When people try to buy local, they think most often of things they eat. But what about other merchandise? Does it all have to come from China? Walking around a local craft show this weekend, I was set to pondering the value of buying things made by people who live near me and who, in most cases, I know.

(A confession up front: My husband was one of the exhibitors, so I have good  reason to think craft shows are great. But as swell as I think he is, I won't promote him here.)

I bought soap for my sister from people who live within 15 miles. A table runner for her, too, from someone who lives within 20 miles. For myself: a jacket (made within 25 miles) and earrings (made within 40). 

To be sure, many of the materials likely came from farther away.  But I don't want to make this complicated. For me, it was enough to know they were made nearby and by hand, not some giant piece of machinery.

Right now --and through the fall -- is big craft show season throughout the region. Maybe I'll see you at one of them. 

A lot of news has been coming out lately about bisphenol-A.

The compound, also called BPA, is in many plastics, including baby bottles, and the linings of cans used as food containers. While the plastics industry says the chemical is safe, researchers have been concerned about possible neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and young children exposed to the chemical at current levels.

Yesterday, Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper reported that tests by Health Canada scientists showed levels of BPA in energy drinks and, to a lesser extent, in soft drinks. Health Canada and the industry said the levels were well below regulatory limits, but Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri and an authority on BPA, told the Globe and Mail, “We are constantly getting exposed to this chemical. People drink a lot of soda and this needs to be looked at as one of a very large number of sources of exposure to this chemical.”

Read the story here.

Meanwhile, the six largest manufacturers of baby bottles have announced that they will stop selling bottles in the United States that contain BPA.

Meanwhile, the six largest manufacturers of baby bottles have announced that they will stop selling bottles in the United States that contain BPA. This was in response to a request by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, joined by the attorney general of New Jersey.

“The evidence seems too clear and emphatic and unequivocal to say we should simply permit this stuff to go into children on a massive scale,” said Blumenthal, as quoted in this morning's Washington Post. “And there’s no reason for it, because there are substitutes available.”

Read the Post’s story here.

For background, here’s a story I wrote last year about bisphenol-A that has since expired from our website:

PLASTIC PERIL?
An Ursinus College researcher is convinced that a compound in products
from baby bottles to helmets is a hazard to health. And others agree.

Inside her Ursinus College lab, biology professor Rebecca Roberts dons rubber gloves and watches as her students inject spleen samples from mice with a reactive substance.

It's part of Roberts' eight years of work on bisphenol A, an ingredient in plastics ranging from reusable food containers to eyeglass lenses to CDs.

It's also part of her life as a mom: Many baby bottles contain BPA.

"I wholeheartedly believe there are serious concerns with this compound," she says, thoughtfully fingering a test tube partly filled with the white, powdery substance.

Others agree. Two weeks ago, a draft report by a program of the National Institutes of Health concurred with the earlier evaluation of an independent scientific panel, concluding there was "some concern" about possible neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and young children exposed to the chemical at current levels.

The plastics industry says products containing BPA are safe.

Nevertheless, some stores quickly began pulling baby bottles with BPA from their shelves. Manufacturers are working to eliminate the substance. Legislators have proposed bans.

Roberts, in addition to her research, cowrote an essay - "Babies, Bottles and Bisphenol A: The story of a Scientist-Mother" - that PLoS Biology, a journal of the Public Library of Science, published last summer.

A five-minute walk across campus leads to Roberts' backyard, where Siena Johnson, 2 1/2, puts down her plastic sippy cup and leaps up from a plastic picnic table, exclaiming happily, "My mommy's here! "

One-year-old Bristow Johnson is fretful, so in the kitchen, where plastic cups and lids form a colorful pile in the dish drain, Roberts fixes a plastic bottle of formula.

In the living room, Siena drops to the floor to play with her plastic dolls.

"That's one of the problems," says Roberts. "As a mother, you'd go insane if you tried to take away every single plastic thing from your child. That's all there is. "

For that matter, she doesn't want to take away all plastics. They're washable and bleachable, have no splinters, and the embedded colorant won't chip off.

So she prioritizes, focusing on clear, hard plastics (more likely to contain BPA) that will probably end up in her children's mouths.

Bristow's bottles are made by Medela, one of the BPA-free brands that have proliferated in just the short time since Siena was an infant.

Siena's heart was set on a Dora the Explorer sippy cup. Roberts was relieved to discover it, too, was BPA-free.

Bisphenol A is a chemical building block that makes polycarbonate plastic tough, lightweight, shatter-resistant and clear.

It's in helmets, goggles and dental sealants. It's also used in medical devices such as dialyzers and incubators - like the one that Bristow, born prematurely, stayed in for his first 69 days.

And BPA is in the epoxy linings for virtually all canned goods, protecting the food from a metal that might corrode or affect flavor.

But BPA can migrate from these substances to humans - mostly through food or drink. It has been found in human blood, urine and breast milk.

A 2003-04 study by the U.S. Centers for Discase Control and Prevention found detectable levels of BPA in 93 percent of 2,517 urine samples from people aged 6 or older.

Concern arose after reproductive and developmental effects were reported in laboratory animals. BPA is considered to be "weakly" estrogenic, so researchers are investigating its effect on infant development and hormone-related diseases like breast and prostate cancer.

Within days of the NIH's recent National Toxicology Program report, the Canadian government, based on its own risk assessment, began moving toward a ban of baby bottles with BPA.

Wal-Mart, among other stores, has begun pulling baby bottles with BPA from the shelves; a spokesman said the company expects all of its baby bottles to be BPA-free early next year.

Playtex Infant Care is distributing one million free no-BPA "Playtex Drop-Ins Original Nurser Systems" bottle liners. "While U.S. and worldwide regulatory bodies continue to deem the ingredient safe," the company says, "we are listening to consumer concerns. "

Following California, New Jersey legislators have introduced bills banning BPA in toys and child-care products.

The chemical industry has cricticized many of these moves.

"Although I'm sure their intention is to do things that are good for their customers, they're not going to improve health or safety of their customers by taking these products off the shelves," says Steven Hentges, executive director of the American Chemistry Council's Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group.

"We believe BPA is safe for use, based on many scientific reviews," says Hentges, who was authorized to speak for manufacturers of BPA.

There's also the matter of replacing it. "If we want to not use BPA, we will not have polycarbonate plastics. That becomes a real big challenge," he says. "You will find no alternatives that have been tested so well as bisphenol A."

Meanwhile, the research continues.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, one of the major funders of BPA studies, has given Roberts a three-year, $150,000 grant to study its effect in a new area, the immune system.

"So from that standpoint, it's a unique grant that's very valuable," says Jerrold Heindel, an institute program official. "Her results will be important to help us determine if there should be concerns. "

In her Collegeville lab, Roberts and her research students are looking at cathepsins - enzymes that act like small scissors, cutting to pieces whatever is brought into a body's infection-fighting white blood cell. Some pieces return to the cell surface and become potential flags for the immune system.

Basically, if the cathepsins do their job differently than they are supposed to, the immune response may be faulty.

So Roberts and her students have been injecting Cheerios-shaped cereal with BPA and feeding it to mice. Later, they collect and analyze the mice's white blood cells.

While results are preliminary, she believes she's seeing problems.

Roberts is applying for more grants to continue her enzyme work. She also hopes to start an outreach program in the area, educating mothers about BPA and how to avoid it.

"Do I think more science needs to be done? Always," the biologist says.

Adds Roberts the mother: "I have two little kids at home. I want to make sure they're healthy and growing up the best they can. "

Second thought, do! Some say the stuff made from recycled paper is just as soft as as the stuff made from virgin wood fiber.  

That would include Bill Hemmer, co-host of Fox's America's Newsroom, who yesterday blew a blind touch-test, identifying the eco-paper as the softest. The hilarious segment is now a You Tube video, which accompanies this post. (Scroll down to the bottom.)

As I blogged a few days ago, the advocacy group Greenpeace has released its guide to paper products, including toilet paper, paper towels, facial tissues and napkins. It ranks them according to how much recycled content they have, how much of that is post-consumer recycled paper (versus paper that is, say, left over from manufacturing) and what the bleaching process is.

For more information, visit www.greenpeace.org/tissueguide

I wrote a column about paper about a year ago. It's no longer on our site, so I'll copy it below from our electronic archives:

On a roll: Dead trees go down the toilet
Here's a way to help save forests, one TP square at a time. And it's painless.

Of all the things to obsess about, toilet paper has never been at the top of my list.

Or the bottom.

Then I met Jeff Wells, a pleasant, earnest ornithologist who lives in Maine and was visiting Philly. Wells and a few environmental groups say I should buy paper products made from recycled paper - not trees.

Now, Wells obsesses about birds, billions of which breed in Canada's boreal forest, which he also obsesses about because he's a scientist with the International Boreal Conservation Campaign.

The boreal stretches nearly from Alaska to the Atlantic; it absorbs tons of carbon dioxide and it's a major summer nesting ground for birds that winter in backyards like mine.

But the boreal forest is being logged at the rate of 2.5 million acres a year, Wells says. Some is for lumber, sure. But also for paper. Toilet paper.

Paper giant Kimberly-Clark says all the leading consumer tissue brands in North America contain primarily virgin fiber.

In a longstanding dispute, the company says it mainly uses leftover tree pulp, but environmentalists insist that entire trees are being given over to toilet tissue.

The company said about 11 percent of its virgin pulp comes from the boreal - which is then reforested.

Still, environmentalists wonder why we are, in effect, flushing virgin wood pulp of any sort down the toilet when at the same time we're sending nearly half of all the perfectly good paper left over from home and office use to landfills.

"It's one of those things that just doesn't make sense in today's world," Wells said.

At least half a dozen companies now make TP from recycled paper. I took a field trip to area grocery stores to investigate.

OK, then, talk about obsessed. In one paper goods aisle, there were 18 kinds of toilet paper - including one aimed specifically at children.

Every store also had at least one eco brand. I bought seven. Back home, I piled my loot onto the dining room table and took stock.

The eco-packages had pictures of trees and cute slogans: "Soft on Nature, Soft on You. "

And in case anyone should miss the "100 percent recycled" label, they had names such as Nature's Balance, Earth First, Sunrise, Earth Friendly and Seventh Generation.

All were white, so I guess that matters to most people. (The eco brands touted a chlorine-free bleaching process. )

Many were embossed with flowers or butterflies, which seemed silly until I learned the designs hold the paper together after it has been air-fluffed to make it softer.

Traditional toilet tissue ranges from half a cent to 4.5 cents per square foot. The eco-brands were actually less: half a cent to 2.3 cents per square foot.

Seventh Generation contends on its packaging that if every household in the United States replaced just one four-pack of virgin fiber TP with recycled, it would save the equivalent of nearly a million trees.

The toilet paper awaited me. I tried them all.

I'm happy to report I have not had to seek medical attention for abrasions from scratchy paper - because it was fine.

Allen Hershkowitz is a proponent of recycled toilet tissue and a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Now, he is obsessed. He has timed himself in the bathroom and says it takes less than five seconds to use up a piece of tissue.

And for that, he asks, we're using trees?

Recently, he went to a swank French spa to give a speech. The TP was brownish, stiff. But, "the president of France goes there," he said, "and everybody survives. "

Still, I recently had a bad cold, my nose raw from all the tissues, and I wasn't even using recycled.

I told the spokeswoman at Seventh Generation, and she laughed. In cold and flu season, even they "concede to softer brands," she wryly noted.

So maybe I'll just go with the virgin pulp for my delicate nose. And I'll take eco-paper for, uh, the other end.

No more trees for me.

 

There were 70 nominations, a dozen finalists, and now, the five winners of the Philadelphia sustainability awards sponsored by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council are:

Bob Pierson for Farm to City: Pierson works to connect the region’s farmers with customers, and he does it through farmers’ markets and CSA — for community supported agriculture — farms, which typically have members that pay a fee and collect produce weekly. This season Farm to City will operate 15 farmers’ markets, including two new ones at 15th & JFK Blvd Plaza plus 10th and Chestnut.

Energy Coordinating Agency: Established by Liz Robertson in 1984, the ECA provides about $21 million a year in home heating, weatherization and other energy assistance. It also has significantly expanded and now provides energy conservation services. It also offers training for architects, builders and home energy field inspectors.

Eagles Go Green: You’ve probably seen one of their signs at the football games: “When we recycle, everybody wins.” Launched in 2003, it was Christina Lurie’s mission to reduce the footprint of the team. Did they ever. The team instituted recycling programs, installed solar panels on the headquarters building, began buying enough renewable energy to power all functions, began planting a forest in Bucks County, switched to non-toxic chemicals for the fields, made bio-diesel from cooking fats in the team’s kitchens and more.

Schuylkill Banks Greenway:   Surely you’ve seen it. Maybe you’ve been there. It’s the 1.2-mile stretch (so far) of green along the river from Locust Street to MLK Blvd. It’s been transformed from an abandoned mess into a destination that attracts 16,000 people a week. It’s been described as “an alternative transportation corridor, urban wildlife habitat, pollution management plan, and community asset that unites diverse Philadelphians.” It’s a project of the city, Fairmount Park and the Schuylkill River Development Corporation.

Onion Flats (Thin Flats):  This nine-unit residential development in Northern Liberties is a trophy among trophies, the first LEED platinum duplexes in the country. Platinum is the top level in the U.S. Green Building Council’s program. The idea is to show that “green” design is good design that isn’t necessarily more expensive and isn’t weird, just common sense.

The winners were announced last night at a ceremony at the Philadelphia Flower Show, and they’re all explained in more detail at www.philadelphiasustainabilityawards.org.

The nominees and finalists are listed there, too. Take a look. It’s inspiring. Indeed, taken together, the nominees illustratate a “green groundswell” in the  region, according to the PEC. “This year's finalists demonstrate the breadth of initiative to make Philadelphia the greenest city in America,” Patrick Starr, vice president of the southeast region of PEC, said in a statement.

The award program is done in collaboration with the city,  the Delaware Valley Green Building Council, PennFuture, The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, The Reinvestment Fund, and Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.
 

 

 

 

Wondering which paper towel or toilet paper is the greenest?

The nonprofit advocacy group, Greenpeace, has just released a pocket guide to paper products -- an updated version of the old NRDC guide. The products also include facial tissues and paper napkins, although many people suggest ANY paper napkin is not a good thing. Use cloth until it’s dirty, wash it with the rest of the clothes and skip the ironing.

Anyway, among the brands Greenpeace recommends are Green Forest, Natural Value, Seventh Generation, 365 and Trader Joe’s. It suggests you avoid Kleenex Cottonelle, Charmin, Quilted Northern, Angel Soft and even Scott Naturals.

You can download the guide here:

Greenpeace uses three benchmarks in making its ratings. The recommended brands are made from 100 percent overall recycled content, a minimum of which is 50 percent post-consumer recycled content, and are not bleached with chlorine or toxic chlorine compounds.

The guide lists those recommended, those that "can do better" and those that should be avoided. With each brand, it lists the percentage of recycled content and specifies the bleaching process.

"Tissue products that are made from recycled content help to reduce our impact on ancient forests, protecting forest ecosystems and wildlife," said Greenpeace forest campaigner Lindsey Allen in a statement. "By using our guide and voting with their dollars, shoppers can help save endangered forests." 

Critical among them is the Canadian Boreal, which provides nesting grounds for millions of songbirds. But it is being heavily logged, and Greenpeace contends many of the trees go straight into paper products.

Greenpeace has had a long-standing battle with Kimberly-Clark, the largest tissue product company in the world.  Greenpeace gave an "avoid" rating to these Kimberly-Clark brands: Kleenex, Scott, Cottonelle and Viva.

 

Mark Alan Hughes was proud, clearly. At least he had good news.

City finance director Rob Dubow had just summarized  the bad news about the looming $1 billion budget shortfall.  Deputy mayor Rina Cutler took on the unpopular subject of a $5 per household trash fee. 

Can sustainability survive in this kind of environment?

You bet, said Hughes last night at the latest urban sustainability forum at the Academy of Natural Sciences.  The mayor’s office of sustainability, which Hughes directs, has promised to have a sustainability “framework” by Earth Day, and he said things were on track.

One of the things they’re looking at is efficiencies that have “immediate and sustainable budget implications.” Like reducing energy use in all city buildings 30 percent by 2015, with millions of dollars in outright savings. It would be $36 million less than projected expenditures. But, more vividly, $15 million less than the city spends now.

Hughes crowed that the office is “on schedule to launch the smartest, coolest framework ever designed by an American city.” He said it was even better than the New York plan — PlaNYC — which he’s praised in the past. Hughes joked that he was just setting the Big Apple up to be a better target.

It was an occasionally rollicking evening, down to a surprise guest, Mayor Nutter himself, who snuck in through a back door.

As long as they were talking trash, he came clean about a “big battle in my own household.” Seems that in an effort to make recycling easier, the mayor bought a second trash can for the kitchen. Alas, “it has thrown off the complete feng shui of our kitchen area,” he lamented, adding as the crowd laughed, “I’m going to ask for your thoughts and prayers.”

More seriously, he vowed that no matter what happens with the trash — less frequent pick-ups is one proposal — he’s going to keep weekly single-stream recycling pick-up.

Cutler, meanwhile, took on the $5 weekly trash fee. To keep the system simple (and, presumably, cheaper), they’d have to charge every household, regardless of income level or the amount of trash they put out.  She lamented that the plan, if approved, “is going to be a heavy lift in oh so many ways.”

And how.

Here was one comment from Ben Ditzler of RecycleNOW West Philly: “We in the recycling advocacy community would wholeheartedly support a pay-as-you-throw program, but this is not it. It is, quite simply, a regressive tax that does not encourage a beneficial behavior. Under the city's proposed system, if you put out the maximum amount of trash, you are charged $5/week. If you put out one bag of trash or even a bag of trash once a month (as I do - I recycle and compost), you are charged $5/week. I fail to see how this charge will advance recycling in Philadelphia.”

Stay tuned.

Next up for the Academy’s great Town Square forums: “Extending the Schuylkill River Trail,” 6:30 p.m. Feb. 26.
 

Clean Ocean Action — a nonprofit that seeks to is to improve the degraded water quality of the marine waters off the New Jersey/New York coast — is having a contest for collecting plastic caps.

The organization’s concern is that the caps often aren’t recycled. They become trash or litter, ending-up in landfills and on beaches, or washing into our rivers and oceans.

So between now and May 1, they’re asking groups and families to collect all their caps. The beauty care products company, Aveda, will recycle them into new caps out of 100 percent recycled caps — like the ones on their vintage clove shampoo, which came out last September.

Eligible caps include those that twist on with a threaded neck  (such as caps on shampoo, water, soda, milk and other beverage bottles), flip top caps on tubes and food product bottles (such as ketchup and mayonnaise), plus those on laundry detergents and some jar lids such as peanut butter.

If marked, they’d have the number 5 inside the chasing arrows recycling symbol.

I can attest to how fast they’ll pile up. I collect all mine, except I take them to Recycling Services Inc. in Pottstown, along with all manner of other things I can’t recycle anyplace else.

The contest rules are simple, and based on the honor system. Just keep a tally of the caps collected and submit it to Clean Ocean Action by 5 p.m. May 1.

Registration is required at www.cleanoceanaction.org, or with Carl Guastaferro, contest coordinator, at (732) 872-0111. A packet of information — including details about pre-paid shipping of the caps — will be sent to participants.

Okay. Not hardly. But nanotechnology and hamsters combined are doing some interesting things.

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers who fit special little jackets onto hamsters and then let them run on a treadmill found that the tiny rodents could actually generate power.

According to a press release about their research, they also have also generated electrical current from a tapping finger – moving the users of BlackBerry devices, cell phones and other handhelds one step closer to powering them with their own typing.
 

"Using nanotechnology, we have demonstrated ways to convert even irregular biomechanical energy into electricity," said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regent's professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. "This technology can convert any mechanical disturbance into electrical energy."

The research was detailed Feb. 11 in the online version of the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. Funding was provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Air Force, and the Emory-Georgia Tech Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence.

According to the press release, "The study demonstrates that nanogenerators – which Wang's team has been developing since 2005 – can be driven by irregular mechanical motion, such as the vibration of vocal cords, flapping of a flag in the breeze, tapping of fingers or hamsters running on exercise wheels. Scavenging such low-frequency energy from irregular motion is significant because much biomechanical energy is variable, unlike the regular mechanical motion used to generate most large-scale electricity today."

Plenty of cities -- and entire countries -- are moving toward charging for plastic bags.

Now, the District of Columbia is considering charging for both.  The proposal, if adopted, would give the District one of the country's toughest bag laws, according to a news story in today's Washington Post. The fee would be five cents per bag.

Post reporter Nikita Stewart writes that, under the proposal, the income would be split between businesses and the city, which would use its share to offer free reusable bags to elderly and low-income residents.

It would also be used to help clean the Anacostia River. A recent study found that plastic bags were "the single largest component of trash" in the eight-mile river and its tributaries.

But businesses didn't want to target plastic solely because of the economics of bag-dom. Plastic costs about two cents a bag; paper, five cents.

Both the paper and the plastics industries are expected to fight the measure.