It’s home canning season, and by some indications a lot more Americans are joining in on the pickle-packing fun. If you’re one of them, you ought to know that your plastic-lined canning lids probably contain bisphenol A, the endocrine-disrupting chemical that’s been suspected in a host of health problems and is under intensive scrutiny by the slow-moving FDA.

“Canning jar lids from the brands Ball, Kerr, Golden Harvest, and Bernardin are coated with bisphenol A,” writes Organic Gardening magazine in its Winter 2009-2010 issue.

The magazine asks an endocrine-disruptor expert about the potential health hazards. “If the lid doesn’t contact the food, it’s not a problem,” says Frederick vom Saal, a biological sciences professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. But that’s unlikely to be the case, so he recommends using a BPA-free product. Organic Gardening suggests Weck brand canning jars, which have glass lids.

It’s too bad that the legions of Americans who are growing and preserving their own produce—often because they’re trying to avoid the mega-food system and eat locally and heathily—have to deal with yet another potential toxin in their diet. And while I don’t know how serious the canning-jar-lid threat is, I agree with Treehugger that Jarden Home Brands, the manufacturer of all four BPA-containing brands mentioned above, is not exactly setting a high ethical standard with its website FAQ statement falling back on highly questionable FDA studies. “Weasely words,” Treehugger calls them.

The FDA, as Utne Reader reported in August, expects to rule by November 30 on whether BPA is safe for food and beverage containers.

It’s enough work learning how to blanch and shock our vegetables and avoid the dreaded botulism. Shouldn’t we at least be able to declare our canning jars poison-free with confidence?

Sources: Reuters, Houston Chronicle, Organic Gardening, Mother Earth News, Treehugger, Jarden Home Brands

UPDATE 10/26/09: Lloyd Alter at Treehugger, who wrote about this issue in July, is conducting a test to compare BPA levels in two jars of home-canned pickles: one that's been sloshing around in the trunk of his car and another that's been kept upright. We’ll follow the results here on Utne.com.

Image by TheBittenWord.com, licensed under Creative Commons.

Green your Twitter feed—in a single click. Investigative reporter Osha Gray Davidson, editor and publisher of the Phoenix Sun, has set up a TweepML list for the Society of Environmental Journalists. With one click, users can follow 58 environmental reporters, writers, and publications, including Utne Independent Press Award-winning High Country News.

(Thanks, @orion_magazine.)

It seems that more and more Americans are interested in conserving water—but shorter showers only go so far. It’s time to take the next step: Green the plumbing industry!

That’s the approach of GreenPlumbers USA, which is currently featured in our sister publication Natural Home. Adapted from a very successful program in Australia, GreenPlumbers USA trains plumbers in a variety of conservation techniques, “everything from solar hot water to how to conduct a detailed, 50-point water audit on homes and businesses,” says director Megan Lehtonen.

Top to bottom—manufacturers, wholesalers, contractors and plumbers—the entire industry needs to adapt to new technology and conservation procedures. For us, culture change means plumbers stepping up and taking the responsibility to become champions of conservation. America needs to save water, and the plumbing industry needs to be part of the solution.

More than 3,000 plumbers have taken the program’s 32-hour coarseload thus far, and Lehtonen expects to train at least 50,000 more in the next few years. “It’s really inspiring for us when a 50-year-old plumber gets excited about his trade all over again,” she says. “And you know that he will go out and be a representative for change.”

Source: Natural Home

Image by jrob86, licensed under Creative Commons.

Here's a line that ought to get your attention: "Contemporary children are so drenched with eco-propaganda that it's almost a waste of resources." You probably won't be surprised to learn that these are the words of the woman who reviews children's books for the Wall Street Journal. I stumbled upon Megan Cox Gurdon's essay Scary Green Monsters in PERC Reports, a magazine put out by the Property and Environment Research Center, which boasts of being “the nation’s oldest and largest institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through markets and property rights.” Mostly, the essay is a takedown of anti-corporate children’s books such as Carl Hiaasen’s award-winning Hoot. You can almost imagine Cox Gurdon sneering as she offers up a summary: Hoot is “a book for middle-schoolers about three children who foil a corporation’s attempt to build a pancake restaurant over a burrow of endangered miniature owls.” It’s a grouchy essay, but Cox Gurdon is acting in the interest of something scared, even if that something sacred is not a burrow of endangered miniature owls:

As any parent can tell you, children like routine. They’re not put off by predictability in stories. They’re accustomed to princesses being pretty, dragons being fearsome, and, it seems, alas, their fictional businessmen being corpulent and amoral. So it’s probably pointless to object to the eco-endlessness on the grounds of artistic feebleness.

Yet there is something culturally impoverishing about insisting that children join in the adult preoccupation with reducing, reusing, and recycling. Can they not have a precious decade or so to soar in imaginative literature before we drag them down to earth?

Source:  PERC Reports (article not available online)

Rail all you want against paving paradise, but concrete is going to be with us for a while. We might as well make it greener, right? Environmental Building News writes in its August 2009 issue about a new disposal system for concrete washout, the water left over after washing down concrete equipment. Washout, the magazine writes, “can be nearly as caustic as drain cleaner and can contain metals that are toxic to aquatic life, including chromium, copper, and zinc.”

To make proper disposal easier and certain, Atlantic Concrete Washout delivers an empty sealed container to construction sites, and workers put the washout into it. When it’s full, the company sends a truck to pump out the water, separates the solids from the water, and sends the water to a state industrial wastewater treatment facility.

Environmental Building News points out that it can be expensive and gas-intensive to tote these heavy water loads around, but still the Environmental Protection Agency regards the containers as the best way to contain concrete wastewater. Atlantic Concrete Washout operates in Florida and California (under the name National Concrete Washout), but such services are springing up across the United States. And at least one firm, California's On Site Washout Corp., is selling self-contained washout disposal equipment for job sites.

The concrete industry is addressing the larger issue of climate change, too. World Watch (Sept.-Oct. 2009) reports that the industry’s Cement Sustainability Initiative “has helped the world’s 18 leading cement companies slow the growth of their carbon dioxide emissions. Net emissions grew only 35 percent from 1990 to 2006, while cement production climbed 53 percent.”

Sources: Building Green, World Watch (article not available online)

Image by ThrasherDave, licensed under Creative Commons.

It’s been two long decades since most U.S. bike companies moved their factories overseas, primarily to China and Taiwan. It’s a story avid U.S. cyclists often lament—the decline of domestic manufacturing—and the death knell seemed to sound this past April when the owners of Cannondale, among the last big brands to have a U.S. production facility, announced they would cease stateside production by 2010.

Perhaps Cannondale’s execs (and bummed-out cyclists) should pick up a copy of the New Internationalist. In its June 2009 issue, the global justice publication predicts that large-scale bicycle manufacturing will return to the United States in the next few years. Overseas shipping has become less economical (not to mention an environmental boondoggle), and U.S. retailers are interested in faster turnaround, industry analyst Jay Townley tells the magazine.

If the prediction bears out, which U.S. cities will nab domestic factories? The New Internationalist article, written by a contributor to BikePortland.org, understandably showcases the many perks of Oregon’s bicycle mecca, while conceding that Portland’s “roads and railways are not placed as favorably as a Midwestern transportation hub like Indianapolis or Nashville.”

Source: New Internationalist

Image by doviende, licensed under Creative Commons.

It used to be that primitive wilderness skills were the province of rural, bearded men with a fascination for musket loaders and taxidermy.

Urban forager Becky Lerner displays none of these qualities. Her First Ways blog is a digest of “urban foraging and other wilderness adventures” and shows that the audience for this brand of adventure is growing much broader as green-minded city folks try to live lightly and eat locally. It doesn’t get much lighter or more local than eating weeds off the sidewalk.

Last week Lerner described making sun tea from local leaves and flowers. Another time she made “coffee” from baked and ground dandelion roots. And she has extolled the virtues of munching raw sprigs of purslane, a succulent plant often found sprouting through sidewalk cracks. Purslane, Lerner writes, is “rich in iron, vitamins A and C, and believe it or not, omega-3 fatty acids!”

“Wild food is free, healthy, local, and can save your life in an emergency,” she proclaims. “My goal is to inspire and empower my fellow human beings as we work together to build a better world. Through foraging, it is possible to stay close to nature, even in the city!”

(Thanks, Earth First.)

Source: First Ways

Image courtesy of Becky Lerner.

A Wisconsin farmer has figured out a way to turn cow manure into water that “tastes just like the kind you get at the grocery store.” John Vrieze and his son  have developed an innovative four-part filtration system that effectively converts the manure from his 1,200 cows to potable drinking water and highly enriched fertilizer. Vrieze’s son tells Wisconsin People & Ideas that although the technology is not new (it’s typically used in food processing and water treatment plants), “its use in a dairy farm is unprecedented.” The downside? The equipment requires an awful lot of fuel. With rising fuel costs the economy in shambles, Vrieze has been forced to revert to “conventional manure management” for the moment.

  Source: Wisconsin People & Ideas

Image by Svadilfari, licensed under Creative Commons.

Environmentalists, especially of the veggie persuasion, are quick to point out that meat accounts for nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing consumption, giving meat up even one day a week, is the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.’s panel on climate change, said last fall.

But not all meat is created equal, Lisa Hamilton writes for Audubon. Some methane production is unavoidable (file this fact under “cow burps”), but “animals reared on organic pasture have a different climate equation from those raised in confinement on imported feed,” asserts Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness.

In large-scale farming confinement systems, manure flows into (disgusting) lagoons, where its decomposition releases millions of tons of methane and nitrous oxide into the air every year. “On pasture, that same manure is simply assimilated back into the soil with a carbon cost close to zero,” Hamilton writes.

What’s more, grass-fed livestock can be an essential player in a sustainable set-up. Manure revitalizes soil (in lieu of chemical fertilizers or shipped-in compost), and grazing encourages plant growth. Hamilton also points to Holistic Management International, an organization that proposes managed, intensive grazing as part of a climate change solution.

“In order for pasture-based livestock to become a significant part of the meat industry, we need to eat more of its meat, not less,” Hamilton writes. “So if you want to use your food choices to impact climate change, by all means follow Dr. Pachauri’s suggestion for a meatless Monday. But on Tuesday, have a grass-fed burger—and feel good about it.”

Sources: Audubon, Holistic Management International

Image by pointnshoot, licensed under Creative Commons.

Canadian lawmakers are looking ahead to a time when smoking bans will extend to all public sidewalks and outdoor places, reports Spacing. Canada has some of the toughest anti-smoking laws in North America, but the unintended (although perhaps foreseeable?) consequence of the bans has been a glut of smokers in open-air spaces.

What’s the harm of smoking in open air? Spacing points to secondhand-smoke research conducted in Finland that found air in outdoor cafes to be 20 times more polluted than the stuff people breathe on the sidewalks of traffic-heavy streets. Nasty. “I absolutely see a time in which there will not be any smoking in all public spaces,” Toronto city councilor Pam McConnell told the magazine.

South of the border, cities in various U.S. states, such as Minnesota and California, have already banned smoking at parks and beaches. Berkeley introduced a sidewalk smoking ban in 2008.

Source: Spacing (article not available online)

Can eating healthy become an eating disorder?

E Magazine reports on the disputed condition known as orthorexia nervosa, in which people become obsessed with healthy eating habits to the point of developing an eating disorder.

Orthorexia nervosa begins with a benign, even beneficial drive toward improving one’s diet. But over time, “even if physical and emotional health begin to falter, the sufferer continues a harsh dietary regime,” E reports. “Eventually, the all-consuming drive for nutritional purity can become a kind of spiritual quest.”

Not all doctors and nutritionists are convinced that orthorexia nervosa is a real condition. E cites Doctor Kelly Brownell, codirector of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, who writes on WebMD that in 20 years of working in the field, no one has ever come into the clinic with orthorexia.

Other nutritional professionals disagree. Joshua Rosenthal, director of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, tells the environmental magazine that he counsels individuals to “look beyond” diet as the only font of health. “I encourage people who become overly obsessed with eating the ‘right’ food to see the impact on their life,” he says. “This condition can impede other important elements of life, including relationships, creativity, and just feeling part of a community.

“I call these elements of life primary food—the parts that fill our soul and satisfy our hunger for living. You can eat all the kale in the world, but if you feel disconnected, how healthy and happy can you be?”

Source: E Magazine

Image by riot jane, licensed under Creative Commons.

Who needs to travel abroad when you can see new things (beavers! butterflies!) in your airport’s own backyard? A few notable airports around the world (including Beijing, Boston, and Toronto) have managed to go green with beauty and aplomb. In its June 2009 issue, enRoute profiles the environmentally conscious Zurich Airport, where, in addition to utilizing rainwater, geothermal energy, and solar cells to keep the place running, curious citizens can safely planespot (an activity in sad decline) and observe the airport’s adjoining “safe habitat for over 50 species of flora and fauna.”

Source: enRoute 

Image by GIDESIGN, licensed under Creative Commons.  

Derrick Jensen is an environmentalist who sure knows how to rile up the environmentalists. The radical green author and Utne Visionary has launched a new column in Orion magazine, Upping the Stakes, and its first installment, “World at Gunpoint,” has set off a tempest on Orion’s website, landing 174 comments on 22 web pages when we last checked.

What did Jensen do to spark this upwelling? He suggested that mere “green living” lifestyle choices aren’t going to save our asses, and that much bolder actions are necessary to confront environmental devastation, which he likens to a gunslinging murderer:

If someone were rampaging through your home, killing those you love one by one (and, for that matter, en masse), would the question burning a hole in your heart be: how should I live my life right now? I can’t speak for you, but the question I’d be asking is this: how do I disarm or dispatch these psychopaths? How do I stop them using any means necessary?

Not all the respondents take issue with Jensen: Some hail his line of thinking, and others admit to deeply conflicted feelings. Which to me means that he’s asking important and necessary questions, taking the dialogue to a deeper lever. I eagerly await his next column, which will be online July 7.

Source: Orion

Check out Treehugger’s amazing slideshow of innovative water-collecting mechanisms, including a personal fog collector, an aqueduct, the brilliant Hippo Roller in action, a crazy-looking dish drainer that positions drying dishes atop your flowerpot (as they dry, they drip water onto your plant), and lots of other interesting methods. Of particular interest: a helpful diagram of the Aqua H20, a surprisingly cute urine-recycling device that engineers potable pee.

Source: Treehugger 

Image courtesy of Erdem Selek.

Carbusters—a Prague-based magazine defiant of all-things-gasoline-powered—spots a real doozy of an “activity” at the U.K. theme park Diggerland, which offers Bobcat-crazed children opportunities to ride in and drive construction machinery. (Which, admittedly, sounds pretty cool.) The new attraction, “Novice Driver,” puts young people (9 and up) behind the wheels of their parents’ cars, confined to a large off-road space. “If a parent’s car is too uncool, then a 4x4 is available for hire to teach kids how to be good citizens—one loves cars,” Carbusters observes. Imagine the blank stares of park execs were one to propose: “Walk or Bike to School: The Ride.”

Source: Carbusters

Image by plasticrevolver, licensed under Creative Commons.

You can—but should you? In 2007 the global ecotourism industry ferried 55 million U.S. vacationers around the world on better, greener holidays. And every one of them should have been asking themselves that question. The editor in chief of Women’s Adventure, Michelle Theall, eloquently broaches ecotourism’s ethical dilemma in a candid, even haunting editorial.

“The polar bear alongside the boat makes a low chuffing sound,” Theall writes. “He dives to escape us. Each time he surfaces, he moves farther into open water, farther from land. A few passengers ask our guide, Wally, if we’re stressing the bear. I don’t hear his answer. I’m too busy kneeling low on the deck with my Canon. I stretch out one hand. The bear swims just beneath it, and he’s magnificent. . . .Only after I’ve clicked off about 100 images does it occur to me that Wally might be chasing this bear because of me. I’m with a travel magazine. I’m worse than global warming. I’m a journalist.”

 “Guilt’s a heavy souvenir,” writes Theall, who last saw the polar bear, confused and agitated, swimming out toward open water. Although Wally later reassures her that the bear most likely made it back to land, she finds a sobering ecotourism parable in the experience—what is legal is not always what is right.

Source: Women’s Adventure

Image by suneko, licensed under Creative Commons.

Last winter when we named Tzeporah Berman one of Utne Reader’s 50 Visionaries, we spoke to the Canadian activist about her latest project, PowerUp Canada, which challenges citizens to take the “next step” in addressing climate change—that is, pushing for greener legislation. Private actions, like switching to CFLs, still matter, Berman said, but it’s critical to extend that greenwill to the public level and start changing laws too.

Guess Chevron didn’t get the message. The May-June issue of World Watch contains a biting spoof of the energy company’s “I will” ad campaign, which depicts earnest, average-looking folks alongside statements such as “I will finally get a programmable thermostat.” The spoofs—brought to you by the League of Conservation Voters—pair Chevron execs with their own “I will” statements, such as, “I will think about cleaning up one or two of Chevron’s 94 Superfund toxic waste sites.”

Putting the focus on large-scale regulation doesn’t give individuals a pass on small-scale green choices, of course. The ads, writes World Watch, merely “suggest that the company could also do well to embrace greater corporate responsibility.”

Source: World Watch

Image by philosophygeek, licensed under Creative Commons.

Organic Gardening just made this bicycle geek smile: The May 2009 issue includes simple instructions on how to convert old bike wheel rims into a support for climbing garden plants, like beans. All the nailing and stringing necessary (which isn’t much), happens through the holes already there for spokes. Brilliant!

Source: Organic Gardening

A dramatic BBC report finds Vélib, Paris’ extensive bike-share program, in dire straits. The article claims that half of Vélib’s 15,000 bikes have “disappeared” and that many others have been vandalized, “[h]ung from lamp posts, dumped in the River Seine, torched and broken into pieces.” The director of JCDecaux, the company that runs the rental system for the city, warns that the program can’t be sustained without some serious changes.

How accurate is the story? Kottke.org found a smart posting on Streetsblog that challenges the BBC’s more sensational assertions. It quotes sources—including Paris’ Deputy Mayor of Transportation—who say JCDecaux is renegotiating their contract and encouraging the negative coverage to get the city to pay more into the program.

Apparently, JCDecaux zealously guards data on the costs and profits associated with Vélib, so it's a bit hard to objectively assess how it's doing. Since its launch, though, it's generally been regarded as a success. So, as more cities plan similar intiatives—The Bike-sharing Blog counts 92 existing programs and notes that the number's growing quickly—it'll be important to keep tabs on the public's perception of Vélib.

Image courtesy of Luc Legay, licensed under Creative Commons.

Sources:  BBC , Kottke.org , Streetsblog, The Bike-sharing Blog.     

The promises of the Obama administration, coupled with increasing social and economic pressure, have thrown a bright spotlight on green-minded business. One new site is taking advantage of that attention and connecting green employers and their potential employees is the Green Buildings Jobs search engine. The job listings stretch across the United States and Canada and include positions for engineers, designers, and architects. Its interface is just like that of other job search engines, a user-friendly site where job seekers can post resumes and search for jobs based on industry or location.

For information on how to green your current job, this article at Planet Green has you covered.

(Thanks, Good Clean Tech.)

When it comes to cutting paper consumption, every bit matters, even the facial tissue you choose. Grist has conducted a review of which tissues are the greenest (no pun intended). Of course the most eco-friendly choice is a cloth handkerchief, but if the convenience of disposable tissues is a necessity, you can make choices that clear your nose without clearing the forests at the same time.

Image courtesy of AnA oMeLeTe, licensed under Creative Commons.

In March 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to outright ban plastic bags from being distributed by larger retailers. But almost two years later, an SF Weekly reporter finds that the cut-and-dried argument used for so long—plastic bad, paper good—is largely disproved after a close look at the facts.

True, producing plastic bags takes millions of barrels of oil, but processing paper bags releases noxious chemicals and pollutes millions of gallons of water. In addition, transporting them to stores takes far more space and gasoline than their plastic cousins.

“Firstly," says the author, "biodegrading paper represents a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Secondly, in a properly run landfill, paper doesn't really biodegrade. In fact, nothing much really does.” Landfill trash is so tightly compacted that paper and even food waste remains mummified for decades, unable to break down.

As for the aesthetic argument, that the ban would eliminate unsightly and unsafe plastic litter, research shows that while overall litter has decreased, plastic bags’ share of that percentage of that number has actually increased since the ban.

So what should consumers do? As TreeHugger puts it, “Ultimately, neither paper nor plastic bags are the best choice; we think choosing reusable canvas bags instead is the way to go. From an energy standpoint, according to this Australian study, canvas bags are 14 times better than plastic bags and 39 times better than paper bags, assuming that canvas bags get a good workout and are used 500 times during their life cycle.”

Image courtesy of londonista_londonist, licensed under Creative Commons.

The bottled water industry has been quite busy sweet-talking consumers into disregarding the environmental impacts of their product. But in certain cities, like London and Minneapolis, their message is running up against robust campaigns to make tap water trendy.

Style is strategy across the pond, where Londoners will soon sip their city’s tap water from a “signature serving vessel” designed to rival even the prettiest packaging of bottled water, according to World Changing. Selected from a design contest as part of the city’s London on Tap campaign, the sleek carafe will be produced and sold to London restaurants, bars, and hotels as the vehicle to deliver tap water to patrons. “Though a gimmick for sure,” writes Julia Levitt for World Changing, “the contest is a smart way to bring high style and sophistication to simple tap water, which is both less expensive and less wasteful than bottled water.”

Minneapolis is also marketing its water to residents with an $180,000 campaign set to run throughout 2009. The effort is part of a “progressive citywide campaign to cut down on waste,” according to the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and will attempt to build loyalty to the tap water brand by pushing its high quality and environmental advantages.  

Image by Rickard Berggren, licensed under Creative Commons.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has launched “One Million Acts of Green,” a campaign to mobilize everyone from TV studio execs to kids to commit basic green acts every day. Once you sign up, the site keeps track of your steps, and for every one you take, the website calculates its impact on the environment in kilograms of greenhouse gases saved.

The focus of the project is “not about overhauling your life; it’s about one act from each individual amassing to a million. It can be as simple as switching to compact fluorescent lightbulbs, starting a recycling program, or walking to work. You can do one act—or you can do all one million! It’s up to you… Together we can make an impact. Together we can make our lives, our communities, and our environment greener.”

Acts range from small changes in habit to home renovations, and the tangible impact on the environment gives the sense of working as a community. To date, participants have reported more than 634,000 green acts, saving an estimated 33 million kilograms of greenhouse gases.

Forget everything you’ve heard about mountains of bottled water waste! Disregard the experts who prove that tap water is almost identical in quality! Viva bottled water!

That’s the battle cry EnjoyBottledWater.org raises in its quest to free bottled water from persecution. The website is run by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market advocacy organization that believes that “individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.” (Feel free to insert your own cynical economic observation here.)

The site exhaustively details why bottled water is a misunderstood and wrongly persecuted beverage medium, and why it’s our right as Americans to drink it. Users are encouraged to sign a petition against “foolish lawmakers and regulators” taking away the right to the stuff, donate money to the cause, and purchase Enjoybottledwater.org merchandise (no reusable water bottles, naturally). Visitors can also read up on the “crazy bans” enacted by cities and those “silly claims” that bottles affect global warming.

A few of the highlighted benefits are somewhat sensible, like ease of distribution at disaster sites, but the flippant disregard for known facts goes beyond chutzpah to being ridiculous. The best headline of the bunch: “Is Beer Next?”

Image courtesy of judepics, licensed under Creative Commons .

Apparently, Christmas traditions can be compatible with an eco-friendly mindset. A recent post on Sustainablog offers earth-conscious consumers some great information on choosing Christmas trees. If Christmas just isn’t Christmas without that fresh evergreen smell, take heart: While an artificial tree can be reused year after year, real ones may ultimately prove the more sustainable option. The post examines the environmental impacts of buying a real tree, from the farm to your house to the curb. It also includes links to help you locate local tree farms, as well as recycling services once the holiday’s over.

Image courtesy of Teresa Sheehan, licensing by Creative Commons.

Public transit ridership indicates that Americans may make greener lifestyle choices even when not prodded by financial forces.

The Washington Post reports that American commuters continued to flood buses and trains “in record numbers in the third quarter of this year,” despite sharp declines in gas prices. Which kind of puts a wrench in the seemingly obvious cause and effect relationship between increased ridership and high gas prices.

Riders may just have become accustomed to using public transportation after prices at the pump forced them onto the bus. Whatever the case, their continued willingness to opt out of driving, at least some of the time, is welcome news for transit advocates, particularly when coupled with president-elect Obama’s recent commitment to fund infrastructure developments, including transit.

But the picture’s not all sunny for public transit. As the Post points out, “Despite ridership demand, severe budget deficits and declining sales and property tax revenues have already forced many transit agencies to raise fares and cut service.”

(Thanks, Yale Environment 360.)

Image by btorzyn, licensed under Creative Commons.

All those extravagant holiday feasts, pretty packages, and shiny clamshells encasing gifts add up to a whole lot of extra trash this time of year—5 million tons, to be exact. That’s according to the Use Less Stuff Report, which asserts that between Thanksgiving and New Years, American waste grows by 25 percent.

But thanks to a “historic burst of common sense,” reports the Hartford Courant, there may be a little less plastic filling our landfills this holiday season. Amazon.com recently announced that it’s phasing out clamshells—those endlessly annoying hard plastic encasements that take an entire toolbox to open—in favor of recyclable cardboard. According to the Courant, Amazon is starting with 19 products but ultimately aims to outfit all its products with what the company calls “frustration-free packaging.”

Of course, excessive, frustration-full packaging isn’t just a holiday problem, but is it possible to avoid in everyday life? It is if you frequent London’s Unpackaged, a shop entirely devoted to ridding its customers’ lives of one-time-use packaging. Unpackaged sells everything from banana chips and shower gel to cheese, eggs, and juice, all package-free, and also stocks reusable containers for customers who forget to bring their own from home. (Thanks, Green Futures.)

Image by miss rogue, licensed under Creative Commons.

Think the new e-culture of business has eliminated our need for paper? Think again: Even though e-mail is the established mode of business communication, American offices still use as much paper as they did back in 1994.

Paper Elephant, the most recent entry in the Center for American Progress’ “Easy Being Green” series, outlines how prevalent paper is in our daily lives and how much of that paper is wasted with unnecessary printouts, paper utility bills instead of e-bills, and endless streams of junk mail.

While America’s addiction to paper is somewhat obscene, the post’s tone is optimistic, outlining how you can cut back on paper usage and therefore save millions of tons of CO2 emissions from being released into the atmosphere.

The rest of the “Easy” series covers green-centric news and simple, specific ways to be more eco-friendly in your life, such as Community-Supported Agriculture programs, energy efficiency, and sustainable merchandise and services.

Image courtesy of Orin Optiglot, licensed under Creative Commons.

Software company Front Seat, the outfit behind the Walk Score website on walkable neighborhoods, has launched Obama Urban Policy, a website that allows readers to express their thoughts and opinions on president-elect Barack Obama’s proposed Office of Urban Policy. Readers can nominate and vote on issues they feel deserve the most attention from the future administration.

The most popular idea is far and away the development of a “world-class rail network,” followed by “change zoning laws to promote walkable development” and “end subsidies for car-dependent development” at a distant second and third, respectively.

(Thanks, Worldchanging.)

Solar energy is becoming a community effort, and more accessible than ever before. Married couple Sylvia Ventura and Dan Barahona have launched 1BOG, “One Block Off the Grid,” a volunteer group that organizes neighborhoods and communities to install solar power en masse. Those who go solar through 1BOG have access to bulk discounts on equipment and installation, whose high cost has been a main deterrent for many potential buyers. The all-volunteer program boasts over 700 member homes in 20 cities across the country, with more to come.

(Thanks, Conscious Choice)

Image courtesy of  Trebosc , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Conservationist Calvin DeWitt sees the Bible as our earliest environmentalist treatise: “an ecological handbook on how to live rightly on earth.”

The newly published Green Bible drives that message home by highlighting all verses with ecological and conservationist themes in green ink. It’s a variation on the red-letter editions of the Bible that highlight the words of Jesus. The green edition includes an index of environmental topics, a foreword by Desmond Tutu, a “trail guide for further study,” and “inspirational essays by scholars and leaders,” among them DeWitt.

Perusing the text and zeroing in on the green passages makes for an illuminating kind of exegesis. Most of Genesis is printed in green, concerning as it does the natural world and humankind’s relationship to it. When God says, “‘And have dominion over the fish of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (1:28), the Green Bible and its contributors interpret “dominion” not as free reign, but as responsibility.

The Book of Jeremiah is more to the point, recasting the Old Testament God as an angry environmental activist: “But my people have forgotten me … making their land a horror.” (18:15-16).

The Green Bible hopes to remind the faithful that adherence to their faith includes a responsibility toward God’s creations—an increasingly common theology reflected in the emergence of Christian environmental initiatives. Environmental awareness in this edition also encompasses a mindfulness of the earth’s other human inhabitants, and every exhortation to love thy neighbor, every reminder of our interconnectivity, is printed green. An example comes from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians: “There may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for each other. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (12:25).

Country singer Kenny Chesney is an unlikely environmental advocate: I haven’t seen many “hot country” megastars carrying a green message to their rabidly red, white, and blue fans. So I was surprised to see an interview with the zillion-selling artist on the website of Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club. Sierra was there to talk about Chesney’s involvement with the hurricane disaster-preparedness group PlanIt Now, a Sierra Club partner. Chesney was apparently there to display his environmental ignorance, along with a Palinesque ability to give disastrous answers to simple questions.

Early in the Q&A, Chesney seems to be on the verge of connecting some dots between extreme weather and climate change:

Sierra: Have your experiences with PlanIt Now affected you personally?

Chesney: It's made me think about how fragile life and the environment are. We only see the impact at its most severe, but it's a delicate balance out there. Loving the islands and the ocean the way that I do, every time I'm anywhere on my boat or on a beach now, I look at it in a whole new way. I realize how easily it could be gone.

He soon undercuts any notion that he’s some sort of eco-activist with a big hat, though:

Sierra: Have you changed any of your habits at home or on the road to reduce your environmental impact?

Chesney: On the road, I know we're always making sure that the catering gets to homeless shelters and soup kitchens. There's still a lot we don't eat, and the idea that we're feeding some of the hungriest people in the cities we play is a good feeling.

That’s right: He and his tour entourage are reducing their environmental impact by giving their leftovers to hungry people. Bravo for your eco-humanitarianism, cowdudes.

Finally, there’s this rich exchange:

Sierra: How have rising fuel prices affected your touring and travel choices?

Chesney: I think it's making the fans think twice about what they're going to do for entertainment. We drive 55 trucks for stadium shows, and I don't want to pass the fuel costs on to the fans. I've always believed in being affordable, so we're going to be having some very interesting conversations about what next year is going to look like.

Fifty-five trucks! And it’s the fans who need to think twice about how to remedy this! Ecorazzi razzed Chesney back in August for bragging about the massiveness of his stage show, but clearly he didn’t get the memo. If he didn’t already seem like the next Jimmy Buffett with his good-time beach bum shtick, he’s clearly entered the Margaritaville city limits now.

Here’s an idea, Kenny: Leave the 55 trucks at home, get on a fucking horse, and tour the country like a real cowboy troubadour—with zero emissions. Then we’ll buy you as a voice for the environment. Until then, shut up and sing.

Image by  John VanderHaagen , licensed under  Creative Commons .

New York artist Jean Shin makes detailed, beautiful works of art using recyclables like empty bottles and refuse like old vinyl records. Perhaps the most impressive pieces are “Chance City,” meticulous scale-model buildings made entirely of discarded lottery tickets, and the melted-vinyl tidal wave "Sound Wave," now at the Museum of Art and Design.

Ryan Curtis from Environmental Graffiti identifies this as the essence of her art: taking worthless things like those tickets and giving them renewed value as works of art. Using discarded objects to make art is not new, but Curtis argues that Shin “manages to bring the items together in a way that makes us think about them in a new light. Previously, those vinyl records, lottery tickets, clothes and shoes meant something to us, and were very important in our lives. [She shows] us that not only are these things still of value; they are also still beautiful.”

World economic prospects were looking dire even before Monday’s bailout bill failed to pass Congress, sending stock markets plummeting and nearly everyone into a panic. A “more palatable” version of the bailout bill might eventually be approved, but it’s safe to say that things are going to get worse before they get better, and no one’s quite sure of the long-term effects of our economic crisis.

Eco blogs are beginning to speculate and offer commentary about the situation’s impact on environmental politics, and Gristmill is leading the analysis. Joseph Romm debunks the suggestion that Barack Obama would put funds for the bailout bill ahead of his clean energy plan. David Roberts explains how more energy efficient homes would raise housing stock while lowering the cost of utilities—the unstable housing market being the catalyst, of course, for the current financial crisis. And Kate Shepherd hopes the bailout won’t push Congress’ renewable energy tax-credit bill off the table.

But EcoGeek Hank Green laments that the bailout legislation has already killed carefully crafted solar legislation. “These people simply do not understand. The bailout is about preventing disaster,” Green writes. “But what about planning for an America that can see beyond damage control to growth and prosperity?”

A more optimistic—if long-term—outlook comes from Angelique van Engelen at Triple Pundit, who predicts that the next bull market, when and if it arrives, will be heavily influenced by green investing. “Admittedly, it's a bit obscene to talk of a new bull market now that Wall Street is heavily sick and in need of a trillion-dollar bailout,” she writes. “But perhaps it makes sense to do it anyway because it's very likely that the next bull's going to be colored brightly green.”

Image by Shiny Things, licensed by Creative Commons.

Launching today, the Green Report Card website promises to rank 300 colleges in terms of their sustainability, helping eco-conscious high school seniors make the right choice.

Green Report Card was created by the nonprofit Sustainable Endowments Institute, a project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The college rankings are formulated using information gathered from the College Sustainability Report Card 2009, which evaluates schools in nine key categories: Administration, Climate Change and Energy, Food and Recycling, Green Building, Student Involvement, Transportation, Endowment Transparency, Investment Priorities, and Shareholder Engagement.

Factors affecting a school’s grade range from the presence of “green dorms and car sharing,” according to the program’s press release, to “shareholder advisory committees and renewable energy investments.” Small liberal arts colleges like Carleton and Oberlin were among the 15 schools that got A grades, joining the ranks of such state schools as the University of Washington and the University of New Hampshire, and Ivies like Harvard and Brown.

Peruse the Report Card to see how your current or former institution fared. (I’m embarrassed to say where I went to college, since my alma mater got a D-minus. Ouch!)

Image by redjar, licensed by Creative Commons.

It turns out heavy traffic isn’t just bad for the atmosphere. It also erodes the social fabric of communities and squashes neighborly relationships, according to a new study out of Great Britain.

The Guardian reports that the study, which looked at three streets in Bristol, England with light, medium, and heavy traffic flow, found that “people who live with high levels of motor traffic are far more likely to be socially disconnected and even ill than people who live in quiet, clean streets.” Residents on the heavily trafficked street had fewer neighborhood friends and acquaintances than those living on the less congested roads, weren’t likely to let their kids play outside, and felt little sense of community.

Researcher Joshua Hart concluded, “The primary influence on social deterioration is the external effect of traffic, not any possible personality differences among residents of the three streets…It seems that community and quality of life have been neglected whilst planning and transport policies have led to a massive growth in motor vehicles in the UK."

Image by Broken Sphere, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.

What exactly makes a building green? Writing for Colorado’s High Country News, Monique Cole takes on the concept of building "green" McMansions after reading about a businessman who built a 6,500-square-foot home near Boulder. The mansion, which uses extensive solar power and ecological building materials, was named "the greenest home in North America" by the Boulder County Business Report. But do these choices actually make the building “the greenest”? No: Even though the materials and power sources are eco-friendly, it still takes gas for the movers, builders, landscapers, and utility workers to get to the property, some 10 miles outside Boulder (not to mention the extra fuel it takes for its owners to get to and from work and commerce). The kicker, Cole points out, is that this house’s square footage is three times that of the median American household. "Everyone’s looking for the silver bullets that will allow us to carry on our consumptive lifestyles just as we always have. But to be truly green, some sacrifices have to be made, such as giving up the home theater or that fourth bay in the garage."

Image courtesy of  Allan Ferguson , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Local foodists have gone too far. I’m all for stalking the wild asparagus, but hunting the urban pigeon? Perhaps we should also dine on Washington, D.C.’s plentiful rats? 

Wired’s Alexis Madrigal is “65 percent not-kidding” about eating pigeons. “A food source that lives on our trash that is so reproductively prolific that we can't kill it off? That's green tech at its finest!” writes Madrigal. “Pigeons are direct waste-to-food converters, like edible protein weeds, that leave droppings that could be used as fertilizer as a bonus.” All it would take, suggests Madrigal, is a quick rebranding. “Pigeons can merely reclaim their previous sufficiently arugula-sounding name: squab.” 

The squabble over squab continues at Earth First. “Would you be open to eating things not commonly considered appropriate as food? Pigeons? Squirrels?” it asks. The question might be better worded as “things not currently considered appropriate as food.” Pigeon used to be widely consumed in the United States, Madrigal points out, and the same is also true of squirrels. Modern-day squirrel hunter Hank Shaw laments the decline of squirrel consumption in the summer issue of Meatpaper (article not available online).

Twentieth-century cookbooks as common as The Joy of Cooking and Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking included squirrel dishes, writes Shaw, as well they should have—the critters were plentiful, and the flavor is fine, he assures. “Its sweet darkish meat vaguely resembles the dark meat on turkey,” Shaw writes. “When squirrels have been eating acorns or other nuts, their meat is deliciously nutty—not unlike the Spanish bellota hams that gourmands shell out princely sums for.” 

Shaw makes a tempting case for the tastiness of squirrels. So why not squab? Well, if we use Shaw’s logic—squirrels taste “deliciously nutty” because they eat nuts—wouldn’t city pigeons taste, um, “deliciously trashy” from feasting on our trash? 

Image by Ernesto Andrade, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Backyard and community gardening is growing like a compost-fed bean shoot, thanks to a spreading green consciousness, a desire to eat local and organic, and high and rising food prices.

In Seattle, more than 1,600 people are on a waiting list for gardening land at one of the city’s “P-Patch” plots, Crosscut reports. And some city officials are pushing for an inventory of public land that could be used to grow food, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, echoing Portland’s “Diggable City” initiative.

In the Bay Area, a new firm called MyFarm helps harried urban dwellers who want a garden in their yard but don’t always have the time or skills to maintain it, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. MyFarm plants, maintains, and harvests veggies for the landowner and sometimes, with larger gardens, for other subscribers in what is basically a backyard CSA (community supported agriculture) operation. Similar outfits already operate in other cities.

Across the pond, the BBC profiles a couple of backyard gardeners in the Midlands region who’ve been driven to exercise their green thumbs in part by a desire to save money.

Altogether, these trends point to a gardening renaissance that recalls the Victory Gardens of World War II—a project that San Francisco is in fact emulating with its Victory Gardens 2008+ project.

We at Utne Reader were bummed out to hear in May that the Portland-based sustainable apparel maker Nau was shutting down and selling off it stock. Our disappointment wasn’t just because Utne Reader had partnered with Nau on promotional events like a showcase at South by Southwest, or because some of us had grown quite fond of the stylish, eco-friendly clothes in which they outfitted us. It also stemmed from the fact that Nau was a sort of standard bearer for the sustainable business community, and its demise was a symbolic blow that seemed to portend trouble ahead for its peers.

But wait! Save your dire predictions for another day. Sustainable Industries reports that California-based apparel maker Horny Toad has agreed to buy all Nau’s remaining assets. Under the deal Nau will be a part of Horny Toad, though its line of products and brand name will remain independent.

The really great news? Horny Toad CEO Gordon Seabury intends to preserve the best aspects of Nau’s business model, including using organic and recycled textiles, reducing environmental impacts, and donating a percentage of profits to partner nonprofits. This mode of doing business is “an untouchable aspect” of Nau, Seabury tells Sustainable Industries.

Nau will of course be a different company. Only 12 of its 60 headquarters employees remain in the new iteration of the firm, its five stores will stay closed—it will sell products through other retailers—and the product line will be trimmed. But it’s clear that for at least the next three to five years, Seabury’s stated timetable for profitability, Nau’s groundbreaking spirit will live on.

Michael Pollan’s a sharp writer, and we generally love his stuff here at Utne when we’re not printing mildly critical pieces like “The Food Police: Why Michael Pollan Makes Me Want to Eat Cheetos.” Anybody who can turn sustainable eating into a catchy seven-word slogan (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”) and talk about agriculture without sounding like a Farm Report host has a rare talent. But I almost choked on my açaí bubble tea when I read a Q&A with Pollan on the great new website Yale Environment 360 and found him uttering these words:

“You know, eight percent of the American landmass we’ve kind of locked up and thrown away the key. That’s a wonderful achievement and has given us things like the wilderness park.”

Where do I start with this? I suppose by pointing out, as one commenter did, that less than 5 percent of the U.S. land mass is actually federally designated wilderness, and less than 3 percent if you’re talking about the contiguous U.S.

Then I’d point out that such wilderness isn’t “locked up” at all. It’s available for anyone to visit, even New York Times food writers. They can use it for activities ranging from hunting and fishing (the ultimate sustainable food sources) to hiking, camping, rafting, skiing, snowshoeing, birdwatching, and many other things. They could even use it simply to look at. To appreciate. To marvel at.

The other problem with the phrase “locked up” is that by employing it Pollan parrots the language of the extractive industries that consider every acre unavailable to them to be “locked up.” Pollan is a master of the soundbite, so it’s natural that he gravitates to catch phrases, but he ought to be aware that this one hits the ear of many environmentalists like an F-bomb and undercuts his credibility with anyone who really knows wilderness issues.

Geez, you’re probably thinking, settle down: He said setting aside wilderness was a “wonderful achievement.” But I read some sarcasm into that statement, especially because he went on to say:

“This is one of our great contributions to world culture, this idea of wilderness. On the other hand, it’s had nothing to say of any value for the ninety-two percent of the landscape that we cannot help but change because this is where we live. This is where we grow our food, this is where we work. Essentially the tendency of the wilderness ethic is to write that all off. Land is either virgin or raped. It’s an all or nothing ethic. It’s either in the realm of pristine, preserved wilderness, or it’s development — parking lot, lawn.”

Pollan has been airing this polarized critique of the wilderness ethic since writing his book Second Nature five years ago, and frankly it seems like it’s time for him to start seeing the nuance in the debate. Certainly there are wilderness lovers who oppose oil drilling in ANWR yet gladly till their yard to plant tomatoes. Certainly there are mall developers who take fly-fishing trips to remote wilderness destinations. To paint backcountry hikers and organic farmers as somehow locked in mortal battle is to vastly oversimplify a complex issue.

Besides, U.S. politicians of all stripes seem to disagree with Pollan that we’ve spent enough time on this silly wilderness designation stuff. Two weeks ago, the Washington Post reported that 12 bipartisan wilderness bills are expected to pass this year, adding as much as 2 million acres of land to the federal system. I suggest Pollan lace up his hiking boots, visit some of these parcels—remember, the door’s open—and from a distant mountaintop ponder just how much organic farmland has been lost to the misguided purveyors of the wilderness ethic.

It’s possible to buy a down-filled comforter or parka without suffering guilt pangs about over-plucked birds. Down harvested from the nests of the common eider, reports Canadian Geographic, helps protect the formerly over-hunted ducks. The Canadian nonprofit Société Duvetnor Ltée, headed by retired biologist Jean Bedard, funds itself by selling eiderdown hand collected from 12,000 nests on the Île aux Lièvres, one of the islands it owns in Quebec’s St. Lawrence Estuary. “The down can be collected without damaging the ducks or their eggs and nests,” according to Hinterlands Who’s Who, a wildlife information site sponsored by the Canadian Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Federation. Société Duvetnor Ltée and another nonprofit, Société protectrice des eiders de l'estuaire, reinvest their net annual revenues of $50,000-$100,000 into protecting nesting grounds, reports the Quebec Management Plan for the Common Eider. 

In addition to generating revenue for preservation, Canadian eiderdown harvesters aid the scientific study of the eider. “Eiderdown harvesting activity in the estuary has made it possible to accumulate a series of unique scientific data that would otherwise have been obtained only at considerable expense,” write the authors of the Quebec Management Plan. “Eiderdown collectors should therefore be considered as partners in the protection and management of the eider rather than as commercial operators.” (The authors of the Management Plan include Société Duvetnor members.)

For duck lovers who can’t afford (or who ethically oppose) a $9,000 comforter, Société Duvetnor allows ecotourism on two of its islands. And don’t worry about disturbing the natives. To coexist with the myriad birds populating the islands, Société Duvetnor prohibits visitors from hiking in certain areas until the birds finish nesting in early July.

Many green-minded people give lip service to the idea of local produce, but how many of us eat local all winter long? An organic gardener in Vermont is pioneering a new type of greenhouse that might make winter growing more feasible for aspiring locavores by using heated soil.

In its spring issue, Vermont’s Local Banquet magazine pays a visit to Carol Stedman’s greenhouse, where in January “the air temperature inside was only slightly higher than outside … but a thermometer stuck deep in the dirt read a balmy 60 degrees.” Stedman uses tubes to circulate warm water through the soil, a system she calls “radiant dirt heating.” Her can-do attitude and experimental spirit might just get you started on planning and designing your own “cool greenhouse” for next winter.

Treehugger reports that London is taking material efficiency into consideration in designing its stadium for the 2012 Olympic Games. The facility will be built from with as many recyclable materials as possible, including a hemp roof. The stadium will also be demountable, meaning it can be disassembled, moved, and rebuilt in a new city. It will be largely bolted together, rather than welded, and break down into pieces that can fit on cargo ships. This new philosophy of “low impact” games and reusable stadia might afford poorer countries the opportunity to host future Games. Chicago, a possible 2016 host, is also considering more reusable and versatile construction materials.

You’ll have to brave a few Britishisms and metric measurements, but the UK-based Veg Box is a handy site for identifying and cooking with the produce in your “veg box,” i.e. your share in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm. Identify fruits and veggies with the photo gallery, and find recipes in the database organized by ingredient. 

(Thanks, The Spark.)

With everything going green, it seems only appropriate that the laundry room, a veritable vacuum of energy and water waste, would be a likely site for improvement. 

The environmental parenting blog Eco Child’s Play offers a host of suggestions for more environmentally friendly laundering. The tips come from the 2007 book Raising Baby Green: The Earth-Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care, by pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene. 

One of his recommendations is to use a front-loading washing machine (look for an Energy Star) instead of a top-loader. This will save as much as 15 gallons of water per load and use half as much energy. 

Greene also advises alternative means of fabric softening (add 1/4 cup of baking soda to the wash cycle), combating static cling (add 1/4 cup of white vinegar to the wash water), and water softening (“use a soap-based, rather than detergent-based, cleaner”). 

Image by Joshua Sherurcij, licensed under Wikimedia Commons.

The home aquarium trade is endangering coral reefs and hobbyists’ beloved marine pets. To stem the tide of destruction, consumers have to get involved.

As far as pets go, fish don’t have the most outgoing, cuddly personalities. But their brilliant colors and graceful movements have made aquariums vaunted fixtures in more than 800,000 U.S. households.

A home aquarium sounds harmless, but the trade that brings fish from coral reefs to our homes and dentist offices is deadly and unsustainable. Once lively reefs are being emptied of their inhabitants, leaving these crucial hubs of biodiversity in crisis. It’s a complex problem, with no easy solutions. Governing bodies haven’t stepped in to regulate the trade, and that means the power to make a difference lies in consumers’ hands.

The problem begins long before colorful butterfly fish and Banggai cardinalfish reach pet stores. Most fish come from coral reefs in the Philippines and Indonesia, where local fishermen make a living plundering fragile ecosystems that already have been damaged by warming waters (a phenomenon driven by climate change). Exporters pay fishermen per fish, says Drew Weiner, director of Reef Protection International, a Berkeley, California-based organization that seeks to educate the public about the aquarium trade and coral reefs. This pay-per-fish system has led to a deadly practice: Fishermen use cyanide to temporarily stun fish and make them easier to catch.  But less than 1 in 10 fish survive a cyanide stun, so the majority of stunned fish die hours later and arrive in the United States floating belly-up. On top of that, cyanide can damage surrounding coral and marine life not targeted for capture.

Even fish that are never exposed to cyanide frequently perish from trauma caused by the long trip from coral reefs to Los Angeles (where most major importers are located) to pet stores around the country. The result is millions of dead fish that don’t reach aquariums, further exacerbating demand for fish from over-harvested coral reefs.

Although the issue has gotten some coverage by the environmental press, the mainstream media have largely ignored the problem. The aquarium trade accounts for less than 1 percent of all the revenue generated from the ocean, so the problem hasn’t garnered attention on a large scale, Weiner says. The two largest sources of ocean revenue—recreation and commercial fishing—draw far more focus and have far stronger lobbying bases fighting for their interests.

A few legislative attempts to regulate the industry never made it off the ground, according to Barbara Best, a coastal resource and policy adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a government agency that provides nonmilitary foreign aid. In the context of coral reef protection, USAID has been working with countries like the Philippines to promote economic development while sustaining biodiversity. USAID serves as a member of the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, a partnership of government agencies formed to create a national action plan for protecting coral reefs. In the National Action Plan to Conserve Coral Reefs, created in 2000, the Task Force called for improved domestic laws regulating the import of marine animals into the United States, but Best says it didn’t go anywhere. She cites a variety of factors for the stalled effort, including the difficulty of enacting effective legislation, concern for fishermen whose livelihoods depend on the trade, and other issues being prioritized by Congress.

Another program, the Marine Aquarium Council (MAC), has tried to self-regulate the trade through an international certification program. Although MAC was created with good intentions, the program was never able to achieve its goal of certifying all the players in the trade, according to Weiner.

“It's not something that's been paid much attention to, but it's a huge story because [MAC] sucked $20 million out of the donor community for this misguided certification program that was flawed from the start,” Weiner says. (Best acknowledges that USAID was one such donor; the agency financially supported MAC for three years but dropped support after realizing the program wasn’t effective.)

With an unsuccessful certification program and no laws regulating import of marine animals, captive breeding programs and consumer education appear to be the most viable solutions to the problem.

Captive breeding aims to reduce demand for wild fish by raising would-be pets in tanks and then exporting them to pet stores. But consumer education about the environmental benefits of purchasing captive bred fish is crucial: Less than 10 percent of aquarium species are currently tank-raised, and consumer demand remains high for species that are not easily bred in captivity.

Weiner says that—given consumer demand and legislative blockades—an all-out ban on the import of marine animals might be the only option to ensure the protection of coral reefs.

“[A ban] might be the easiest thing to do politically: Since there are so few stakeholders, who will complain? It'd be different if you were to try to shut down the commercial fishing industry,” Weiner says.

But a ban could also push the trade further underground, Best says. And that could make the industry even more difficult to manage. 

This leaves all hope with consumers. Hobbyists can reduce demand for wild fish by buying captive bred species whenever possible. If captive bred fish aren’t available, consumers should try to choose species that are less susceptible to endangerment. To help hobbyists, Reef Protection International (RPI) has created a Reef Fish Guide that directs consumers on which species of fish are safe for purchase. For example, the combtooth blenny is on RPI’s “take it home” list because it easily adapts to a home aquarium and isn’t at high risk for disease. Even though the fish isn’t currently captive bred, the species breeds frequently enough in the wild that it isn’t threatened by endangerment. On the other hand, the moorish idol is on RPI’s “keep it wild” list (i.e., don’t buy it) because less than 5 percent survive the transport to home aquariums, and if they do make it that far, they are highly susceptible to disease.

Finding captive bred fish or fish on the “take it home” list can be tricky, especially when dealing with large pet store chains. At Petco.com, consumers can order 78 species of marine fish for home delivery, three of which (the cleaner wrasse, panther grouper, and large angelfish) aren’t recommended for purchase by RPI for various reasons. Petco sells captive bred fish, but the website doesn’t consistently specify which fish are captive bred. (A Petco representative, Ryan May, told Utne.com via email that though some of the website’s and stores’ stocks are wild, most of its fish are captive bred and that the company is “always on the lookout for new resources so we can eventually not have a need for non-captive bred species in our stores.”)   

Instead of going straight to the big chain pet stores, Weiner recommends consumers seek advice from their local aquarium hobbyist club. These groups usually have current information on where to buy sustainably captured fish and corals. The Marine Aquarium Societies of North America maintains a database of 157 hobbyist clubs in the United States and Canada. These clubs often link to smaller, local pet and aquarium stores, where staff is knowledgeable about sustainability issues.

Jake Hagberg is the owner of Discovery Aquatics, an aquarium service and installation store near Minneapolis that doesn’t sell fish, and is a lifelong, passionate aquarium hobbyist.

“A lot of stores don’t give hobbyists the education they need to be successful,” Hagberg says. “They bring in fish that are really colorful and beautiful, but they don’t last long in captivity.”

If consumers don’t stop demanding endangered wild fish, they may be in the market for a new hobby.

“Eventually there is going to be a day when [pet stores] don't have fish to sell,” Weiner says.

Image by jon hanson, licensed under Creative Commons.

Sometimes, it feels like a lifetime’s efforts at living green will just be swallowed up by big business the way a little kid’s sandcastle gets engulfed by the inevitable, indomitable wave. Sure, you can turn off lights when you leave the house, recycle old newspapers, use public transportation, write letters to your congressperson, and avoid bottled water—but at the same time multinational companies are busy pouring chemicals into the air, water, and soil, getting drunk on profit like it was 1899.

In "The Green-Thumb Blues," for Maisonneuve, Pasha Malla writes about how being environmentally conscious isn’t just about recycling and composting, it’s about getting over that hopeless hump. It's about realizing (or perhaps remembering) that a lot of little actions can add up to big change.

The modern environmental movement hinges on the hope that tiny real-world actions can build up to create sustained, potent change. This requires considering the world from a broad perspective, and pulling back to a viewpoint in which car exhaust turns to acid rain and CO2 bestows Minsk with the climate of Antigua paradoxically makes human beings look like tiny, ineffectual gnats. “Environmentalism can make you feel small,” Malla writes. “You are fighting against something unwieldy and ingrained—like trying to combat the idea of winter with a PowerPoint presentation and a shovel.”

But the thing is that there is plenty we can do. We just have to do it. Malla writes:

What can you do? You can do what you can do. Can you type? Type something. Can you walk and talk? Walk around and talk to people. Can you use your Ph.D. in environmental science to test for and uncover the alarming release of polyvinyl chlorides from shoreline industry into the Great Lakes, then publish a report, coordinate a media campaign and pursue legal action based on your findings? Then by all means please do that, too. Ride a bike, write a letter, save a plant. We are not powerless against the They we’re up against. Let’s take Them down, whoever They are, wherever They’re hiding, in whatever way we can.

— Brendan Mackie