As I continue to write and think about the issue of Fair Trade it becomes more and more apparent to me that our economic system is a root cause for a wide array of our world’s woes. Instances of poverty, disease, wars (and the dehumanization that accompanies all three) and our quickly degrading environment occuring all over the world, but especially in the poorer Southern hemisphere, can all be traced back to an economic system that prizes pure economic profit above all else: above fairer distribution of the world’s wealth, above the health of the world’s poor, above the lives of those unfortunate enough to live in resource rich regions targeted by corporations (and therefore governments and militaries) and even, amazingly, above nature and its delicate environment that produces these economically valuable resources. This economic system, very obviously, is unfair and unsustainable. We can do better.

Fair Trade is proving that an economic system that focuses on a triple-bottom line, considering people, plant and profit as equally important outcomes of business operation, can work, and work better, for everyone and everything involved. October is Fair Trade Month and Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Month page says it best, this is indeed “a great opportunity for people throughout the United States to support, promote and celebrate a socially responsible system of trade that prioritizes the needs of human beings and the environment over the drive for profits.”

So this is the month to get involved and make some collective noise about economic justice and sustainability. One great way to shout out is to direct a video about Fair Trade for the Connect with Fair Trade Video Contest. Doing so could just end in your visiting a Peruvian Fair Trade farming co-operative courtesy of TransFair. If you make a great video and end up winning, I also suggest you write to GO editor Jeff McIntire-Strausburg and offer to do a write-up of your experience in Peru.

According to TransFair 56% of people who are aware of Fair Trade make a point to purchase Fair Trade certified products whenever available. Help increase awareness and availability of Fair Trade products by encouraging your local grocery market to carry Fair Trade and participate in the Fair Trade month celebration. TransFair makes it easy with educational marketing materials and contest promotions to intrigue customers.

Perhaps my favorite Fair Trade month promotion joins activism and a great holiday, Halloween. Order your Fair Trade Trick or Treat action kit from Global exchange and you’ll have everything you need to tell others just how boo-tiful(!) trade can be: tasty chocolate from Equal Exchange and knowledge of a better way to trade.

At the very least, talk to your friends and family about this idea, email this article around, whatever little bit you can do to just keep the Fair Trade buzz growing.

(Written for Green Options)

(Originally published at Green Options)

Google Earth recently launched their Outreach program to raise awareness about various issues. Outreach is intended to give non-profits "the resources, tools, and inspiration that they need to leverage the power of Google Earth for their cause."

There are many groups which are harnessing this visual power. Having already reached many through the visually powerful mountain-top removal through the Appalachian Voices and mapping the destruction that has raged across Sudan, Google realized the unique opportunity to connect people across the world. "At Google, we believe technology can be a catalyst for education and action," Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president, said in a statement.

The United Nations Environment Programme are using the satellite pictures as a "wake-up all to of us to look at the sometimes devastating changes we are wreaking on our planet." Using images focused on hot spots, their goal is to help people identify and understand the damage humans are causing upon the planet, and then to help them make an effort to change. Many issues ranging from water shortages, forest and biodiversity loss to climate change occur over a period of time which makes it difficult to appreciate the degree of damage that has occurred. Through approximately 30 years of images condensed to a time-sequence series, the viewer is able to visually connect the statics with powerful images.

Fair Trade Certified products was the newest layer announced, along with the Global Heritage Fund and Earthwatch Expeditions. This new layer allows consumers to view information on TransFair USA certified products. Over 70 co-ops are marked, including coffee, tea, chocolate, mangoes, and bananas. Each co-ops pop-up includes a picture as well as information about the Co-op, it’s location and community betterment programs which result from the sale of their Fair Trade goods. Creating this connection between consumers and producers is essential for honest and fair trade for when there is a person behind the product people are more likely to respect the humanity that went into production.

As Dr. Jane Goodall said, "Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. With Google Earth Outreach, more people have the chance to see, to care, and then to act."

To access these new layers simply download Google Earth and expand the Global Awareness layer to see those available and check out the many Fair Trade products and the people who grow them.

Ok, it hasn’t gotten that bad yet but we do have a nice group of regular visitors building up. Honestly it had barely even registered to me, in Guyana ants where a part of . .. well, of everything. They have ants that are so small as to be a moving dot, and ones the size of my index finger that built a nice nest in our shower. Apparently the latter had a nasty bite, but I didn’t ever test that out, I was more afraid of them carrying me off. Ants in the water, drink ‘em down. Ants in the air tight sugar container, brush ‘em off. Ants in the sealed skittles bag (how in the??) eating only the candy coating, pick out the salvageable ones.

So when these little friends took up a march in our house, it didn’t seem that big of a deal. But as my sister pointed out, duh, ants are gross, and not an assumed aspect of living in Kansas. So it’s time to usher these guys outside. On our quest to get greener, this seems a great opportunity. Rather than grab the Raid, I found some other options:

Vinegar - apparently this has a scent that messes up ants ability to guide themselves and they avoid it.

Baby Powder or black pepper - a few sprinkles around their line, or where they are entering should keep the pesky guys at bay. A sprinkle around your honey and sugar bowl will ensure their sweet tooth isn’t enticed.

I’m picking up some vinegar, and will let you know who emerges the victor.

Unfortunately my knitting project to create some reusable bags out of our old plastic ones is moving along a bit slowly. Luckily ChicoBags had a stall set up in Chicago, so we headed over and grabbed some. I have no idea how I missed these great bags in the reusable round-up last month.

The Chicobag holds 20 lbs, and trust me I put this to the test last weekend. The handles are thick enough that carrying heavy loads doesn’t hurt, and they are long enough that the bag can easily be thrown over your shoulder. It measures 18″ x 13″, but the best feature is the built in pouch! Each bag stuffs into the attached pouch, measuring only 4″ x 2 ½” x 1″. It comes with a small carabineer, so hooking it to a book bag or keychain is easy, and the suckers small enough it even fits in my stylin sari purse. If it gets dirty just throw it in the washing machine, and it comes with a 1 year warranty.

We all know reusable bags are the way to go, but the key to success is remembering to bring the dang things. Luckily Chicobags are small enough they’re easy to have on you so they’re easy to remember. They are made in China by “a fair labor, fair wage manufacturing company” and run only $5. Old Chicobags can be sent back to be recycled into door mats, dog beds and prayer flags. A great option on your reusable quest!

A quick break from Greenfestiness too address the media frenzy around Sheryl Crow. Apparently Ms. Crow has gone insane! She wants us to use only one square of toilet paper per trip! Madness! How utterly uncivilized, no one in the world would do something so crazy.

Except about 75% of the people in the world use no toilet paper, and when you consider the average American uses “over
100 single rolls—about 21,000 sheets—each year,” the waste of our waste begins to seem like a pretty big deal.

I have to admit, when I first read that No Impact Man was going to toss the tissue, I had a cultural doh! moment. Ok, no TP=less waste, got it, but uhhhhh . . . how??

The how has been a question faced by many travelers and is addressed by Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth in How to Shit Around the World, which I’ve added to the reading list! For more details on the exact details on the how, check out World Hum. Before you get too grossed out, according to Wilson-Howarth the hand method is actually more sanitary

“You get good bacteriological cleaning with just rubbing your hands together with soap under running water four times,” she says, and cites a study which says you don’t even need soap. “It can be ash or mud, just rubbing your hands together under water with some kind of washing agent. Even dirt from the river bank will give you good bacteriological cleaning.”

Many commenters at No Impact have experience with this method, finding plain tp to be less refreshing and clean. Read more…

Supersize Me is a documentary by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock in which he lives on nothing but McDonald’s for one month, following 3 simple rules:

1) No options: he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!)
2) No supersizing unless offered
3) No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at least once

In the end, his health deteriorates much faster than any doctors predicted. Not surprising, the golden arches responded to the theory that “if you eat too many carrots you’ll turn orange” with a few changes to the menu and a website arguing against the drastic health deterioration Spurlock experienced. While I find it hard to believe McDonald’s has gained any substantial ground towards the healthy end, it is also equally delusional to believe anyone pulls through those golden arches believing they’ve found a balanced and healthy meal. Can we ultimately villanize only the fast food chains? Do we as consumers not have a bit our increasing weight to carry? McDonald’s, along with all other fast food restaurants, cater to our hectic lives, they are convenient and taste good. Is there no alternative? Is the hope of a place to purchase healthy, organic and local value meals beyond imaging?

Much to Lawrencians joy, Hillary Brown has answered this question in Local Burger, “the next generation of burger joints!” Local Burger “buys its naturally raised meats and vegetables from 45 local vendors, most of which are located in Douglas County or a 20-mile radius of Lawrence.” Brown, along with the Sundance channel, also began a 30 day stint featuring Daniel Fisher, a confessed fast food junkie. Inspired by Spurlock’s adventure eating only McDonalds, Brown and Fisher took a different spin. Fisher would follow Spurlock’s rules, replacing the restaurant with Local Burger. Similar to Spurlock, Fisher received a full physical before and after the experiement.

The final results were weight loss of about 23 pounds and a dramatic drop in cholesterol from 285 to 166. Fisher learned to eat better, but not less. “I think it’s time for people to be aware of what they’re eating,” Brown said. “It doesn’t have to taste bad to be healthy, and it doesn’t have to be fat-free to be healthy.”

In addition to having some fantastic meals, they also host a weekly meat market from local farmers. And Brown is well aware of the impact typical restaurants leave upon the environment, and has addressed by sending all food scarps to a local farm for composting and recycling, as well as the carbon emissions saved from buying locally! They are continuing to strive towards the future with the following goals:

We have our hearts set on a super-high efficiency dishwasher - it’s all about saving a little H2O!

We hope to be using biodegradable to-go containers in the near future

We are looking into the use of solar panels and other ways to be energy efficeint at Local Burger

Also, be sure to check out The Green, a new series on the Sundance channel. Local Burger is featured on April 17th at 8 pm as part of the episode “Eat.”

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a 5 to 4 decision that the Environmental Protection Agency, the director of which is appointed by the president, was amiss in its refusal to admit carbon dioxide is a pollutant and that, under the Clear Air Act, has the authority to regulate auto emissions. Ignoring carbon dioxide is directly related to global warming has allowed the Bush administration to also ignore regulating the greenhouse gas.

“EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The agency “identifies nothing suggesting that Congress meant to curtail EPA’s power to treat greenhouse gases as air pollutants,” the opinion continued.

It appears that the decision could force the EPA to either prove excessive amounts of carbon dioxide is not harmful to the environment or to begin regulating it. It could also mean that states have the right to regulate the greenhouse gas if the Bush administration refuses to do so, opening the door for progressive states like California to take the lead on environmental reform once again.

To raise awareness of the decision and to put a little pressure on the EPA, activist group Environmental Action began an online, grassroots outreach campaign to get people to send a message to encourage the EPA to act (via Green Options).

Gerry brought up an important question in the plastic debate which deserves a follow-up.

Gerry Keane says:
I have just stopped using plastic grocery bags. My problem is that they are very handy for kitchen garbage. I live in an apartment and am unsure what to use in their place. I don’t want to start buying more plastic “Kitchen Catchers.”

Any suggestions?

Thanks…
Gerry

Thanks for the question Gerry! It is neither a simple nor easy one, but here’s some ideas. As Brady suggested not using any garbage bags is great if allowed in your city, however many places forbid loose trash.

There are biodegradable bags available, but the conditions in landfills prohibit them from disintegrating. Actually, landfill conditions prohibit even natural garbage, such as apple cores or banana peals, from degrading in natural ways. No Impact Man and garbage.

The problem is the design of the modern landfill (which you can read about in Elizabeth Royte’s fascinating Garbage Land). The landfill is not designed to help things to biodegrade, which requires contact with air and water. Instead, landfills hermetically seal their contents away from the environment to protect it from the toxic things in the landfill that aren’t biodegradable (of course, the seal breaks down in 70 years and leaves a toxic mess for our grandchildren to deal with, but that’s another story).

What this means, is that organic things like apple cores and yesterdays newspapers and cornstarch cups, when dumped in the landfill, either don’t break down at all—and certainly don’t end up returning nutrients to the earth—or they break down anaerobically, which means they produce methane, a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

So ultimately any biodegradable products that end up in landfills are just garbage with fancy, feel good names.

The best solution to this problem is composting. If you are in a large city, and small apartment check out No Impact Man and if your city has compost drop off sites. If you have an outdoor area, there are many different composters available for purchase, or you can take the cheaper route and build it yourself. I’m hoping to get ours built this summer, so if you have any tips please let us know! To avoid odors or fruit flies, simply pick up some biodegradable bags and collect compostable garbage indoors, tie it up and toss the bag in your outdoor composter.

Waste reduction is also an incredibly important element. Simple awareness of product packaging and conscious purchasing can help reduce individual garbage output. For example,instead of the individual yogurt cups, buy a large container of yogurt and then dish out a portion in a reusable container (maybe one of those old yogurt cups) to take with you. And reuse! For some free Tupperware, just wash out your old plastic or glass containers and use them to store leftovers. And it never hurts to ask. If you have a favorite product that seems to over package, let the company know. After all, if it will make the customer happy and save them money in packaging, I doubt they’ll be reluctant to comply!

Last, if composting is not an option, there are 100% recycled trash bags. While it is still using plastic, it is not virgin but rather 100% post consumer recycled.

“If every household in the U.S. replaced just one package of 30 count tall kitchen bags made from virgin plastic with 100% recycled ones, we could save:

• 89,700 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 5,100 U.S. homes for a year

• 1.6 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 2,400 full garbage trucks

• and avoid 33,300 tons of pollution”

For other waste reduction ideas, check out more from No Impact Man, a NY family experimenting with how to cause no net impact on the environment, with the first phase being no waste. Which means no toilet paper. Zero. Wow.

I hope these ideas helped! If anyone else has some gems to toss into the ring, please don’t hesitate!

Paper or Plastic? No thank you!

Here are even more inexpensive options to kick the plastic habit.

Easy and free, just grab a bag laying around your house.

For those craftily inclined, simply make your own bag!

Find some fabric from old cloths or linens and sew a couple squares together. Add an old belt for the handle and viola! you’ve got the one of a kind shopping bag that will turn everyone green.

Put on your knitting/crocheting cap and recycle your old bags. Simply collect the old plastic bags, cut into strips, and go crazy. Your new plastic bag will be sturdy, reusable, compact and easily rinsed out. Here’s just one easy pattern, there a many others out there, or make your own and share.

Shopping list for the shopping bag:

1. Reusable Bags have a huge array in all price ranges. They’ve got a recycled cotton tote at $7.95 which holds a full load and is fair trade!

2. Don’t forget to grab some small guys for produce.

3. Grab a workhorse for $9.95, that folds into it’s own attached bag and fits in your palm, perfect to carry in your purse or throw in the dashboard.

4. Or make your statement with this BYOB (bring your own bag).

5. If you’d rather reuse your current bags, check out this guy at $9.95, which allows you to wash easily in the dishwasher.

6. As Peggy pointed out the key to success is keeping “reusable containers handy” and Ecoezi has a great solutions. For $21.95 “compact, convenient, stylish wallet, with 10 sturdy, easy to use machine washable bags.”

7. Envirosax has beautiful prints with a set of in a carry pouch for $31.

8. For some fun prints check out b. happybags. The bags are organic and made in the US and are each $24.

If you want the nano of the bag, check out Onya, which is stuffed into a bag on your key chain.

San Fransisco isn’t the only place to grasp the severity of our waste, IKEA “Ikea has begun charging U.S. customers for plastic shopping bags in an effort to improve environmental responsibility, the home-furnishings chain says,” we’ll all be carrying our own bags soon enough, why not lead the pack with some cheap style!

What’s all the hullaballo?

~500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year.
The average American family of four throws away about 1,500 single-use plastic bags per year
Less than 1% are recycled. Most are used for trash bags which take ~1,000 years to degrade in the landfill. Wow, isn’t that scary

An interesting new approach has been to biodegradable plastics which can be tossed into the sea. While biodegradable is certainly better, where in the world are they planning on dumping all of these?!?

It appears that San Francisco will be the first city in the US to ban plastic shopping bags. The Reuters article says San Franciscans use an astonishing 181 million plastic bags per year. That’s about 120 bags per person per year. This works out to saving “450,000 gallons of oil a year and (will) remove the need to send 1,400 tons of debris now sent annually to landfills.” Imagine the cumulative impact as similar bans spread around the planet and begin to reduce the 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags we use globally every year!

The goals are to stop using the non-biodegradable bags and cut down on oil consumption but it is certainly not to switch back to using paper bags. Remember those comes from trees. Instead the ban hopes to motivate shoppers to start using reusable canvas shopping bags. The city of San Francisco gave out free canvas bags to residents the day it voted to ban plastic bags.

So, why wait for a ban in your city? Pickup a few fair trade canvas shopping bags for yourself.