Virescent

I’m at home sick today, and generally when I don’t feel well, I want Goldfish. The slightly salty, cheese cracker kind, specifically. I don’t have any, though. They taste best from the big cartons, like the 3-packs at Costco and the gigantic milk-type cartons will do (they start out good but get stale faster than the 3-packs), but I haven’t been to Costco recently, so. I did get a little box of pseudo-Goldfish yesterday, and I’ve had a few for comfort today instead, and I will review those for you.

I have a box of Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies. They’re like goldfish, in that they are tiny baked cheese crackers, only they look like bunnies, and they are organic. Whole Foods is dangerous and fun, because their snack foods emit the siren call of organicity, and the have the haunting allure of fair tradicousness. This has led me to purchase items like organic pop tarts on several occasions that I am not entirely proud of, although I have determined that their organic poptarts actually taste good, like spices and fruit and flour, as opposed to like sugary cardboard, as a normal poptart does. Still, that is no reason to buy them, since pop tarts probably aren’t real food.

I digress. I bought the Cheddar Bunnies Tuesday due to 1/3 not having goldfish, 1/3 really wanting goldfish, and 1/3 being curious. They taste…fine. Cheesier than Goldfish, but without the necessary salty tang that pleases me. Also, the bunny shape is flat and too intricate, and richer (do I detect more butter?) than the simple baked cheese taste of the Goldfish. It lacks the simple bulbous fish body shape, the crunching of which hollow space is probably 25% of the enjoyment of the fish.

In terms of packaging, there aren’t that many bunnies in the box, compared to the glut of fish available at Costco. Buying a big box of fish is more efficient, waste-wise. The three-pack at Costco has a recyclable outside box and three plastic inner bags, and this has a tiny recyclable box of recycled cardboard, and a small plastic inner bag. Per bunny, I produce more waste that I would per fish.

On the upside, since the bunnies aren’t as tempting, I don’t eat too many of them and ruin my dinner.

Really, this is all a matter of taste- but if you like the salty, crunchy fish, you might not like Annie’s Organic attempts. I should go back to Costco to fulfill my true cheese cracker desires, but first, I should take some aspirin and go back to bed.

From recently inside my head, two quick follow-ups, then a review of external bits:

First, still on the fence about buying into Valentine’s day? Reuter’s has a dampening article on the child labor and human trafficking that go into producing much of the world’s cocoa, harsh chemicals dumped on roses and inhaled by farm workers, and those crazy war diamonds. Get off the fence and try something else! If the dear heart’s heart is set on chocolate, check out fair trade chocolate options. (My head? It is now salivating.)

Second, Mike Bloomberg is chastising the US government for promoting corn ethanol as a viable fuel. Sure, it’s interesting because I talked about it yesterday (sensing a pattern in this post?), but Bloomberg has also been flirting with running for president this year. Fred Thompson has already shown us the pitfalls of merely flirting with the idea, though, and the rash (yes, rash) of interesting primary action will probably make late entries into the race less interesting by comparison. But the loud green mayor of NY seems to want to make his voice heard on the national stage, and if he’s got a message like this, let’s hear some more.

Finally, let us turn our heads to my shampoo (masculine types are dismissed, unless they’re looking for tips on how to smell not so, well, dude-like).

I’ve been trying out a few ecofriendly shampoos, and it’s been a rough process. Literally. Whole Foods brand grapefruit shampoo and conditioner left my hair feeling unwashed and unconditioned. Plus, they smell sickly-sweet. Avalon Organics has a Lavender shampoo and conditioner that smell good- like real lavender, not the fake lavender scent. Their shampoo takes a lot of work to lather (it’s not my water’s fault) and their conditioner, while promising to nourish, leaves my hair brittle even when I let it sit a while. If you like the smell, the lack of animal testing, and the “100% vegetarian ingredients”, give the shampoo a try and avoid the conditioner- though the latter might work better for you if your hair is short or oily.

Really, though, you can skip the other two brands altogether and check out Trader Joe’s store brand. Their conditioner actually conditions- and I’ve got long, curly, slightly dry hair, so that’s a tough proposition. It’s $2 a bottle, smells fantastic, wasn’t tested on animals, and it’s got mostly organic ingredients. It does contain a couple parabens, which haven’t been proven to cause breast cancer in anything. Natural health people add an ominous “yet” to that statement. Avalon Organics consciously avoids them, but hey: Avalon Organics hasn’t produced a working conditioner yet, so. I’ll keep testing. (If you can’t wait for me to come up with another suggestion, try the comments at Green as a Thistle’s similar post.)

A couple weeks ago, an article from the NYT outlined a few new books on ecothings. Three were highlighted for their emphasis on pragmatic solutions and lack of partisan bickering (well, relative lack…Newt).

Two of the three books I’ve discussed here- Gingrich’s A Contract with the Earth and Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s Break Through.

Actually, speaking of Break Through, I finished that a month ago and never found time to review it for you. So:

Break Through spends about 280 pages outlining in detail why, based on sociology and history and economics and street life in Brazil, the authors are very very right about environmental policy and why environmentalists are very very wrong and also negative, angry people. They talk a lot about Brazil. There’s not a whole lot of explanation of their actual policy or anything- other than Thinking Positively and Treating the Crisis as an Opportunity. Also, we must Deal First With Related Issues (this has something to do with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) and they mentioned like one or two bills that they were working on or approved of that were related to this. I was really hoping for a book with 1/2 of the extra examples and four times the practical policy advice. They focus on what government should do, but not on people making them do it. This is a theoretical framework with references to Brazil, which is a start, I suppose.

All in all, the book was a good read and framed a lot of issues well. The examples are interesting and the analysis fresh and totally sensical. I’d recommend it if you are at all interested in environmental policy. If you want to borrow my copy, it’s available.

With respect to Newt, I haven’t read his book and I don’t intend to. If anybody does and it says anything interesting (ie, about anything other than tax cuts for everybody! and no emissions caps) then let me know, otherwise I’m going to assume I’ve got Gingrich pegged.

The third book is by Bjorn Lomborg, Skeptical Environmentalist. Now, “skeptical environmentalist” could mean a lot of annoying things, but he’s written a few books already and they’ve gotten some solid reviews. Apparently conservatives tend to like him, so I’ll let him substitute for all the Newt I’m not reading. I’ll let you know how he rolls once I find him and crack the cover.

I don’t dryclean clothes often, but after an entire winter’s worth of run-ins with mud and soup, my coat needed a bath. A few alternatives to the perc-full traditional dry cleaners now exist, and the two most discussed are the Greenearth franchise and “wet cleaners”.

Wet cleaning is a real thing, and if you want to know more about it, read the wikipedia article. I couldn’t find any locations in the area that do this kind of cleaning because there aren’t many places that do. It involves possibly deconstructing clothing, washing it carefully in biodegradable solvents, then maybe reconstructing it. Most “dry clean only” clothing actually can be cleaned in water and soaps, very very carefully. With computers. Still, hard to find a place that does it, and I don’t know any geishas (read the article), so I looked into the Greenearth people.

Greenearth cleaning uses a silicon based solvent that, in very very high concentrations, causes cancer in lab rats. The same chemical is also found in many personal care products, like shampoo, and has been very widely used for about 30 years, and no studies have definitively linked it with people cancer. NPR reported on the cancer findings, but several other reports dismissed the link with assertations and even some science. Whatever the health effects it’s generally agreed that the chemical is less harmfull than perc- making it easier to get approval to use it on location and cheaper to clean up for franchise owners- plus by all reports the Greenearth process is gentler on clothing and doesn’t have a telltale smell. More importantly, stores that do this actually exist in the greater DC area. It appears their franchises are springing up everywhere- they have a pickup service in Kingstowne, Springfield, a branch on North Quaker in Alexandria, presence in Arlington on Washington Blvd, and locations in Bowie MD and Silver Spring MD. The storefront on North Quaker is large and very professional- looking, with uniformed staff and lots of signs posted about safety processes and environmental credits. Prices range from fine to really good- less that 20$ for my long cashmere-blend coat. Shirts are $2.70, according to a sign. No other prices were posted. While they did swathe my clothing in plastic upon return, they didn’t give me all-new hangers, so that was a nice little conservationist “perk.” Har.

My clothes smell nice and look good- all the unscientific tests say that Greenearth treats your clothes much better than normal drycleaners- and the prices seemed ok to me. If you’re balking at paying more for shirts, consider that the shirts will probably last longer with the Greenearth people.

BusinessWeek’s special report on green tech (investing in, new trends, etc.) includes an article on a new rating system for measuring the greenness of PCs. The Electronic Product Environmental Assesment Tool (EPEAT) was

“designed by manufacturers and environmental groups to help institutions such as governments, schools, and businesses pick eco-friendly PCs. Computers submitted for EPEAT ratings have to first meet 23 required criteria covering hazardous materials, recycling, and power consumption. That scores them a bronze rating. To nab a silver or gold, they have to meet at least half or 75%, respectively, of a second list of 28 more rigorous criteria.”

BW points out that while businesses buying in bulk will pay attention to the EPEAT guidelines, most individual consumers care more about upfront cost and nerd cred than the environmental impact rating of a product. They conclude that since this is true, there’s not a reason to give consumers the additional information contained in this new rating.

Since this is a business mag, the lack of faith in the informed consumer must be forgiven. Though we shortsighted masses probably make our purchasing decisions based on cost, styling, or ability to frag n00bs, it’d still be lovely to have a chance to make an environmentally conscious decision (while fragging n00bs in style, cheaply). Not included in the article is a link to the EPEAT rating systems. 617 products have been reviewed and are searchable by product rating in the gold, silver, and bronze categories. Only 14 products got the gold- one of them is the $100 laptop design for the One Laptop Per Child program. Would tech people care to comment on whether or not the Gold medal winners are sweet systems and thus good choices for reasons beyond tree-hugging hippyness?