>> In case you missed it, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote a ridiculous editorial in the Wall Street Journal against Obama’s health care reform effort. Mackey basically says health care — and even food and shelter — are commodities people shouldn’t feel they have a right to:

While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter? Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges.

>> That got some people to launch a boycott against Whole Foods.

>> The Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan won’t be boycotting Whole Foods (via Ethicurean):

So Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder. I haven’t examined the political views of all the retailers who feed me, but I can imagine having a lot of eating problems if I make them a litmus test.

>> Dave Murphy at Grist concurs with Michael. “A boycott of Whole Foods won’t make a difference on health care, and it might actually hurt something progressives care about — organic and natural farmers.”

I won’t be officially boycotting Whole Foods — but Mackey’s disgusting editorial’s grossed me out enough that I may just stick to shopping at Co-opportunity and the farmers’ market until the whole health care debate plays out in Washington.

However, I’m very lucky in that I live in a neighborhood with better shopping options for local, organic food than Whole Foods offers. I would hope that those living in less eco-foodie-friendly neighborhoods won’t feel like they now have to shun Whole Foods if that’s the best place they have to get local, organic food.

What do you think?

Poll closes Monday night.

Image via Whole Foods Boycott / Facebook

37 Comments

Tomorrow, I’m flying to Israel for a week-long clean technology tour. I’m very psyched, if a bit stressed right now.

However, the round trip flight will cover 15,109 miles — and release 3,978 lbs of CO2 according to Terrapass.

Terrapass is happy to offset that for me for $23.80. But at the Blankspaces panel I was on, I talked about how the money you’d spend on buying an offset you’d have a hard time tracking may be better spent as a donation to a local eco-nonprofit whose work you support.

So which nonprofit should I donate to?

Poll closes at the end of the day on May 10, which is the day I’ll be flying back to LAX.

Image by ponte1112

8 Comments

As you know, green LA girl recently got a slight redesign — which included changing the tagline to “urban eco living by the beach.”

Sometimes I like the new tagline; other times I don’t. What about you?

Oh — And if you have a brilliant idea for a new tagline, please share it with me! Poll closes at the end of Earth Day.

4 Comments

I complained about breakouts in my 20s, but since I turned 30 in November, my skin’s been clearer.

It’s because I started using CTRL, a skin care that’s like Proactiv but markets itself as being more eco-friendly. Why? CTRL contains no parabens or phthalates. And instead of benzoyl peroxide, the active ingredient in Proactiv products, CTRL’s active ingredient’s salicylic acid.

So I started using CTRL and my skin cleared up. Yay! But then I started researching it on Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetic safety database — to discover that salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide both score a 7 — a “high hazard” ranking. RLS at EcoStiletto doesn’t seem to care about that, saying salycylic acid just has a “bad rep by association” — but I trust the scientists at EWG more than I do the under-substantiated safety claims at EcoStiletto.

So I checked out acne treatment rankings on Skin Deep — to find that a few products that contain salicylic acid as well as a few that contain benzoyl peroxide have managed to attain low overall hazard scores — due to, I guess, the un-dangerousness of the other ingredients.

Neither CTRL nor Proactiv were in Skin Deep’s system though — and to make matters even more difficult for the anal would-be acne-free environmentalist, neither company publicly lists its ingredients on its website, as far as I can tell.

But I got CTRL’s ingredient lists with my products, so I tried putting its individual ingredients into the Skin Deep database. Most of the other ingredients stayed in the low risk range, with only 6 ingredients in the 4 – 5 range and no ingredients (other than the salicylic acid) scoring in the “high risk” range. I’m guessing that CTRL would score somewhere in the 3 – 5 risk range overall.

Many acne care products in the Skin Deep database score in the high risk category, with some even earning perfectly dangerous 10s for combining parabens, fragrance, and other scary stuff into one toxic mix. And while there are acne care products in the Skin Deep database that do score slightly lower, I remember from my teenage years that most acne products available at the drug store didn’t work for me….

This is a very long way of asking how you — presumably a fellow environmentalist — deal with break outs.

Poll closes at the end of the day on Wed., April 15. Feel free to opinionate and to dispense acne advice and product recommendations in the comments.

26 Comments

The big Earth Hour event tonight happens at LA Live, which Villaraigosa’ll be hosting. But the celebration happens across the L.A. area — with even Larry Flynt participating….

Where will you be turning off the lights tonight?

Poll closes when Earth Hour begins.

0 Comments

Are jumpsuits really coming back in fashion? Michelle Smith at Pretty by Nature seems to think so — and even outlines 5 tips for making the jumpsuit work for you before recommending an all-bamboo jumpsuit: The Elroy Apparel Davidia Jumper, on sale for $126 at Elroy.

My question is simple: Would you wear this eco-friendly, Canadian-made jumpsuit?

Cuz the model in the Davidia Jumper above wears it well — but I’m not sure that actually means the Jumper itself wears well. In fact, I’m wondering if the tall thin model with the cool purse and crazy hair — along with her choice not to wear a tank under the plunging neckline of the Jumper — is simply detracting from the un-prettiness of the Jumper itself.

Which is to say — I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pull of this look myself. How about you?

Poll closes Monday night.

Photo: Courtesy shopelroy.com

8 Comments

No, the question’s not about the TV show, but about actual lipstick. More specifically, my question’s about Cargo Cosmetics’ PlantLove Botanical Lipstick, a tube of which I received at one of the eco-shows during L.A. Fashion Week.

PlantLove lipstick’s marketed directly at the eco-glam crowd. The EcoCert certified lipstick contains no parabens, phthalates, synthetic dyes colors, or fragrance. The tube packaging’s made of biodegradable plant materials — and the box around it’s not only biodegradable but plantable, since it’s embedded with wildflower seeds. Plus, $2 from the sale of each $20 lipstick goes to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

That all sounds good, right? The problem is that PlantLove lipstick scores a rather high 5 on Skin Deep, Environmental Working Group’s cosmetic safety database. The culprit ingredient appears to be oxybenzone, described by EWG as “a sunscreen chemical that has been linked to allergies, hormone disruption, and cell damage, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control.”

That 5 ranking’s higher than even some Revlon lipsticks that score a mere 3 — despite the fact that the Revlon product contains parabens!

So what lipstick would you buy? Feel free to share recommendation of your fave eco-lipstick in the comments –

Poll closes Monday night.

Image via cargocosmetics.com

1 Comments

I’ve called Terracycle’s other upcycled juice pouch stuff eco-fugly before — but the eco worm-poop company keeps comin’ out with new items, this time for the holidays.

Behold the Terracycle stockings and tree skirts, made with upcycled juice pouches and cookie wrappers diligently collected by Terracycle trash brigades!

Now in general, I consider both holiday stockings and tree pouches to be decorative items one saves and reuses year after year. Which makes me wonder — Even if I decided I was okay with cookie-wrapper stockings for one season, would I be able to stand looking at those things every year?

Then again, kids may actually really like this stuff (I’ve no firsthand experience and thus no clue — I’m totally guessing here) because the stockings may evoke warm memories of eating and drinking high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil. Yum!

Let me step back and say that I do love, in general, what Terracycle’s doing to eliminate the idea of trash. In fact, you only need to read TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky’s thoughts on the individual conundrums that non-recyclable, recyclable and biodegradable packagings all cause to know that Terracycle’s serious about its mission. About his own brigades, Tom writes: “these programs (almost 12,000 collection sites strong) are merely a drop in the ocean when compared to the many billions of used packages discarded every year.”

Other eco-conundrums posed by Terracycle’s upcycling ventures include: 1) People will come to think of nonrecyclable packaging as eco-okay since they can be upcycled — despite the fact that only a teensy amount of the stuff actually does get upcycled, and 2) The upcycled products themselves may serve as greenwashed advertisements for unhealthy, uneco products with non-recyclable packaging.

And yet, as far as stockings and tree skirts go, aren’t Terracycle’s products pretty far up on the eco-scale? Certainly since Terracycle’s goods are available via Home Depot at reasonable prices, one could make the argument that these products are the only eco-ones of their kind made accessible to the general public.

Would you buy a Terracycle stocking or tree skirt?

Images via homedepot.com

[crossposted on BlogHer]

Update, 12/8/08: Amenity makes a cuter — and more expensive — eco tree skirt.

3 Comments

My question is simple:

Feel free to elaborate on your answer in the comments. Poll closes Monday night.

2 Comments

A while back, I switched banks and put my money in Bank of the West, the only “blue” bank with locations near me at the time. Lately, though, I’m wondering if I should move my savings to Shorebank.

Shorebank’s an environmentally and socially-responsible bank that “invests in people and their communities to create economic equity and a healthy environment.” One of Shorebank’s projects, for example, is bringing green collar jobs to disadvantaged communities.

Shorebank only has branches in Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit — but it does have an online high-yield savings account, which is offering 3.5% APY right now. Put $500 or more into your new account, and you also get a reusable canteen.

I do like having my savings and checking accounts linked up at one bank, but I’m considering starting a second savings account — but I’m afraid too many bank accounts will make life unnecessarily complicated. So I’m wondering:

Poll closes Monday night.

Update, 9/18/09: Since this post, I’ve opened — and am now in the process of closing, a Shorebank account. And I don’t recommend anyone opening an account with Shorebank — and it’s not because they kept lowering the APY.

Simply, Shorebank’s service sucks. The idealism’s nice, but the the horrendous, glitchy Firefox-incompatible web interface is a huge pain, transfers extremely slow, and the service full of weird rules and quirks no one should have to put up with.

2 Comments