“60 Minutes” follows illegal e-waste from U.S. to China
This Sunday’s “60 Minutes” episode takes us to Guiyu, China, one of the world’s most toxic cities, thanks to e-waste exported from countries like the United States. In Guiyu, pregnant women are six times more likely to result in miscarry, and seven out of ten children have overly high levels of toxic lead in their blood.
Importing e-waste is big business in developing countries, where it’s either landfilled (causing massive toxic waste dumps) or “recycled” by workers (often children) earning little to recover gold and other metals by burning the plastics off of electronic parts, exposing workers and the local environment to cancer-causing toxics.
The “60 Minutes” crew filming in China was accosted by thugs who didn’t want them filming at the e-waste site in Guiyu (see preview below, sorry about the commercials).
Some U.S. “recycling” companies are no better. The “60 Minutes” investigation learned the Colorado recycling company they caught on tape exporting CRTs illegally, and “42 other American firms just like it, were recently caught in a government sting. They all offered to break the law by selling such e-waste when solicited by a federal agent posing as a foreign importer.”
Watch the full “60 Minutes” investigation on Sunday, November 9, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, on CBS.
More about e-waste:Coverage at CNET NewsBasel Action NetworkSilicon Valley Toxics CoalitionLabels: e-waste, recycling, tech, TV
Notes from AIGA Compostmodern 2007 (part 2)
Last January I attended
Compostmodern 2008, a green design conference presented by the
AIGA SF.
I’ve already written about Boisset Family Estates and DeLoach Wines (
“The environmental impact of the wine industry”), and CleanWell hand sanitizer and soap (
“An alternative to normal antibacterial soaps”) (which I use and heartily endorse), but I hadn’t had time to write up some of my other notes and impressions.
My pocket journal (an ultra-thin Moleskine) is where I jot down such things while I’m out and about. My electronic journal (
this here blog yer lookin’ at) is where I save those things for posterity, and share them with others. So here are a few ideas I heard speakers talking about, which made impressions on me:
Self-Indulgent DesignDesigners practicing “self-indulgent design” is equal to driving a Hummer. Examples: Elaborate, unnecessarily long brochures, annual reports, and the like which often contain just three words per page and use fluorescent or metallic inks, plastic sleeves, and other wasteful and nearly impossible to recycle materials.
Low Rate of Paper RecyclingStill only 50% of paper is collected for recycling, and whether all of that actually gets recycled or not is another story. Yet 35% of the waste going to landfills is still paper! C’mon people! I can hardly believe that it’s still so difficult for people to just have two separate containers near their desk, and to be mindful of which one gets garbage and which one gets paper. This is not rocket science. A child can do it. And often, children do it way better than adults.
Electronic Design is Wasteful TooOne big eye-opener for me was something I already knew, but that I hadn’t really processed completely (or maybe I just didn’t want to admit it to myself): Web designers aren’t really polluting and wasting less than print designers. We think of the web and electronic design as a more pure and less wasteful design process, bypassing the pesky problem of deforestation for the pulping of our paper and the nasty chemicals used in the printing process. But in fact, always-on web servers and storage for videos, PDFs, and other files is not free. Servers = energy consumption = oil drilling, coal burning, even *yikes* nuclear energy (and waste). And let’s not forget that servers and hard drives go bad within a few years, all those cellphones and other nifty electronic devices we’re designing iApps for become some Third World country’s e-waste problem (and those countries’ poverty, environmental, and health problems eventually become
our problem).
And here are a few links to things I heard about or saw at the conference:LetsGreenwashThisCity.orgPG&E started a huge publicity campaign a year or so ago under the laudable banner of “Let’s Green This City.” A group of citizens has formed the Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash to unmask the $10 million publicity campaign as mere
greenwashing, and offers San Franciscans an alternative in the form of
Proposition H.
PaperSpecs.comAn independent (not owned or sponsored by any paper companies) database of information that designers and printers can use to specify paper stocks. It’s a paid service ($19.95/mo. or $158.40/yr.), and I haven’t paid for it, so I don’t know how good it is. They have some
free paper, printing, and environmental information available too, but you can’t access the paper database without paying for membership.
Encyclopedia of LifeEOL.org is a new project that intends to harness
crowdsourcing techniques to create a vast online resource of information about the Earth’s 1.8 million known species.
The Designers Accord“A global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.” I joined earlier this year.
Core77 / BusinessWeek Design DirectoryI’d seen
DesignDirectory.com a couple times before, but hadn’t bothered to list myself until this year. In participation with the Designers Accord, you can search the directory exclusively for firms/individuals who have certified that they’ve adopted the accord.
Freedom of the PressIn the gallery I observed a single display copy of
Freedom of the Press, a newsprint publication by
Brian Ponto and
Lindsay Ballant. In excellent
culture-jamming style, in 2004 they commandeered newspaper racks in New York and inserted their own newspaper with stark observations on American politics and how Americans get their news.
CheatNeutral.comA satirical nod acknowledging how many people (including me) view
carbon trading: “Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and
not cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.”
Compostmodern 2009Saturday, February 21
Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
Labels: activism, culture jamming, design, designers, e-waste, environment, events, green design, politics, recycling, web design
Seattle
We went to Seattle last weekend to attend the wedding of our friends Patty and Rich, who met in Seattle but actually live in the Bay Area now. We stayed with our friends Chris and Jana, who used to live in the Bay Area but have since relocated to Seattle (Wedgwood, actually). Are you confused yet?
The wedding was an opportunity for Velma to see some old college friends she doesn’t get to see very often. Rich was one of Velma’s best friends in college, and they were part of the swing dancing scene in St. Louis, and later in the Bay Area.
Velma and I used to work in the same building as Jana, and Chris and Jana asked us to be the photographers for their wedding a few years back, in a park in the South Bay. They’ve since relocated to Seattle (Wedgwood), and were kind enough to put us up and show us around a bit too (I haven’t been to Seattle in over a decade). Not to mention picking us up and dropping us off at the airport! Friends can be awesome, can’t they?
We spent most of our time in the Fremont District and Queen Anne, and Jana and Velma spent a solid chunk of time in World Spice downtown, behind Pike Place.
Here are a few of the places/things I enjoyed in/around Seattle:
Eat LocalA cool organic café and grocery on Queen Anne Avenue N. They use local ingredients and make small batches that are perfect for couples or individuals to pick up on their way home. They also brew
Stumptown Coffee.
Nikki McClureNikki McClure makes extraordinarily beautiful papercut illustrations in a woodcut-like style. You may have seen her
calendars or notecards, or recognize her work from books or magazines. We came across a whole bunch of her work (including a few framed originals, which are fascinating to look at up close) in the above-mentioned Eat Local shop, since she illustrated all their product labels.
Update: Nikki has
a show, “Vote for Survival,” coming to Needles and Pens on October 10. Needles and Pens is a really cool zine and DIY shop on 16th Street near Delores.
Smart Monkey Recycled Yarn & KnitwearLeah Andersson recycles/reuses old thrift store sweaters into rehabbed yarn and new knitted items. I saw her booth at the
Fremont Sunday Market.
Destee Nation Shirt CompanyChris took us to his favorite T-shirt shop. I really liked several of the designs, but since my travel bags were pretty stuffed and I didn’t want to spend much money on this trip, I decided I’d wait and maybe purchase from their website later.
Revival InkI saw this artist’s tees and hoodies at a boutique in Queen Anne and at the Fremont Sunday Market too. I liked two or three of the prints a lot, and would’ve bought one of the hoodies, but while they’re a more earth-friendly 70% bamboo and 30% organic cotton, they have those terribly cheap zippers that seem to jam within a month of use.
ChocolopolisAnother of Chris’s faves, this shop features some exquisite artisan chocolates from around the world, and has free samples out all day.
Hollywood SchoolhouseThis is where the wedding was held, a lovely but slightly quirky historical building. The 1912 brick structure hosts lots of weddings and banquets, and has some interesting decorations.
Gas Works ParkThis 19-acre park is on the site of a former coal-powered gas and oil plant, acquired by the
city in the ’60s and opened to the public in 1975. Right on Lake Union, in the middle of Seattle, the park features stunning vistas of downtown and the lakeside portions of the city (Velma, Jana, and Chris pictured above, enjoying the view).
LeninSince we were only a block away, we simply had to stop and see the 16-foot bronze statue of Lenin in the Fremont. Olya had told me about this (appropriately enough) a couple years ago; I hadn’t seen it when I visited Seattle my first time. If you have a spare quarter-million bucks, you can buy Comrade Lenin for your yard. He’s for sale.
The Fremont TrollThe other thing I hadn’t seen last time was the famous Troll. Somehow Holly and I entirely missed the Fremont neighborhood, although we squeezed in practically everything else in our three-day vacation about a decade ago.
World Spice MerchantsThis popular spot behind Pike Place Market occupied Velma and Jana so long I had to walk around outside because the strong smells were becoming too much for my allergies. Most interesting to me was the
Mongolian tea brick, actual bricks of tea which in the past were broken up to use as currency.
Labels: architecture, art, environment, food and drink, friends, illustrators, recycling, Seattle, T-shirts, travel, Velma
Junk mailers pay less for postage than you do – a lot less
While individuals now pay 42¢ to mail a regular letter, direct mail marketers have once again been granted a much lower rate by the government bureaucrats who make up the rules. It costs just as little as 14¢ to mail one of those credit card offers you got twelve of yesterday.
ForestEthics.org believes junk mailers shouldn't be rewarded for invading our privacy and destroying the environment. Less than 10% of
Canada’s Boreal Forest is protected. It is being logged at a rate of 2 acres a minute, 24 hours a day, to make things like catalogs and junk mail.
The
Do Not Mail campaign has collected over 40,000 signatures since March. If you haven't made your voice heard yet,
do it now.
Labels: activism, environment, forests, politics, recycling
Tell politicians we need a Do Not Mail Registry
Unless you're a big fan of junk mail (I suppose there's
someone out there like that) you may want to sign ForestEthics' petition to
create a Do No Mail Registry that would work like the existing Do Not Call Registry.
An astonishing 100 billion pieces of junk mail are delivered in the U.S. each year, accounting for
one-third of all the mail delivered in the world (!).
And guess whose forests are being cut down to make all that crap you just throw away?
Learn more...Labels: activism, advertising, environment, forests, politics, recycling
The environmental impact of the wine industry
A few weekends back I attended a conference called
Compostmodern, which consisted mostly of panels and presentations about sustainability as it applies to the graphic design industry. A couple of the presentations diverged slightly from the main focus, but they were interesting nevertheless.
One such was given by Jean-Charles Boisset, president of De Loach Vineyards and Boisset Family Estates, which make a wide variety of wine and spirits under various labels, in California and France. The charismatic Boisset's presentation was interesting on many fronts, but I was struck by some of the things I learned about the wine industry as a whole, and about his companies' efforts in particular.
ImpactsThe global wine industry has a
tremendous impact on the environment, from production and manufacturing through transportation and marketing, and ultimately with the consumer who must deal with the resulting packaging materials. Plenty of people don't bother to recycle (or can't) their wine bottles, and how many of us actually know what to do with corks, other than throw them in the trash?
Wine production itself accounts for a large amount of synthetic fungicides, herbicides, and fertilizers that end up in our earth and water. Not to mention the massive amounts of water used in grape production. "Likewise, untreated waste water from winery use — hosing down barrels, tanks and buildings — can harm the ecosystems in and around rivers, lakes and ponds." [
source]
A 2006 study showed that
a pound of waste is created for every bottle of wine made, including the release of 16g of sulphur dioxide into the air. According to Boisset, packaging alone accounts for a whopping 49% of the cost of every bottle of wine manufactured (including design and production of said packaging, presumably).
BiodynamicsA growing number of wineries are
embracing sustainable techniques, and some — like De Loach — are making use of "
biodynamics." I had heard the term before but I didn't really know much about it until Boisset's presentation about how his family vineyards in France are managed. Later I browsed the De Loach website and was enthralled by the
unusually detailed description of what the vineyard is doing over several years to convert the estate entirely to biodynamic production.
From the
De Loach website: "Converting 22 acres of vineyards to biodynamic farming methods requires time and patience. Before planting the new vineyard at DeLoach, we are enriching the soil by letting the land lay fallow through two cover crop successions and applying specific biodynamic compost and preparations."
"We will apply horn manure and barrel compost in the fall in order to introduce more beneficial microorganisms into the soil. Horn manure is the most widely-recognized symbol of biodynamics; [Rudolph] Steiner named it prep 500 in his original lecture. To make it, we bury a cow horn filled with cow manure into the vineyards and let it remain over winter. The horn provides nutrients to microorganisms in the soil that turn the manure into compost. The finished compost is essentially a "bug in a jug", or soil inoculum, that contains microorganisms naturally adapted to the farm's soil since that is where the compost is made. The barrel compost we will use was started in March 2005, and is a mixture of organic barley straw and clean cow manure, containing no hormones or other chemicals...."
Alternative wine packagingI've long been aware of several companies' efforts to green the wine-making process, ever since 1996 or so when I learned of Fetzer Vineyards' use of
recycled glass in their bottles and
other sustainability efforts. I visited Fetzer on a trip north one year with my friend
Laura Stec, a chef and environmental educator.
Another vineyard I've been impressed by is
Bonny Doon, located in our very own Santa Cruz Mountains. They've pushed the industry to adopt the decidedly unsexy screw cap as a superior alternative to corks, for both environmental and freshness reasons.
Boisset, for its part, is packaging some of its wines in the even less sexy
Tetra Pak, an aseptic package that you might be more familiar with from soy milk cartons. Boisset's French Rabbit label is sold in this alternative packaging.
As
others have noted, the Tetra Pak is problematic. While it is theoretically recyclable, in the U.S. there are practically no communities that accept aseptic packaging among their recyclables. According to Boisset this packaging is
more recyclable in Europe, but the fact remains that the U.S. recycling economy isn't up to speed on this packaging yet, and it may be another decade before we see its wide-spread recyclability (let's not forget that much of the middle of the U.S.
still has no municipal recycling
at all).
Labels: environment, food and drink, green design, recycling
Is Apple improving its environmental record, or is it just spin?
Did anyone else notice that Steve Jobs actually made it a point, albeit briefly, to talk about Apple's environmental goals at his
MacWorld keynote last month?
When I was checking out the specs for the new MacBook Air on the Apple website I was astonished to see on the Tech Specs page, a big, bold box labeled Environmental Status Report.
A short while later I went looking for Apple's page on their environmental standards, which I had seen last year but wasn't sure where to find it since they've redesigned their site in the meantime. I went to the home page of
Apple.com and figured I'd have to click on "Site Map" and then look for the link there, but I was surprised to see an
"Environment" link at the bottom of the home page, right next to "Job Opportunities."
It all made me wonder whether Apple is beginning to do a better job with their product designs, or whether it's just their marketing department that's doing a better job with spin.
As I
mentioned here a couple years ago, Greenpeace has been critical of Apple, citing the company as the 4th worst tech firm in 2006 and launching the
Green My Apple campaign in 2007.
Likewise, in 2005 the
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) launched it's
Bad Apple campaign to criticize, among other things, the non-ubgradeability of the iPod and Apple's reluctance to institute a take-back solution for electronics recycling. (SVTC's campaign was itself criticized in a 2006 article on
Roughly Drafted.)
I've been wondering if these two watchdog groups had been following Apple's progress and what their take was. Alas, the SVTC's website search sucks and Google doesn't seem to have even spidered their content (!), so I didn't find much there, although it seems that SVTC is still pushing Apple for shareholder resolutions that would improve its computer take-back efforts.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace seems to have discontinued its Green My Apple campaign after Steve Jobs issued a very public pronouncement last spring on a page titled
"A Greener Apple," wherein he described the company's plans to, among other things, phase out some of the worst chemicals found in CRT monitors. I thought this was a little bit disingenuous on Apple's part, however, since it had been clear for a while that Apple was phasing out CRTs for business and product design reasons, not environmental ones. Jobs' letter also signaled improvements in e-waste reduction via upgrades to its electronics take-back program.
In a statement about Jobs' letter, Greenpeace said, "It's not everything we asked for. Apple has declared a phase-out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufactures' pledge to phase them out by 2009... But while customers in the US will be able to return their Apple products for recycling knowing that their gear won't end up in the e-waste mountains of Asia and India, Apple isn't making that promise to anyone but customers in the USA. Elsewhere in the world, an Apple product today can still be tomorrow's e-waste. Other manufacturers offer worldwide takeback and recycling. Apple should too!" [
Full article]
Greenpeace also issued a
detailed analysis of Jobs' pronouncement last May. Almost a year later, though, they don't seem to have put out a follow-up yet. I hope they will.
Labels: activism, Apple, environment, Mac, recycling, tech
Arbokem's Downtown Paper
Two weekends ago I was at
Compostmodern, a one-day conference put on by the
AIGA about sustainability and the design industry. I chatted for a while with the reps for the great paper company
New Leaf Paper, and I asked them if they'd ever heard of Arbokem paper, which I'd used back in 1997 and '98 for some clients and for
Bay Area Action's letterhead.
Arbokem's little-known Downtown Paper line was one of the best alternatives on the market back in the late '90s, and that's saying a lot. That time was pretty much the beginning of recycled papers' popularity, but almost no companies processed chlorine free and very few paper lines were 100% post-consumer.
But Arbokem's Downtown line was even better. It was 45% wheat straw (agricultural waste that would ordinarily be burned and cause air pollution), 42% post-consumer recycled paper, and 12% calcium phosphate, which whitened the paper without the normal chlorine bleaching process that causes cancer-causing chemicals to be poured into our streams.
Tonight I was thinking about the paper again and I Googled
Arbokem to see if it's still around. Sure enough, the company is, and apparently they do all sorts of
other obscure R&D, but it looks like the paper is not produced anymore. Shame, it was a great alternative.
Incidentally, while Googling Arbokem I came across
this 1997 article from the Palo Alto Weekly that I'd never seen, which mentions my use of Arbokem (look for "Western Front Graphics," my old company name, about two-thirds down).
Labels: environment, forests, Mark Bult Design, paper, recycling, Western Front Graphics
"The Story of Stuff"
"The Story of Stuff" is a 20-minute history lesson and an economics course all in one, but it won't put you to sleep like your professors did. It's a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns and was produced by
Free Range Studios, the same folks who did "Store Wars" and "The Meatrix."
Labels: activism, advertising, environment, food, forests, politics, recycling
Goodwill now recycling computers
Goodwill is now accepting electronics for recycling at some locations in California, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas.
In a partnership with Dell called
Reconnect, Goodwill is apparently keeping anything that looks like it is in working order, and anything that's broken or otherwise not usable is going to Dell's Asset Recovery people for recycling. This means they take all kinds of e-waste: broken CRTs (monitors), random parts, old CPUs, and pretty much anything.
Check the site to see if your local location is participating and what they'll take.
Labels: e-waste, electronics, environment, recycling
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Kansinee
Karl
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Yuliya
Yu-Po