Eco-Fabrics: An Introduction

It would be great if thrift stores coordinated their intakes in order to sort and present their clothes better. The problem is that shops that promise a pleasant customer experience tend to have higher prices. And vice versa (see relevant blog post).

The truth of the matter is that second-hand will never be for everyone for every thing they need. Clothing degrades, styles change, and people like new things. It is important to take a look at the problems with how we make clothes now and solutions that are already being implemented.

So why are most fabrics environmentally damaging?

Nylon – non-biodegradable and energy-intensive. Creates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 310 times more potent than CO2.

Polyester – non-biodegradable and energy intensive as well!  Polyester also requires lots of water for cooling and lubricants.

Rayon– made from wood pulp. Rayon is often made from water-hungry eucalyptus and is treated with harsh chemicals.

Cotton– Cotton uses 2.5% of the world’s cultivated land and 16% of the world’s insecticides.

In addition, dyeing is extremely water-intensive. Unfixed dye and dye fixatives (often heavy metals) wash out of garments and can end up in rivers.  Bleached fabrics and treated fabrics (easy care, crease resistant, etc.) also use harmful chemicals (which also end up in the water).

So, what is better?

Organic cotton– Organic cotton uses less water and doesn’t use the chemicals that harm workers, consumers, and ecosystems.

Hemp- Yes, I know I sound like a super hippie when I write this (perhaps I am?). Hemp produces 250% more fiber than cotton. It is easy to cultivate and, because it sheds it leaves throughout the growing season, hemp helps enrich the topsoil. Although I haven’t ever bought hemp clothing, the internet tells that hemp is soft and comfortable these days.

Bamboo- Bamboo is hypoallergenic, absorbent, fast-drying, fast-growing, and naturally anti-bacterial. There are concerns about the chemicals used in processing bamboo, but it is still better than conventional fabrics.

Linen- Linen, from flax, needs fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides than cotton, so it is a better (but not the best) option.

From my end, I’ll keep buying and supporting second-hand clothing. The fabrics from used clothes have done 0 environmental damage (on their journey from the last owner to me) and are cheaper than sustainable fabric options. But if you do want something new, watch out for organic fabrics, hemp, bamboo, and linen.

Sources

1. Details on conventional fabrics – http://www.greenchoices.org/green-living/clothes/environmental-impacts
2. Details on sustainable fabrics- http://www.greenchoices.org/green-living/clothes/more-sustainable-fabrics
3. Information on hemp  –http://www.earthfriendlygoods.com/index.php?dispatch=pages.view&page_id=13

4. Why cotton is so harmful- http://rodaleinstitute.org/chemical-cotton/
5. Organic Cotton- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-dietz/organic-cotton-sustainable-fashion_b_3562788.html

Additional

• Here’s just a cool video that shows how fabric is made. It’s a pretty involved and fascinating process.

Waste-to-Energy: We’re Missing Out

When your question is, “who does it better than us?”

The answer, regardless of what you’re talking about, tends to be “some country in Scandinavia.”

In Sweden, only 1% of all goods go to the landfill. The rest (about half and half) is recycled or burned for energy. In fact, Sweden has such a high capacity for converting waste into energy that it imports 700,000 tons from other countries. 3 tons of waste contains about as much energy as 1 ton of fuel oil, so we actually throw out quite a bit of energy every time we use a landfill!

So why don’t we burn our fuel like Sweden?  Well, one reason is that space is plentiful and landfills are cheap in the US. Another reason is that waste-to-energy tends to be controversial in this country.

 

Environmentalists and citizens in the US have two main qualms:

1. Waste-to-energy will decrease recycling rates.

2. Waste-to-energy is harmful to the environment.

The first point is not necessarily true. Cities in the US that have waste-to-energy programs also have higher rates of recycling. This is likely influenced by higher environmental awareness in those areas, but it does go to show that recycling efforts and waste-to-energy can together.

Regarding the second point, “according to the EPA, for every ton of garbage processed at an EfW facility, approximately one ton of emitted carbon-dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere is prevented.”

This is because waste converted to energy doesnt gwnerate methane (like waste in landfills does), and waste-to-energy limits the coal or other energy that would have been extracted and burnt in its stead.

I am a big fan of practical, scalable solutions. Reducing waste where we can, recycling it when possible, and turning waste-to-energy as a last resort. Although public opinion on waste-to-energy is still lukewarm in the states, there is some movement in this direction. Just this month, DC announced a $470m plan to turn wastewater into energy. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes

Sources:

http://www.waterworld.com/articles/2015/10/dc-water-leverages-technology-first-in-north-america-to-generate-clean-renewable-energy-from-wastewater.htmlSources

 https://sweden.se/nature/the-swedish-recycling-revolution/http://midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/17/is-burning-garbage-green-in-sweden-theres-little-debate/

Healthy and Affordable?! Wah?!

My dream is to open a supermarket. The market is open and welcoming to everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you are homeless and have no consistent place to store your food. It doesn’t matter if you were bequeathed millions of dollars upon the death of a distant, but supremely wealthy aunt. This market is for everyone and it promises that:

Healthy and environmentally- and socially- sustainable food is a right.

No one should go hungry. No one should have to sacrifice nutrition to save their wallets. Everyone should be able to buy food that doesn’t exploit laborers, damage the environment (which ultimately hurts our poorest), or depend on the cruel treatment of animals.

When I talk to people about this dream, they tend to have two issues:

1. That doesn’t sound possible.
2. Poor people don’t want healthy food.

Regarding 1: In my heart of hearts, I knew that this had to be possible. After all, given the amount of food we waste and the amount that the government spends on subsidies, there had to be a way to get affordable, healthy, and kind food to people’s tables.

Then, a few days ago, my dad sent me an article, and the suspicions in my heart of hearts grew stronger. Doug Rauch, former president of Trader Joe’s, recently opened Daily Table in Dorchester, MA– a not-for-profit supermarket that provides healthy food at low prices. Rauch relies on a number of sources to get affordable food into his stores, including surplus from local farms, donated items, and food close to its sell-by-date (Rauch points out that food stays fresh a lot longer than its sell-by-date. Additionally, since opening his store in the beginning of the summer, they have not sold a single item past its sell-by-date).

And regarding 2: sometimes it takes more than just providing fresh vegetables to lower income individuals to get them to start incorporating these foods into their diets. It is unfair to say that poor people don’t want healthy foods (this isn’t a strawman argument. I have actually had people say this to me). Everyone wants to eat foods that will maximize their standard of living. However, we have to understand that people who have not been able to afford many fresh vegetables in the past may not know how to prepare these items and may be wary of spending their money on new items. To combat this, many food banks incorporate teaching kitchens into their models. Daily Table, which does plan to open a teaching kitchen, also sells a great deal of prepared foods— another way to “nudge” people into healthier habits.

Although Daily Table does have organic and local foods, their focus is really on hunger. I think that model similar to Daily Table’s can be used to make healthy, environmentally- and socially-friendly food more accessible. Their initiative gives me a lot of hope, and I hope it inspires you too.

Fun with a Spear or How a Former Vegetarian Became a Hunter

A few days ago at lunch, someone commented that it was weird that I went hunting. After all, most of the food I ate was vegetarian. I laughed, groaning a little (okay, a lot) internally, and I explained myself yet again. I became interested in hunting *because* I am interested and concerned about the source of my food, not in spite of that fact.

Crouching over my second boar

This past January, I had the amazing opportunity to see the inside of a humane slaughterhouse in Vermont (not just be inside of it, actually walk under the swinging half carcasses of freshly slaughtered beef while “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” was playing. That song was actually playing. I can’t make this stuff up.). That same week, I met a taxidermist who was also an avid hunter. I was impressed by the care and respect with which both the workers at the slaughterhouse and the taxidermist discussed the killing of animals and the treatment of the animals after death. I started to think more deeply about my own meat consumption. And that’s when something shifted. Previously, I had tried to limit my consumption of meat or try to eat only meat that was produced in a good way. In other words, I tried to make my consumption of meat “less bad.” Even if the animal was raised and slaughtered humanely, which can be hard to determine and harder to pay for, growing meat still requires much more water and many more resources than growing other food. Researchers estimate that livestock-based food production causes about 17% of all greenhouse gas emissions.  I decided I had to learn how to hunt.

My dad hunted, and he often offered me to go with him, but I was never interested as a kid. After my trip to the slaughterhouse and the taxidermist, I finally took him up on the offer. While visiting Miami earlier this month, my dad and I drove to Lake Okeechobee to the Rock Hill Hunting Preserve in the early morning. After about an hour and a half and with the help of two wonderful dogs (and one adorable pup that was in training), I killed two wild boar, weighing about 60lbs and 150lbs.

The wild boar that I killed were:

• Delicious
• Had spent their entire lives in the beautiful open marshes in central Florida
• Required no resources to raise

And, as an added benefit, the wild boar in Florida are a destructive and invasive species with no natural predators (see my post on invasive species).

If you want to learn to hunt, this is a good article to start with. Hunting requires a few upfront expenses (rifle, scope, shooting practice, hunter education course), but if you love the outdoors, it might be worth your time to take up hunting as a hobby. The easiest way would probably be to find a friend (or a father… XD) who knows how to hunt and tag along with them.

Some More Resources:

http://modern-hunters.com/is-hunting-sustainable/

http://modern-hunters.com/where-can-i-go-hunting/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/beef-uses-ten-times-more-resources-poultry-dairy-eggs-pork-180952103/?no-ist

Quite Caffeinated: Round 3. Direct Purchase.

(This is part of a series on coffee. See Round 1 on Fair Trade and Round 2 on Direct Trade)

Overall kindtrade score:                 ****

Overall affordability score:           $$

Two-degrees of separation:       The Farmer. You.

One of the Pachamama co-op farmers.

In a goal to eliminate the middle man and gain more transparency in the coffee supply chain, what can be better than buying coffee directly from the grower? There are several sites online that make this possible:

1. Ethical Coffee Chain. If you buy from ECC (ships to the US and Canada), you purchase coffee directly from a single farmer and receive updates on that farmer’s operations. The first farmer to have partnered with ECC is Gus in Nicaragua. Gus’s farm employs about 400 people annually, and partnership with ECC has thus far allowed him to set up health care and education programs. Coffee from ECC is $16/lb (approx. 64 cups or 25 cents per cup).
2. Pachamama’s Coffee Co-op. Pachamama’s Coffee Co-op offers organic coffee sourced directly from farmer coops to consumers. Pachamama farmers receive much more per pound of coffee than the typical grower:

“The typical grower of Fair Trade coffee, he told me, was paid about $2.18 per pound in 2010. The Pachamama Coop collects about $8.50 per pound, about half of which is returned directly to growers; the other half is invested in the business, which ultimately benefits the growers.”

In order to purchase Pachamama coffee, you buy a subscription. Coffee on a subscription can range from $20/lb to $16/lb (depending on the length of a subscription and the quantity of coffee recieved per month).

3. Crop to Cup sells green coffee beans directly to roasters (or adventurous consumers). A buyer can purchase coffee directly from selected growers around the world. When you click on each coffee type, you can read more about the coffee, its flavor, and information about its farmers and their methods. C2C also facilitates connections between roasters and growers. Interested roasters can start programs in local coffee communities or join C2C on trips to origin sites. Coffee is $12 to $13 for 2lb bags of green coffee (smallest quantity sold). In order to purchase, you may have to contact them directly, as I encountered issues with their login/registration.

Direct purchase is a relatively affordable option. It is an especially good option for an office or workplace, as many sites that offer direct purchase offer subscriptions with significant discounts for a longer subscription length and a greater volume of coffee.

More Information:

1. Direct Purchase: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/06/01/coffee-farmers-eliminate-middle-man
2. An Interview with Crop to Cup: http://sprudge.com/crop-to-cup-59702.html

Quite Caffeinated: Round 2. Direct Trade

(this post is a follow-along to a post I wrote about the problems with Fair Trade, see it here.)

Overall kindtrade score: Depends on the roasters

Overall affordability score: $$$$

The largest problem with the coffee supply chain is that it is looong. By the time you get your coffee, a chain of middle men has taken their cut without providing much value. My interest is in getting more money in the hands of farmers, especially farmers that produce their products in an environmentally responsible way. So today I’d like to look at one solution: Direct Trade coffee.

Coffee cherries

Three-degrees of separation:    The Farmer. The Roaster. You.

Direct Trade, a term coined by Intelligentsia and Counter Culture Coffee, refers to roasters that buy coffee directly from growers. Direct Trade coffee prides itself on its high-quality, which allows it to charge a premium for its goods. This, in turn, has the potential to put more money into the pockets of growers. Some roasters make sure that they pay fair prices to the growers.

Pros:

1. Direct Trade coffee is often extremely high-quality coffee.
2. Direct Trade roasters often commit to paying farmers high prices.
3. Direct Trade roasters often visit their farmers directly, which means that the roasters (and the consumers)—and not the farmers— bear the cost of auditing.

Cons:

1. Direct Trade is not a centralized certification system, so each company has their own standards.
2. Direct Trade coffee tends to be much higher than comparable gourmet coffees.

On the supply side, Direct Trade is based on trust between the farmers and the roasters. On the demand side, Direct Trade is based on trust between the roasters and the consumers. Cutting out an outside certification scheme saves roasters and farmers money. Consumers are still paying a premium for coffee, but this premium is based on the coffee’s high-quality, not based on paying middle men. Some examples of Direct Trade roasters are:

• For instance, Intelligentsia Coffee pays its growers 25% more than the Fair Trade price (in addition to several other criteria you can find on their site). Intelligentsia sources coffee from multiple regions around world and ensures its growers comply with regulations by making monthly visits to each of its sites.
• Counter Culture Coffee launched their own third party certification, which is based around personal & direct communication with farmers, fair & sustainable price paid to farmers (at least $1.60/lb for green coffee), exceptional cup quality, and supply chain transparency.
• The Direct Trade Coffee Club (DTCC) takes a little bit of a different approach. DTCC sources all of its coffee from the Huehuetenango region of Guatemala and each of its coffee blends comes with a short blurb about the individual grower. DTCC has a commitment to environmental and economic sustainability. Unlike Intelligentsia, DTCC doesn’t have a list of its environmental and economic criteria (however there might be one buried in its blog).

There are a number of other companies that call themselves Direct Trade. Direct Trade is usually high quality coffee with environmental and financial standards of accountability.  Direct Trade coffee is only worth your buck if you a) value high-quality coffee and b) find a company whose standards match your own for what coffee sustainability should be.

Sources:

1. Direct Trade: http://www.ethicalcoffee.net/direct.html
2. NY Times profile on Direct Trade: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/dining/12coff.html?_r=0

What is KindTrade?

Ultimately, for me, kind trade is about people.

There are a few things I care deeply about:

1.    Sustainable and ethical clothes
2.    Sustainable and ethical fruits and vegetables.
3.    Sustainable and ethical fish

“Ethical” food and clothing is obviously important to the humane treatment of other people. To me, ethical means that a product’s value chain is free of child labor, poor working conditions, and forced labor.

But the “sustainable” part is equally as important for the proper treatment of people around the world. The world’s poorest are the most vulnerable to depletion of resources, such as fish and arable land. Many of the world’s poorest depend on fish protein for their primary source of animal protein. Many poor families live in areas with high rates of pollution or other toxins, either because of lower property values or lack of information. And finally, the poor are the ones who are most heavily impacted by increasingly severe weather cased by rising global temperatures.

What you wear and what you eat are some of the most important choices you make every day.

Quite Caffeinated: Round 1. Fair Trade Falls Flat

Sometime in the past year, I became a coffee person. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I knew that something had changed once I started having opinions about my cuppa joe. Not just “good coffee, bad coffee” opinions either. Nowadays, I can be in the mood for a Kenyan roast, or I can sense that only a Southern Pecan will do the trick.

I know this isn’t really big news. After all, I’m not alone. 2.3 billion cups of coffee are consumed every day. Furthermore, in the United States, the average adult drinks a little over 3 cups of coffee a day. If the numbers on EcoNews are to be believed, if you drink two cups of coffee a day, it requires 18 fully-mature coffee trees to feed your habit.

There is also the oft-repeated claim that coffee is the most valuable commodity, second only to oil. Although this statement appears to be a myth, the comparison between oil and coffee is apt. The world runs on oil for everything from transportation to plastic. And plenty of us run on coffee. I run on coffee when I hit that afternoon slump. Almost 15 million Ethiopian growers, harvesters, processors, and transporters run on coffee for their livelihoods. An estimated 75 million people around the world depend on coffee for most or all of their living. Simply put, coffee is produced in the developing world and consumed in the developed world. It is startling how much is involved in each step of the way from the coffee bean to the coffee cup.

It is even more startling to me that so many people’s lives are completely consumed with making my machine whir every morning and filling my cup. Of course, in an increasingly globalized world, this level of specialization isn’t surprising. Nor am I implying that it’s wrong. It’s just worth thinking about it. And, since, I started drinking more coffee— for better or worse— I also started wondering about Fair Trade. Fair Trade promises that “your rich cup of Fair Trade coffee can help farmers escape poverty.” Fair Trade pays coffee producers with a “fair trade” price for their product as long as they meet certain environmental, labor, and production standards. Although Fair Trade is well-meaning, the system falls short of its goals. The problems are:

Overregulation. Fair Trade has an extensive list of certification requirements—ranging from farm size to contractual transparency and daily record keeping to the requirement that farmers belong to a democratic growing cooperative. These regulations put too high a burden on farmers.

Fair Trade helps only middle-income farmers. Only small-holder farmers can be certified as Fair Trade. The majority of coffee industry workers do not own land, but are hired by farmers. A recent study of Fair Trade laborers in Ethiopia and Uganda actually found that people hired to work on farms that sold fair trade products were paid less and treated worse. On the other end of the spectrum, large-holder farmers cannot be certified as Fair Trade either. Why shouldn’t large growers that treat their workers well, generating stable employment for a community be able to be listed as Fair Trade?

I think buying FairTrade is better than not paying attention to the source of your coffee. At the very least, FairTrade sends a message to companies that consumers care about supporting farmers’ livelihood. But there are better ways to buy coffee. In next Monday’s post, I’ve outlined some alternative solutions that provide more bang for your caffeinated buck than FairTrade. Check back here to read more.

(note: this is a revived post from an old blog of mine- podoflogs)

Sources:

1. http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofFoods/CFSAN/CFSANFOIAElectronicReadingRoom/UCM333191.pdf
2. http://www.earthfuture.com/econews/back_issues/02-01.asp
3. http://www.dimattinacoffee.com.au/blog/entry/coffee_second_only_to_oil_is_coffee_really_the_second_largest_commodity
4. http://fairtradeusa.org/products-partners/coffee#
5. http://ftepr.org/wp-content/uploads/FTEPR-Final-Report-19-May-2014-FINAL.pdf
6. Image source: Wikicommons

Invasive Species: Eat ‘em to beat ‘em? Or…?

I recently came across an article in Scientific American by Chef Bun Lai, which promoted the benefits of eating invasive species. The article described dishes with Asian shore crab, lion fish, and other invasive species in mouth watering detail. People have been eating these unwanted pests since at least the 1980’s as a means of control. Why wouldn’t they? It’s food you don’t have to grow, and it’s stuff you don’t really want in your backyard. Invasive species cost the U.S. $120 billion every year in herbicides, pesticides, and the like.

Lionfish, an invasive species on the Florida coast since the 1980s

Despite the longevity, this was a new idea to me. As I searched online, I found a multitude of initiatives to eat invasive species and about as many articles discussing the negative impacts of these campaigns. Developing a market for invasive species can provide incentives to keep these species in the area and spread them to new areas. An invasive species, as in the case of the wild boar in Hawaii, can also become a cultural icon if it becomes ingrained in the regional cuisine.  Additionally, invasive species have no natural predators and have high reproductive rates. Promoting the idea that eating invasive species is a solution can also lead people to believe that eating invasive species is all that is needed to take care of a species.

After reading these articles, I am still a fan of eating invasive species, but I think we need to be careful how we market them. “Eat ‘em to beat ‘em” is catchy (…and it rhymes), but most species cannot be contained by eating them alone. Instead of propagating the idea that we can eat an invasive species out of existence, we need to focus on the fact that every calorie we consume of an invasive species is a calorie that benefits our local ecosystem instead of harming it.

Sources:

1. http://web.utk.edu/~mnunez/Nunez_etal_eating_invasives.pdf
2. http://ensia.com/voices/why-eating-invasive-species-is-a-bad-idea/
3. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-would-nature-do/invasive-species-if-you-can-t-beat-em-eat-em
4. Image source: http://www.nmsfocean.org/files/lionfish2_credit_noaa.jpg

My Great Grandfather and The Things He Picked Up

This one is a little bit different than my others.

I was really close to my great grandfather— closer than anyone else in the family. He was my great grandma’s second husband, and they slept in separate rooms— he in the bedroom and she in the living room. I was too young then to pick up on the finer points of their relationship— I could tell they cared for one another, but they were more old age companions than lovers. Anyway, my great grandfather and I were tight— blood or no blood.

Source: http://weheartit.com/entry/group/940894

He used to go wandering alone for hours in Brooklyn— who knows where— and would bring back mattresses, clocks, toys, all sorts of things. It was clear that many of these items were found on the side of the road. The clocks and furniture would go into his bedroom—my great grandmother definitely was not a fan of his habits!— and the toys would go to me. I never cared where the toys came from. In fact, I loved that these toys were discards and misfits. Whatever he brought back always felt like adventure. He had gone out into the big city, and he brought back treasures.

He was definitely a cheap bastard. He wrote me a birthday card once, and when I got older, I noticed that one of the edges of the card were uneven. On closer examination, it became clear that he must have cut an already used card in half and wrote in the blank portion. I still re-read that card and laugh as I trace my finger along the jagged edge of the paper.

We played games and had adventures. He taught me how to play cards in secret, despite my great grandmother’s disapproval. He would tell me stories (oftentimes the same exact story about a poor fisherman who catches a golden, wish-granting fish) and watch as I put on ridiculous “shows.”

We also watered his plants together. The space by his bedroom window was filled with plants. The plants were also, I’m pretty sure, items that he picked up on the side of the road over the years. The nook where he kept them was about three feet deep, ten feet long, and ten feet tall, and it was full. Along the sides and in the back, were all the tall plants that brushed the ceilings. The rest of the space was filled with smaller ones. Few of them had any flowers, they were just green and bushy and completely overtook the room. He watered them often and rotated the plants to make sure they all got a good amount of light and sunshine.

My great grandfather made NYC his own. He wandered through streets and found plants for his forest, furniture to fill his home, and toys for my imagination. Thinking back, it’s funny that many of my dearest childhood memories tend to include my great grandfather and pieces of trash. But, then again, I guess it’s not mystery why, these days, I care about making the most of what we have here on Earth.