It’s in your toothpaste, your chocolate, your lipstick, your detergent, and even your ice cream. In fact, palm oil is in more than 50 percent of all packaged products sold in America’s grocery stores, and the ingredient, when not responsibly sourced, is wreaking havoc on our environment.  Sadly, this issue over palm oil production isn’t new and large corporations that promised to source this ingredient transparently and responsibly, like Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson&Johnson, and PepsiCo, are not upholding their end of the bargain.

Tropically grown, palm oil originated in Western Africa, but can thrive anywhere that heat and rain are plentiful. Today, according to Say No to Palm Oil, crops are “grown throughout Africa, Asia, North America, and South America, with 85 percent of all palm oil globally produced and exported from Indonesia and Malaysia, but most of the time not using sustainable measures.”  Although this doesn’t sound malicious, the impact on the environment and its residents, both human and animal, is truly devastating.

The World Wildlife Federation claims “palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet,” and because of this, the demand for usable land in order to grow crops has risen drastically. Uncontrolled and unregulated clearing of these forests done to make way for palm oil plantations has resulted in the destruction of the biodiversity and ecosystems in the countries where it is produced. This has not only affected native species who called the forests home, but it is also believed to be a significant contributor to climate change. Moreover, the removal process is known to involve the burning of healthy trees and undergrowth, letting off large amounts of smoke and polluting its surroundings, “making Indonesia the third highest greenhouse gas emitter in the world,” says Say No to Palm Oil.

Many of the 300,000 different animals and wildlife that inhabit the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra are injured, killed, and displaced during deforestation practices used to clear land to make way for palm oil plantations. Orangutans in particular have been severely victimized, with government data showing that more than 50,000 have already died over the course of twenty years as a direct result of palm oil production. It’s said that orangutans have been found buried alive, while others have been killed from machete, guns, and other weapons, and mothers are specifically targeted by poachers so that their babies can be taken or sold as pets or entertainment for tourism parks.

Although the lure of the palm oil trade is one that claims to benefit the native people by bringing development to poor regions, the effects are actually quite the opposite. Governments allow these large corporations to seize land from the indigenous people for their own financial benefit. Furthermore, palm oil is believed to be linked to child labor in Indonesia and Malaysia who are afflicted by heat exhaustion, cuts and bruises, and little to no pay for their efforts.

So how is this perpetuated by big businesses? According to a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald, the large corporations that formerly promised their consumers to make a serious effort to phase out irresponsibly sourced palm oil with “no deforestation” pledges are appearing to seriously drop the ball. After a survey of 14 of such companies, the results found that none of them can say with certainty that there is no deforestation being committed by their palm oil suppliers, nor have they published a full list of these suppliers. Three of the companies involved, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson&Johnson, and PepsiCo, are some of the most well-known and worst offenders, not that it comes as any surprise considering these are also the brands that still find the antiquated practice of animal testing acceptable.

Many of these corporations rely on something called GreenPalm certificates endorsed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which is essentially a lazy attempt at quickly and easily buying “sustainably” sourced palm oil from suppliers that make it seem as though the effort is real, while still opting for regular or irresponsibly sourced product at other times. Greenpeace is said to have criticized both Colgate-Palmolive and PepsiCo for using tactics like these because even with these certificates traceability is poor.

Without action and pressure from consumers, it’s likely that very little will change. Eliminating palm oil entirely would drastically cut back on what you’re able to buy, especially when recalling that there’s an estimated 50 percent of palm oil-containing products in supermarkets, but making small changes, like boycotting the worst offenders or making a concerted effort to do a little research before venturing out to the store could make a big difference. If or until palm oil is required to be identified on labels, it will be up to us as consumers to take a stand against deceptive palm oil production and the devastation it leaves behind.

For a wallet-sized ingredient list of what palm oil can be hidden as in our products, please visit Palm Oil in Disguise.

Let us know your thoughts on palm oil production by visiting the EcoSalon Facebook page.

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Images of Mother and Baby Orangutan, Palm Oil Fruit, and Palm Oil Fruit Truck via Shutterstock

The post Deceptive Palm Oil Production is Still Destroying the Environment, and Everything in its Path appeared first on EcoSalon.

Climate change. Global warming. Whatever you call it, weird things—dangerous things—are happening to our weather, our oceans and our natural resources. And according to Livia Firth, Creative Director of Eco Age Ltd, what we wear, particularly if it’s fast fashion, matters a lot in this equation.

The climate crisis is complicated. Industry, reliance on fossil fuels, deforestation—they all play a part. But the one area we don’t seem to be talking about nearly enough, according to Firth, is fashion.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has famously said that you can’t be an animal-eating environmentalist. The math just doesn’t add up; animals, even those animals raised ‘ humanely’, just take up way too many resources to be part of an environmentally sensitive diet. This point continues to be argued, but studies have supported the claim.

And now, eco-fashion activist and change-maker Livia Firth is speaking out against our fast fashion choices, as they too seem to be irrefutably damaging to the environment, yet nearly as easy to change as our food choices. “Every single day we all perform two simple actions: we eat and we get dressed,” she wrote in a recent Huffington Post op-ed. “Could I even go as far as saying that we could solve climate change if we all dressed in a sustainable manner?”

It’s a logical question, but one we don’t seem to be asking nearly enough. “For some reason the fashion industry is often ignored, or cast aside as if it was an irrelevance,” she wrote. “The path to a more just and ecologically sound existence for us all is notoriously rocky, but each industry must play its part in cleaning up and bringing substantive change.”

The numbers are simply startling: Nearly 80 billion new garments are produced each year, according to Firth. Producing just one pair of jeans requires as much as 6,000 gallons of water. Then there are the dye colors and other chemicals involved–the making of zippers and buttons, etc., not to mention the packaging and transportation.

Firth writes, “[W]e are dependent on multifarious resources at a time when these resources are being degraded at unprecedented speed.” Cotton, the dominant fiber in the fashion industry, is what we often equate with simple, clean, even a safe fabric unlike rayon or polyester. But cotton requires more pesticide applications than any other crop, which in turn, contributes to the sickness of our waterways and soil, the chemicals in our air contributing to greenhouse gases and rising global temperatures. Firth says that the fashion industry is also “dependent on the animal kingdom and some of the most fragile ecosystems on earth.”

Firth and Eco Age worked with Gucci to offset some of its dependence on the conventional leather industry, which is one of the biggest drivers in deforestation, much in the same way beef is. “[F]ashion touches on every great environmental theme: climate change, declining available resources, lost wilderness, flooding, through to the flipside of flooding – drought,” she writes. “And of course, all of these are interconnected.”

Perhaps the importance of fashion is being ignored in the climate change discussion because fashion is often perceived as frivolous. We all wear clothes, but true Fashion, in the Anna Wintour or Coco Chanel sense, seems reserved for the few and beautiful. Most of us wear clothes, rather than fashion pieces. We eye clothing with the same lens of necessity as drinking water or breakfast foods. And when the choice is between a $20 pair of jeans or $200 organic denim ones, it’s understandable why we’re not having a more mainstream conversation about what we wear. “But while human kind continues to treat fashion as a frivolous side line, it pollutes and squanders with impunity,” says Firth. The fast fashion industry “has created a ‘factory of consumers’ whereas it is the offer to drive/create demand,” she says. “We buy in a rush and discard as quickly.”

So, while Fashion as an art, an industry, and a way of life for many, might not be a conversation the rest of us care to follow, we can start to make better choices. If you can’t buy organic or upcylced, you can buy gently used clothes. You can swap with friends. You can resist the urge to be Forever 21 and grow older gracefully with timeless pieces you don’t need to replace every season. According to Firth, “we’re on the threshold of a new fashion industry where ethics and glamour co-exist, where new fibres and technology minimise impact, where fashion brands begin to acknowledge their debt to the natural world and invest in sustaining it for their future and our future,” she wrote. “Could we solve climate change if we all were to buy carefully and get more ‘fashion mileage’ out of each piece?” Do we really have a choice?

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post Livia Firth: Fast Fashion is Speeding Up Climate Change…Fast appeared first on EcoSalon.

War, science denial and Fox News. It’s what’s going on in the world, but it’s not especially merry, merry. If you’re feeling anxious about the eco conversation turning an ugly shade of green at the family Christmas dinner, rest easy. It’s not all doom and gloom. (Besides, there will be plenty of time post-feast to take on Uncle Ulysses on Wikileaks, your sister Sue on why being green doesn’t actually make you a commie, and cousin Clive on the South Atlantic Gyre.)

So, for your dining pleasure, I submit to you three news items everyone can be happy about:

1. Good for flora…

How is this for a dream headline: “Amazon deforestation in dramatic decline, official figures show.”

This is from the Guardian, which reported this summer that data from satellites shows that large areas of forest destruction was about halved in the period between August 2009 and May 2010, compared with the same period a year earlier (to about 930 square miles from about 1860 square miles). The story notes that the Brazilian environment agency, Ibama, said “the drop was due to the increased use of satellite data to spot the felling of trees and new tactics to deter loggers, including ending their ability to hide under cloud cover.” Along these lines, we recently reported here that Google’s announcement this month of its Earth Engine will allow for even more monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s environment. With its eye in the sky, the system will “function like a watchdog camera, supporting the development of ‘monitor, report and verify’ (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation.” Go, trees!

2. Good for fauna…

Things are looking up for some pretty cool endangered species – you know, the sexy ones that get lots of press and for which even your most “who-cares” relatives have a soft spot. Consider first the mountain gorilla, the number of which in national parks of three African countries has risen by 26 percent in the last seven years, says a recent census. Next, how about those tigers, whose on-the-brink status has led to a recent summit among the 13 nations where the animals still exist in the wild. The takeway was $300 million raised to save the animals (including a cool million from actor Leonardo DiCaprio), as well as agreement to attempt to double their number by 2022. And finally, there’s the canary in our global coalmine – the polar bear – for which The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just designated 87,000 square miles along the north coast of Alaska as protected “critical habitat” as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed by environmental groups (although a lump of coal to the Obama administration for declaring polar bears merely “threatened” today).

3. And good for us…

Hooray for the home team on the emissions front. As a result in an increase in United States fuel economy standards, a new EPA report is showing a 14 percent per mile drop in carbon dioxide emissions over the last six years, and a 16 percent drop in gasoline use, with a rise of 3.1 miles per gallon to 22.5. In fact, “C02 emissions have decreased while fuel economy has increased every year since 2005, reversing the trend of the previous eight years.” This doesn’t mean we’re all to breathe easy and lose our discipline on this issue, but good news is good news.

So there. Eat, drink and be environmentally merry. A little more champagne, please! Go ahead and top off the glass.

Special thanks to the Great News Network (GNN) for reminding me that all’s not dire on the environmental front.

Images: Sara&Joachim, Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel, wwarby, ^riza^

The post 3 Green Holiday Dinner Conversation Starters (That Everyone Will Like) appeared first on EcoSalon.

In southern Vietnam, the population depends on healthy farming for its livelihood, but several factors challenge that goal: discharged animal agricultural waste into open gutters and community waterways, as well as using traditional fuels  – such as wood and coal for cooking – which causes deforestation, hurting land productivity through drought, flooding and erosion.

The solution? Biodigestion, a method for treating animal waste to produce a  methane-based biogas that can be used for cooking or lighting. This source of clean and renewable energy aimed at helping some 50 families is being funded by people like you and I through Ecodana.

The San Francisco-based for profit social enterprise is seeking to better the lives of the poor in rural areas around the world by identifying and facilitating funding for sustainable projects in their communities. In terms of acquiring the biogas systems, the funds raised will cover the subsidy ($11) and training provided with each installation ($9) bringing the cost per family at $20.

Ecodana has a number of ongoing sustainable grassroots projects around the world, and depends largely on the internet to spread the word and get people involved.

Recycle Plastic to Fund Scholarships: In rural Vietnam, this program was set up to reward schools for raising the environmental awareness of theirs students by collecting plastic waste and recycling it. Over 100 million tons of trash accumulates in the country each year with only a small fraction being picked up.

Building Dry Composting Latrines in Guatemala and Cambodia: Coming to the rescue of families who mostly rely on Pit toilets – shallow holes in the ground that are breeding grounds for disease-carrying flies, parasites and other microorganisms that spread cholera, typhoid and infectious hepatitis. The latrines are ecologically-sound and in high demand in areas prone to flooding during the rain season.

Ecodana was founded by filmmaker and photographer Marc Henrich in 2008, who was raised in five countries and speaks several languages which helps his international awareness. The idea for these grassroots projects was sparked when he moved his family to Laos and became involved with Sunlabob, a renewable energy company.

In creating his global grassroots mission, he located various partners in the areas he is helping. They include Thien Chi (Goodwill), an independently operated Vietnamese non-profit organization helping with the agricultural projects; the Cambodian-based charity MaD; and the Asociacion Amigas del Sol, a multi-ethnic women’s organization promoting communities in the southwestern coastal region of Guatemala. The projects chosen are often overlooked by larger organizations as too insignificant, but they can make a big difference in lives, according to Ecodana.

“We believe these small grassroots projects can be hugely influential and deserve to be supported,” says Henrich. “By harnessing the power of technology, we can bypass the issues of large institutional giving and get people directly involved with grassroots projects anywhere in the world.”

The post Ecodana Rural Project: Toilets and Clean Energy for the Cost of Coffee and a Donut appeared first on EcoSalon.

British designer Vivienne Westwood is no newbie to advocating for climate change action, but now she’s added another cause to her list: Deforestation.

Partnering with Anvil Knitwear, Westwood has just launched a limited edition t-shirt to support the efforts of rainforest nations to stop deforestation.

Can big name designers effect environmental change? Westwood is wasting no time finding out.

Deforestation accounts for approximately 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and with much of the world intently following the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, raising awareness around the issue is crucial.

Westwood is doing so through a simple and fashionable message.:ACT FAST/SLOW DOWN and stop climate change.

“We must all commit ourselves and say YES to the Rainforest,” says Westwood.

The Coalition for Rainforest Nations is currently working on getting the UN to implement its REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanism. The mechanism would issue carbon credits for each hectare of living rainforest. The credits could be traded on the global commodity market to countries that need to reduce their emissions at low cost. As a benefit, the proceeds would go to poor landowners in rainforest nations who have no other economically viable option other than logging their trees.

Along with promoting a great cause, Westwood’s t-shirt is made with a blend of recycled polyester and cotton and features eco-friendly printing. Anvil deems the cotton “transitional,” as it comes from farms that are converting to organic farming methods, a process that takes up to three years. Anvil’s commitment to practicing more sustainable farming methods has a significant impact; in 2008 the company was ranked the sixth largest organic program and the largest domestic purchaser of US grown certified organic cotton.

No word yet on where you can buy the t-shirts, so keep an eye out on Westwood’s online store as well as Anvil’s site.

Photo credits: Strawberry Earth, Threat to Democracy

The post Vivienne Westwood Designs T-Shirt to Stop Deforestation appeared first on EcoSalon.

It’s one thing to read about how some of the most amazing natural treasures in the world are endangered due to environmental degradation, or learn specifically about the dangers global warming poses to our national parks. It’s another thing to see it firsthand.

I was hiking in the Rockies earlier this month and saw for myself large swaths of dead, rust-colored Lodgepole pine trees throughout the forest (see gallery below).  Witnessing the actual damage done by human folly is heart wrenching in a way that is difficult to verbalize. For me, there’s a huge sense of loss and missed opportunity and a knot of pure anger in my stomach at the shortsightedness and power of denial in us humans.

At the same time, there’s a strange gratitude in the moment of experience at the fact that I’m lucky enough to stand surrounded by such inspiring beauty (despite the visible damage). Then there’s the feeling of awe and appreciation at the incredible beating nature is able to take before showing signs of wear.

The trees’ deaths were caused directly by an insect called the mountain pine beetle and indirectly by climate change. Pine beetles have always fed on certain species of trees, like the Lodgepole pines in the Rockies, but cold winters have kept the beetle’s population under control and plenty of water made the trees hardy and resistant to the beetle’s attacks.

Enter drought and successive years of warm weather. The population of beetles explodes, the trees are weakened and unable to secrete the resin that kills the beetles, and the trees die – to the tune of millions upon millions of trees. According to this National Parks Conservation Association Survival Guide, Forestry officials estimate that all mature Lodgepole pine forests in Colorado will be dead by 2013.

This all sounds hopeless and it is, especially for the Lodgepoles and the many birds, animals and fish that directly or indirectly depend on them for survival. So many dried, dead trees make the specter of devastating wildfires a sure bet.

Experts agree that the damage is irreversible. The only way to think positively is to ponder the new forest that will eventually grow up in this one’s place. Luckily, nature does have amazing powers of regeneration. But that doesn’t mean we can excuse the damage already done. To appreciate both the beauty and the scale of loss people need to see these places and truly experience them firsthand. That’s the only way we are ever going to save them.

Though heavy visitation has its own deleterious impacts on our national parks, I believe it is only through experiencing nature’s awe-inspiring beauty and mystery that humankind will muster the desire to live more lightly in hopes of saving what we still have.

Images: Vanessa Barrington

The post Gallery: A Firsthand Look at Climate Change Damage in Rocky Mountain National Park appeared first on EcoSalon.

Reuters reports on a British company, Helveta, that has developed a unique way to protect hardwood trees in parts of Africa, southeast Asia and South America against illegal logging and help countries keep track of timber reserves.

They are barcoding them with little plastic tags similar to the ones you’d find on supermarket groceries.

Every plantation tree above a predetermined size has a bar code and when that tree is cut down, another bar code is attached to the remaining stump. Other tags are nailed into the processed wood, providing a computerized trail for customs officials to follow.

At the same time, the tags are scanned by handheld computers in the field and the data is entered into Helveta’s secure database.

This technology should help companies comply with the sustainable timber import laws set up by the United States and Europe. At the same time, Helveta hopes that this innovative practice could also be able to assist with the proposed United Nations Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) scheme  which aims to increase forest cover with the aim of soaking up carbon dioxide emissions.

Of course, this won’t stop those determined to chop down trees but it might make it more difficult for them to sell, process or export the wood.

Image: fabbio

The post Can Barcoding Trees Protect Endangered Forests? appeared first on EcoSalon.

You may have seen or read exposés on corn monoculture – notably, the series here at EcoSalon back in November. But there’s another crop that is just as pervasive and potentially problematic. It’s soy, which we will be exploring in a series of articles over the next few weeks.

Soybeans were first cultivated in China at least 3,000 years ago and are now an important worldwide crop for use in cooking oil, animal feed, processed food, and bio-fuels.

The U.S., Brazil, Argentina, and China produce close to 90% of the world’s soybeans. Brazil is now the world’s largest exporter of soybeans, producing about one-quarter of all soybeans, and exporting a large percentage to Europe where most of the beans are processed and used for animal feed.

The soy industry in Brazil started growing in earnest in the 1970s and has been accelerating since the early part of this century. (Between 1995 and 2004 soy output increased by 77%.)

Soybeans, like all beans, nourish the soil by fixing nitrogen, so they are not congenitally bad. But explosive growth of any monoculture crop puts pressure on the environment and the people and other creatures that depend on it.

The soy industry has been blamed for deforestation in the Amazon, and the resulting increase in greenhouse gas emissions. But that is a bit simplistic. In some ways, soy is a result of deforestation, not a cause. Illegal logging has been going on in the Amazon for a long time because the wood fetches such high prices. Once the forests are cleared, the cattle ranchers move in. After the cattle deplete the soil, the land is no longer useful for pasture. Soybeans are then planted because that’s the only thing the soil is useful for at that point, which sounds like a good fix for a bad situation.

Not so fast.

Soy is now having its own effect on accelerating the deforestation. National Geographic details how soy brings with it big infrastructure, like the highway, BR-163, that runs through the Mato Grosso, the center of soy, north to the port in Santarém. The road provides access to the forest that didn’t exist before, fueling illegal logging.

The government has tried to control the logging, but with limited resources, rampant corruption by local officials, and disputed land titles, they’ve had minimal success. Recent high demand for soy as animal feed for a burgeoning world population and for use in biofuels have caused the price of soy to skyrocket, meaning that farmers of soy plantations that abut forest are beginning to clear forest land themselves to plant more soy.

Government restrictions and the heroic efforts of indigenous people and activists slowed deforestation for a time in 2003. In 2005 Greenpeace pressured major industrial purchasers of soy to sign onto a 2-year moratorium of soy purchases from newly deforested lands, partially bolstered by the publicity generated by the murder of nun Dorothy Stang, at the hands of criminal land grabbers. The moratorium, which was set to expire in the summer of 2008, was extended for another year last summer.

However, these efforts haven’t been enough. Recently released figures from Brazil show a 3.8% increase in deforestation between August 2007 and July 2008, a period during which 3 million acres of forests were cut.

Added to the American multinationals and rich Brazilian landowners are new players in a new foreign land grab. According to The Guardian, the world food crisis is fueling a new rush to purchase Brazilian land by foreign governments like Saudi Arabia and China.

As the land becomes even more profitable, this new land rush doesn’t bode well for the forest or for the indigenous people who understand how to sustainably manage its resources.

What can we do? The first thing is to begin to question the dominance of processed soy in our food system and vote with our dollars whenever we can. The easiest way is to banish processed food, fast food, and animals fattened on soy. Cook your own fresh, local vegetables, grains and beans from scratch, and look for animal products that are organic, local and have not been produced with soy.

We’ll also be providing recipes using healthy, traditional soy products in the upcoming weeks. In the next article in this series we’ll learn about the hopeful efforts of social movements in Brazil and other countries in Latin America that work for land reform policies that serve the people, not the multinational grain, seed, pesticide, and fertilizer companies.

Image: Clearly Ambiguous

The post The Soy Juggernaut: Deforestation & Land Grabs in Brazil appeared first on EcoSalon.