Urban Ecoist

I will totally admit that I stole this idea from this month’s National Geographic, but I really did think that it is such a good idea that really, I am just passing this on…It’s allowed.

Meet Ecofont. And it looks its best in 10 point. Anything bigger and you can start to see the holes. See what I mean?

The trick is that each letter, number or symbol has all these little holes in it. Holes mean no ink in that spot, obviously, and thus the savings in costly printer ink and more ink cartridges going into landfills by those of us that don’t bother to recycle them (I’m guilty of this sometimes).

Now, it’s not like you are going to save the world with a font here, but if you can conserve ink, why not, right? I have recently gone back to get my masters (the reason for sporadic new posts) and suddenly, I find that I am printing out a lot more than I used to. So this ecofont couldn’t have come at a better time. I cannot give you any quantifiable savings on my end as a newbie user, and I really doubt that I will be able to perceive a discernible difference considering my control (previous amount printed) was just changed. But I have faith that I will save ink, dammit!

Anyhoo, the font is available to you free via this site, ecofont.eu (yes, it’s a European product, because they care more about the world than we do here in ‘merica).

It’s a zip file and it is pretty easy to install. You can read some help files on the site if you find that you are having problems getting the file into your fonts drive, or whatever I did to get this to work. The only problem that I had was trying to find it listed under Ecofont. It’s Spranq eco sans in Word.

Ecofont download available here

National Geographic, ecofont, printing, ink

Americans don’t seem all that keen on their fruits and veggies, or at least not as keen as they should be, unless we are talking potatoes. And especially when they eat out, Americans are more concerned about proteins and starches, relegating the veggies to mere side dishes, if included in the meal at all.

And then, add the seasonality of fresh fruits and veggies, and we can see that sometimes eating fresh produce is hard to do, especially if you are on a budget or if you don’t want to purchase imported produce that requires fuel and produced more carbon emissions to ship to your local grocery chain. Also, keep in mind that so-called fresh produce was most likely picked unripe (which means that it did not spend enough time “on the vine” to develop all its healthy nutrients) and has been traveling for a week or more before it even gets to your store.

What’s an urban ecoist to do?

Two options are canned or frozen vegetables and fruits. But which is better?

The canning process involves heating, which will kill any microorganisms that may be living on or in vegetables and fruit. It is very rare that a canned product will carry food-borne illness (which has become a problem with fresh produce lately). However, some nutrients withstand the canning process better than others. Vitamin C and folate are two such nutrients that can be lost during canning.

Frozen produce may be a better choice for most fruits and veggies. Produce undergoes freezing soon after it is picked, so there are less nutrients lost due to age, which may make frozen produce better than some imported “fresh” produce.

Of course, we wouldn’t be very responsible ecoists if we didn’t take some other things into consideration, such as packaging. Cans are highly recyclable and can be reprocessed almost infinitely, but more and more cans are lined with a plastic that contains Bisphenol-A (BPA), which more and more research is showing to leach into foods (especially acidic ones, like tomatoes). Scientists are finding evidence that BPA may cause developmental damage in humans. The EPA is working with some manufacturers to voluntarily reduce BPA use in cans, but I can forecast a day soon when you will be looking for a “no BPA” label on canned goods.

Frozen produce are usually packaged in plastic bags, and the plastic, usually HDPE (#2), used is not as easily recyclable and rarely included in curbside recycling programs. Unfortunately, even the cardboard packaging used with frozen produce is lined with plastic, which also makes it harder to recycle.

Another consideration is where those canned and frozen fruits and vegetables are coming from, and usually that’s a factory farm. Depending on where you live, that can of peas may have traveled thousands of miles to get to your grocery store shelves.

Geez, it’s not easy being green…but if you are serious about it, you may want to can or freeze your own veggies and fruits. When you are at your local farmers market or farm stand this summer, buy larger quantities of fresh produce and process them yourself for winter consumption. Start out freezing fruits like berries, which are easy, and as you become more comfortable and savvy, try your hand at tomatoes.

I remember the cellar at my great-grandfather’s house in Dearborn, Michigan and the shelves stocked with mason jars full of stuff like tomatoes and pickles. He grew everything in his own urban backyard. It’s too bad that as a society, we have become more and more reliant on grocery stores to bring us our produce, when really we could be providing our own — saving money and nutrients at the same time.

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So, Greenpeace is campaigning against the Kimberly-Clark Company. Supposedly, Kimberly-Clark is using virgin cut trees from the Canadian Aboreal Forest. K-C makes disposable products like Kleenex, Huggies, Scott and Viva paper towels, Kotex, Depend[s], and my favorite toilet tissue, Cottonelle.

Since I usually trust Greenpeace to get their facts straight before they go public with a boycott, I participated in the campaign last year. Now, Greenpeace is releasing video of wood stockpiles that are headed for the Terrace Bay Pulp mill in Ontario, right at the tippy-top of Lake Superior. The wood stockpiles contain logs from the Ogoki Forest, which is one of the last stands of virgin boreal forest left in Canada.

First, let’s look at the problem of logging in the boreal forest. It is a unique ecosystem that has developed over a very long time, in such that this type of forest cannot repair itself without losing its unique composition of conifers and other softwoods. You see, when the boreal forest is cut down and replanted, the trees that start to grow are not the same trees that grew there before. Or in order to prevent deciduous hardwoods from taking over, chemical herbicides would have to be used, thus degrading the forest environment. The planted trees will just not take to the new regular pattern of distribution and cannot compete naturally with hardwoods (maybe something to do with a warmer world since the boreal forest established itself). But also, it is the nature of the boreal forest to reseed itself in fires, as with the jack pine. Furthermore, the boreal forest depends heavily on decomposition of trees and other plantlife. If you take out too many trees, the soils will suffer.

Not to mention, all the logging trucks and logging roads, the erosion, the possibility of accidents or spills with gasoline and oil, the loss of habitat for the woodland caribou…

So…Terrace Bay Pulp, Inc. sells nearly half of their pulp (from this virgin cut old-growth) to Kimberly-Clark. This is from Business Net.

Now that the mill is again producing, Terrace Bay Pulp will ship at least half the output to key customer Kimberly-Clark, which had a long-term fiber agreement after spinning off Neenah Paper into a standalone company. The rest of the output will be marketed mostly in North America and perhaps see some tonnage exported to Europe, contacts said.

As a city-dweller, an Urban Ecoist if you will, it is important to recognize that every product that you use is sourced somewhere and in some fashion. It is our collective responsibility to see that the products we do purchase and use are not from a critical ecosystem or harvested in a harmful manner. Do you necessarily need Greenpeace to find these things out for you? No, but it is nice that someone is looking out for the collective good.

Secondly, the problem with Kimberly-Clark is a little problem I like to call greenwashing. I checked out the K-C website and looked into their sustainability reports. Oh, yeah, they talk about how they are getting wood from responsibly-cut forests, and claim that 97% of their fibre is coming from certified forests. The certification they recognize come from one of five organizations that do this certification stuff. If you want to read the whole document that I am getting this from, click here.

Now, here is the kicker. The document states that K-C give preference to fibre coming from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but if you look at the clever little pie chart only 6.1% of the fibre K-C is using is FSC-certified. What gives, K-C? Six percent shows a preference?

FSC is considered by many to be the superior of the certifiers when it comes to sustainable harvests in our world’s forests. You can read more about the difference between FSC and the American Forest & Paper Association’s Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which is the second-ran in terms of certifications.

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It is that time of year when the little kiddies are sent off to school, and that means that parents are buying the usual pencils, paper, crayons, markers, rulers, etc. But are you aware of where some of those supplies come from companies with very different ways of looking at the world? Let’s look at pencils today.

What a better way to discuss a renewable resource like wood with kids than by teaching them about something so ubiquitous as that ol’ number 2? First of all, what kind of wood is used in pencils, and where does that wood come from? Forest Ethics has just released a report card for pencil companies, and which pencil you purchase can make a difference.

Most pencils are made from soft woods such as cedar, and a large amount of cedar is found on the West Coast of the US. Some pencil companies are definitely ahead of the curve when it comes to working with sustainably harvested wood to make their pencils. Two good choices for pencils are ForestChoice, from CalCedar, and Greenline Paper Company’s Eco-Writer. ForestChoice uses Incense-Cedar from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified forests, which has ten principles and fifty-six criteria for determining the environmental impact of the wood harvested from certain forests. The Eco-Writer pencil is made from recycled materials, and attempts to avoid using wood at all.

Some pencils to avoid for being less envir-aware are the Green Apple line of pencils from Red Apple School Supplies. Though the Green Apple’s are made from recycled cedar, it is not clear where that cedar is coming from in the first place. Also, the pencils are made in Japan, so the shipping involved may undermine whatever benefits the pencil offers. Another less-than-awesome choice is Papermate’s Earthwrite pencil line. True, the Earthwrite’s are made from recycled or reclaimed wood, but that wood may be coming from forests that are clear-cut out of the Sierra Nevada, which are under threat. Although Earthwrite does use some FSC-certified wood, it is not clear if all the wood is sustainably-harvested.

A couple of companies to avoid altogether include the pencil giant, Dixon/Ticonderoga. This company did at one time offer pencils made with FSC wood, but no longer. I say we start emailing them and bugging them to make this a priority, or simply stop buying the D/T pencils and maybe they will get the message. Another “evil-doing” (Sorry, I watched Bowling For Columbine last night, and George Bush’s favorite term is my new fav, too) company is USA Gold. I just checked out the Mega Brands website (the USA Gold parent company), and it lists the USA Gold pencil as “are made from sustained yield cedar.” However, ForestEthics gives USA Gold an “F” for using wood from Sierra Pacific Industries, which ForestEthics calls out for using wood from non FSC-certified forests.

In all fairness, I did pop by Sierra Pacific Industries website to see how they deal with the whole sustainable forests issue. SPI says that it is a voluntary partner in the Sustainable Forest Initiative, which they say is similar to FSC. If you want to read a bit more about this he said, she said bullsh*t, you can read this San Francisco Chronicle article from earlier this year. It does seem that there is some debate as to what constitutes sustainable forestry. Perhaps I will revisit this another day.

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Join the Stop Global Warming Virtual March

green tip tuesday

Stem the tide of polluted runoff threatening our waterways by setting up a simple “rain garden”.

green tip tuesday

Whether you are flying to London or driving to your Grandma’s house in the next city, packing light will cut down on fuel use, as well as wear and tear on luggage and other items.

green tip tuesday

When it comes time to pick up after your pup, choose a biodegradable bag instead of regular plastic. Otherwise, you are wrapping one of nature’s quickest degrading substances in something that takes decades to break down.

green tip tuesday

According to the Annenberg Foundation’s Garbage exhibit, the average American generates 4.6 pounds of trash per day - that’s 1460 pounds per year! Less than 25% of that waste is recycled, with the rest going to landfills (which are becoming harder and harder to create) or to incinerators. Decreasing the amount of garbage you put into the waste stream is an easy way to lighten your footprint.

green tip tuesday

Are you using too much detergent? Have you read the instructions on the box to see how much you are supposed to use? Sometimes, the scoops they provide are larger than needed. (An evil trick to make you use more.) Try an experiment with using less detergent until you find the smallest amount you need to still make a load clean. Then mark your scoop at that level (permanent marker works great for this.)

I personally have found that the small 1 tbsp scoop is enough of even my liquid detergent to get the clothes clean.

Go to www.dressforsuccess.org to learn more about donating your business clothing to Dress for Success, a not-for-profit agency that helps low-income women get back into the workforce.

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Direct your browser on over to GreenMaps.org. There you can get the scoop (and the map) on all your local ‘Green’ stores and services.

Not finding anything? Sign up to participate and put your city on the map!!

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Want to ‘green’ your life, but not sure where to start?

Green Options’ free e-course will teach you how to lighten your environmental impact, without sacrificing comfort or breaking the bank.

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Did you know that changing the air filters in your heating and cooling systems regularly can knock 2 percent off of your CO2 output each year.

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Park your car on your lawn or grassy area. The ground will serve as a natural filter for the run off.

More ideas, more information here.