Still haven’t seen the eco-documentary of the summer, Food, Inc.? If money’s what’s keeping you away from the theaters, you’re in luck — According to Eater LA, a couple more free screenings of Food, Inc. are happening later this month:

>> Tues., July 14, 2009 at 7:30 pm: Laemmle Playhouse 7 Cinemas, 673 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

>> Thurs., July 16, 2009 at 7:30 pm: Laemmle Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

Featured in that film is Stonyfield Farm Organic, a sponsor for my trip to BlogHer ‘09. Food, Inc. brings in Stonyfield Farm as an example of an organic food company gone big, since this all-organic yogurt company’s 85% owned by Groupe Danone and can be found everywhere from local co-op markets to Wal-Mart. Some enviro purists remain skeptical with what they see as “big organic,” and in fact the Stonyfield’s own rep in the film says the jury’s still out on the effect of multinational buyouts of smaller organic companies.

Food, Inc.’s pretty remarkable in the way it explores some of the conflicts within the organic movement, even as it covers the broader issues of food production, immigration, and much much more.

In any case, Stonyfield’s actively promoting the film on its website as well as on its yogurt lids, and even has an exclusive interview with Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner on its website. Plus, Stonyfield’s website lets you get coupons from a whole bunch of organic companies, from Stonyfield itself to Nature’s Path cereals to Amy’s organic cake. Watch and learn!

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Does your SPF 15 lip balm actually protect your lips from sunburn? That’s info you can now find out thanks to the new and improved 2009 Sunscreen Guide from Environmental Working Group. This year, lip balm data’s been added to the guide — a much needed addition, since w of 5 lip balms apparently don’t quite do their job.

Hundreds of products with sunscreens are evaluated and rated for UVA and UVB protection, safety of ingredients, and product stability. But to make things easy for you, EWG’s also put together top 10 lists of the best sunscreens — as well as the best moisturizers and lip balms with SPF.

And to further simplify things, a handy PDF 1-pager has a list of the 9 best easy-to-find sunscreens (PDF) along with label-reading tips and sunscreen use recommendations. Take it to a store near you to get the sun protection you need without the dangerous chemicals.

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A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.

Today’s giveaway are DVD copies of 3 eco-documentary films — Flow, Addicted to Plastic, and Garbage Dreams — and the first season of Sundance Channel’s Eco Trip: The Real Cost of Living.

All DVDs are review screeners — meaning they don’t come in pretty packaging. The films and shows contained on them, however, are still pretty — and eco-educational.

Read my review of the films and show, then comment or email by Tuesday to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Wednesday (more info on freebies here). US addresses only.

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So you want it all in your eco-fashion — not just eco-friendly materials, but also eco-friendly, low-impact dyes — as well as fair trade and fair labor! And of course, the clothes themselves have to look good, stay in fashion, and generally last a long time –

Then stop by Indigenous Designs, a company that’s been making fair trade, organic fashions since 1994. Here you’ll find great basics — like classic polo shirts and simple button downs — that look good, fit well, and have all the socio-eco-friendly attributes too.

Combining all those do-gooder elements with good fashion isn’t easy to do, as Truly Organic’s demonstrated with its unevenly-dyed crunchy clothes. In fact, I hadn’t shopped much at Indigenous Designs because I used to associate the company with crunchy-wear — some of which, like the “earth” cardigan (below, right), you can still find on the website.

But for the most part, Indigenous Designs has gotten both more stylish and practical, making nice basics for both men and women. I recently got a Pogo Stick Polo shirt (top left), made in Peru with organic cotton and tencel and dyed almond with low-impact dyes. I like the fitted design and the gathers at the neck — details that add a nice modern accent to a classic look.

That shirt costs $72 — which some may consider pricey, but is still less than the popular Lacoste polos that have none of the fair trade, organic attributes. I will say that the pricing at Indigenous Designs does seem odd though. A gorgeous handknit organic cotton pullover (below left) costs just $38, yet the crunchy-as-can-be earth sweater (below right) costs $139. I recommend spending a little time browsing the site to find the good deals.

Indigenous Designs was founded on fair trade principles and is fully committed to fair trade and eco-friendly initiatives. Find out more about the Peruvian artisans who make Indigenous Designs’ clothes — by hand!

Photos via Indigenous Designs

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>> Chat with Michael Pollan about Food, Inc. at 3 pm today, Thurs., July 2, on Facebook! Michael will answer your Facebook and Twitter (send to @takepart) questions in the video player. Earlier: Film Review: Food, Inc.

>> Westside LA Green Drinks happens tonight, Thurs., July 2, from 7 pm - 10 pm at The Green Life, 2409 Main St., Santa Monica. A stylist from Hamadi Organics — a paraben-free beauty product line — will be doing demos and mini-makeovers from 7 pm - 9 pm. Take your own cup or glass to enjoy organic wine and local beer! Earlier: Green Drinks FAQ

>> Celebrate Food Independence Day on July 4 by eating local! The initiative’s launched by Kitchen Gardeners International, with the goal to get all 50 U.S. governors to eat local on Independence Day. Sign the petition, and share the deets of your local meal at Food Independence Day’s website.

>> Food and Water Watch wants your help in getting bottled water companies to disclose how much clean water they’re pumping out of California communities. Join the meeting on Tues., July 8 at 7 pm in downtown L.A.

>> Learn to make organic tamales! Deborah Stern, the white-girl tamale maker of La Guera Tamalera, will host an Organic Tamalada on Saturday, July 11 from noon to 2:30 pm at 1326 E. 1st St., Los Angeles. The class, which you can register for online, costs $58 a person — but green LA girl readers can get a 2-for-$100 deal by calling Deborah at 213.880.0277.

Image via Food, Inc.

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Organic beauty’s now available even to the Target crowd. Botanics Organic, an eco-friendly beauty product line by the U.K. company Boots, has made safer, greener cleansers and lotions budget-friendly.

From lip balms to face polish, Botanics Organic products are affordable, with prices ranging from $6.99 to $13.99. All the products also have high certified organic content, ranging from 77% - 100%!

Of course, the safety of what makes up the other 23% (and less) of the products matter too — so I tried putting them through Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetic Safety Database. All ingredients in the 95% certified organic Lip Balm, 87% certified organic Smoothing Face Polish, the 85% certified organic Hydrating Day Cream, and the 81% certified organic Rich Body Butter, were in the “low hazard” range except for citric acid, which scored a “medium hazard score of 4. I didn’t even bother putting the Rosewater Toner or Nourishing Body Oil through the Skin Deep test — because the products are 100% certified organic!

Do they work? My favorite product’s the lip balm, which combines shea butter and olive oil to moisturize without greasifying your lips. The day cream also’s an item I plan to get again. It’s rich and creamy but surprisingly light, both in texture and scent.

I liked the texture and moisturizing power of the body butter too, but the stuff has a slightly musty scent when I first put it on, which some may find off-putting. The face polish was probably my least favorite product, because the little scrubby granules just aren’t scrubby enough — and the product leaves a bit of its creamy residue behind. However, those with drier skin might find this moisturizing scrub provides a good combo of cleansing and moisturizing all at once.

The Botanics Organic line also includes a hand wash (94% certified organic), body lotion (83% certified organic), body wash (77% certified organic), super balm (95% certified organic), and body oil (100% certified organic). Find them all at Target, Target.com or Amazon.

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>> A vegan-friendly Taco Bell menu! The Onion makes fun of greenwashed fast food with a “news” report about Taco Bell’s new green menu — which takes nothing from nature! The “meat” used to be made of 85% gluten filler, 8% petroleum based grease flavoring and 4% meat. Now that 4%’s been replaced with a simple chemical adhesive! (via murketing)

Taco Bell’s New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

Scarily, this “meat” reminds me of the scary fake meats beloved by many vegans.

>> Plastics are forever, but plastic art is not — and details of this story will make you leery about storing food and drinks in plastic containers:

It’s inevitable, however, that even plastic objects kept in dark, sterile drawers will begin to deteriorate chemically…. Often the only clue a plastic is degrading is its odor. Some begin to smell like ammonia or take on a sickly new-car smell. PVC weeps chlorine, giving it a swimming-pool smell, and any plastics with acetate eventually give off whiffs of acetic acid, which is found in vinegar. Other plastics are redolent of burnt milk, burnt hair, celery, cinnamon, raspberry jam, or camphor “muscle rub.”

Worst of all, when plastics weep and bleed they can corrupt everything around them. Chemicals evaporate from their surface and acidify any moisture inside a display case. This causes mini bouts of acid rain that in turn eat away at the plastic in nearby objects—as well as any cloth, metal, or paper in those objects.

>> Rejoice Californians — Only about a quarter of us are obese! Seriously, we’re one of the slimmer states according to the latest obesity rankings. (via Bitten)

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>> Cali’s now allowed to set tougher tailpipe emissions laws! Earlier:  Cali’s tougher car emissions law gets a boost from Obama.

>> Relatedly, Cali’s going to require cars to have heat-reflecting windows, starting with 2012 models. That rule’s expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to air conditioner use. According to Wired’s Autopia, AC efficiency’s a hot topic since eco-ACs could improve fuel efficiency too.

>> Cali’s set to get more solar energy fast, now that the Obama administration’s fast tracked solar development in the west. “The proposed California solar-generating areas are projected to have the annual capacity to produce 39,000 to 70,000 megawatts of electricity at full development — enough to serve millions of homes.”

>> L.A. recorded its 4th straight year with below average rainfall yesterday. “From July 1 of last year to today, a period designated as a “rain year,” only about 9 inches of rain fell compared to an average of slightly more than 15 inches, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.” Earlier: Eating local in a drought: Should we buy Cali rice?

>> Missed the Venice Eco Fest over the weekend? Me too. But Matt Mason didn’t — and he’s put together a photo-essay of sorts so you can visit the fest virtually.

Photo by Simone Ramella

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A “Green Vest” that simply attaches green gadgets to a perfectly good vest could be a bully-magnet if worn by kids, I wrote not too long ago. Now, it appears this bully magnet’s actually being created and sold to geeky environmentalists!

For the bargain price of $140, you can display your love of solar power by wearing an ugly Solar Vest. If any passerby happens not to notice the four chunky solar panels that take up a good quarter of the vest, the eco-wear’s clearly labeled “SOLAR VEST” in bold white letters to set them straight.

The Solar Vest boasts lots of pockets to carry all manner of gadgetry and keep them juiced up on sunny days. However, as Jaymi Heimbuch points out in Treehugger, “no geek who might wear this is going to be seen sitting in the sun for the hours it’ll take to charge the small handhelds.”

There’s a reason geeks are known to have pasty skin and it’s because they don’t walk around for hours in the sun. They might, however, devise a complicated pulley system that will haul this thing out their window into the sunlight, and back in when it finishes charging their gear.

Chinavasion’s making things even worse for lost eco-geeks by insisting that the vest’s perfect to wear to “go cruising for chicks,” who’ll be drawn to the vest “like moths to a light bulb.” Let’s hope that the green guys google for proof of chic-magnetism and find this post before donning the vest and stepping outside.

Not all solar clothing’s so blatantly ugly. The solar bikini, for example, actually looks like a futuristic, albeit uncomfortable, bikini, and makes better sense as a solar-power device since bikinis are meant to be worn on sunny beaches in the first place.

Know of any other solar-powered devices, whether eco-gorgeous or eco-fugly?

Photos courtesy of Chinavasion

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In case you hadn’t heard yet, L.A. vegan restaurants are feeding eggs and milk to vegans (via Boing Boing, thanks to Zak).That’s right — A vegan blog called Quarry Girl undertook “Operation Pancake” — a study that basically bought food from 17 L.A. vegan restaurants and tested them for animal products. 10 restaurants passed the test — but 7 did not. According to Quarry Girl:

What the test results seem to confirm … is that the meat substitutes available at vegan Thai restaurants are suspect, as are the ingredients used in some specific food options (pancakes, quesadillas and more).

The specific issue that Quarry Girl points to is that meat substitutes imported from Taiwan sometimes include animal ingredients that aren’t listed on the ingredient labels — an omission that appears largely due to the different food labeling laws in Taiwan vs. the U.S. Luckily, Taiwan’s poised to tighten its food labeling laws, which will hopefully help close this un-vegan-friendly gap in information.

But the larger and more important issue, IMHO, is that many of these meat substitutes are highly processed foods with massive ingredient lists and huge travel footprints that bring up some of the same sort of scary issues as the synthetic, engineered foods from Nestle and Kraft. According to Quarry Girl, “MOST, if not all, of the fake meats you buy come from Taiwan.”

Part of my reaction to this story may simply have to do with all the overzealous vegans and would-be vegans that “inform” me that vegan is by definition the greenest of green (read this comment string for an example of the vegan harangues I have to deal with — mostly via email — every couple weeks) — an assumption that most sustainable foodies would disagree with. But given the choice between an egg from an organic free range chicken farmer at my local farmers’ market and some multi-ingredient “meat” that’s made with in Taiwan using genetically-modified ingredients grown via factory farming before getting shipped over to the U.S.,  I’d opt for the egg.

Yes, I know some vegans are very mindful about making sure their vegan diet is actually green, opting for locally-produced tofu stir-fried in Cali olive oil. Those vegans know well that “vegan” apparently isn’t always vegan in L.A. restaurants — and a vegan diet most certainly isn’t always green. After all, the mercury-tainted, high fructose corn syrupy Hershey’s chocolate syrup’s also vegan.

Photo by Andrew Dowsett and Divine Harvester

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