally targeted at fleets of
vehicles, but individuals are free to use them as well. Owners
beware, though: Use of such products could invalidate automakers’
warranties, so read the fine print in your owner’s manual before
pouring anything out-of-the-ordinary into your fuel tank
Of course, getting
out of your car altogether—or most of the time—is a far greener
choice than driving even a well-maintained new or old car
conscientiously. Some employers now offer federally-subsidized
“commuter choice” incentives whereby workers can derive financial
benefits by telecommuting (working from home), or by walking,
biking, using public transit or carpooling to and from the office.
Another option is
to join a car sharing service like Zipcar or Flexcar, whereby you
pay a modest monthly membership fee and can then rent cars parked
nearby by the hour only when needed. The companies operate on both
U.S. coasts, as well as in major Midwestern and Canadian cities.
CONTACTS:
GreenerCars.org “Green Driving Tips,” www.greenercars.org/drivingtips.htm;
Bluestar Environmental, www.ablustar.com ; Suntec Bio-Energy,
www.suntecbioenergy.com; Zipcar, www.zipcar.com; Flexcar,
www.flexcar.com.
Dear EarthTalk:
Are there any efforts
underway to lessen the environmental impact—which must be
considerable—of all the “18 wheelers” and other large vehicles
that are numerous on our highways?
- Sadie Strauss,
Madison, WI

Copyright: Getty Images
According to the Union of Concerned
Scientists, although large trucks account for just six percent of
total highway miles driven in the U.S., they are responsible for a
host of environmental threats. These include over half the soot
and a quarter of the smog-causing pollution generated by highway
vehicles, six percent of the nation’s global warming pollution,
and more than a tenth of the country’s oil consumption.
A typical diesel-powered 18-wheeler can
emit as much nitrogen oxide and fine particulates—key elements in
the formation of asthma-inducing smog—as about 150 passenger cars.
Although strict limitations on emissions of various pollutants
from cars have been in place in the U.S. since the 1970s, trucks
and other large transport vehicles have been allowed to emit as
much as five times as much pollution per mile.
But thanks to new regulations put in
place by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), new
trucks coming off assembly lines in the years immediately ahead
promise to be much cleaner and greener. Known collectively as the
EPA’s Heavy-Duty Highway Diesel Rules, the new regulations mandate
that trucks manufactured in 2007 or after produce 75-90 percent
less nitrogen oxide and 90 percent fewer particulates than earlier
models. Of course, with most of the trucks on the road made prior
to 2007 and thus exempt from the new regulations, air quality
improvements won’t happen overnight.
In the meantime, though, the federal
government has also instituted new regulations mandating that
diesel fuels contain 97 percent less sulfur, another primary
component of smog, than previously required. This means that all
diesel-powered vehicles in the U.S., new or old, will be polluting
less. Regulators hope that the combination of greener trucks and
cleaner fuel will eventually bring emissions from large trucks
into parity per mile driven with cars and light trucks (SUVs,
pickups and minivans).
Beyond making existing truck engines
more efficient, new technologies promise to green the trucking
industry even more. Biodiesel, a form of diesel fuel derived from
renewable plant crops, is coming on strong. According to the U.S.
Department of Energy, use of the most common blend, B20 (80
percent regular diesel and 20 percent biodiesel), cuts petroleum
use by 19 percent, greenhouse gas emissions by 16 percent and
hydrocarbon emissions by 20 percent.
Also, hybrid technologies popularized by
the Toyota Prius are starting to show up in trucks. Federal
Express is pioneering the use of hybrid technology in trucks by
outfitting many of its new delivery trucks accordingly. And
several U.S. cities now run hybrid diesel-electric buses.
Environmental leaders hope such fuel- and emission-saving
technologies will trickle down into the private trucking industry
as well.
CONTACTS:
Union of Concerned Scientists,
www.ucsusa.org; EPA’s
Heavy-Duty Highway Diesel Program,
www.epa.gov/otaq/highway-diesel.
Dear EarthTalk:
Is it true that some ingredients in common air fresheners can
cause health problems?
- Mike Jaworski,
Seattle, WA

Copyright: Getty Images
Air fresheners are a $1.72 billion
industry in the United States. An estimated 75 percent of homes
use them regularly. According to a September 2007 report released
by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), most common
household air fresheners contain potentially noxious chemicals
that degrade the quality of indoor air and may even affect
hormones and reproductive development, particularly in babies.
As part of its “Clearing the Air” study,
NRDC researchers tested 14 brands of common household air
fresheners and found that 12 contained chemicals known as
phthalates. Only two, Febreze Air Effects and Renuzit Subtle
Effects, contained no detectable levels of phthalates. Products
testing positive included ones marketed as “all-natural” and
“unscented.” None of the brands tested listed phthalates on their
labels.
Phthalates are “hormone-disrupting”
chemicals that can be particularly dangerous for young children
and unborn babies. Like some other man-made chemicals, phthalates
can affect normal hormonal processes—those that control brain,
nervous and immune system development, reproduction, mental
processing and metabolism—by blocking them altogether, throwing
off the timing or “mimicking” natural hormones and interacting
with cells themselves, with very unhealthy consequences. The State
of California notes that five types of phthalates—including one
commonly used in air freshener products—are “known to cause birth
defects or reproductive harm.”
Despite these issues, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate the use of phthalates
or require the labeling of phthalate content on products. Other
governments take the phthalate threat more seriously. The European
Union forbids the most harmful phthalates in cosmetics or toys,
and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to soon
sign similar legislation for his state.
NRDC bemoans the fact that the U.S.
government does not test air fresheners for safety or require
manufacturers to meet specific health standards. “More than
anything, our research highlights cracks in our safety system,”
says Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior NRCD scientist. “Consumers have a
right to know what is put into air fresheners and other everyday
products they bring into their homes,” she says, adding that the
government should keep a watchful eye on potentially dangerous
products.
In conjunction with the study, NRDC—along
with the Sierra Club, the Alliance for Healthy Homes and the
National Center for Healthy Housing—is petitioning federal
agencies to start assessing the risk air fresheners pose to
consumers by testing all products now on the market. And NRDC has
already begun working directly with some manufacturers to find
ways to eliminate phthalates from these products.
NRDC recommends that consumers be
selective and purchase only air fresheners that have the least
amount of phthalates. Better yet, the group suggests consumers
first try to reduce household odors by tending to their root
causes or improving ventilation rather than masking them. “The
best way to avoid the problem is to simply open a window instead
of reaching for one of these cans,” concludes Solomon.
CONTACTS:
Natural Resources Defense Council,
www.nrdc.org/health/home/airfresheners.asp.
Is removing the salt from ocean water
(desalination) a feasible fix for the world’s shortage of fresh
water? - Nora Jones,
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Copyright: Getty Images
Fresh water scarcity is already posing
major problems for more than a billion people around the world,
mostly in arid developing countries. The World Health Organization
predicts that by mid-century, four billion of us—nearly two-thirds
of the world’s present population—will face severe fresh water
shortages.
With human population expected to
balloon another 50 percent by 2050, resource managers are
increasingly looking to alternative scenarios for quenching the
world’s growing thirst. Desalination—a process whereby highly
pressurized ocean water is pushed through tiny membrane filters
and distilled into drinking water—is being held forth by some as
one of the most promising solutions to the problem. But critics
point out it doesn’t come without its economic and environmental
costs.
According to the non-profit Food & Water
Watch, desalinated ocean water is the most expensive form of fresh
water out there, given the infrastructure costs of collecting,
distilling and distributing it. The group reports that, in the
U.S., desalinated water costs at least five times as much to
harvest as other sources of fresh water. Similar high costs are a
big hurdle to desalination efforts in poor countries as well,
where limited funds are already stretched too thin.
On the environmental front, widespread
desalination could take a heavy toll on ocean biodiversity. “Ocean
water is filled with living creatures, and most of them are lost
in the process of desalination,” says Sylvia Earle, one of the
world’s foremost marine biologists and a National Geographic
Explorer-in-Residence. “Most are
microbial, but intake pipes to desalination plants also take up
the larvae of a cross section of life in the sea, as well as some
fairly large organisms…part of the hidden cost of doing business,”
she says.
Earle also points out that the very
salty residue left over from desalination must be disposed of
properly, not just dumped back into the sea. Food & Water Watch
concurs, warning that coastal areas already battered by urban and
agricultural run-off can ill afford to absorb tons of concentrated
saltwater sludge.
Food & Water Watch advocates instead for
better fresh water management practices. “Ocean desalination hides
the growing water supply problem instead of focusing on water
management and lowering water usage,” the group reports, citing a
recent study which found that California can meet its water needs
for the next 30 years by implementing cost-effective urban water
conservation. Desalination is “an expensive, speculative supply
option that will drain resources away from more practical
solutions,” the group says.
Despite such arguments, the practice is
becoming more common. Ted Levin of the Natural Resources Defense
Council says that more than 12,000 desalination plants already
supply fresh water in 120 nations, mostly in the Middle East and
Caribbean. And analysts expect
the worldwide market for desalinated water to grow significantly
over the coming decades. Environmental advocates may just have to
settle for pushing to “green” the practice as much as possible in
lieu of eliminating it altogether.
CONTACTS:
Food & Water Watch,
www.foodandwaterwatch.org;
Natural Resources Defense Council, “Turning Oceans into Tapwater,”
www.nrdc.org/onearth/04sum/saline1.asp.
Dear
EarthTalk: Is it true that
biologists want to bring African and Asian wildlife to roam free
in North America to help restore natural ecological balances here?
If so, what are the implications for biodiversity and our
environment? - Naturegirl,
Victorville, CA

Copyright: Getty Images
A group of biologists and
environmentalists is advocating just such a plan to help save wild
animals from extinction and restore the ecological vitality of
North America’s wildlands to a state that existed before humans
set foot on the continent some 13,000 years ago. The
concept—whereby large mammals are reintroduced across the
continent to fill ecological gaps abandoned eons ago—was first
posited publicly two decades ago by bio-geographer Paul Martin of
the University of Arizona.
In arguing for the introduction of
lions, elephants, camels and other large mammals from around the
world to North America, Martin cites the important role that
so-called “megafauna” play in maintaining overall ecosystem
integrity, including keeping predator/prey populations in balance
and invasive species in check. Some conservationists like the idea
because hosting such large mammals would require a large amount of
preserved, natural open space for habitat. Others see it as a
terrible idea, citing human safety issues and the difficulty such
exotic animals might have adapting to such different landscapes
and ecosystems.
Building on Martin’s ideas, a group of
conservationists came together in 2004 to form the New
Mexico-based Rewilding Institute. Members of the group co-authored
a 2005 commentary in the scientific journal Nature, in
which they suggested starting with a series of controlled
experiments on fenced private land, as was previously done with
condors and bison and led to population rebounds. Some of the
first species suggested for North American introduction include
giant tortoises, wild horses, camels and elephants. If such
experiments pan out, cheetahs and lions could be next.
The group also wants to restore native
species such as mountain lions and wolves, both of which roamed
North America in large numbers before European settlers first
arrived in the 1600s. The group argues that the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service has approached recovery of these animals “in a
haphazard and minimalist way.”
“Obviously, gaining public acceptance is
going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about
reintroducing predators,” says Josh Donlan, Cornell biologist and
lead author on the Nature article. “There are going to have
to be some major attitude shifts [including] realizing predation
is a natural role, and that people are going to have to take
precautions.”
Donlan adds that “rewilding” could be a
win-win situation as far as people and wildlife are concerned.
Portions of the Great Plains, for instance, could see an increase
in tourism dollars as people flock there to see the wildlife,
while the animals themselves—many of which are seriously
endangered in their native lands—can take advantage of increased
habitat and a decreased threat of extinction.
CONTACTS:
The Rewilding Institute, www.rewilding.org .
Dear
EarthTalk: I was surprised to
learn recently that some cities, including New York, have outlawed
kitchen-sink garbage disposals, at least in homes. I would have
thought these machines were Earth-friendly. What’s the deal? -
Maggie Mangan, St. Louis, MO

Copyright: Getty Images
Kitchen sink
garbage disposals are not necessarily Earth-friendly in and of
themselves, but they do play a valuable role in grinding up food
scraps into small enough bits for local sewer or on-site septic
systems to handle. In the U.S. overall, about half of all homes
have a garbage disposal in the kitchen. New York did outlaw the
devices for many years, thinking a ban would alleviate the strain
on the city’s aging sewer system. But a study later conducted in
the mid-1990s found benefits to lifting the ban, including a
likely reduction in rat and cockroach problems and a reduced flow
of solid waste to landfills already bursting at the seams. So in
1997 the Big Apple began allowing the devices again.
But garbage
disposals are not the greenest way to dispose of food waste.
According to Mark Jeantheau of the popular eco-website Grinning
Planet, conscientious consumers interested in returning food-based
nutrients back to the Earth should bypass the garbage disposal in
favor of composting.
“The ground-up
waste [in a garbage disposal] does not go back to nature’s water
supply to be gobbled up by fish and other life forms,” he says.
Sewage-treatment and septic systems remove “any food value the
waste might have had.” Indeed, most modern-day sewer filtration
systems utilize chemicals to rid the outflow of any life forms,
beneficial or otherwise. Plus, grinding food in a garbage disposal
uses a lot of freshwater, which is becoming a more and more
precious commodity.
Those on their own
septic systems also might want to minimize their use of the
garbage disposal. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), regular use of garbage disposals leads to a “more
rapid buildup of scum and sludge layers in the septic tank and
increased risk of clogging in the soil adsorption field due to
higher concentrations of suspended solids in the effluent.”
Jeantheau adds that even if a given septic system is designed to
handle heavier, food-based loads, it still might not be worth the
risk: “There are few homeowner nightmares worse than having your
septic system go belly up.”
While composting
may sound like a messy proposition, it doesn’t have to be. For
starters, those doing the dishes should make sure to dump any and
all food waste items into a kitchen-based composting bin with a
lid that seals tight. Many municipalities now make such bins
available to interested residents. A mesh strainer in the hole in
the sink can catch smaller food scraps and be dumped into the
composting bin when the dishes are done.
When the
kitchen-based compost bin fills up, it can be dumped into a larger
composting bin outside. After four to six months, you should have
some nice compost to add to your garden and jumpstart the health
of your soil. Companies such as The Compost Bin and Clean Air
Gardening offer online sales of a wide variety of quality compost
bins of different shapes and sizes, and provide a wealth of
comparative information for the interested consumer.
CONTACTS:
Grinning Planet,
www.grinningplanet.com; The
Compost Bin,
www.compost-bin.org; Clean
Air Gardening,
www.cleanairgardening.com.
Dear
EarthTalk: The soil beneath
our feet is a critical resource we often take for granted. But I
have heard that there are many threats to soil. What are they and
how do we make things right?
- J. Lyons,
Andover, MA

Copyright: Getty Images
Even among the
ecology-minded, soil falls well below the radar of important
causes. But the relationship between soil quality and both
environmental and human health is intricately entwined. From the
food we eat and the clothes we wear, to the air we breathe and
water we need to drink, we depend upon the dirt beneath our feet.
Soil nurtures and feeds all life on Earth, while it under girds
our cities, forests, waterways and crucial agricultural
activities. Further, healthy soil and the plant matter it holds
steady act as important “carbon sinks” that lock vast amounts of
carbon up that would otherwise contribute to global warming.
Throughout
history, great civilizations prospered where soils were fertile
and fell when soils could no longer sustain rough treatment. In
Mesopotamia, poor land management caused soils to become degraded,
leading to loss of agricultural productivity, migrations—and
ultimately, civilization collapse. Ancient Greece suffered a
similar fate. Many experts also blame the fall of the great Mayan
civilization on soil exhaustion and erosion, resulting from
agricultural practices and clear-cutting of forests.
Today, we face
many of the same issues: forest loss, over-consumption,
overpopulation and over-worked soils nearing collapse. While
factors such as logging, construction, off-road vehicles, floods
and droughts threaten soil, high use of agricultural pesticides,
fertilizers and other chemicals, as well as livestock grazing and
the “factory farming” of food animals, are primary culprits.
Chief among
threats to soils is damage to or loss of fertile topsoil.
According to the American Society of Agricultural and Biological
Engineers (ASABE), topsoil erosion today reduces productivity on
29 percent of U.S. cropland and negatively affects 39 percent of
rangeland. In West Africa, fertilizer overuse is causing already
acidic soils to become even more so, making the farming of even
native crops difficult. In Sub-Saharan Africa, declining soil
fertility from intensive farming is a main cause of poverty and
hunger.
Urban erosion is
equally significant and is becoming more serious as population
growth fuels urban development. Housing and building projects
gouge the soil and strip its vegetation. Rain then washes the soil
away into sewers and then waterways. This leads not only to water
pollution, but the glut of nutrients the soil carries with it
causes “algae blooms” that use up oxygen and choke out the aquatic
life.
Educating farmers
in the U.S. and abroad about the damaging effects of intensive
agriculture and over-application of synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides is a good place to start to try to make things right.
Converting more farming over to organic methods that eschew
chemicals altogether is an even better solution. Supporting local
farms also promotes better land stewardship, as mega farms make
heavy use of synthetic fertilizers, and factory animal farms
generate huge amounts of animal waste, which pollutes surrounding
land and soil. And cities and towns can do their part by
supporting low-impact development and mandating greener design
standards.
CONTACTS:
ASABE,
www.asabe.org; E – The
Environmental Magazine, “The Scoop on Dirt: Why We Should all
Worship the Ground We Walk On,” www.emagazine.com/view/?3344.
Dear
EarthTalk: I want to give my
baby fresh, organic food but I don't have the time to make her
special meals. What options are out there?
- Marie L., via e-mail

Copyright: Getty Images
Babies deserve the
best possible start in life, so giving them nutritious food is a
must, not only for good health but also to establish positive
eating habits as early as possible.
According to
Consumers Union (CU), publisher of Consumer Reports
magazine, commercial baby foods, many of which are made up of
condensed fruits and vegetables, can contain high concentrations
of pesticide residues. “A lot of these pesticides are toxic to the
brain,” says Philip Landrigan, a professor of pediatrics and
preventative medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New
York City. Citing studies that have linked smaller head
circumference and reduced intelligence in babies to in utero
exposure to pesticides consumed by their mothers, Landrigan says
it is best not to gamble when it comes to baby food.
If you’re not
already serving organic baby food, CU urges making the switch as
soon as possible. A 2005 study ordered by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency measured pesticide levels in the urine of 23
children in Washington State before and after a switch to an
organic diet. After five straight days on the diet, pesticide
measures fell to undetectable levels and remained so until the
conventional diets resumed. The study concluded: “An organic diet
provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect” against
pesticide exposure.
Fortunately for
concerned parents the organic food industry is growing rapidly,
and one result is the availability of a wide selection of organic
baby foods in both natural food stores and mainstream
supermarkets. Some leading jar- and box-based choices come from
Gerber, Earth’s Best, Homemade Baby and others. And frozen meals
from the likes of Happy Baby, Plum Organics, Bobo Baby and other
relative upstarts mix good flavor and fresh healthy ingredients
with convenience. Using the power of cold temperatures to keep
their foods fresh allows these companies to avoid the use of
traditional preservatives.
Happy Baby’s frozen
meals come in individual cubes in flavors like “Baby Dahl and Mama
Grain,” an organic mixture of bananas, black beans and quinoa
(pronounced KEEN-wah). Quinoa is a high-protein whole grain that
is considered a complete protein because it contains all eight
essential amino acids.
Plum Organics
offers flash-frozen, nutrient-rich organic meals that come in
reusable four-ounce cups in varieties like “Super Greens” (peas,
spinach and green beans) and “Red Lentil Veggie” (potatoes,
carrots, corn and red lentils). Bobo Baby specializes in organic,
kosher and allergen-free flash-frozen baby meals.
For parents
inclined toward cooking instead of opening jars or microwaving,
making baby food out of fresh organic ingredients does not have to
be complicated or time-consuming. Fresh Baby sells cooking kits,
cookbooks and food trays to help parents concoct and serve the
freshest and healthiest baby food possible right from their own
kitchens.
CONTACTS:
Earth’s Best,
www.earthsbest.com; Homemade
Baby,
www.homemadebaby.com; Happy
Baby,
www.happybaby.com; Bobo Baby,
www.bobobaby.com; Plum
Organics;
www.plumorganics.com; Fresh
Baby, www.freshbaby.com.
Dear
EarthTalk: What are the
ramifications for shorelines around the world if predictions about
rising sea levels due to global warming actually come true?
- James Florino, Palm
Beach, FL
Sea level rise, and
the accompanying loss of shoreline, promises to be one of the most
devastating results of global warming. A recent report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of leading
atmospheric scientists, forecasts a global sea level rise of
between seven and 23 inches by 2100. This they foresee due to the
greenhouse gases we have already pumped into the atmosphere—even
if we start cutting back now. Such dire but realistic predictions
are based on computer models that factor in the heating and
expansion of the ocean, the melting of polar ice sheets, and storm
surges that can affect tides by a foot or more.
What does this mean
for shorelines around the world? Simply put, existing shorelines,
especially in low-lying areas, will become submerged—a sea level
rise of less than half an inch can cause shoreline retreat upwards
of four feet—forcing inhabitants to relocate their homes,
businesses and ways of life. Perhaps the most striking example of
this type of upheaval is already underway in Bangladesh, a
low-lying country of 140 million people. According to the World
Bank, an international lending and development agency, sea level
rise will likely inundate as much as 20 percent of the country’s
habitable land, affecting as many as 30 million people already
living on the edge of survival. As much as a third of the
country’s rice crop will be lost, and natural treasures like the
Sundarbans mangrove forest will be reduced to just a memory.
With about a third
of the world’s people living within 60 miles of a shoreline, and
13 of the world’s 20 largest cities located on coasts, people are
bracing for the worst beyond Bangladesh as well.
Scientists fear that sea level rise, especially when combined with
intense storms, could deliver a knock-out blow to areas already
devastated by 2004’s Indian Ocean tsunami. China, India and
Egypt are also expected to experience major flooding. One result
could be a humanitarian crisis as millions of so-called “climate
refugees” could seek higher ground, perhaps across national
borders where they are not welcome.
Here in the U.S., scientists fear rising
sea levels could put a recovered New Orleans back under water, but
this time permanently. In New York, stronger and more frequent
hurricanes, also thanks to global warming, could combine with
rising sea levels to essentially put most of Manhattan and
outlying areas under water, wreaking untold havoc for millions of
people in the region. And in the San Francisco Bay Area, according
to a report by the Bay
Conservation and Development Commission and summarized
in an article in the San Francisco
Chronicle in February 2007, San Francisco’s
sewage-treatment facility on Islais Creek and both San Francisco
and Oakland airports could be under water.
With scientists uncertain about the
amount of sea level rise to anticipate, municipal officials are
working to get their cities ready in a number of ways, including
“nourishing” beaches with additional sand and building overlapping
layers of levees and sea walls. But engineers warn that already
strained municipal budgets have no room for the staggering costs
of buttressing entire cities against sea level rise, so planners
will be forced to pick and choose to hopefully avert disaster. For
the rest of us, it might be a good time to sell that waterfront
vacation property that has appreciated so much in value in recent
years.
CONTACTS:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change,
www.ipcc.ch; World
Bank-Bangladesh,
www.worldbank.org/bd.
Dear
EarthTalk: What would be the
feasibility of having hybrid cars run on E85 or biodiesel?
Wouldn’t this solve multiple problems?
-Bob Pendergrass,
Broken Arrow, OK

Copyright: Getty Images
Environmental
advocates would love to see carmakers mass-produce a biofuel-electric
hybrid. From a technology standpoint, it’s a no-brainer: Major
automakers already turn out vehicles that can run on E85, a blend
of 85 percent ethanol, derived from corn and other crops, and 15
percent standard gasoline. Ford’s light duty F-series pickups are
examples of such “flex fuel” vehicles. And gasoline-electric
hybrids, like Toyota’s Prius, are all the rage and beginning to be
ubiquitous on the roads.
Cost, however, is
an issue, says Jim Kliesch of the website greenercars.org.
Traditional cars and trucks powered by diesel, biodiesel or
ethanol cost more to manufacture than equivalent gasoline-power
vehicles. And gas-electric hybrids also cost more than
conventional cars, largely because their market share is still
small and economies of scale have not yet kicked in. Thus
combining two costly technologies in a biofuel-electric hybrid
would constitute “a double-whammy,” says Kliesch, “limiting the
vehicles to a very small slice of the market.”
Nonetheless, Ford
last year unveiled a prototype of its popular Escape Hybrid SUV
that runs on E85. Like the gas-electric hybrids now on the road,
the E85-electric hybrid Escape maximizes fuel economy by
alternating between its internal combustion and electric engines.
And it never needs to be plugged in because its high-capacity
batteries store electricity generated from braking and other
processes in-car.
Ford estimates that
if only five percent of U.S. vehicles were powered by
ethanol-electric hybrids oil imports could be reduced by 140
million barrels a year. Such vehicles would also produce about 25
percent less carbon dioxide (CO2)—a chief contributor to global
warming—than traditional cars and trucks. What’s holding up mass
production, says Ford, is a lack of E85 fueling outlets—only 1,200
exist across the U.S.
Not to be outdone,
General Motors (GM) has its own ethanol-electric hybrid in the
works via its Sweden-based Saab subsidiary, which unveiled a
prototype in 2006. The company claims that, whereas Toyota’s
gas-electric Prius emits 104 grams of CO2 per kilometer, their
E85-based hybrid should emit just 15-20 grams. Industry insiders
don’t expect to see such a vehicle available to the public until
2010 or later.
With regard to
diesel-electric hybrids, though diesel spews particulates and
other nasty ground level pollutants into the environment, it
contributes significantly less CO2 to the atmosphere than
gasoline. And biodiesel, a form of the fuel derived from plants,
is both carbon-neutral (burning it contributes no additional
carbon to the atmospheric balance of the pollutant) and cleaner
burning in regard to particulates. It can be used interchangeably
with regular diesel in most diesel engines. Thus combining
biodiesel with an electric motor in a hybrid car or truck would
yield one of the cleanest burning engines on the road.
GM and Chrysler
have already collaborated on developing a diesel-hybrid platform
that combines dual electric motors with a diesel engine to offer
unparalleled fuel efficiency. But whether such vehicles ever see
the showroom floor—and whether consumers will be able to even
afford them—is anybody’s guess.
CONTACTS:
GreenerCars.org,
www.greenercars.org;
E85vehicles.com,
http//e85vehicles.com.
Dear
EarthTalk: OK, once and for
all, which is more environmentally friendly: paper or plastic at
the grocery checkout? And didn’t I just hear that San Francisco
has banned plastic bags? -
Brian, Santa Clara, CA

Copyright: Getty Images
Yes the city of San
Francisco did just recently ban plastic bags. Large supermarkets
and pharmacies there must eliminate plastic shopping bags by early
2008 in favor of bags made from either paper or compostable and
biodegradable cornstarch. The city’s Board of Supervisors cited
the fact that plastic bags are a challenge to recycle and as a
result occupy much-needed landfill space, while causing litter
problems by easily blowing into trees and waterways, where they
can kill birds and marine life.
But just because
San Francisco has outlawed plastic bags doesn’t mean that all
indications point to paper bags being more green-friendly than
plastic. A landmark 1990 study by the research firm Franklin
Associates—which factored in every step of the manufacturing,
distribution and disposal stages of a grocery bag’s usable
life—actually gave the nod to plastic bags.
Franklin’s employed
two critical measures in reaching their conclusion. The first was
the total energy consumed by a grocery bag. This included both the
energy needed to manufacture it, called process energy, and the
energy embodied within the physical materials used, called
feedstock energy. The second measure used was the amount of
pollutants and waste produced.
The Franklin report
concluded that two plastic bags consume 13 percent less total
energy than one paper bag. Additionally, the report found that two
plastic bags produce a quarter of the solid waste, a fifteenth as
much waterborne waste and half the atmospheric waste as one paper
bag.
Of course, many
environmentalists still side with paper as a better choice than
plastic at the checkout, mostly for the reasons cited by San
Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. Plastic is not biodegradable, it
litters our waterways and coastal areas, and has been shown to
choke the life out of unsuspecting wildlife. A recent survey by
the United Nations found that plastic in the world’s oceans is
killing more than a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals
and sea turtles each and every year. According to the California
Coastal Commission, plastic bags are one of the 12 most commonly
found items in coastal cleanups. Paper bags do not cause such
after-the-fact problems, and are inherently easier to recycle.
But to the
non-profit Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment,
“paper versus plastic?” is not the question we should be asking
ourselves, since the answer is really “neither.” After all, energy
and waste issues aside, the manufacture of paper bags brings down
some 14 million trees yearly to meet U.S. demand alone, while at
the same time plastic bags use up some 12 million barrels of oil
each year.
The group urges
consumers to “just say no” to both options and instead bring their
own re-usable canvas bags, backpacks, crates or boxes to haul away
the groceries. Some supermarkets, such as the Albertson’s and Wild
Oats chains, even offer a small discount (around five cents) to
those who do so. Another benefit of bringing your own, of course,
is setting a good example so that other shoppers might do the
same.
CONTACTS:
Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment,
www.ilea.org.
Dear
EarthTalk: Is it true that
anti-bacterial soaps are no better at preventing infections than
plain soaps and that they are actually harmful to the
environment? - Avery Bicks,
New York, NY

Copyright: Getty Images
University of
Michigan researchers reviewed numerous studies conducted between
1980 and 2006 and concluded that antibacterial soaps that contain
triclosan as the main active ingredient are no better at
preventing infections than plain soaps. Further, the team argued
that these antibacterial soaps could actually pose a health risk,
because they may kill beneficial bacteria and also reduce the
effectiveness of some common antibiotics, such as amoxicillin. The
study was published in the August 2007 issue of the peer-reviewed
journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases.
These findings
concur with earlier research conducted by Tufts University’s
Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics. The Tufts study
concluded that overuse of triclosan could cause new strains of
bacteria to develop, thus “changing the kind of bacteria in our
houses to those that may actually be harmful or resistant to
antibiotics…” said Tufts’ Dr. Stuart Levy.
According to the
non-profit group Beyond Pesticides, laboratory studies have found
a number of different strains of mutated bacteria that are
resistant to triclosan and to certain antibiotics. The
organization also cites reports of triclosan converting into a
carcinogenic class of chemicals known as dioxins when exposed to
water and ultraviolet radiation. Besides cancer, dioxins have been
linked to weakening of the human immune system, decreased
fertility, altered sex hormones and birth defects.
If antibacterial
hand soap is not effective at reducing infections, consumers may
wonder about whether alcohol-based hand sanitizers may do a better
job. Combing through different studies on the topic yields mixed
conclusions. According to one study conducted at Colorado State
University, alcohol-based hand sanitizers were as much as twice as
effective as either regular soap or antibacterial soap at reducing
germs on human hands.
A Purdue University
study, however, contradicts these findings, concluding that while
alcohol-based hand sanitizers may kill more germs than plain or
triclosan-based soaps, they do not prevent more infections that
make people sick. Instead they may kill the human body’s own
beneficial bacteria by stripping the skin of its outer layer of
oil.
The best advice
might just come from a study published in the journal Dairy,
Food and Environmental Sanitation back in 1998, which
concluded that washing hands thoroughly for 20 seconds or more
with plain soap and warm water is by far the most effective way to
reduce harmful bacteria, and as such remains our best defense
against getting sick.
CONTACTS:
Clinical Infectious Diseases, www.journals.uchicago.edu/CID/;
Tufts’ Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, www.tufts.edu/med/apua/;
Beyond Pesticides, www.beyondpesticides.org.
Dear EarthTalk:
What is the issue with the Gulf
Stream in relation to global warming? Could it really stop or
disappear altogether? If so, what are the ramifications of this? -
Lynn Eytel,
Clark Summit, PA
Part of the Ocean
Conveyor Belt—a great river of ocean water that traverses the
saltwater sections of the globe—the Gulf Stream stretches from the
Gulf of Mexico up the eastern seaboard of the U.S., where it
splits, one stream heading for Canada’s Atlantic coast and the
other for northern Europe and Greenland. By taking warm water from
the equatorial
Pacific Ocean and
carrying it into the colder North Atlantic, the Gulf Stream warms
up the eastern U.S. and northwestern Europe by about five degrees
Celsius, making those regions much more hospitable than they would
otherwise be.
Among the greatest
fears scientists have about global warming is that it will cause
the massive ice fields of Greenland and other locales at the
northern end of the Gulf Stream to melt rapidly, sending surges of
cold water into the ocean system and interrupting the flow of the
Ocean Conveyor Belt. One doomsday scenario is that such an event
would stop or disrupt the whole Ocean Conveyor Belt system,
plunging Western Europe into a new ice age without the benefit of
the warmth delivered by the Gulf Stream. “The possibility exists
that a disruption of the Atlantic currents might have implications
far beyond a colder northwest Europe, perhaps bringing dramatic
climatic changes to the entire planet,” says Bill McGuire, a
geophysical hazards professor at University College London’s
Benfield Hazard Research Centre.
Computer models
simulating ocean-atmosphere climate dynamics indicate that the
North Atlantic region would cool between three and five degrees
Celsius if Conveyor circulation were totally disrupted. “It would
produce winters twice as cold as the worst winters on record in
the eastern United States in the past century,” says Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution’s Robert Gagosian.
The slowing of the
Gulf Stream has been directly linked with dramatic regional
cooling before, says McGuire. “Just 10,000 years ago, during a
climatic cold snap known as the Younger Dryas, the current was
severely weakened, causing northern European temperatures to fall
by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit,” he says. And 10,000 years
earlier—at the height of the last ice age when most of
northwestern Europe was a frozen wasteland—the Gulf Stream had
just two-thirds of the strength it has now.
A less dramatic
prediction sees the Gulf Stream slowing down but not stopping
entirely, causing the east coast of North America and northwestern
Europe to suffer only minor winter
temperature dips. And some scientists even put forth the
optimistic hypothesis that the cooling effects of a weakened Gulf
Stream could actually help offset the higher temperatures
otherwise caused by global warming.
To McGuire, these
uncertainties underscore that fact that human-induced global
warming is “nothing more nor less than a great planetary
experiment, many of the outcomes of which we cannot predict.”
Whether or not we can trim our addiction to fossil fuels might
just be the determining factor in whether global warming wreaks
havoc around the world, or just causes us minor annoyances.
CONTACTS:
University College London’s Benfield Hazard Research Centre,
www.benfieldhrc.org/climate_change/index.htm ; Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution,
www.whoi.edu
Dear
EarthTalk: What is the status
of the land mines issue popularized by Princess Diana and Paul
McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills? How many mines have been
removed? How many are left? What is being done? -
Jonas Schultz, via e-mail

Copyright: Getty Images
Land mines were
first widely used in World War II and have since been used in
Vietnam, the Korean War, the first Gulf War, and in about a half
dozen conflicts around the world today. Initially, mines were used
for defensive purposes, to guard certain areas and keep the enemy
out. Today they are used for more insidious reasons such as to
terrorize civilians and limit their movement. And, of course, many
remain behind from past wars and continue to unintentionally kill
or maim civilians, including many children.
Today, an estimated
110 million mines are still scattered around the world in 78
countries, injuring or killing upwards of 26,000 people each year.
According to a recent United Nations (UN) study, the countries
most affected by mines are Afghanistan, Angola,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Eritrea, Iraq, Mozambique,
Namibia, Somalia, Nicaragua and Sudan. The landmines in these
countries make up almost 50 percent of all mines deployed in the
world today.
Stats like these
have prompted outcries from concerned people all over the world.
Organizations such as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
and Adopt a Minefield work to both rid the world of these weapons
and to aid those injured by them. In the last decade, such
organizations have spearheaded the destruction of as many as 30.5
million mines. Their work has also led to such a dramatic decrease
in the mine trade worldwide that, since 2003, the manufacture and
sale of mines has essentially ended (or at least no evidence
exists that any trade in mines is still going on). In addition,
Costa Rica, Djibouti, El Salvador, Kosovo and Moldova have all
been declared “mine safe” as of 2004.
The UN itself does
more than conduct studies and issue reports. Some14 different UN
departments, agencies and programs work on de-mining efforts in
some 30 countries. The actual work is done by non-governmental
organizations and various military entities employing commercial
contractors. Many intergovernmental and charitable organizations
also support the UN’s efforts with financial assistance.
Many rather
low-tech methods are used to detect and destroy mines. In Denmark,
for instance, scientists have genetically modified Thale cress, a
fast-growing green plant from the mustard family, to turn red
whenever its roots are exposed to nitrogen dioxide, a gas released
into soil by degrading mines. The Danish company Aresa
Biodetection works with governments around the world to sow fields
with the plant in areas plagued by mine problems. In another
example, Colombian researchers have trained rats to freeze when
they encounter mines in the ground. Since rats weigh so little,
they don’t trigger explosions
In December 1997 an
international conference held in Ottawa, Ontario yielded the
Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production
and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction,
otherwise known as the Mine Ban Treaty. The treaty was formalized
in March 1999 when 122 countries became signatories. The
international treaty works to prevent mine use, production and
trade, assist victims and to destroy existing mines.
CONTACTS:
Adopt a Minefield,
www.landmines.org;
International Campaign to Ban Landmines,
www.icbl.org; Mine Ban
Treaty;
www.icbl.org/treaty.
Dear
EarthTalk: How can we get
schools to offer healthier and more eco-friendly cafeteria food to
our kids? I don’t have time to bag a healthy lunch every day. -
Leslie Morris, Richmond,
VA

Copyright: Getty Images
Now that many
schools have stopped selling sodas and other unhealthy vending
machine items to their students, improving the nutritional quality
of cafeteria food is on the agenda of many parents and school
administrators. And luckily for the environment, healthier food
usually means greener food.
Some
forward-thinking schools are leading the charge by sourcing their
cafeteria food from local farms and producers. This saves money
and also cuts back on the pollution and global warming impacts
associated with transporting food long distances. And since many
local producers are turning to organic growing methods, local food
usually means fewer pesticides in kids’ school lunches.
Alarmed by
childhood obesity statistics and the prevalence of unhealthy foods
offered to students in schools, the Center for Food and Justice (CFJ)
in 2000 spearheaded the national Farm to School lunch program. The
program connects schools with local farms to provide healthy
cafeteria food while also supporting local farmers. Participating
schools not only obtain food locally, they incorporate
nutrition-based curriculum and provide students with learning
opportunities through visits to the local farms.
Farm to School
programs now operate in 19 states and in several hundred school
districts. CFJ recently received significant support from the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation to expand the program to more states and
districts. The group’s website (link below) is loaded with
resources to help schools get started.
The U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) also runs a Small Farms/School
Meals program that boasts participation in 400 school districts in
32 states. Interested schools can check out the agency’s
“Step-by-Step Guide on How to Bring Small Farms and Local Schools
Together,” which is available free online.
Other schools have
taken the plunge in their own unique ways. In Berkeley,
California, noted chef Alice Waters holds cooking classes in which
students grow and prepare local organic fruits and vegetables for
their peers’ school lunch menus. And as documented in the film,
“Super Size Me,” Wisconsin’s Appleton Central Alternative School
hired a local organic bakery that helped transform Appleton’s
cafeteria fare from offerings heavy on meat and junk food to
predominantly whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Of course, parents
can ensure that their children eat well at school by forgoing the
cafeteria offerings altogether and sending their kids to school
with healthy bag lunches. For on-the-go parents unable to keep up
with a daily lunch making regimen, innovative companies are
beginning to sprout up that will do it for you. Kid Chow in San
Francisco, Health e-Lunch Kids in Fairfax, Virginia, New York
City’s KidFresh and Manhattan Beach, California’s Brown Bag
Naturals will deliver organic and natural food lunches to your
kids for about three times the price of a cafeteria lunch. But
prices should change for the better as the idea catches on and
more volume brings costs down.
CONTACTS:
Farm to Schools, www.farmtoschool.org; USDA Small Farms/School
Meals Initiative,
www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Lunch/Downloadable/small.pdf; Kid
Chow,
www.kid-chow.com, Brown Bag
Naturals, www.brownbagnaturals.com; Health e-Lunch Kids,
www.healthelunchkids.com; Kidfresh,
www.kidfresh.com.
Dear EarthTalk: I read that
hybrid cars are actually less green-friendly than even Hummers,
because they have two motors and very environmentally damaging
batteries. Is this true?-
Renee Sweany, Indianapolis, IN

Copyright: Getty Images
The claim you read about was from
“Dust-to-Dust: The Energy Cost of New Vehicles from Concept to
Disposal,” a controversial study by researcher Art Spinella of
Oregon-based CNW Marketing. It ranks more than 300 vehicles for
their energy use over their entire lifecycles—from raw materials
extraction and manufacturing, to driving and burning fuel, to the
recycling and disposal of parts. What surprised even Spinella was
how the Toyota Prius, the world’s most successful
gasoline-electric hybrid car, stacked up against General Motors’
behemoth Hummer, the modern poster child for unsustainable
transportation.
“The Hummer over the lifetime of the
vehicle ends up being less of a drain of energy on society in
general than does the Prius,” wrote Spinella in his report. A
key-determining factor was the hybrid battery’s use of nickel
extracted from a Sudbury, Ontario mine that has emitted so much
sulfur dioxide that acid rain has turned a once healthy nearby
forest into a bleak landscape. That mine, however, which supplies
nickel for many industrial purposes and not just hybrid batteries,
has cut pollution 90 percent since the 1970s.
Another common criticism of hybrids is
that their batteries will be a pollution threat once they land in
the junkyard. But hybrid advocates insist that the nickel-metal
hydride batteries found in the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight and
other hybrids contain far fewer pollutants than the lead-acid
varieties used in traditional cars. And initial worries that
hybrid batteries would need replacement every few years have not
borne out; Toyota says the batteries should go for 150,000 miles,
which they predict to be the car’s life expectancy.
Spinella pegs the life of the typical
Prius bought new today at only 100,000 miles, and contrasts that
against a predicted 300,000 for Hummers—meaning that, though
Hummers burn more gas and emit more pollutants, they will last
much longer. Additionally, Spinella factors in the added
production costs of including two separate engines in the Prius—one
that runs on gas and the other on electricity.
Most environmentalists challenge
Spinella’s conclusions. Jim Kliesch, research analyst with the
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), which
publishes a yearly rating of the “Greenest and Meanest” cars, says
the CNW study contradicts many other studies, including those
conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
Carnegie Mellon, Argonne National Labs, the Union of Concerned
Scientists and others that place the green-friendliness of the
Prius and other hybrids head and shoulders above many other
vehicles and certainly the Hummer.
Spinella is “way off the mark,” says
Kliesch, and scolds CNW for not having “Dust-to-Dust”
peer-reviewed for accuracy. “If you do some back-of-the-envelope
calculations on their claims,” he says, “you’ll find that it takes
about $286,500 in energy to produce and assemble a Prius, [which
is] absurd.”
Toyota itself also disputes CNW’s
findings. In a short rebuttal published in the Washington Post,
Toyota vice-president Irv Miller said that the increased energy
requirement to build a hybrid with two engines under the hood “is
overwhelmingly made up for in the driving stage.”
CONTACTS:
“Dust to Dust,”
cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/;
ACEEE,
www.aceee.org.
Dear EarthTalk:
What tax or other government incentives are there out there for
buying green—for individuals as well as
businesses? --
Sarah Rafferty, New York, NY

Copyright: Getty Images
There has never been a better time than
now to tap into a laundry list of tax rebates and other financial
incentives designed to encourage individuals and businesses to go
the greener mile. At the federal level in the U.S., individuals
can reap the rewards of no less than eight different financial
incentives ranging from tax credits and home loans for replacing
windows and installing insulation around the house to tax rebates
for purchasing a hybrid car or hooking up a solar hot water
heater.
Besides these federal incentives, nearly
every U.S. state has additional state or local incentives
available. Many require utilities to rebate consumers who save
electricity. Some utilities even offer “net metering,” whereby
consumers who generate some of their power through rooftop solar
panels or other technologies can sell electricity back to the
utility, thus reducing or zeroing out their electric bill—even
earning money.
Many financial incentives are in place
for businesses, as well. At the federal level, examples include an
energy-efficient commercial buildings tax deduction, a business
energy reduction tax credit, an energy-efficient appliance tax
credit for manufacturers, and a new energy-efficient tax credit
for green-savvy builders.
At the state level, many are eager to
attract renewable energy companies to their region, and offer tax
breaks to get them there. Washington State, for example, charges
no sales tax on renewable energy equipment produced or sold there.
And some forward-thinking cities are beginning to offer “density
bonuses” and green building incentives to developers and builders
to encourage sustainable land use.
The best place to look for what’s
available is to steer your web browser to the free online Database
of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE), a
comprehensive source of information on state, local, utility and
federal incentives that promote renewable energy and energy
efficiency. DSIRE is a federally funded project of the Interstate
Renewable Energy Council, whose membership includes state and
local government agencies, national laboratories, renewable energy
companies and advocacy groups.
In Canada,
the Office of Energy Efficiency at Natural Resources Canada offers
a slate of federal grants and incentives under its ecoENERGY
Retrofit program to homeowners, businesses, large industries and
public institutions to help them invest in energy- and
pollution-saving upgrades. The agency also administers the High
Efficiency Home Heating System Cost Relief program, which will
contribute up to $300 to homeowners who upgrade their old oil or
gas furnace or boiler to a new high-efficiency model. And
low-income households might qualify for additional federal
financial assistance for energy retrofits. Another Canadian
program, the Vehicle Efficiency Incentive (VEI) rewards those who
buy fuel-efficient cars or trucks with rebates of up to $2,000
each. Beyond these federal programs, selected provincial and
municipal entities across Canada also offer incentives to those
looking to save energy and the environment.
CONTACTS:
Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE),
www.dsireusa.org; Natural
Resources Canada ecoEnergy Retrofit Program,
www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca/corporate/incentives.cfm.
GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION?
Send it to:
EarthTalk, c/o
E/The Environmental Magazine,
P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at:
www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/,
or e-mail:
earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read
past columns at:
www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.
Dear EarthTalk: How do I find
a Styrofoam recycler in my area? My company receives huge sheets
of the stuff on a regular basis and it just gets thrown straight
into the trash. What can a business do to get this stuff recycled
economically and efficiently? - S.R.M., Mesa, AZ

Copyright: Getty Images
Known within the packaging industry as expanded polystyrene (EPS)
and usually bearing the “#6” recycling symbol, Styrofoam (which is
actually the trademark name for Dow Chemical’s product) has long
been an environmental bugaboo, as it is contains chemicals known
to cause central nervous system damage and other health problems
for workers regularly exposed to it. And since it is difficult and
expensive to recycle, EPS tends to clog landfills already teeming
with toxic garbage.
But EPS has proven to be one of the lightest and least costly
forms of packaging material, so the industry has worked hard to
make recycling it more cost-effective and convenient. More than 80
packaging manufacturers, polystyrene suppliers and equipment
makers joined together in 1991 to form the Alliance of Foam
Packaging Recyclers (AFPR). The Maryland-based industry
association works to facilitate recycling between EPS
manufacturers and the companies that buy from them. It currently
boasts of overseeing the recycling of 10-12 percent of the
post-consumer EPS packaging produced every year.
Member companies, which provide drop-off services at their
facilities, reprocess up to 60 percent of the EPS foam collected
and incorporate it directly into new packaging. Some of the
material is reformulated and used in a wide variety of durable
plastic products. Currently, more than 110 plant locations serve
as collection centers which together receive upwards of 50 million
pounds of post-consumer EPS packaging each year. AFPR provides a
comprehensive list of EPS drop-off locations from coast-to-coast
on its website. While companies sending the EPS in for recycling
must bear the shipping or drop-off costs, they may save money over
paying for disposal fees at the landfill.
One caveat: AFPR does not get involved in the recycling of the
foam “peanuts” so often used as packaging filler. Most
“pack-and-ship” shops (like UPS stores) will accept used but
otherwise clean foam peanuts to reuse in their own shipments.
Otherwise, the Plastic Loose Fill Council, another trade group,
runs a free web-based database where users can find a local
drop-off center by simply punching in their zip code.
Also, food service managers should bear in mind that recycling of
soiled food-grade EPS is more difficult and expensive due to
issues of bacterial contamination. Most EPS packaging recycling
centers will not accept such tainted foam. Many food service
companies have followed the lead of McDonald’s and phased-out
their use of EPS containers for disposable dishware and to-go
orders.
Companies that don’t find it convenient to recycle or otherwise
dispose of large amounts of EPS (food-grade or otherwise) might
want to consider purchasing one or more StyroMelt machines from
UK-based Purex. The technology uses a thermal compaction process
to reduce the volume of EPS by up to 95 percent. The resulting
solid EPS “briquettes” are dense enough to make for good recycling
fodder, and also take up much less room than the foam they started
out as if they end up in the landfill.
CONTACTS: Alliance of Foam Packaging Recyclers,
www.epspackaging.org ;
Plastic Loose Fill Council,
www.loosefillpackaging.com ; Purex Styromelt,
www.styromelt.com
Dear EarthTalk: Aside from the
obvious benefits to mankind of reducing poverty, how would
promoting more economic equality around the world benefit the
environment? -Steele Shapiro, Seattle, WA

Copyright: Getty Images
Research has shown that in countries with a wide disparity between
rich and poor, environmental protection tends to be a lower
priority. The inverse is also true: Countries with greater
economic equality assign higher priority to safeguarding their
environment.
The main determining factor seems to be that lower income people
tend to vote against spending tax dollars on what are deemed
costly or discretionary environmental projects. In countries with
less disparity between rich and poor, such as throughout
Scandinavia, environmental protection is assigned a higher
priority and governments have enacted more stringent regulations
and policies accordingly.
University of Rochester researchers Laura Marsiliani and Thomas
Renstrom reviewed hundreds of academic studies of linkages between
economic equality and environmental protection and found plenty of
evidence to suggest that “poorer individuals tend to prefer less
stringent environmental policy.” Previous research also supports
their hypothesis that greater income inequality causes lower
environmental taxes, regulation and spending around the world.
On a related front, a team of McGill University researchers
uncovered a connection between growing economic inequality and an
increase in the number of plant and animal species threatened with
extinction. Dr. Greg Mikkelson of McGill’s School of Environment
led the study, which looked at income inequality and biodiversity
loss on two different scales: among 45 countries worldwide; and
among 45 U.S. states. The researchers found that the same general
trend is evident in both cases: Societies with more unequal
distribution of income experience greater losses of biodiversity.
While there is often a trade-off between economic growth and
environmental quality, says Mikkelson, his study suggests that
there is also synergy between removing or reducing poverty and
greater conservation of biological diversity. If the U.S. were to
achieve levels of income parity comparable, say, to Sweden, some
44 percent fewer plant and animal species in the U.S. would be in
danger of extinction. “Our study,” adds Mikkelson, “suggests that
if we can learn to share economic resources more fairly with
fellow members of our own species, it may help us to share
ecological resources more fairly with other species.”
One group working to help the environment by bridging the economic
equality gap is the Poverty Reduction and Environmental Management
(PREM) program at the Institute for Environmental Studies at
Holland’s Vrije Universiteit. Formulated by Dr. Pieter van
Beukering and Kim van der Leeuw, the program has lined up
researchers in 16 developing nations to develop case studies
showing how sustainability-oriented natural resource management
can lead to economic development for poorer people. The
researchers hope that their work in the field will help show
policymakers the way toward enlightened regulatory practices that
encourage both economic equality and environmental protection.
CONTACTS: “Inequality, Environmental Protection and Growth,” Laura
Marsiliani and Thomas Renstrom,
http://ideas.repec.org/p/roc/wallis/wp35.html ; “More
Inequality Means Less Biodiversity,” McGill Reporter,
www.mcgill.ca/reporter/39/17/inequality ; PREM Program,
www.prem-online.org
Dear EarthTalk: I am
considering buying Honda’s natural gas Civic. What exactly comes
out of a natural gas vehicle’s tailpipe, and how harmful to the
environment is natural gas extraction and refinement? Which is
greener, a hybrid or natural gas car? -- Alex Neal, San Diego CA

Copyright: Getty Images
Honda’s natural gas Civic GX, which debuted in 2006 in California
but is now becoming available in other parts of the country, just
may be the cleanest mainstream car on the road. At least the
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) thinks
so. The nonprofit group publishes an annual Green Book listing the
greenest (and meanest) cars of the year, and put the Civic GX at
the top of its 2007 environmentally friendly car list, edging out
Toyota’s hybrid Prius.
Although neither car is a slouch when it comes to fuel economy and
reduced emissions, the natural gas-fueled Civic scored slightly
better than the Prius on both counts in ACEEE’s battery of tests.
It also scored better in terms of the pollution generated in the
manufacturing processes.
Natural gas is the cleanest burning of all fossil fuels. According
to the U.S. Department of Energy, the burning of natural gas emits
117,000 pounds per billion (ppb) BTUs of carbon dioxide as
compared to gasoline’s 164,000. Its 92 ppb of nitrogen oxide
emissions are considerably lower than gasoline’s 448, and its mere
one ppb of sulfur dioxide emissions is dwarfed by gasoline’s
1,122. Natural gas also emits just seven ppb of particulates
compared to 84 for gasoline, and it emits no mercury whatsoever
against the trace amounts emitted by gasoline-burning engines.
Natural gas combustion does generate slightly more carbon monoxide
than gasoline, at 40 ppb versus 33, but the difference is
negligible.
The big trade-off for Civic GX owners is the car’s limited
220-mile range between fuelings. The gasoline-powered Civic can go
350 miles on a tank; the Prius, even with just an 11-gallon tank,
can go considerably further operating at as much as 55 miles per
gallon in highway driving. While a few dozen natural gas refueling
stations have popped up around the U.S., they are few and far
between. For those who need to make longer trips but still value a
greener ride, a hybrid may be the best bet, as it will produce
only marginally worse emissions while taking advantage of the
ubiquity of gas stations out on the road.
Those who already use natural gas for home heating can pay $5,000
for a car fueling system installed in their garage or driveway.
While that cost may seem high, owners can save about $1 per gallon
over gasoline and can also get a federal $1,000 tax rebate. (Also,
like the Prius, the purchase of the Civic GX itself qualifies for
a federal tax break of $2,000 as well as up to another $2,000 in
state and local incentives where applicable.) Some Honda dealers
lease home systems for between $34 and $79 monthly. Honda pegs the
fuel cost at 3.75 cents/mile, compared to 8.8 cents/mile for the
gasoline-powered Civic.
Regarding the extraction and distribution of natural gas, the fuel
is often sourced along with or near oil reserves, and involves
similarly invasive drilling methods. Accidents do happen from time
to time and, though natural gas does not spill like oil and cause
ground and sea-level ecosystem disturbances, it rises into the
atmosphere where it contributes directly to global warming.
CONTACTS: Database for State Incentives for Renewables and
Efficiency, www.dsireusa.org
; ACEEE’s Green Book,
www.greenercars.com ; Honda Civic GX,
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx .
Dear Earth Talk:
Artificial turf has been popular
on sports fields for decades for a variety of reasons, but is it
also a good environmentally friendly option for residential
lawns?- Sharon Chinchilla, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Copyright: Getty Images
The use of artificial turf for residential lawns is a growing
trend across America, notably in regions where water supplies have
a tough time keeping up with demand. Advocates of artificial turf
point out, for example, that a whopping 56,000 gallons of water
are applied each year to the average residential lawn.
Statistics also show that the mowing, watering and fertilizing of
natural grass contribute as much as two percent to U.S. overall
fossil fuel consumption. According to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, lawn care activities also account for about 10
percent of hazardous air pollution coast-to-coast. And studies on
Long Island in New York State have shown that up to 60 percent of
the synthetic nitrogen applied to lawns there ends up
contaminating local ground water supplies.
But given the choice between real or artificial turf, most
environmental advocates still prefer real grass. Besides helping
to create the oxygen we breathe through photosynthesis, plants
(including grass) are an integral part of any living ecosystem.
They filter water and sunlight down into the soil where worms,
insects and moisture work in concert to hold the soil firm. And
they prevent flooding while providing habitat and nourishment for
birds, bees and other wildlife.
In contrast, synthetic turf is made out of petroleum-derived
plastic. In cases where fake turf is installed improperly,
chemicals from the plastic can seep into the ground below and
potentially contaminate groundwater. Some formulations of
synthetic turf require infill such as silicon sand or granulated
rubber, either of which may contain potentially toxic heavy metals
that can leach into the water table below. The granules have also
been known to produce a distinctly unpleasant odor at times. And
consumers trying to reduce their carbon footprints should keep in
mind that manufacturing and shipping artificial turf, like any
synthetic product, generates large amounts of greenhouse gas
emissions.
Nonetheless, because of concerns about water usage, some
municipalities are trying to encourage homeowners to switch to
synthetic turf. Back in 2002 city managers in drought-ridden Las
Vegas began offering homeowners rebates of $1 per square foot to
replace their thirsty natural grass lawns with synthetic turf. And
in July 2007 board members of southern California’s Metropolitan
Water District, which serves 18 million people across six
counties, initiated a similar program to try to make a dent in
outdoor water use in the region, 50 to 70 percent of which is
devoted to the watering of residential lawns.
Of course, installing artificial turf isn’t the only way to
minimize the environmental impact of one’s yard. Converting grass
lawns over to less resource intensive landscaping—known as
“xeriscaping”—is also catching on. Drought-tolerant native shrubs,
plants and ornamental grasses don’t require large amounts of
water, fertilizer or pesticides to survive. Many groundcover
plants naturally hold back weeds and contribute to the health of
the soil. Even rock gardens are attractive and essentially
maintenance-free. Given all the natural alternatives, homeowners
need not convert their back yards over to fake turf.
CONTACTS: Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s
BeWaterWise,
www.bewaterwise.com
Dear EarthTalk:
What alternatives are there to traditional fertilizers and other
chemicals typically used on golf courses? What other actions can
be taken to make golf courses kinder to the environment?
-Kathy McGuire, PGA
National Resort, Palm Beach Gardens, FL

Copyright: Getty Images
Although golf courses are large areas of open space, certainly
more desirable ecologically than equivalent amounts of paved
highway or polluting industrial operations, they are less “green”
than they appear. Golf maintenance operations use significant
amounts of synthetic fertilizer and pesticides (more,
acre-for-acre than farms in some cases), which can contaminate
nearby lakes and streams as well as local groundwater.
A typical golf course uses about a half
ton of chemical pesticides each year, at least some of which runs
off into nearby groundwater sources. With nearly 20,000 courses
now in operation across the United States and Canada, such
problems affect just about every community from coast-to-coast.
Luckily several institutions and organizations have been working
to minimize the environmental impacts of golf courses.
According to researchers at New York’s
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), there are many ways to
create and maintain golf courses that remain attractive to golfers
without excessive use of toxic chemicals. Examples include:
selecting turf grasses that match local environmental conditions
so as to reduce susceptibility to pests; mowing less often as
longer grass increases natural pest resistance; using slow-release
and natural organic fertilizers; taking into account pest
forecasts to be better prepared for potential infestations; and
introducing the natural enemies of problem pests and natural
bacteria-based fungicides.
More information and tips are available
for free via the website of the Environmental Institute for Golf,
which publishes an informative series of best management practices
for golf course managers looking to improve their facilities’
eco-footprint. Some tips include: planting vegetative buffers
around golf course water bodies to prevent the transmission of
fertilizers and pesticides into the water; leaving grass clippings
and leaves on the ground where possible to serve as natural
compost in low-maintenance areas; and timing the application of
fertilizer to minimize loss from rainfall and maximize uptake by
grasses.
One of the
nation’s leaders in green golf course management is San
Francisco’s Harding Park, where course managers eschew
conventional pesticides and fertilizers in favor of microbes to
kill pests and soap to get rid of weeds. They also hand-pluck
weeds, flush out moles with hoses, use traps to catch harmful
insects, and choose native plants wherever possible. Beneficial
insects such as ground beetles, ladybugs, fireflies, praying
mantis, spiders and wasps help keep harmful insects at bay and
also pollinate plants and decompose organic matter that serves as
natural fertilizer. These and other alternative management methods
make the course one of the greenest stops on the Professional
Golfers Association (PGA) tour.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) is also taking steps. EPA’s Wetlands Division consulted with
several leading nonprofits and golf institutions on the creation
of a booklet, “The Environmental Principles for Golf Courses in
the United States,” outlining the environmental responsibilities
of golf courses. It is posted at the website of the United States
Golf Association (USGA).
CONTACTS:
Environmental Institute for Golf,
www.eifg.org; Environmental
Principles for Golf Courses in the United States,
www.usga.org/turf/articles/environment/general/environmental_principles.html
Dear EarthTalk:
Bottled water companies would have us all believe that tap water
is unsafe to drink. But I’ve heard that most tap water is actually
pretty safe. Is this true?
-
Sam Tsiryulnikov, Los Angeles, CA

Copyright: Getty Images
Tap water is not without its problems. The
nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) in 2005 tested
municipal water in 42 states and detected some 260 contaminants in
public water supplies, 140 of which were unregulated chemicals,
that is, chemicals for which public health officials have no
safety standards for, much less methods for removing them.
EWG did find over 90 percent compliance on the part
of water utilities in applying and enforcing standards that exist,
but faults the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for
failing to establish standards on so many of the contaminants—from
industry, agriculture and urban runoff—that do end up in our
water.
Despite these seemingly alarming stats, the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has also conducted
extensive municipal as well as bottled water tests, says: “In the
short term, if you are an adult with no special health conditions,
and you are not pregnant, then you can drink most cities’ tap
water without having to worry.” This is because most of the
contaminants in public water supplies exist at such small
concentrations that very large quantities would need to be
ingested for health problems to occur.
NRDC does caution, however, that pregnant women,
young children, the elderly, people with chronic illnesses and
those with weakened immune systems can be especially vulnerable to
the risks posed by contaminated water.” The group suggests that
anyone at risk obtain a copy of their city’s annual water quality
report (they are mandated by law) and review it with their
physician.
As for bottled water, it is first important to know
that 25 to 30 percent of it comes straight from municipal tap
water systems, despite the pretty nature scenes on the bottles
that imply otherwise. Some of that water goes through additional
filtering, but some does not. NRDC has researched bottled water
extensively and has found that it is “subject to less rigorous
testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap
water.” Bottled water is required to be tested less frequently
than tap water for bacteria and chemical contaminants, and U.S.
Food and Drug Administration bottled water rules allow for some
contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform, contrary to EPA tap
water rules which prohibit any such contamination.
Similarly, NRDC found that there are no
requirements for bottled water to be disinfected or tested for
parasites such as cryptosporidium or giardia, unlike more
stringent EPA rules regulating tap water. This leaves open the
possibility, says NRDC, that some bottled water may present
similar health threats to those with weakened immune systems, the
elderly and others they caution about drinking tap water.
The
bottom line is that we have invested considerably in highly
efficient municipal water delivery systems that bring this
precious liquid straight to our kitchen faucets anytime we need
it. Instead of taking that for granted and relying on bottled
water instead, we need to make sure our tap water is clean and
safe for all.
CONTACTS: Environmental
Working Group,
www.ewg.org/tapwater/findings.php;
EPA Local Drinking Water Information,
www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.htm;
NRDC,
www.nrdc.org/water.
Dear
EarthTalk: I visited New York
City recently and could not believe the number of taxicabs on the
streets. Are there any efforts to “green up” these vehicles? They
must be real gas-guzzlers, considering all the idling and
stop-and-go traffic they face. -
Justin Grant, Berkeley, CA

Copyright: Getty Images
Just this past May, as part of a larger
effort to make New York the “greenest major metropolis on the
planet,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an ambitious plan to
switch over the city’s 13,000-vehicle taxi cab fleet from gas
guzzling traditional cars to (comparatively) fuel-sipping
gasoline-electric hybrids.
So far, 375 New York City cabs are
hybrids, but Bloomberg wants that to rise to 1,000 by the end of
2008, with an additional 20 percent of the cab fleet going hybrid
each year thereafter. The reason taxis are an ideal fit for hybrid
technology is that they spend much time idling in traffic and
while waiting to load passengers. Hybrid cars, which pair a
conventional gas engine with an electric motor, essentially shut
down when they are idling, minimizing emissions significantly. New
York’s plan, once fully realized, is expected to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions of the city’s taxi fleet by over 215,000 tons
yearly.
And even though cabbies will have to pay
a premium to replace their existing vehicles with hybrids, most
are behind the move, as it will save them about $10,000 yearly in
fuel costs alone. According to The New York Times, 90
percent of the city’s cab fleet is now made up of Ford Crown
Victorias, which get only 10-15 miles per gallon (mpg) in city
traffic. Ford’s own Escape hybrid would improve that to 34 mpg.
“I have been wanting to drive a hybrid
taxi for years now,” says Kwame Corsi, a cabbie from the Bronx.
“Once this law allows us to drive hybrids, our gas mileage will
skyrocket and our expenses will plummet. We pollute less and make
more money—who can argue against that?” New York cabbies now ready
to take the plunge can choose from any one of six different hybrid
models, including the Ford Escape, Toyota’s Prius and Highlander,
the Lexus RX 400H, and Honda’s Accord and Civic.
New York is not the first to go hybrid with its cab
fleet. San Francisco took the plunge in 2005 when 40 Ford Escape
hybrid taxis hit the streets there. San Francisco is also home to
140 Ford Crown Victoria cabs retrofitted to run on cleaner-burning
compressed natural gas (CNG), which has been shown to reduce
ozone-forming emissions by 80 percent as compared to traditional
gasoline. The city’s goal is to have half its taxi fleet—some 600
vehicles—powered by cleaner-energy sources (either hybrids or CNG)
by 2008.
And Chicago’s Carriage Cab Company just welcomed
its first hybrid, also a Ford Escape. It is joined in the city by
just one other hybrid, that of an independent operator who began
taking fares in June in his Toyota Prius. Chicago has ordered taxi
firms with over 50 cabs to add at least one hybrid to their
fleets. The cities of Denver, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts
are also looking to make the transition.
And while hybrid taxis may be all the
rage in San Francisco and New York now, such vehicles have been
plying the streets of Vancouver, British Columbia since 2000, when
cabbie Andrew Grant first started offering taxi rides in his
Toyota Prius there. Today about a third of all the taxis in
Vancouver are hybrids and local lawmakers recently announced that
the city would approve only eco-friendly vehicles when handling
applications for new taxi companies or additions to existing
fleets.
CONTACTS:
Andrew Grant’s “Hybrid Taxi Driver” Blog,
http://www.hybridcars.com/blogs/taxi;New
York City’s Taxi & Limousine Commission,
www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/home/home.shtml
Dear
EarthTalk: How do I learn how
to build an all-around “eco-home?” My wife and I have some land in
Delaware and would like to build a state-of-the-art green home on
the site. - Zachary Jahnigen, Frankford, DE

Copyright: Getty Images
There are many ideas as to what
constitutes an “eco-home,” depending upon how pure one wants to
be. But certain common elements—such as energy efficiency,
responsible materials sourcing and minimal landscape
disruption—must be in place to meet most environmentalists’
criteria. And with technologies improving and prices coming down,
eco-homes are no longer the domain of the wealthy, as even a
modest building can incorporate green features.
According to the U.S. Green Building
Council (USGBC), a non-profit network of practitioners of
environmentally friendly construction, a green home “uses less
energy, water and natural resources; creates less waste; and is
healthier and more comfortable for the occupants.” The
organization is continuously updating its Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines, which help realtors,
developers, architects and builders create high performance green
buildings of every stripe.
USGBC recently launched a special set of
benchmarks—LEED for Homes—devoted specifically to the design and
construction of residential buildings. Builders or owners can
evaluate every step of the home design and construction process
according to standards set forth under these guidelines, which aim
for sustainably sourced materials, lower energy and water usage,
reduced greenhouse gas emissions and less exposure to mold and
other indoor toxins. USGBC research indicates that the net cost of
owning a LEED home is comparable to that of owning a conventional
home. Since LEED for Homes was launched in 2005, more than 375
builders representing 6,000 homes across the U.S. have built
according to its standards.
Other organizations also weigh-in on
what constitutes an “eco-home.” Juliet Cuming, of the
Vermont-based nonprofit Earth Sweet Home Institute, lays out
several criteria that anyone can use when planning the design and
construction of an environmentally-friendly home: Does the home
plan reduce energy and resources? Does it re-use existing
resources? Are materials used recyclable or biodegradable once no
longer usable? Is the home healthy to producers and occupants and
also to the installers of the materials? Is the plan affordable
and available? Will the resulting home be durable?
“The ideal eco-home would be built in a
place where it will have as little negative impact as possible on
the plants, wildlife and humans in the area,” says Cuming. “The
home will be sited and designed to take advantage of shade in the
summer and sun in the winter.” She adds that a true eco-home
should be crafted out of materials derived from local sources.
Those looking to learn more about
eco-homes have lots of information to wade through online and in
print. A good place to start is Environmental Building News,
a monthly newsletter on green design and construction published by
Building Green, Inc. It features comprehensive, practical
information on a wide range of topics—from renewable energy and
recycled materials to land-use planning and indoor air quality.
CONTACTS: LEED for Homes,
www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=147; Earth
Sweet Home Institute,
www.earthsweethome.com;
Environmental Building News;
www.buildinggreen.com.
-Kidsfreesouls Spanish Blog
Dear EarthTalk: I’m moving in
eight weeks and am trying to find some “green guidance” for making
my relocation as eco-friendly as possible. Any tips?
- Holly,
Elizabethtown, PA

Copyright: Getty Images
Moving
may be inherently unfriendly to the environment given that carting
stuff around means expending lots of fuel and emitting a lot of
pollutants, but there are ways to “relocate responsibly.” For
starters, the less stuff we accumulate in the first place the less
we have to pick up and move elsewhere—so fighting the pack-rat
urge and minimizing trips to shopping malls in the first place are
good prerequisites.
Beyond
what may already be too late to undo, though, one can lessen their
environmental footprint when moving by first giving away or
selling any non-essential items. Neighborhood yard sales and
giveaways are one way to go, while websites like Ebay, Craig’s
List and Freecycle provide virtual ways to unload unwanted stuff.
Books can be donated to local libraries, and most schools will be
happy to make use of old computers. And Goodwill and other
charities will gladly take old clothes for resale in thrift
outlets.
While
all that’s going on, the environmentally-conscious mover would
also want to be hoarding bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, padded
envelopes and other packing materials instead of going out and
buying them new. Many liquor, grocery, hardware and other retail
stores are happy to give away large cardboard boxes they no longer
need and would have to otherwise discard or recycle. Calling
around first will save the headache and the emissions of driving
around to individual stores one-by-one to ask them.
As to
the move itself, if you’re fortunate enough to be relocating
within Orange County, Los Angeles one green option is to rent
“RecoPack” moving boxes from Earth Friendly Moving. The company,
which has plans to expand nationwide over the next five years,
provides five different stackable sizes of durable moving cartons
made from recycled plastic bottles. The rental cost is just a
dollar per box per week—and the company’s biodiesel-powered trucks
will drop-off and pick-up the boxes before and after the move.
Not in
southern California? Rent-a-Crate, which has 13 U.S. locations
coast to coast, also rents re-usable (though not recycled) plastic
moving crates that they’ll deliver to and pick up from any
location. The company works extensively in the office relocation
business, too, and rents other reusable accessories such as
dollies for rolling heavy crates and crates for delicate items
like computers and even medical x-ray films.
And
remember, there is more to moving green than just moving. Use only
eco-friendly cleaning products when scrubbing down the old place.
If you live in the Washington, DC or Baltimore, MD area, a crew
from Green Clean will send a professional crew that uses only
nontoxic, biodegradable cleaners. Otherwise, health food stores
all carry green cleaners that you can use yourself or instruct the
hired help to use.
A tip
from the Care2 “Green Moving Guide”: File a temporary change of
address with your post office rather than a permanent one to cut
down on junk mail at the new place. The U.S. Postal Service sells
lists of permanent address changes to direct marketers, but
doesn’t bother doing so with temporary addresses.
CONTACTS: Rent-a-Crate,
www.rentacrate.com,
800-427-2832; Earth Friendly Moving,
www.earthfriendlymoving.com/recopack.php;
Green Clean,
www.greencleanUSA.org; Care2
Green Moving Guide,
www.care2.com/greenliving/green-moving-guide.html.
- Kidsfreesouls Spanish Blog
Dear
EarthTalk: How much pollution
do motorcycles generate? Are there efforts to make them more
eco-friendly?
- Matt Lackore, Rochester, MN

Copyright: Getty Images
Motorcycles typically get about double the gas mileage of even the
most fuel-efficient cars—but that doesn’t mean they are green.
Despite getting 60-70 miles per gallon, motorcycles are not
subject to the same rigorous emissions standards as cars and light
duty trucks, even though they spew up to 15 times more pollution
per mile, mostly in the form of smog-causing hydrocarbons and
nitrogen oxides.
Increasingly stringent regulations in Europe and the U.S. have
forced automakers to make their engines cleaner, but motorcycle
manufacturers have not been held to such high standards and have
therefore been slow to implement similar advances. According to
the European Commission, motorcycles—despite only accounting for
about three percent of total traffic volume in Europe—are expected
to generate as much as 14 percent of that continent’s total
hydrocarbon emissions by 2010.
But
there is light at the end of the tunnel, thanks in large part to
the state of California, which in 2004 passed legislation to green
up motorcycles sold and ridden in that state. California’s new
standards dictate that hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions
from motorcycles top out at only 0.8 grams per kilometer (g/km),
down from 1975-set standards of between 5.0 and 14.0 g/km
(depending on engine size)
And in
2005, the United Nations’ World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle
Regulations, which works internationally to set vehicle emissions
standards, issued a new set of motorcycle emissions testing
guidelines that will make it easier for manufacturers to design
more green-friendly motorcycles.
In the
wake of these developments, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) established new federal rules that require motorcycle
makers to reduce their products’ emissions by 50 percent. In place
since the beginning of the 2006 model year, these new rules are
expected to cut combined hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions
from motorcycles by about 54,000 tons a year, while also saving
approximately 12 million gallons of fuel annually by preventing it
from escaping from fuel hoses and fuel tanks.
Many
manufacturers are rising to the challenge. Honda, already a world
leader in the development of greener cars, is putting the
finishing touches on its new “idling stop system” that cuts fuel
consumption and exhaust emissions by turning off the engine
instead of idling at stop lights and in traffic jams. And
Intelligent Energy, a British company, is developing an Emissions
Neutral Vehicle (ENV), a motorcycle powered by a detachable
hydrogen-powered fuel cell. The vehicle can reach speeds topping
50 miles per hour while making virtually no noise, and can run for
up to four hours without refueling. Bigger, faster and longer
running versions of the ENV are currently in the works, and should
become widely available in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere within a
few years.
CONTACTS: California’s “New
Standards for On-Road Motorcycles,”
www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/motcycle/onrdmc.htm; EPA’s Motorcycle
Emissions Info,
www.epa.gov/otaq/roadbike.htm;
Honda Motorcycles,
http://powersports.honda.com/the_story/environment;
Intelligent Energy,
www.intelligent-energy.com.
Dear EarthTalk: What is the
status of Sea Turtle protection efforts? Don’t many of them die in
fishnets and, as a result, are threatened with extinction?
- Matthew Lieberman, Wellesley, MA

Copyright: Getty Images
Given
their tenuous existence, sea turtles are considered by many
environmentalists as ambassadors for the world’s troubled oceans.
They have graced the seas for more than 200 million years and
survived whatever catastrophe befell the dinosaurs. But they are
now facing a sharp decline in numbers around the world due mainly
to human threats such as the alteration of beach nesting habitat,
the harvesting of eggs for food, entanglement in fishing nets and
pollution of ocean waters.
Found
in all the warm ocean waters of the Earth, sea turtles generally
remain at sea, returning to the surface for air and only coming
ashore to lay eggs and nest. The five species of sea turtles found
in and around North America are the leatherback, green turtle,
hawksbill, Kemp’s ridley and loggerhead.
Sea
turtles are protected in and around U.S. waters under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA), which lists the hawksbill,
leatherback, Kemp’s ridley and green turtle as “endangered,” while
the loggerhead is listed as “threatened.” (A species is considered
endangered when it is on the brink of extinction; if it is
experiencing serious threats that may eventually lead to its
extinction, but the situation is not yet critical, it is
classified as threatened.) Harming, harassing, killing, importing,
selling or transporting any sea turtle, hatchling or eggs is
considered a violation of federal law punishable by a stiff fine
and jail time.
Outside
the U.S., many other countries have similar laws designed to
protect the world’s remaining and beloved sea turtles. And the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES),
an international agreement signed by 169 countries and designed to
prevent the trade in endangered wild animals and their parts, also
protects sea turtles. But such measures often look much better on
paper; enforcement efforts are often inadequate and as a result
sea turtle populations continue to plummet.
According to the Florida-based Caribbean Conservation Corporation
(also known as the Sea Turtle Survival League), present goals for
protecting sea turtles include: cracking down on the illegal
international trade in turtles and turtle products; forcing
fishing boats to use “turtle excluder devices” in their nets to
decrease turtle deaths; establishing more coastal refuges to keep
development from encroaching on turtle nesting beaches; decreasing
artificial light near nesting beaches (light
scares turtles away); enforcing laws to minimize the dumping of
pollutants and solid waste into the ocean and near-shore waters;
and stepping up turtle monitoring activities so conservation
efforts can stay focused where they are most needed.
Individuals can do their part by steering clear of sea turtles
when they are laying eggs on beaches, making sure to never remove
or handle a turtle egg in any way, and keeping house lights (and
even flashlights and camera flashes) off at night on or near
nesting beaches. Concerned
persons can also help by joining and supporting organizations
working to protect sea turtles, such as the Caribbean Conservation
Corporation, the Sea Turtle Restoration Project and the National
Save the Sea Turtle Foundation.
CONTACTS: Caribbean Conservation Corporation’s “Information
on Sea Turtles and Threats to Their Survival,”
www.cccturtle.org/sea-turtle-information.php;
Sea Turtle Restoration Project,
www.seaturtles.org; National
Save the Sea Turtle Foundation,
www.savetheseaturtle.org.
Dear EarthTalk:
Are mothballs safe to use? If not, are there any environmentally
friendly alternatives? -
Anna Wiener, Dearborn, Michigan
Even
though they are not as popular as they once were, mothballs are
still used by many people to keep stored clothes, furniture and
carpets free of hungry pests like moths. But the very ingredients
that make mothballs so effective as household pesticides—namely
naphthalene or paradichlorobenzene (PDB)—also make them dangerous
to any person or animal who breathes the fumes or ingests them
directly. Such chemicals are often listed as primary offenders
when household air is tested for indoor air pollution.
Exposure to naphthalene or PDB can induce relatively minor human
health problems such as nausea, vomiting, headache, coughing,
burning eyes and shortness of breath. The World Health
Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer
considers both naphthalene and PDB to be hazardous carcinogens as
well. These chemicals, which are also found in some dry cleaning
agents as well as household air fresheners and solid toilet-bowl
deodorizers, have been found to nearly double the risk of
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma—a cancer of the blood—for those who come
into frequent contact with them.
So
what’s a conscientious homemaker to do? For starters, removing all
mothballs and their flakes from the home is a good first step.
Experts suggest donning gloves and even perhaps a mask before
manually removing intact mothballs. Affected clothing can be
machine-washed and dried several times, preferably on high heat
settings. If the smell of mothballs continues to linger, any such
clothes can be ironed—also with high heat settings, which tend to
break down the active chemicals quicker. Sunlight also breaks down
naphthalene and PDB, so leaving any affected items outside on hot
sunny days may also help.
Carpets
and upholstery co-mingled with mothballs should be vacuumed
thoroughly, with vacuum cleaner bags containing mothball traces
emptied immediately outdoors. If the mothball smell lingers after
vacuuming, a professional cleaning might do the trick, although
such services can introduce other harmful chemicals, such as the
carcinogen perchloroethylene, into the household as well. (ChemDry
and Zoots both offer in-home carpet and upholstery cleaning
services that do not rely on harmful chemicals.) After any kind of
mothball removal effort, the cleaned house or closet should be
aired out, ideally with one or more fans blowing as much fresh
outdoor air through as possible.
As to alternatives
for keeping moths and other critters away from clothes and other
valuable fabrics, Care2.com’s green home guru and author Annie
Berthold-Bond suggests using home-made sachet pillows filled with
a dried herb mixture combining two parts each of rosemary and
mint, one part each of thyme and ginseng, and eight parts whole
cloves. The herbs can be mixed and combined in the center of a
bandana or handkerchief that is then tied with a ribbon and placed
among the stored items. Also, Richards Housewares makes “Moth-Away
Herbal Moth Repellant,” a pre-packaged product that makes use of a
similar formula. It’s available from planetnatural.com and other
online environmental product websites.
CONTACTS:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Napthalene page,
www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/naphthal.html;
PlanetNatural Moth-Away page,
www.planetnatural.com/site/moth-away.html.

pic
copyright: getty images
Dear EarthTalk: Why do some
people complain about fluoride in drinking water and toothpaste? I
thought it was beneficial for dental health?
- Becky Johnston,
Shoreline, WA
Communities began adding fluoride to water supplies in the early
1940s after decades of studies into why some Colorado residents
were exhibiting a discoloration or “mottling” of the teeth but at
the same time very low rates of actual decay. The culprit turned
out to be high concentrations of a naturally-occurring fluoride
that was running off into the water from Pike’s Peak after
rainfalls. Research later concluded that adding small, controlled
amounts of fluoride into public water supplies would act as a form
of community-wide cavity prevention without causing the
undesirable mottling known at the time as “Colorado stain.”
Today,
supporters of fluoridation cite research from the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control showing that the very inexpensive fluoridation of
drinking water has since correlated to significant reductions in
incidences of tooth decay (15-40 percent) in communities across
the country. But skeptics worry we may be getting too much of a
good thing. While small amounts of fluoride will prevent tooth
decay, excessive amounts can lead not only to irreversible tooth
discoloration (today called “fluorosis”) but also to other health
issues, including an increased risk of bone breakage and
osteoporosis.
The
problem, says Fluoride Action Network (FAN), which is opposed to
fluoridation, is that the very water supplies that are treated for
dental purposes are also used in the making of many common food
products—from baby formula and cereal to juices, sodas, wines,
beers and even fresh produce. And with most toothpastes also
adding fluoride, many people are ingesting far more fluoride than
they should.
The
main concern for most people is the discoloration of children’s
second teeth once the baby teeth are gone. Besides being
embarrassing, there is no cure. And some doctors worry that
excessive fluoride may actually be promoting tooth decay rather
than preventing it—and harming kids in other ways, particularly as
they get older. FAN cites studies showing how low-to-moderate
doses of fluoride can lead to eczema, reduced thyroid activity,
hyperactivity, IQ deficits, premature puberty and even bone
cancer.
On the
other side of the debate, concerns have risen that our increased
reliance on non-fluoridated bottled water instead of tap water may
be leading to increases in tooth decay (some bottled waters have
added fluoride). However, speaking in a May 2002 UPI Science
News article, John W. Stamm, dean of the School of Dentistry
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a
spokesperson for the American Dental Association, said, “It’s very
important to realize that there are many sources for body
fluids…The fact that one may be consuming variable amounts of
bottled water seems to me to be insufficient reason to be
concerned about a fluoride deficient diet.”
Avoiding fluoride is difficult for those whose local water is
fluoridated. And the only filters that can strain fluoride out of
water are expensive ones that employ reverse osmosis, activated
alumina or distillation. Switching to unfluoridated
toothpaste—many varieties are available from natural health
retailers—is one way to cut down on fluoride intake, especially
for those who swallow toothpaste when they are brushing.
Dear EarthTalk:
What is the population status of Africa’s large mammals, such as
elephants, lions, rhinos, and hippos? Are they all headed for
extinction?
-Elias Corey, Seattle, WA

pic
copyright: getty images
Overall, the variety and abundance of
wildlife in Africa, as elsewhere around the world, is shrinking
fast as human population grows and encroaches ever more on once
wild and pristine landscapes. While illegal hunting (known in
Africa as “poaching”) still runs rampant despite government
crackdowns, the spread of logging and agriculture contributes even
more to the decline of many species of large mammals.
The population of the continent’s
biggest mammal, the African elephant, has declined by more than 99
percent since the 1930s, when as many as 10 million of the great
creatures roamed free there. At last count, biologists estimated
that only about 600,000 elephants are left in all of Africa.
Elephant populations are thriving in
areas of southern Africa, thanks to massive government
conservation efforts, including a ban on the ivory trade as part
of the 144-nation strong Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which limits
trade in wild animals and their parts and accords varying degrees
of protection to more than 33,000 species of plants and wildlife.
Africa’s
hippopotamus population is also suffering, partly because of the
very ban on ivory. Bullied out of the ivory trade, many African
poachers have turned to hippo teeth, which measure as long as 24
inches and have become a valuable substitute for ivory. A 2003
census of the hippos of Virunga National Park in the African
Republic of Congo, for example, found only 1,300 animals, down
from an estimated 29,000 in a previous count three decades
earlier. In neighboring Burundi, another recent census found that
two thirds of that country’s hippo population—some 200 animals—had
disappeared in just a five-year period.
As for rhinos, only 10,000 individuals
exist around the world, down 85 percent since just 1970. Poaching
has been the main culprit in the decimation of these animals, with
a single pair of black rhino horns—coveted by Arabs in oil-rich
Yemen who collect them as symbols of wealth and status—fetching as
much as $50,000 on the black market. Of the two rhino species in
Africa, the white rhino is faring slightly better and has
rebounded from near extinction but isn’t quite in the clear yet.
The black rhino, down to only about 2,500 animals, is still
considered critically endangered, however. Where it once roamed
across the entire African continent, the black rhino is barely
hanging on in just a few East African countries.
Lions may be faring a little better, but
not much. The nonprofit African Wildlife Foundation reports that
the continent’s lion population has fallen off by half since the
early 1950s when an estimated 40,000 “kings of the jungle” ruled.
Besides contending with habitat loss to ever expanding human
settlement, Africa’s lions have also had to deal with hunting and
poisoning by livestock ranchers.
Although limited conservation efforts
within Africa and internationally are helping some of these
species remain barely viable, fighting extinction is an uphill
battle, especially when expanding human population and sputtering
economies force people to occupy previously wild lands and
generate income by any means necessary. Individuals can help by
donating money and time to organizations committed to saving these
magnificent animals. With the extinction clock ticking fast,
there’s no time to waste.
CONTACTS:
African Wildlife Foundation,
www.awf.org; Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora
(CITES),
www.cites.org
Dear
EarthTalk: I’ve been
noticing a lot of organic wines lately in the supermarket. Is
this going to be a continuing trend? --
Peter Toot, via email
pic
copyright: getty images
The
recent upsurge of interest in organic foods has indeed not escaped
the wine business and, yes, organic wines are more popular and
more readily available than ever.
According to the Organic Trade Association, an industry group
representing organic food producers and distributors, U.S. sales
of wines made with organic grapes reached $80 million in 2005, a
28 percent increase over the previous year. Such sales represent
little more than one percent of the total U.S. domestic wine
market, but the association expects organic wine sales to grow
about 17 percent a year through 2008, mirroring growth across all
sectors of organic agriculture.
There
are two types of organic labeling on wines. The vast majority of
wines made with organically grown grapes do not qualify for the
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) white-and-green
“certified organic” label. This is because, like many conventional
wines, they include added sulfite preservatives to prevent
oxidation and bacterial spoilage.
While
trace amounts of sulfites occur naturally in wines during the
fermentation process, most producers add more, later in the
winemaking process, to prolong shelf life. An estimated one
percent of consumers, primarily those with asthma, report
sensitivity to wines with larger amounts of sulfites. Symptoms can
include a quickened pulse, lung irritation, skin redness and
rashes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use
of sulfites on fruits and vegetables in 1986 after 13 consumer
deaths were linked to them.
Current USDA rules allow wines containing fewer than 10 parts per
million (ppm) of sulfites and made from organic grapes to carry
the “certified organic” label. But organic wines may only
advertise that they are “made from organic grapes” if they contain
more than 10 ppm and up to 100 ppm of sulfites. Some organic grape
growers consider it unfair that the addition of sulfites—which
occur naturally and are not synthetic chemicals—should disqualify
their wines from “certified organic” standing.
Moving
beyond organic, a handful of vineyards have adopted so-called
“biodynamic” (BD) grape growing methods, adding to organic methods
the practice of cultivating, pruning and harvesting on a strict
calendar in sync with lunar cycles. Many view such practices
skeptically; nonetheless, proponents claim that BD wines taste
better and remain drinkable longer. The website Wine Anorak
(“anorak” is British slang for “geek” or “nerd”) lists biodynamic
wine labels from around the world.
Some
leading organic (and low-sulfite) wines include varieties from
Ceago, Frey, LaRocca, Bonterra and Organic Wine Works. Meanwhile,
the California-based Organic Wine Company sources and distributes
organic wines from around the world. Additionally, California
Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), a trade group representing that
state’s organic agriculture industry, provides a free online
directory of California organic products and services, including
the state’s many purveyors of organic and biodynamic wines.
CONTACTS: Wine Anorak,
www.wineanorak.com/biodynamic3.htm;
Ceago,
www.ceago.com, Frey
Vineyards,
www.freywine.com; Bonterra,
www.bonterra.com; Organic
Wine Company,
www.theorganicwinecompany.com;
CCOF Organic Directory,
www.ccof.org/directories.php.
Dear EarthTalk:
What is “Sick
Building Syndrome?”
-- Annie Sundberg, New York, NY
The term “sick building
syndrome” was coined in the 1970s to describe a phenomenon whereby
occupants of a building would become ill without explanation, and
then symptoms would appear to decrease or go away altogether once
they left the building.
According to the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), those afflicted usually
experience symptoms such as headaches; eye, nose or throat
irritation; dry cough; dry or itchy skin; dizziness and nausea;
difficulty concentrating; fatigue; and extra sensitivity to odors.
Usually sick building syndrome is associated with commercial
buildings, but residential homes can also trigger symptoms. And,
according to the U.S. Green Building Council, more than half of
all U.S. schools have sick building syndrome.
Ironically, improvements in building design and energy efficiency
may be major contributors to the problem, as airtight indoor space
is not as well ventilated as areas cleansed by fresh air breezes.
According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health indoor air pollution, biological contaminants such as
bacteria and mold and inadequate ventilation have all contributed
to a rise in SBS in recent years.
Adhesives, upholstery, carpeting, copiers, manufactured wood
products, cleaning agents and pesticides are all sources of indoor
air pollution, as are many of the chemical smells and other odors
present in manufacturing and service settings. Also, according to
the EPA, outdoor
pollutants such as car exhaust can enter buildings through poorly
located air intake vents and windows and become trapped indoors.
It’s no wonder that cases of
sick building syndrome have been on the rise in recent years:
People are spending more and more time indoors, and building
materials, furniture and equipment contain many more synthetic
chemicals than they did 50 years ago. Buildings operated or
maintained in ways they were not originally designed for can
create problems, as can occupant activities such as smoking or the
use of colognes and perfumes.
Not
everyone is convinced that on-the-job illnesses are associated
with a building’s environmental factors. In a study conducted by
Dr. Mai Stafford, M.D. of the University College London Medical
School, symptoms were instead strongly linked to other factors
such as job stress and lacking social support at work. Dr.
Stafford and colleagues concluded,
“…if sick building syndrome is
reported in a building, management should consider causes beyond
the physical design and operation of the workplace and should
widen their investigation to include the organization of work
roles and the autonomy of the workforce.”
A combination of measures can
help reduce sick building syndrome, including increasing
ventilation and air distribution, removing known pollutants,
replacing water-stained ceiling tiles and carpets, introducing air
filtration—and educating management and maintenance personnel.
Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, at a minimum,
should meet local building code ventilation standards. And time
should always be allowed for new building materials to off-gas
chemical contaminants before occupancy.
CONTACTS: EPA Sick Building
Syndrome page,
www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/sbs.html .
Dear
EarthTalk: I know of issues
associated with the Earth’s ozone layer, but what is “ground level
ozone” and why is that a problem?
-- D. Goetz, Palm Beach, FL
Ozone (O3)
is a colorless gas formed when three atoms of oxygen bond
together. About 90 percent of the Earth’s ozone forms naturally in
the stratosphere, dozens of miles above ground. It forms the
protective layer that shields us from overexposure to the sun’s
radiation, and is therefore considered “good” ozone.
The
rest of the ozone found on Earth occurs at ground level, and forms
when nitrous oxides and various “volatile organic compounds’ (VOCs)—originating
with car exhaust, industrial emissions, chemicals and gasoline
vapors, as well as some natural sources—bond together in the
presence of sunlight.
Ground
level ozone, or “bad” ozone, is a key component of smog, which
wreaks havoc on human health and the environment, especially in
urban areas. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
reports that exposure to even relatively low concentrations of
ground-level ozone for extended periods (several hours) can
significantly reduce lung function and cause respiratory
inflammation in normal, healthy people. Symptoms can include chest
pain, coughing, nausea and congestion. For people with asthma and
other respiratory illnesses, exercising in ozone-rich air can be
deadly. Repeated exposure to high levels of ozone for several
months or more can produce permanent structural damage in the
lungs.
Beyond
its effects on our health, the EPA estimates that pollution from
ground-level ozone is responsible for nearly $2 billion in
agricultural crop yield losses in the U.S. alone each year. The
pervasive gas has also been shown to damage forests in California
and the eastern U.S. and to contribute to global warming.
Under
the mandate of the Clean Air Act, the EPA is charged with
monitoring and limiting the amount of ground-level ozone in urban
areas, and issuing warnings when smog levels are above its
standard of 0.12 parts per million. But new studies indicate that
ground-level ozone causes adverse health effects at even lower
concentrations. And, according to the EPA,
even rural areas suffer
increased ozone levels, because wind carries ozone and the
pollutants that form it hundreds of miles away from their original
sources. As a result, the EPA is
reviewing whether revisions to ozone standards and policies are
warranted.
High
concentrations of ground-level ozone are not as common in Canada,
but three urban regions—British Columbia’s Lower Fraser Valley,
the Windsor-Québec City Corridor and the Southern Atlantic Region
that includes New Brunswick and Nova Scotia—do suffer several “bad
air days” each year. The Canadian government, through its own
Clean Air Act, has even stricter standards for exposure to
ground-level ozone than in the U.S., though enforcement is not as
big a priority given the smaller scope of the problem there.
To help
minimize ground-level ozone, avoid car trips and the use of power
lawn equipment during especially hot or windless days. Paints and
solvents, most which off-gas VOCs that create ozone and form smog,
are also best to steer clear of with hot summer temperatures
coming on strong. Those concerned about their respiratory health
should follow local weather sources, most which post smog alerts.
CONTACTS: U.S. EPA
Ground-Level Ozone Information,
www.epa.gov/air/ozonepollution;
Canada’s Clean Air Act,
www.ec.gc.ca/cleanair-airpur/Home-WS8C3F7D55-1_En.htm.
BRINGING
UP BABY:
E – The Environmental Magazine on Raising an Earth-Friendly Child
When it comes to raising a natural baby, it’s not always easy
being green, E – The Environmental Magazine reports in its
May/June 2007 cover story, “Natural Baby, Toxic World” (now posted
at www.emagazine.com ).
The average baby poops and pees through some 8,000 diapers before
potty training. Then there are the baby food jars, the formula
cans, the plastic containers of wipes, the scented disposable
diaper bags, the plastic swings and teething rings and the crib
with all its trimmings. Of course, green varieties of every baby
product are available on-line and on supermarket shelves: from
non-toxic cleaners to chlorine-free diapers and organic cotton
crib mattresses. But is buying eco-versions of baby products
enough?
A new trend, E reports, is “Attachment Parenting,” which includes
modeling traditional cultures by wearing the baby in a wrap,
“co-sleeping” and regular breast feeding as opposed to cribs,
carriers, swings and bottles. Some have even taken that philosophy
to the next “natural” conclusion - going diaper free.
“For me it was the missing link,” says Melinda Rothstein,
co-founder of DiaperFreeBaby. She has used the method with her
son, Samuel, since he was eight months old and with her daughter
Hannah since birth. The practice consists of making observations
of the child’s facial expressions and verbalizations (like
squirming and grunting) whenever they have to go. Then the parent
can use any container that holds liquid to catch the waste, and
the contents get flushed down the toilet.
“It’s consistent with responding to the baby’s needs in a very
proactive way,” Rothstein says. “I nursed my son until he was
three, but he was out of diapers at 11 months. That’s considered
backwards in our society.” DiaperFreeBaby has grown to include
chapters in 35 U.S. states and 11 countries. The group Rothstein
helped found for other interested mothers in Boston has grown to
20 members.
Of course 90 percent of American parents continue to use
disposable diapers. The diaper service industry enjoyed a heyday
in the early 1990s, but now, says Jack Shiffert, executive
director of the National Association of Diaper Services, it’s
nearly out of business. But disposables are made with a bevy of
chemicals, including chlorine bleaching agents and volatile
organic compounds such as toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene and
dipentene, which have been linked to cancer and brain damage. And
3.5 million tons of disposable diapers are sent to landfills each
year. About 38,000 are tossed every minute in the U.S.
A company called gDiapers thinks they've found the green solution.
Founders and parents Jason and Kim Graham-Nye created a diaper
liner made of sustainable tree-farmed fluff pulp and other
flushable materials. The liners contain no elemental chlorine, no
perfumes or dyes, no plastic layer and no latex. What’s more,
gDiapers fully decompose and the company actually encourages users
to put their wet liners into compost piles, where they will
“provide a rich source of nitrogen and organic matter.”
Meanwhile, the organic foods industry has been growing at a rate
of 20 to 24 percent annually over the last few years, and the baby
food aisle of local supermarkets has seen a substantial increase
in organic selections from companies like Gerber’s and Earth’s
Best.
But the biggest advances in organic meals for baby are happening
in the supermarket freezer. Shazi Visram launched the
Brooklyn-based company, Happy Baby, on Mother’s Day 2006, joining
other frozen baby food lines by makers like Plum Organics. Happy
Baby’s frozen meals come in individual cubes in flavors like
“Smarter Squash and Wiser Apple,” and “Baby Dahl and Mama Grain.”
“In our country,” Visram says, “babies are started on processed
food.... to attain shelf stability for up to three years they cook
the food at high temperatures. It creates a seal but it cooks the
flavor and nutrients out.” Quoting her company’s motto Visram says
she wants parents to start "thinking outside the jar.”
And what about “child-proofing” the home? In its Blue Butterfly
Campaign, the Children’s Health Environment Coalition suggests
“Five Easy Steps” to a child-safe home. These are: avoiding
pesticides and insecticides; using nontoxic cleaners; cleaning
indoor air; eating more organic foods; and using plastic products
more wisely. Vinyl bath toys and plastic teethers and bottles
could contain phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA), which have been
shown to disrupt the reproductive systems of lab animals. While
legislation to ban these substances is under review, until then
consumers can use the recycling codes to determine content. If
it’s marked #7, it’s polycarbonate plastic and contains BPA; if
it's marked #3, it’s PVC plastic and contains potentially harmful
phthalates.
As concerns about household toxins grow, companies are eagerly
pushing their “green” versions of traditional cleaning products.
And scientific findings are supporting their cause. Well, sort of.
A University at California Berkeley study in April 2006 found that
many commonly used household cleaners emit toxic pollutants that
could lead to health problems. Of particular concern were products
containing glycol ethers or terpenes, compounds found in pine,
lemon and orange oils.
Unfortunately, says William Nazaroff, a UC Berkeley professor of
environmental engineering and the study’s lead author, terpenes
“appear in conventional products as well as some products that are
marketed as green.”
But parents can take precautions regardless of the cleaners they
use. They can dilute them, rinse surfaces after use, thoroughly
wash sponges after cleaning and/or store used cloths in a sealed
receptacle, and make sure the space that is being cleaned is well
ventilated during and several hours after cleaning.
(E – The Environmental Magazine distributes 50,000 copies six
times per year to subscribers and bookstores. E is also the
publisher of EarthTalk, a nationally syndicated environmental Q&A
column distributed free to over 1,300 newspapers, magazines and
websites throughout the United States and Canada
(
www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek ). Single copies of E’s
May/June 2007 issue are available for $5 postpaid from: E
Magazine, P.O. Box 2047, Marion, OH 43305. Subscriptions are
$19.95 per year, available at the same address. E is also on the
web at www.emagazine.com)
Dear
EarthTalk: Are we making
progress in cleaning up America’s rivers?
-- Maria B., via e-mail
pic
copyright: getty images
When
the Cuyahoga River caught fire in downtown Cleveland in June of
1969, a nation already becoming more aware of environmental
problems took note. Across the country, people were fed up with
bans on swimming and fishing due to growing pollution levels. And
rampant logging was clogging many a remote river system with soil
and debris, making them uninhabitable by the fish that had evolved
there for eons.
In
1972, in response to such concerns, Congress passed the landmark
Clean Water Act, which regulates the discharge of pollution into
America’s waterways. This important law has worked well to curtail
pollution and keep development in check, but it does little to
restore already damaged river ecosystems.
Luckily, a large array of local governments, nonprofit
organizations and ad hoc citizen groups has risen to the
challenge, making the United States the world’s nexus for river
restoration work. The National River Restoration Science Synthesis
Project, a 2005 survey conducted by leading river scientists,
identified 37,000 different river restoration projects either
completed or underway across the U.S.
According to the survey, American taxpayers and foundations have
invested nearly $15 billion in U.S. river restoration projects—or
about $1 billion yearly—since 1990. Projects include: reforesting
riverbanks to curb erosion; recreating natural river channels to
reduce downstream flooding; removing dams to allow fish to migrate
more freely; and restoring wetlands to better do their jobs at
naturally filtering pollution.
Some
specific high profile examples include Native Americans and
farmers working together to bring wild salmon back to Oregon’s
Umatilla River, and the creation of natural habitat and buffer
zones along Texas’ San Antonio River. And General Electric finally
complied with state and federal mandates to begin removal of the
PCBs they had dumped in New York’s Hudson River for years.
“It’s
no mystery why river restoration is booming,” says Andrew Fahlund
of the nonprofit American Rivers, a leading rivers advocacy group.
“Rivers in good condition more readily meet the needs of the
surrounding community than polluted and degraded rivers.”
A new
House budget resolution calls for increased spending on programs
to reduce the amount of raw sewage going into American streams and
to better manage the nation’s 168 designated “wild and scenic”
rivers. The resolution also calls for allocating funds for
removing obsolete dams that could rupture and threaten nearby
communities with potentially catastrophic flash floods.
Despite
the positive trends, not all rivers are doing well. American
Rivers’ annual list of “America’s Most Endangered Rivers”
highlights river ecosystems across the U.S. that are still in
disrepair or under threat. Those on the 2007 list include New
Mexico’s Santa Fe, New York’s Upper Delaware, Washington’s White
Salmon, Texas’s Neches, Wisconsin’s Kinnickinnic, North Carolina’s
Neuse, Alaska’s Chuitna, Iowa’s namesake Iowa River, Arkansas and
Oklahoma’s Lee Creek, and California’s San Mateo Creek.
CONTACTS: The National River
Restoration Science Synthesis Project,
nrrss.nbii.gov; American
Rivers,
www.americanrivers.org.
Dear
EarthTalk: Every time I visit
my local print shop, I am overwhelmed by the smell of chemicals,
and wonder if the health of the workers there is affected. Is
exposure to such chemicals known to cause human health problems,
and what can be done to clean up the printing process?
-- Bill W., Norwalk, OH

pic
copyright: getty images
That smell in your printer’s production
facility no doubt comes from the cocktail of hazardous chemicals
typically used in the printing process: inks, cleaning solvents,
waste water and sludge that “off-gas” volatile organic compounds
associated with eye and lung irritation, dizziness, headaches and
even cancer.
But just because your printer uses such
chemicals does not mean that all do. According to the Printer’s
National Environmental Assistance Center, printers can take
several steps to clean up their acts, such as avoiding
alcohol-based solvents, abandoning mineral oil based inks in favor
of vegetable-based inks and substituting chlorinated glues with
water-based alternatives. Along with using fewer chemicals and
more eco-friendly products, printers can go even greener by using
recycled materials and renewable energy.
Despite a printer’s good intentions,
though, it can be a daunting task to become more environmentally
friendly. Most print shops are small businesses and may not be
able to afford to upgrade their equipment or pay a premium for
cleaner alternatives to some of the chemicals and supplies they
have been using for years. Also, navigating the labyrinth of air,
hazardous waste and industrial wastewater treatment regulations
may be more work than a small company struggling to make payroll
can undertake.
A few programs have arisen to address
these issues. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s PrintSTEP
(Printers’ Simplified Total Environmental Partnership) program, in
pilot phase in Missouri and New Hampshire, aims to make
environmental and worker health and safety regulations clearer and
simpler. The program is designed to help individual states
streamline the regulatory process so that printers can spend time
greening their operations instead of wading through thousands of
pages of arcane regulatory gibberish just to see if their current
practices meet the letter of the law.
Another pilot program, the Great Printer
Environmental Initiative, is underway in Illinois, Michigan,
Minnesota and Wisconsin. This joint initiative of Environmental
Defense’s Pollution Prevention Alliance, the Printing Industries
of America and the Council of Great Lakes Governors encourages
printers to minimize their impact on human health and the
environment beyond what is required by government regulatory
agencies in environmental, health and safety compliance. And in
doing so, they can use their membership as a marketing tool to
attract customers interested in cleaner, greener printing.
Print buyers can do their part by
choosing firms that have implemented environmentally friendly
practices. Ask your printer about their health and safety programs
that go beyond the minimum requirements. And work with your
printer to develop your printed materials in ways that minimize
environmental impact, such as by using recycled paper and
soy-based inks. If you are located in one of the pilot states for
the Great Printer Environmental Initiative, be sure to choose a
company that participates.
CONTACTS:
Printer’s National Environmental Assistance Center,
www.pneac.org; PrintSTEP,
www.epa.gov/compliance/assistance/sectors/printstep.html.
Cleaner Cars are Coming...
Interest in cleaner and greener auto technology is exploding,
according to a comprehensive article in the March/April 2007 issue
of E – The Environmental Magazine. From fuel cells to plug-in
hybrids, the industry is showing more research and development
zeal than at any time since the halcyon days of 1900, when
gasoline, steam and electric vehicles (EVs) were competing in the
marketplace.
With seesawing gasoline prices and uncertainty about the future of
oil, consumers are finally focusing on fuel economy and looking
beyond big SUVs for their next vehicle. A consumer survey by the
influential J.D. Power and Associates last summer found that an
amazing 57 percent of respondents would consider buying a hybrid
car for their next vehicle, and 49 percent would consider a car
powered by E85 ethanol. Another survey, by Frost & Sullivan, found
that 80 percent are more concerned about fuel prices than they
were a year ago.
Despite these numbersand the fact that cars like the Toyota Prius
are proliferating on U.S. roadshybrids still made up slightly
more than one percent of the market in 2006. But by 2013, J.D.
Power predicts they'll have taken five percent. This year, expect
to see a wide range of new hybrids on the market, from the compact
Honda Fit Hybrid (with fuel economy in the mid-50s) to the Toyota
Sienna seven-seat minivan (approximately 40 mpg). You'll even be
able to buy a hybrid version of the Chevy Tahoe (though expect
only a 25 percent improvement over the SUV’s 17 mpg).
Indeed, after a protracted period of sticker shock at the pumps,
the public is showing interest in a range of cleaner automotive
technologies, from hybrids to fuel cells, battery vehicles,
plug-in hybrids and cars that run on biodiesel. Still, consumers
remain quite confused about both the potential and the timetable
for these technologies, and much of what they think they know is
wrong. For instance, it is still commonly believed that hybrid
vehicles need to be plugged in. Here’s some of what’s happening:
Hybrids
Although hybrid sales slowed somewhat at the end of 2006 as gas
prices eased and the federal credit was halved (it went, for
example, from $3,150 for the top-selling Toyota Prius to $1,575),
2006 was still a banner year, with 251,803 hybrids sold. There are
now more than 550,000 on U.S. roads. More than 200,000 hybrids
were sold in 2005, doubling the 88,000 sold in 2004. A plethora of
new hybrid models are on the way.
Diesel
Diesel vehicles are largely anathema to environmentalists and
California clean air regulators, but they’re becoming a majority
on the roads of Europe (where green consciousness is almost a
given) and they deserve a second look in the U.S., where their
numbers can only go up. The good news for diesel partisans is the
federally mandated low-sulfur (below 15 parts per million) diesel
fuel that went on the market at up to 76,000 American filling
stations late last year. It’s the cleanest diesel fuel in the
world.
Biodiesel
There are several forms of bio fuel, and the categories can
confuse the novice. Biodiesel, in blends with standard diesel of
five to 100 percent, has been refined to work without modification
in any newer diesel vehicle. With a kit from companies like
Greasecar, diesels can burn 100 percent vegetable oil, which can
be sourced and filtered from restaurants for a wholly recycled
fuel. Biodiesel, which offers both improved emissions and the
opportunity to thumb your nose at fossil fuel, is still largely a
grassroots enterprise, with enthusiasts banding together in
co-ops.
The Future with Batteries and Fuel Cells
If any one technology can replace the internal-combustion engine,
it’s the fuel cell, which doesn't burn anything but instead
converts hydrogen (stored in a tank as liquid or gas) to
electricity. And its only tailpipe emission is water vapor. Fuel
cells were invented in the mid-19th century and have since
provided electric power on NASA space missions, but they’re only
now becoming practical for ground transportation. And Electric
vehicles (EVs) are showing promise, especially with the advent of
high-output, lightweight lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries.
In 2007, America’s auto fleet is hardly green, but it’s getting
greener.
E
– The Environmental Magazine distributes 50,000 copies six times
per year to subscribers and bookstores. E is also the publisher of
EarthTalk, a nationally syndicated environmental Q&A column
distributed free to over 1,200 newspapers, magazines and websites
throughout the United States and Canada (
www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/aboute.html ). Single copies of
E’s March/April 2007 issue are available for $5 postpaid from: E
Magazine, P.O. Box 2047, Marion, OH 43305. Subscriptions are
$19.95 per year, available at the same address. E is also on the
web at www.emagazine.com
Dear
EarthTalk: My local recycler
won’t take my old phonebooks. What should I do with them?
-- Jake, Westport, CT
Many
recyclers won’t accept telephone books because the fibers used to
make the books’ lightweight pages are too short to be reformulated
into new paper. In fact, mixing old phonebooks in with other waste
paper can even contaminate the batch, hindering the recyclability
of the other paper fibers.
Nonetheless, phonebook papers are 100
percent recyclable and are used primarily to—you guessed it—make
new phonebooks! In fact, most phonebooks distributed today are
made from re-fabricated old phonebook pages mixed with some scrap
wood to strengthen the fibers for re-use. Old phonebooks are also
sometimes recycled into insulation materials, ceiling tiles and
roofing surfaces, as well as paper towels, grocery bags, cereal
boxes and office papers. In fact, in a gesture both symbolic and
practical, Pacific Bell/SBC now includes payment envelopes in its
bills created from old Smart Yellow Pages phonebooks.
According to Los Gatos, California’s
Green Valley Recycling, if all Americans recycled their phonebooks
for a year, we would save 650,000 tons of paper and free up two
million cubic yards of landfill space. Modesto, California’s
Parks, Recreation & Neighborhoods Department, which lets city
residents include phonebooks with their regular curbside pickup,
says that for each 500 books recycled, we save 7,000 gallons of
water, 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space, 17 to 31 trees and 4,100
kilowatts of electricity, enough to power an average home for six
months.
Consumers trying to do the right thing
should find out when and how their town or phone company will
accept phonebooks for recycling. Some will only take phonebooks
back at certain times of year, often when new books are being
distributed. Some schools, echoing the “newspaper drives” of
bygone days, run contests in which students bring old phonebooks
to school where they are then collected and sent off to recyclers.
But those whose towns won’t accept
phonebooks at all and who can’t find anywhere else to drop them
need not fret. Old phonebooks have many practical uses. Their
pages make excellent fire starters in a wood-burning fireplace or
outdoor fire pit. Balled up or shredded phonebook pages also make
nice packaging filler in place of problematic polystyrene
“peanuts.”
Phonebook pages can also be shredded and
used as mulch to keep weeds down in your garden. The paper is
biodegradable and will eventually return back to the soil. Those
with an artistic bent can use old phonebooks to make flipbook
style animated drawings, as described by animator Robert Truscio
on his “Drawings That Move” instructional website.
There are also a number of telephone
book collectors; some who make money selling their stock to those
with a historical interest or who are researching family
genealogies. Lifelong collector Gwillim Law sells old phonebooks
from all 50 U.S. states as well as from most Canadian and
Australian provinces.
CONTACTS:
Drawings That Move,
http://home.att.net/~RTRUSCIO/DRAWMOVE.htm ; Gwillim Law’s Old
Telephone Books website,
www.oldtelephonebooks.com .
Dear
EarthTalk:
Is there any theme for Earth Day this year, and what can I do to
participate?
-- Adele Davies,
Seattle, WA

The non-profit Earth Day Network, which organizes and coordinates
annual Earth Day celebrations around the U.S. and beyond, is
partnering this year with Step It Up 2007, a nationwide campaign
organized to demand bold federal action on climate change.
As
part of the build-up to Earth Day itself (April 22), Step It Up
2007 has organized hundreds of rallies to take place a week
earlier on April 14, including major events at or near
“meaningful, iconic” places that are already reeling from the
impacts of global warming. These include: New Orleans, where
Hurricane Katrina wreaked destruction in 2005; Mt. Rainier in
Washington state, where the volume of glaciers shrank by nearly 25
percent over the last century; and Key West, Florida, where
increased ocean temperatures are causing the region’s living
coral reefs to turn white (bleach) and die.
Step
It Up rallies are already planned for nearly 800 U.S. locations,
where thousands of concerned citizens will call on Congress to
force industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading
culprit in the onset of unprecedented global warming. Earth Day
Network representatives and volunteers will then spend the
following week on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, lobbying
Congress directly. Then on Earth Day itself, April 22, millions of
Americans will participate in hundreds of celebrations
co-sponsored by Earth Day Network coast-to-coast, seeking to raise
public awareness about our climate crisis.
Says
Earth Day Network, “We all possess the tools and know-how to
reduce our own environmental impacts and carbon footprints, but
lack a united voice to tell our leaders what to do. Earth Day 2007
will bring together millions of Americans concerned about global
warming to call on our elected officials to take immediate and
effective action to deal with global warming.”
Those
interested in joining the effort can do so by first participating
in one of the Step It Up rallies taking place around the nation on
April 14 (an event locator can be found at the group’s
website)--or by organizing a local event. Participants are
encouraged to “show their green colors” by foregoing car
travel that day and “hiking, biking, climbing, walking,
swimming, kayaking or canoeing” to a rally near them.
Following
the April 14 rallies, individuals can join Earth Day Network’s
week-long lobbying effort in Washington—or participate virtually
over the Internet by first completing an online form at the
group’s website. The Earth Day Network website also offers an
Earth Day event locator for those wishing to attend an event.
Earth
Day 2007 is the kick-off to a three-year “Climate Change
Solutions Campaign” intended to educate and motivate all levels
of the global community, including K-12 and college students,
governments, corporations and religious institutions. Earth Day
Network is making available an “Earth Day in a Box”
kit, which includes an organizers guide for those seeking to plan
an event, as well as tips, ideas and resources on various simple
actions individuals can take that can make a difference for the
environment.
CONTACTS:
Earth Day Network, www.earthday.net
; Step It Up 2007, www.stepitup2007.org
Dear EarthTalk:
Alternative energy sources like wind power, hydrogen and biofuels
are getting a lot of headlines these days, but what about efforts
to generate electricity from the ocean’s waves?
--
Tina Cook, Naples, FL
As any board or
body surfer will tell you, the ocean’s tidal currents pack
considerable wallop. So why wouldn’t it make sense to harness all
that formidable power, which is not too unlike that of the rivers
that drive hydropower dams or the wind that drives wind turbines,
to make energy?
The concept is
simple, says John Lienhard, a University of Houston mechanical
engineering professor: “Every day the moon’s gravitational pull
lifts countless tons of water up into, say, the East River or the
Bay of Fundy. When that water flows back out to sea, its energy
dissipates and, if we don’t use it, it’s simply spent.” According
to Energy Quest, an educational website of the California Energy
Commission, the sea can be harnessed for energy in three basic
ways: using wave power, using tidal power, and using ocean water
temperature variations in a process called “ocean thermal energy
conversion” (OTEC).
In harnessing
wave power, the back-and-forth or up-and-down movement of waves
can be harnessed, for example, to force air in and out of a
chamber to drive a piston or spin a turbine that can power a
generator. Some systems in operation now power small lighthouses
and warning buoys. Harnessing tidal energy, on the other hand,
involves trapping water at high tide and then harnesses its energy
as it rushes out and drops in its change to low tide. This is
similar to the way water makes hydroelectric dams work. Already
some large installations in Canada and France generate enough
electricity to power thousands of homes.
An OTEC system
uses temperature differences between deep and surface waters to
extract energy from the flow of heat between the two. An
experimental station in Hawaii hopes to develop the technology and
someday produce large amounts of electricity on par with the cost
of conventional power technologies.
Proponents say
that ocean energy is preferable to wind because tides are constant
and predictable and that water’s natural density requires fewer
turbines than are needed to produce the same amount of wind power.
Given the difficulty and cost of building tidal arrays at sea and
getting the energy back to land, however, ocean technologies are
still young and mostly experimental. But as the industry matures,
costs will drop and some analysts think the ocean could power
nearly two percent of U.S. energy needs.
Several companies
now work at the cutting edge of ocean power technology. Scotland’s
Ocean Power Delivery Ltd. has a wave system called Pelamis that it
hopes to install in waters off of California’s wave-battered
central coast. And Seattle, Washington’s Aqua Energy has
installations off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and British
Columbia and is in talks with utilities about providing the
Pacific Northwest with hundreds of megawatts of ocean energy
within the next decade.
Tidal energy
pioneers are also hard at work on the U.S. Atlantic coast. The New
Hampshire Tidal Energy Company is developing tidal power in the
Piscataqua River between New Hampshire and Maine. And a company
called Verdant Power is providing Long Island City, New York with
electricity through tidal river turbines and has begun
installation of tidal power systems in New York City’s East River.
CONTACTS:
Ocean Power Delivery Ltd., www.oceanpd.com
; Aqua Energy (Finavera Renewables), www.finavera.com/wave
; Verdant Power, www.verdantpower.com

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Dear EarthTalk:
There has been so much attention paid to designing environmentally
friendly cars. Is there a similar effort to replace gas-guzzling
boats? -- Brita B., via e-mail
The U.S. has been
regulating fuel economy and emissions in cars and trucks for
decades but got a late start addressing similar issues with boats.
In 1996, though, recognizing a growing problem of boat engine
pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued new
rules to “bring forth a new generation of marine engines
featuring cleaner technology and providing better engine
performance to boat owners.”
Even small
quantities of fuel and exhaust discharged by boats can disrupt the
balance of nutrients, oxygen and clean water in both freshwater
and marine ecosystems. Indeed, the cumulative effect of millions
of inefficient motorboats plying our waterways has been
devastating to marine life and our water supplies. Under the new
EPA regulations, which will phase in over the next 30 years, new
marine engines will burn gas much more efficiently and generate
much less pollution than most models out on the water today.
According to the
EPA, traditional two-stroke boat engines waste significant amounts
of gasoline and oil, spilling as much as 30 percent of their fuel
into the water and air either unburned or partially unburned. In
the water, unburned hydrocarbons increase concentrations of
benzene, methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MBTE) and other toxic
substances that pollute water ecosystems. In the air, they help
form smog, which causes a host of health problems and disrupts
visibility everywhere from our cities to our national parks.
Those looking to
buy a boat today should choose one with a four-stroke or direct
fuel injection (DFI) two-stroke engine. These pollute about 75
percent less than their traditional two-stroke predecessors and
use as much as 50 percent less gas and oil. They cost more than
traditional two-stroke engines, but owners soon make up the
difference in fuel and oil savings. They are also easier to start
and maintain, and are quieter.
New generations
of electric boat motors are also coming on line, and promise to
significantly cut pollution if adopted widely. Wooden, sport and
leisure boats are now all available with electric engines that are
quite comparable to traditional engines in performance and looks.
They are also non-polluting, quiet and can cruise where gas motors
are not permitted. Some leading makers include Beckman, Budsin,
Cobalt Marine, Electric Launch, Duffy, Electracraft, Griffin
Leisure, Pender Harbour and Spincraft.
The only catch is
that the energy that powers the batteries for electric boats most
likely comes from a coal-burning power plant that spews mercury,
carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the skies and waterways.
A handful of manufacturers--such as Australia’s Solar Sailor and
Canada’s Tamarack Lake--now make solar-powered or solar-assisted
electric boats to help overcome this environmental hurdle.
Of course, the
ultimate energy source for any recreational activity is elbow
grease. But for those who need more than a canoe or kayak to get
around, Nauticraft hybrid boats employ human pedal power to
augment a small electric motor. And the Italian-made Shuttle Bike
puts a new spin on pedal boats: Owners affix two inflatable
pontoons to their mountain bikes, and they can then pedal around
their local lake or harbor.
CONTACTS:
EPA: Shipshape Shores and Waters: A Handbook for Marina Operators
and Recreational Boaters, www.epa.gov/owow/nps/marinashdbk2003.pdf
Dear
EarthTalk:
What are the fast-food chains doing to cut back on--or at least
recycle--the huge amount of paper, plastic and foam they use
daily? Are there any laws or regulations to force them to be good
environmental citizens?
-- Carol
Endres, Stroud Township, PA

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Currently
there are no federal laws or regulations in the U.S. specifically
aimed at getting fast food chains to reduce, reuse or recycle
their waste. Businesses of all kinds must always obey local laws
pertaining to what must be recycled versus what can be discarded.
And a small number of cities and towns have local laws
specifically designed to force businesses to do the right thing,
but they are few and far between.
There
have been some strides in the fast food business with regard to
packaging materials and waste reduction, but it has all been
voluntary and usually under pressure from green groups.
McDonald’s made headlines back in 1989 when, at the urging of
environmentalists, it switched its hamburger packaging from
non-recyclable Styrofoam to recyclable paper wraps and cardboard
boxes. The company also replaced its bleached paper carryout bags
with unbleached bags and made other green-friendly packaging
advances.
Both
McDonald’s and PepsiCo (owner of KFC and Taco Bell) have crafted
internal policies to address environmental concerns. PepsiCo
states that it encourages “conservation of natural resources,
recycling, source reduction and pollution control to ensure
cleaner air and water and to reduce landfill wastes,” but does
not elaborate on specific actions it takes. McDonald’s makes
similar general statements and claims to be “actively pursuing
the conversion of used cooking oil into biofuels for
transportation vehicles, heating, and other purposes,” and
pursuing various in-store paper, cardboard, delivery container and
pallet recycling programs in Australia, Sweden, Japan and Britain.
In Canada the company claims to be the “largest user of recycled
paper in our industry” for trays, boxes, carry out bags and
drink holders.
Some
smaller fast food chains have garnered accolades for their
recycling efforts. Arizona-based eegee’s, for instance, earned
an Administrator’s Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency for recycling all paper, cardboard and polystyrene across
its 21-store chain. Besides the positive attention it has
generated, the company’s recycling effort also saves it money in
garbage disposal fees every month.
Despite
such efforts, though, the fast food industry is still a large
generator of waste. Some communities are responding by passing
local regulations requiring recycling where applicable. Seattle,
Washington, for example, passed an ordinance in 2005 prohibiting
businesses (all businesses, not just restaurants) from disposing
of recyclable paper or cardboard, though violators only pay a
nominal $50 fine.
Perhaps
policymakers in the U.S. and elsewhere could take a lead from
Taiwan, which since 2004 has required its 600 fast-food
restaurants, including McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC, to
maintain facilities for proper disposal of recyclables by
customers. Diners are obliged to deposit
their garbage in four separate containers for leftover food,
recyclable paper, regular waste and liquids. “Customers only
have to spend under a minute to finish the trash-classification
assignment,” said environmental protection administrator Hau
Lung-bin in announcing the program. Restaurants that don’t
comply face fines of up to $8,700 (U.S.).
CONTACTS:
eegee’s, www.eegees.com;
Taipei Times, “Restaurants set the new recycling
trend,” www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/01/02/2003086025.
Dear EarthTalk: Are the recent cyclones and droughts in Australia and
elsewhere more evidence of global warming? --Billy
Hulkower, Los Angeles, CA

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Scientists can't blame individual storms or droughts on climate change, but
many believe that human-induced global warming is increasing the severity
and frequency of such weather “anomalies.” Indeed, on February 2, 2007
scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
released a long-awaited 21-page report confirming “with 90 percent
certainty” that increases in man-made greenhouse gases since the mid-20th century are raising the planet’s temperature and
destabilizing the climate.
Besides hurricanes like Katrina that have affected the northern hemisphere,
a number of high-impact tropical cyclones and typhoons have occurred
around the world in just the last few years, with Australia’s mammoth
Cyclone Larry topping the list in terms of intensity. That March 2006 storm
battered the northern Queensland coast with 180 mile-per-hour winds,
causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and virtually
wiping out Australia’s banana crop. Thanks to Australia’s top-notch weather
forecasting and emergency preparedness, however, unlike Katrina, Larry
claimed no human lives.
Meanwhile, higher global temperatures have at least worsened if not
outright caused drought conditions around the world, and Australia has
been no exception. A 2003 report by the Australia chapter of the World
Wildlife Fund found global warming to be a key factor in the severity of the
country’s 2002 drought, one of four especially harsh droughts in just the
last 50 years. The 2002 drought, which many scientists consider to be still
in effect, was particularly memorable as Australians endured higher daytime
temperatures than had ever been recorded during any March-November
winter season. Besides causing countless bush fires in the Australian
Outback, the drought has led to a significant drop in agricultural
production, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses,
according to government data.
An original 1997 signatory to the landmark Kyoto Protocol calling for
reduced greenhouse gas emissions, Australia’s government nevertheless has
refused to ratify and adhere to the terms of the treaty. Prime Minister John
Howard has taken a position similar to that of U.S. President George W.
Bush, who considers the terms of Kyoto bad for industry.
But just because Australia hasn't ratified Kyoto doesn't mean it has refused
to acknowledge the potential environmental impacts of global warming. The
country has pledged $300 million over three years to implement various
strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It has also signed onto the
Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, an agreement
with India, Japan, China, South Korea and the U.S. to develop technology
that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Whether such an agreement
has enough teeth to take a bite out of global warming is anybody’s guess,
but it and other endeavors to fight global warming will undoubtedly pick up
momentum with the release of the landmark IPPC report.
CONTACTS: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, www.ipcc.ch
; World Wildlife Fund Australia drought report, www.wwf.org.au/publications/drought_report
; Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, www.asiapacificpartnership.org
Dear
EarthTalk: What is an “urban heat island” and does it have anything to do with global warming?-- Max, via e-mail

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An urban heat island is a metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas. Unlike global warming, which entails a worldwide rise in temperatures, heat islands occur at the local level. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), many cities and suburbs have air temperatures up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than their neighboring areas.
Heat islands form as cities replace their natural land cover with pavement, buildings and other infrastructure. These changes contribute to higher urban temperatures in a number of ways. For one, displacing trees and removing soil and vegetation takes away the natural cooling effects that shading and water evaporation from soil and leaves ordinarily provide. Meanwhile, tall buildings and narrow streets can heat the air trapped between them and reduce airflow. And waste heat from vehicles, factories and air conditioners adds warmth to the surroundings, further exacerbating the heat island effect.
The intensity of a heat island will also depend upon its topography, its proximity to water bodies, and local weather and climate. Urban heat islands can also impact local weather, altering local wind patterns, spurring the development of clouds and fog, increasing the number of lightning strikes, and influencing the rates of precipitation.
And although urban heat islands are distinctly different from the phenomenon of climate change, during the summer months they can contribute to global warming. The increased use of air conditioning and refrigeration needed to cool indoor spaces in a heat-island city, for example, results in the release of more of the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Furthermore, the poor air quality that results from this increased energy usage can affect our health, aggravating asthma and promoting other respiratory illnesses.
Costs are impacted, too. The Heat Island Group, a research and advocacy organization that works to educate the public and policy makers about the heat island effect, estimates that the city of Los Angeles spends about $100 million per year in extra energy costs to offset its heat island effect.
The heat island effect can be reduced through the use of white and light-colored construction materials (including white roofing materials) in buildings, which will work to reflect the sun’s heat skyward rather than absorb it, as dark surfaces tend to do. Also, preserving or creating pockets of green space and vegetation help to cool areas naturally. A national program called Cool Communities, coordinated by American Forests and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, encourages building owners and local policy makers to adopt just such practices. Another useful practice is the creation of “green roofs” or rooftop gardens, in which roofs are partially or completely covered with vegetation and soil, or a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing layer.
CONTACTS: EPA Heat Island Effect Information, www.epa.gov/heatislands
; Heat Island Group, eetd.lbl.gov/HeatIsland; American Forests, www.americanforests.org
.
Dear EarthTalk: Does environmental education figure prominently in classrooms these days? By that I mean not just science but an understanding of key issues and environmental stewardship. -- Mary Swan, Framingham, MA

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Environmental education has long struggled for legitimacy alongside more traditional disciplines within the liberal arts and sciences. But “environmental literacy” studies in the late 1980s revealed that schoolchildren lacked basic knowledge about the natural environment. This convinced the U.S. Congress to take action, and in 1990 they passed the National Environmental Education Act, forcing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen and expand environmental education nationwide through education and teacher training and the administration of grants to exemplary programs.
While many of the programs since developed by the EPA have been lauded as exemplary, a lack of funding has prevented many ideas from moving forward. According to a National Environmental Education Advisory Council report, between 1991 and 1996 the EPA received 10,000 environmental education grant applications totaling $300 million, but was only able to fund 1,200 totaling $13 million. Continued shortfalls at the EPA under the current Bush administration have forced further cutbacks.
With such a lack of federal resolve, the onus for teaching kids about the environment has fallen on local schools and individual teachers. According to the President’s Council on Sustainability, because environmental education is multi-disciplinary, it is hard for teachers to work it into their narrowly defined lesson plans. Also, most teachers are not trained in environmental subjects. As a result, non-governmental organizations have become increasingly involved with classroom environmental education efforts.
One such organization is the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), a network of volunteers that provides guidelines and resources for educators and parents who want environmental education for their K-12 students. According to NAAEE’s Mary Ocwieja, the group takes a “cooperative, non-confrontational and scientifically-balanced approach” to education about environmental issues. NAAEE’s website, EE-Link, lets users find resources on just about any environmental topic.
Another organization, the National Environmental Education & Training Foundation, which was chartered by Congress in 1990, sponsors ClassroomEarth.org, a free website that calls itself “the best of the best” collection of environmental education programs and resources for K-12 teachers, parents and students. The site helps educators, after-school programs and home-schooling parents find up-to-date information on the most successful, well-tested and effective national environmental education programs available today.
According to NAAEE, their work and that of similar organizations is starting to pay off. Some 61 percent of U.S. K-12 teachers surveyed in 1999 claimed that they include environmental topics in their curriculum, with some devoting hundreds of hours of classroom time annually to environmental issues.
CONTACTS: NAAEE, www.naaee.org
; ClassroomEarth, www.classroomearth.org
.
Dear EarthTalk: Which trees are best to plant to help combat global warming?
-- Tim C., Perrineville, NJ

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Trees are important tools in the fight to stave off global warming, because they absorb and store the key greenhouse gas emitted by our cars and power plants, carbon dioxide (CO2), before it has a chance to reach the upper atmosphere where it can help trap heat around the Earth’s surface.
While all living plant matter absorbs CO2 as part of photosynthesis, trees process significantly more than smaller plants due to their large size and extensive root structures. In essence, trees, as kings of the plant world, have much more “woody biomass” to store CO2 than smaller plants, and as a result are considered nature’s most efficient “carbon sinks.”