Urban Ecoist

Seems the companies that are supposedly making the world safer for your child are not really all that concerned about the next generation after all.

Climate Counts recently released its findings as it pertains to responsible climate-centered action on the part of the toy making and children’s equipment industry, and let’s just say if it really were a Lego World, it wouldn’t be headed for a healthy future.

The big winner (and in that I mean the best of the very sad bunch) is Hasbro with a whopping 40. Woo-hoo. That puts them one point better than Kraft, a company that exploits the stupidity of the American Public with every single-serving snack pak of Corn Nuts. That 40 places Hasbro well above Sara Lee (13) and ConAgra (21). By contrast, the highest-scoring company rated by Climate Counts (I’ll detail the criteria below) is…ta dah…Nike.

Nike? Really? Isn’t Nike exploiting cheap labor in Southeast Asia to make $100+ basketball shoes? I thought I wasn’t supposed to support Nike.

That is exactly the issue I have with Climate Counts. Sure, it rates a company on 4 categories encompassing 22 criteria, and that marks the end of their purpose. But in the case of highly-rated Nike and Coca Cola, there are other issues to look at before deciding to buy a company’s products (as Climate Counts suggests). But that is yet another topic for another day, urban ecoists.

Oh, yeah, the four categories…

* MEASURED their climate “footprint”
* REDUCED their impact on global warming
* SUPPORTED (or suggest intent to block) progressive climate legislation
* Publicly DISCLOSED their climate actions clearly and comprehensively

So, you see, labor practices or safety is not taken into consideration when it comes to Climate Counts, but the point is to simply draw attention to how large corporations are dealing (or not) with climate change.

And returning to today’s topic, it seems that children’s products manufacturers are definitely not leading the Corporate Social Responsibility arena. In fact, the only industry that doesn’t beat Hasbro’s 40 is the airline industry (top airline Northwest rated a 39). And the hotel industry tied with Marriott’s 40. But there is no reason for the Toy/Kid Stuff industry to pat itself on its lead-painted back. No other industry had 62% (8 out of 13) of its major companies score a big fat Zero.

toy makers, childrens equipment, industry, Hasbro, Lego, Kraft, ConAgra, Sara Lee, Climate Counts, climate change, social responsibility, CSR, Nike, Coca Cola, children, environment

Within days of Michelle Obama breaking ground on the White House’s South Lawn, California’s First Lady Maria Shriver announced that she too will be putting in an “edible garden” in Sacramento’s Capitol Park.

Will the updated “victory garden” become the new black…or rather green?

According to the White House blog, First Lady Michelle Obama and a group of students from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, DC got out the shovels and starting digging up the South Lawn. They are putting in a vegetable garden complete with herbs, both perennial and annual. You can click here to see a PDF of the somewhat ambitious garden plans. I love the idea to include edible flowers (nasturiums) and beneficial flowers (marigolds, zinnia) to attract or repel insects. So much better than nasty pesticides.

The official story is that it will be the kids working the “kitchen” garden, and I applaud the fact that the crops planned are the easy

“kid-friendly” peas, lettuces, spinach, and onions. There is some room for broccoli and fennel as well. I’m sure there will be a garden staff to help out in addition to the student labor.

The White House Kitchen Garden, as the blog refers to it, is the first such garden at the White House since World War II and Eleanor Roosevelt. The Clintons had a rooftop garden, but this is the first to go in the actual grounds of the White House in some 60 years.

It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t mention that the WHKG was “suggested” to the Obamas by more than 100,000 petitioners.

More than 100,000 people have lobbied the president online to plant a garden on the White House lawn, according to Kitchen Gardeners International, a coalition of gardeners whose mission is to inspire and teach people to grow their own food. The group’s Eat the View campaign to plant “high-impact gardens in high-profile places” urged the first family to start an edible garden within the first 100 days of the Obama administration. –LA Times

Not to be outdone in green cred, the California First Lady is planning a vegetable garden to be a demonstration garden for the city of Sacramento. Shriver is working with Alice Waters, who is a big advocate for kitchen gardens and local foods and teaching kids to grow things, and her organization, Edible Schoolyard. The plan is to have the garden as a classroom for kids to learn about food and its production.

The White House kitchen garden will provide organic produce for the White House kitchen, appropriately enough. How cool is that? Dignitaries come into town and eat peas from the White House’s personal garden. Take that, Europe. We’re down with veggies here in the US and we even know how to grow them instead of driving our Hummer to the mega-huge-chain grocery store selling GM crops.

The WHKG will also donate to a local food bank, Miriam’s Kitchen. The California Capitol Edible Garden (CCEG) will “probably” be donating to a food bank.

Michelle Obama, kitchen garden, garden, White House, South Lawn, local food, victory garden, recession garden, first lady, California, Maria Shriver, organic, Alice Waters, Edible Schoolyard

This week is National Poison Prevention Week, as if you didn’t know. But you may not know that this is the 48th of such weeks, and National Poison Prevention Week is one of the longest running public health campaigns.

In fact, did you know that 30 children a year die in the United States from accidental poisoning? Thanks to the National Poison Prevention Week, that number is down from a high of 216 in 1972. What I think is even more impressive is that the numbers of accidental poisonings are down despite the increase in household poisons we keep around our typical American homes. Good work, NPPW!

And it’s not just cleaning products or drain openers that are poisoning our kids. Half of all accidental poisoning in very young children involve prescription drugs and dietary supplements.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission offers tips on preventing accidental household poisonings, including not referring to your medicine as candy in front of kids. No kidding. Also, keep an eye on your kids when any hazardous material is present. Keep everything dangerous out of reach or better yet, locked up. Also, and I thought this is a good one, do not have colorful lamps and candles that have lamp oil in them. The stuff may look like Kool-Aid to kids, but even more deadly.

I’m going to go you one better and suggest that instead of keeping lots of chemically-delicious household cleaners around the house, explore other ways to clean your house with natural ingredients. Not that a tummy full of borax would be good for your child upon ingestion (it really wouldn’t), but it cannot be as bad as some of the stuff that may be under your sink.

poison, poisoning, National Poisoning Prevention Week, Consumer Product Safety Commission, children, health, death, chemicals, household cleaners, prescription drugs, medicine, dietary supplements, natural, borax

I ran across this on the Care2 network. I don’t think I am going out on a limb by assuming that many Urban Ecoists out there have gardens or at least a few pots of things growing. Why not help out in the Great Sunflower Project and count bees this next growing season?

It’s really quite simple, or so the website claims. This will be my first year participating, so if anyone participated last season, leave a comment or two describing your own experience if you are so inclined.

The Great Sunflower Project is meant to study the health of the urban bee. It is well documented that bees are disappearing in the wild and in agricultural areas, and as bees are a very valuable resource for pollinating many of the things we eat and use in our daily lives, the health of bee populations could not be more important. Studies focus on the wild bees, but fewer studies have looked at the health of urban bee populations.

We know that pollinators are declining in certain wild and many agricultural landscapes. However, little is known about urban pollinators. Our recent data on bumble bees in an urban setting suggests that urban bees may also be declining (McFrederick & LeBuhn 2006, Fenter and LeBuhn submitted). While the loss of these pollinators is important, it is more important to understand what effect these losses have had on pollinator services.

We do not know much about how healthy bee populations are maintained in an urban environment. Because natural habitats are uncommon in urban landscapes, they may not provide enough resources to support viable pollinator communities. However, if other habitats, such as urban gardens and restored areas, are sufficiently connected to natural habitat, then native populations may thrive. — The Great Sunflower Project

I tend to advocate making your urban garden a home to all things wild and helpful, so putting in a sunflower or two, in addition to the beauty they bring, will also bring bees to your garden. The bees will pollinate everything else you grow or let grow, and in return you get vegetables, fruit, and seeds for your next season.

If you join the Great Sunflower Project, you will receive seeds for a wild, native sunflower variety called the lemon queen. Plant the seeds (sunflowers are notoriously easy to grow from seed) and sit back. You can plant the sunflower in pots if you don’t have traditional garden space. While sitting back enjoying your garden, write down how many bees come to the flowers on your sunflowers. Make a note of what time of day, the temperature, and the date. That’s all there is to it. You enter the data on the website under your account. The Project is specifically interested in how long it takes five bees to visit a single plant. And if you can identify the type of bee, even better.

So get the kids involved in this one. The website offers lot of interesting info on bees of all shapes and sizes, as well as how to attract more bees to your garden. There is also resources for teachers and students.

urban garden, city garden, bees, honeybees, pollination, colony collapse disorder, wild bees, bee health, flowers, vegetables, seeds, sunflower, great sunflower project, kids, gardening

Despite my reluctance to admit that I read USA Today occasionally, I read USA Today occasionally. My aunt and uncle subscribe, and spending the holidays at their house, well, it’s here, and I tend to read anything within an arm’s reach.

USA Today has been publishing special investigative reports on “The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America’s Schools“, and I happened upon this week’s installment in what seems to be a pretty expansive series. Monday’s paper had a scary article on the alarming proximity of industrial facilities and elementary schools and pre-schools.

USA Today found that more than 20,000 schools are located within one half-mile of an industrial plant that emits some rather dangerous pollution. That is one in every six schools. And to make matters worse, half od those schools are elementary schools and early education centers such as pre-schools. That is just unacceptable.

Children are kind of like our canaries in the coal mine. Think about it. Kids are smaller, so any chemical that is taken in is naturally going to become a higher amount percentage-wise than in adults. And here’s where it becomes downright negligent — the EPA only tests chemicals in terms of how they may affect an adult body.

Too little is understood about the impact of thousands of chemicals on children. In part, that’s because most government assessments of the dangers assume those exposed are adults.

“The science doesn’t know — it can’t establish — what a safe level is” for children, says Stephen Lester, the science director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, an advocacy group that focuses on children and schools. “There’s no tool, scientifically, for evaluating cumulative risk.”

Landrigan says the lack of detailed knowledge on safe levels of exposure, coupled with today’s rates of childhood cancer, asthma and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, begs “the obvious question: Is there a cause-and-effect relationship?” –USA Today

One of my pet research projects, and biggest gripes, is that many, many, way too many chemicals are not thoroughly tested before being approved for general consumption. Look at bisphenol-A. And in the case of many industrial facilties, chemicals are being pumped into our air with hardly a thought given to how those chemicals affect people over the long term.

USA Today, chemicals, pollution

Sanyo has unveiled a new electric-hybrid bike for the Japanese market.  My question is, when will it come to the United States market?  Why must Asians always have the best technology, i.e. toys?

The Eneloop electric bicycle is designed to “harness the energy” from the braking system on the bike. It comes with a lithium-ion battery that is, of course, rechargeable. The best part in my opinion, as I live in a hilly city, is that the electric part of the bike can add extra power going uphill — up to double the power that my little legs can generate on their own.

Sanyo has an entire family of “eneloop” products which are based on the eneloop battery, which is a hybrid between regular old alkaline batteries and the traditional rechargeable batteries. The eneloop batteries are ready to use and can be stored for long periods of time, rather than needing to be charged before use and recharged often. According to Sanyo, the eneloop batteries are available in Japan and Europe, but the website doesn’t say anything about North America. I’m sure the disposable battery lobby is somehow involved…but then I usually blame lobbyists for most of our society’s dumbness when it comes to cleaner technology.

I can see this kind of hybrid moped-bicycle becoming popular in my urban environment of Portland, Oregon, and other hilly cities across the US. I would hope that a bike could become popular in many, many other cities, but unfortunately American urban planning over the past century seems to eschew centralized layouts and instead prefer the suburbs to house everyone in cookie-cutter McMansions. I am not sure if suburbanites would be as well served by adding a bicycle/moped to their family’s vehicle fleet, but it could be a great way to get to school for teens or for anyone making a shortish journey to wherever it is that Americans drive to constantly.

And I am not sure if this kind of electric bike would need to be regulated like a moped in the US. Mopeds requires licenses to drive, whereas bikes do not. If licenses would be required for a hybrid such as the eneloop, then I can see how this bike may not be as easy to own and use in the US. But if the eneloop and it’s ilk did not require additional licensing, this could be a good move for kids getting around, you know, to and from soccer practice so Mom can get rid of the SUV.

Wow, I am living in a dream world, aren’t I? Kids cannot be allowed to wander the streets on their own, or so it seems. And Americans giving up their cars and their hour commute to and from work– never gonna happen.

Still, for urbanites, the eneloop could be an excellent way to increase your bicycle-based travels. The eneloop also claims to boost speeds up to 1.8 times. It’s not much, but if I can get a few miles farther without totally wiping out my legs and showing up ruddy-faced and sweaty to an appointment or a meeting, that could be a very cool thing for me — and everyone who has to sit near me.

Sanyo, electric bike, hybrid, bicycle, lithium ion, battery, alkaline, rechargeable, Japan, Europe, commute, biking, SUVs

If you were not already aware of it, there is a high-numbered cable channel called Planet Green.  It is part of the Discovery family of cable channels, and I have to say it is the least fav of all the Discovery channels.  In fact, I mostly hate Planet Green — except for Bill Nye’s show, Stuff Happens.

I know, I know, of all people, you’d think that an Urban Ecoist like myself, I’d be all about Planet Green, but really, it is so lame. The shows always seem to revolve around some B-list celebrity and how cool they are because they are eco-conscious. I mean, Adrian Genier? Give me a break. Planet Green is making a huge mistake with this focus on celebrities telling the rest of American how to live “green”. One, nobody really cares what an actor or rapper thinks, and the only people that would care are simply blindly following just another “trend” that an overpaid celebrity is hawking. Also, if I may point out, Discovery has never had problems in the past with using actual experts in the field, like scientists, so why now this reliance on actors with no relevant experience other than shopping for a hybrid. I would rather hear advice and research from an actual scientist than watching a lame game show with host Tom Green (seriously, please tell me his last name is the only reason he got the job, because it sure wasn’t his talent). True story — my boyfriend will turn on Planet Green just to annoy me. It usually works, but then…

Enter Bill Nye.

I have been a fan of Bill Nye for years. He’s a big dork, with no apparent ego, and he makes sense. He’s got that old-school vaudeville-esque style that can appeal to kids as well as adults, and his show is interesting and informative.

Example…aluminum causes tooth loss in cows. I did not know that. It’s actually the mining of bauxite that releases certain substances that are harming cow teeth on nearby farms.

The boyfriend and I stumbled across Stuff Happens, and we have watched a few episodes “on demand” thanks to Comcast. It’s funny whenever Nye poses a question to his audience, Chris turns to me and had made it a little game to see if I already know about the topic. I mean, I write about this stuff, so I should know about it, yes?

And here’s a kicker for you. I never use non-stick pans when I cook, much to Chris’ chagrin as he washes quite a few pots and pans on a weekly basis. He always complains about my non-stick choices, and I always tell him that I don’t trust the non-stick coating on his pans, as they are pock-marked and scratched. And then, we watched the Kitchen episode of Stuff Happens. The next morning, I awoke to the sounds of breakfast being made. I walked into the kitchen and a non-stick pan had been used for Chris’s scrambled eggs. He’ll listen to Bill Nye, but not to me. Sigh.

Hopefully, Bill Nye can create a few spinoffs for Planet Green, as he is the only thing worth watching.

Planet Green, Discovery, channel, cable, Bill Nye, Stuff Happens, Adrian Gernier, Tom Green, television, episode, kitchen, aluminum, non-stick pans

I finally watched WALL-E last night. I write finally because I usually see Pixar films in the theatre, usually within the first two weeks of their release. I never got around to seeing WALL-E as I hate going to the cinema now that I have to sit through television commercials, and my boyfriend is a big poophead when it comes to seeing so-called kids films.

Now, there was some disgruntlement among some caused by WALL-E’s rampant environmentalism. Some said children shouldn’t be exposed to the Church of Al Gore, and some claimed that Disney was being hypocritical in regards to its merchandising habits when it comes to films like WALL-E. I happen to agree with the second issue, but the first is ridiculous.

Kids should be initiated into the world of environmentalism. You know, I have resented that label since I was young and idealistic, thinking that we could save the planet. I resent it even more now, as no one should not be an environmentalist. Being human and environmentally-mindful should be one and the same, and the fact that some don’t get that yet is why the Earth is in so much trouble. However, to be fair the beginning of the Industrial Age was a while ago, and I doubt that first person to burn coal or a gallon of gas could even imagine what devastation that act would cause. But there is so much more to the environmental crisis than just carbon dioxide — we do produce a lot of crap, both in the form of trash, but also in the form of dangerous chemicals and toxins that are destroying the planet and its inhabitants much faster than global warming.

The more children of today are exposed to the truth the better. Let’s get beyond the Bush Regime’s maybes and omissions and upcoming Republican party spokeswoman Sarah Palin’s not caring to know the causes of climate change.

I loved WALL-E, by the way. My boyfriend liked it, too, although he kept complaining about WALL-E having human emotions. He just doesn’t understand kids’ movies.

WALL-E, Disney, Pixar, environmentalism, environment, trash, chemicals, toxins, Al Gore, children, kids, movies, films, Republican, denial, Palin, Bush