Hormone disrupting chemicals, found by Greenpeace, can affect immune systems and alter sexual development.

Greenpeace recently reported that clothing items bearing the logos of 14 global brands – including Adidas, H&M, Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch – have been found to contain nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), chemicals that can break down to form the hormone-disrupting substance nonylphenol (NP). Just this morning, Reuters released the news that Nearly 300 Cambodian workers fell sick this week at a garment factory producing goods for Swedish fashion brand H&M.

“Workers smelled something bad coming from the shirts,” said 26-year-old Norn Leakhena, a worker at the factory.

Greenpeace also reports in their findings that “Of the 78 articles of clothing bought and manufactured in locations all over the world, two thirds (52) tested positive for these chemicals – demonstrating that the use and release of these substances is a global problem affecting the entire textile industry, and further reinforcing the findings of the first Dirty Laundry Report, published 6 weeks ago.”

We caught up with Tommy Crawford, Communications Manager for Greenpeace International to help us break down what this means for us in terms of personal as well as ecological safety.

Are the hormone disrupting chemicals coming from finishes on the clothes?
Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) are used as surfactants in textile production. They subsequently break down into the toxic nonylphenol (NP) in the manufacturing process in wastewater discharges, as well as when finished clothes are washed by the consumers. This means that the persistent, hormone-disrupting NPs end up predominately in rivers and waterways in the countries of production but also in the countries of sale – including countries where use of the parent compounds (NPEs) is banned.

Would you say these are brands targeted mostly at a younger demographic who could care less about toxic clothing?
Toxic chemicals are a concern for everyone, regardless of their age. Greenpeace is not looking to discourage people from buying these brands, but we are interested in empowering their consumers to challenge these brands to produce their clothes in a way that does not come with a high price for people and the environment. A toxic-free future is possible, and concerned and empowered consumers have already played a massive role in convincing Nike and Puma to commit to the total elimination of all hazardous chemicals from their production by watching and sharing the campaign video and signing the petition. Over 600 supporters and activists even took part in the world’s biggest coordinated striptease to send a clear message to the brands to “Detox” our future.

The Greenpeace report says that chemicals are entering waterways and altering organisms. Why should we care?
We should care as we are talking about very problematic toxic chemicals entering into our water and our environment and having harmful and often unknown impacts. Chemicals that have no safe levels. Chemicals that stay in our environment for a long time (persistent), build up in the food chain (bioaccumulative), and that are hormone disrupting and toxic.

The substances Nonylphenol ethoxolates (NPEs) that we found in the clothes breakdown into the toxic nonylphenol (NP) once released into sewage treatment plants or directly into rivers (such as in manufacturing wastewaters, or during normal washing by consumers). NPs have the ability to mimic natural estrogen hormones. Scientific studies have found that exposure to NP can lead to altered sexual development in some organisms, particularly fish and other aquatic organisms. Lab testing on animal cells has also observed NP impacting immune system cells. Many of these effects can occur at relatively low levels.

With 13 countries involved in the supply chain for all these tested brands, how can they be regulated to ensure change? Is it too big a project?
No it is not. Suppliers in all these 13 countries are supplying big international clothing brands. By campaigning on the clothing brands, urging them to take responsibility for the toxic discharges in the manufacture of their clothes and becoming part of the solution by cleaning up their supply chains we can witness positive results for people and the environment in all production countries. It is not an impossible task, we have already seen both Puma and Nike committing to a toxic-free future by 2020.

Following its commitment last Wednesday Nike immediately took measures to start the elimination of NPEs in their supply chain by informing all of their suppliers around the world that NPEs need to be eliminated. Nike immediately moved NPEs from their list of ‘future restricted substances during manufacture’ to their existing list of ‘restricted substances during manufacture.’ This means that by encouraging the brands to commit to creating a toxic-free world, we can bring about positive and widespread change in all the countries of manufacture – very important for all the millions of people living in the countries of production who are dependent on rivers and other waterways for their drinking water.

Will you be checking back with Puma and Nike regarding their commitment to change?
Yes, both companies have publicly committed to come back with a Plan of Action with a road map detailing how they will get to zero discharges of hazardous chemicals by 2020. Nike, for example, wrote last week in its public commitment: ”Within eight weeks Nike Inc. will announce it’s action plan for the goal of eliminating hazardous chemicals within our supply chain addressing transparency, chemical management, including how we will address the need for industry disclosure in line with the right to know principles and a time-line for the highest priority hazardous chemicals.” Puma has also committed to publishing an action plan detailing how they will deliver their commitment within the next eight weeks.

Greenpeace will be closely watching this process and reviewing the plans of action to ensure they will indeed lead to the brands and their suppliers achieving toxic-free production by 2020.

Images: Greenpeace

Guess what? Jeans aren’t really green. The most sustainable pair you’ll slip on are the blue jeans that feel like cardboard boxes on your legs or the pair you find at the thrift shop; otherwise it’s a crapshoot as to how they get distressed like you want them to be.

Sustainable? To a degree, depending on what the company wants to tout as “eco,” with initiatives ranging from the use of natural reactants vs. toxic indigo baths to planting trees or giving back to countries that have suffered at the hands of the denim industry.

On that note, we turn our eyes to images like these released recently from Greenpeace on Ecotextile News. The site claims that “Two Chinese textile factory towns in Guangdong province, that together make millions of pairs of jeans and underwear, are now heavily polluted with chemicals released from textile production.”

Situated on a tributary of the Pearl River Delta, Xintang is a huge denim producer. Its jeans and apparel business began in the eighties, but thanks to our unquenchable thirst to look like rugged Americans, the last thirty years has enabled an entire economy to become completely dependent on the denim production chain in Xintang. According to Greenpeace, the town produces over 260 million pairs of jeans a year, equivalent to 60 percent of China’s total jeans production, and 40 percent of the jeans sold in the USA.

This is a satellite image of what Greenpeace caught flowing out of Xintang.

Denim pollution flows from Xintang into the Dong River, then on to the Pearl Delta

Apparently, in Xintang, the “jeans capital of the world” and Gurao, heavy metals in 17 of the 21 soil and water samples tested, indicated extensive heavy metal contamination throughout both cities, says EcoTextile News.

Greenpeace even cited that “In one sample, cadmium exceeded China’s national limits by 128 times.” 128 times?! Come on!

Will China get wise to stricter monitoring of discharged chemicals in their water and soil? Do they even care?

Greenpeace hopes so (as do we) and has called on not only the Chinese textile industry and government to shape up but for society as a whole to take a closer look at what fast fashion is doing to China’s environment and beyond, to you.

Imagine the consequences of 20 years of nuclear waste dumping in the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea that surround the Italian Peninsula and its islands.

It’s an unfolding crisis that has the international community alarmed, including the fishing interests in Japan.

We’re talking about the coasts of 22 countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and a pending ecological and public health disaster which is being allegedly swept under the rug by the Italian government.

I only learned about it recently in a Counterpunch post on the nightmare, passed along to me by a devastated reader. Meantime, the disaster is also catching on in the mainstream media.

The post writer, Michael Leonardi, is a university educator who lives in Calabria with his wife and baby. He says after returning from a visit to the States, he was alarmed to learn that the Tyrrhenian Sea – which his daughter has been bathing in since birth – was intentionally poisoned with toxic waste.

“How shocked and dismayed we were to discover that government officials have known about it all along,” he shares. “And how enraged we are that a journalist has been killed, possibly for trying to reveal the truth about the disposal of waste by the international Ecomafia and their colluding government and corporate interests.”

The journalist described was Rai television reporter Ilaria Alpi. Leonardi says she was following the trail of arms and toxic garbage trafficking from Italy to Somalia in 1994 when she and her camera man, Miran Hrovatin, were gunned down and killed in Mogadishu.

“Many here believe, including the Mafia pentito, Franceso Fonti, that she was killed because she learned too much about the collusion between the Mafia and Italian military,” argues a bold Leonardi.

So how is the dumping engineered by the bad guys?

Leonardi says dozens of ships with the radioactive and toxic cargoes have been intentionally sunk by organized crime syndicates.

Leonardi says epidemic levels of cancerous tumors and thyroid problems have occurred in the area and along the coasts of the Mediterranean – where fishermen make a living by selling their catch throughout Italian and on the international market.

The public outcry is heating up as Greenpeace and the Italian environmental organization Legambiente work to bring the disaster to the surface. CNN reported on the scuttled hips, as well, last week. The report says it is believed between 32 and 41 of the ships sunk in international waters between Italy, Greece and Spain.

Lending credence to the sinking, testimony by Franceso Fonti, who admitted his role in helping to sink three ships in the fishing waters, including the Cunsky.

Last week a robot sub was sent down off the coast of Centraro to shoot photos of the ship thought to be the Cunsky. The images document the presence of drums like those used to transport and store radioactive and toxic wastes. The hope is that the barrels are still in tact but no one knows for certain what they contain.

“Traces of Mercury and Cesnium 137 have recently been found near the town of Amantea in Calabria further south of Cetraro by about 50 kilimeters,” explains Leonardi. “Amantea is considered a “hot spot” for tumors and ground temperature around the contamination area is six degrees warmer than normal.

“The population is demanding the truth and government action,” he says, adding international cooperation is needed.

Images: enigmachck1, Wiki, Wiki

We’ve just asked you to contemplate giving up your fridge; now how about the t.p.?

We’re kidding, of course. And if I told you that Greenpeace wants you to recycle tissues and toilet paper, you”Ëœd probably say “Ëœthat”Ëœs gross!’ But that’s only because you’ve taken the concept at face value. Greenpeace isn’t really asking you to re-use tissues and toilet paper. What they are asking is that when purchasing household paper products, why not choose ones that are recycled?

To make this easier for you to do, Greenpeace has put together a credit card sized Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide that you can download and print (on recycled computer paper) to use as a reference when you are out shopping.

The guide rates facial tissues, paper towels, toilet paper, and paper napkins based on the following important environmental benchmarks: that they are made from 100 percent overall recycled content, a minimum of which is 50 percent post-consumer recycled content and that they are not bleached with chlorine or toxic chlorine compounds.

Using these benchmarks, the guide gives a thumbs up to Green Forest, Natural Value, and Seventh Generation brands and a thumbs down rating to Kleenex, Cottonelle Charmin, and Angel Soft.

Of course, you could always go one better and use cloth hankies and old rags instead of tissues and paper towels.

Image: Samantha Celera

We got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and it’s been in full use ever since. Tennis, golf, baseball – you name the game, we’ve played it. Of course, being energy conscious, I’ve been making sure that everyone unplugs it at the wall when not in use. I’ve also been patting myself on the back, because according to the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nintendo Wii uses the least amount of energy of the three available game consoles. (The device uses an average of 16 watts in active mode compared with the energy sucker Sony Playstation that uses a whooping 150 watts in active mode.)

I was feeling pretty smug, really. Until I started reading Playing Dirty, a Greenpeace report published last year that examines what the game consoles are made of. Let me tell you – it sure ain’t pretty.

According to the report, all three game consoles – Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo – contain hazardous chemicals and materials. And chief among them are bromines and phthalates, toxic chemicals that are bad not only for our health but the health of the planet. It made for depressing reading. And to make matters worse, it seems that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are in no hurry to take any action to fix this.

But as usual, Greenpeace is on the job. They are laying out all the grime facts on their Clash of the Consoles website. They have created a form letter that you can email to the different companies telling them that it’s time they started making the world a greener place to live.

And they have even provided the manufacturers a blueprint (or in this case, a greenprint) on what they need to do to produce a true green console:

Produce energy-efficient products and inform the consumer on best practices to reduce energy consumption.
Take global responsibility for the full lifecycle of the products, especially when discarded.
Make upgradeable and recyclable products.
Design out toxins by removing hazardous chemicals and materials from products.

Now, if only the manufacturers would listen.