A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Angelika Dreams Organic (A.D.O.) clothing is all about feminine essentials for spring infused by the works of Monet, but it’s also one of the greenest lines going. We caught up with A.D.O. designer Angelika Krishna for an interview on how she went from considering a denim line to a chemical free ready-to-wear line.

You’re so damn smart, aren’t you? Well, do you know enough about plug in or electric car technology to hold your own in a conversation? Brush up with A Glossary Of Car Terms to Recharge Your Thinking. You’ll be quizzed later.

You thought the sustainable world was filled with big green huggie bears and organic trees heavy with communal bounty? Well, sometimes, it’s not all what it’s cut out to be. In Bad Blood on the Home(Steading) Front, writer K. Emily Bond wants to know if “urban” homesteading’s reputation of being a crowd-sourced and friendly philosophy for living is being capitalized on. See what you think and don’t stop until you get to the heated comments at the bottom.

Frito Lay may be a natural at greenwash, but they’re certainly not green. In The Green Plate: Frito Lay, How Green You’re Not, columnist Vanessa Barrington writes: “Remember that corporations are in business to maximize their profits and everything they do is aimed at that goal. Though some corporations may do things that benefit some people some of the time, the ultimate goal is profits. Any advertising, anywhere, should be evaluated with a critical eye.”

Sex By Numbers columnist Abigail Wick was recently in Barcelona with a friend and caught up with some very attractive, innocent bystanders to ask them about (what else?) sex. In Sex by Numbers: El Amor en Espana: Seven Lovers, One Weekend, Wick collects her top seven favorite philosophies of love and we are left to fan ourselves…

Image: Moe

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ColumnFrito Lay may be a natural at greenwash, but they’re not green.

The other day, when a banner ad touting the greening of SunChips popped up on the granddaddy of green blogs, Treehugger, we were dismayed and confused.

It goes like this: Treehugger = the green original. Sunchips is a Frito Lay brand. Frito Lay is owned by Pepsico. What’s wrong with this match made in HTML? Frito Lay/Pepsico are masters at greenwashing. To see a green ad for one of their brands show up on a blog that is considered to be the moral authority of environmentalism is fairly demoralizing.

I don’t know what Treehugger’s ad policy is or if that ad is displaying as part of a package (our editor did some digging and it appears to be a Discovery network campaign; Discovery is Treehugger’s parent company). Sometimes, with ad networks, what ads pop up is at least temporarily beyond a publisher’s control. But giving space to a Pepsico brand lends an air of credibility that just smells bad. Here’s why.

1. Pepsico wants to keep America hooked on sugar and junk food.

Despite what the marketing arm says about wanting to help people eat better, PepsiCo spent $3.6 million in the first quarter of 2011 alone on lobbying to combat legislation to tax sugar-sweetened drinks.

2. Pepsico’s Refresh Project is just a line item in the company’s ad budget and a strategy to get its brand logos in front of a many children as possible.

In 2010, Pepsico decided to forgo spending millions to go up against rival Coke during the Super Bowl, in favor of a new $20 million social media-leveraged campaign that provides cash grants for community improvement projects, including many in public schools. Though the campaign has come under fire by good food advocates, notably Michele Simon, some socially conscious blogs, such as Tonic, have breathlessly praised the project. I find it depressing that public schools, parks, and programs are so thoroughly defunded that community groups must scramble for coins tossed by disreputable corporations to repair infrastructure that should be publicly funded.

3. Frito Lay is nothing more than a “corn launderer” with a big ad budget.

Snack food company Frito Lay practically exists to utilize the overproduction of corn that is the pillar of our farm subsidy system. They are masters at transforming corn kernels into any number of syrups, solids, powers, and masses and then reconstituting them into snack foods (see number 6 below) that generate huge marketing budgets for campaigns to convince consumers that the foods are healthy.

4. Frito Lay works humorously hard to convince consumers their products are healthy and “natural.”

Last week Frito Lay conducted a PR stunt in Times Square to prove to consumers that “fully half” of its products are “all natural” (see numbers 7 and 8 below).

5. Most Frito Lay products are anything but healthy, though they all benefit from the halo of health-driven advertising/PR efforts.

Company officials admit that they will not be making any changes to best-selling Doritos and Cheetos snacks. I live near a school and I see children walking to school eating these things for breakfast.

6. The incredible almost-onion Funyuns.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Flaming Hot Funyuns contain onions. A gander at the ingredient label shows lists 39 ingredients, of which at least seven are corn derivatives. The remaining ingredients include MSG, artificial colors Red 40 lake and Yellow 6 lake (I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to swim in those lakes), sugar, disodium phosphate, and sodium diasiphate. Toward the end of the ingredient list we see onion powder. The penultimate ingredient is “extractive of onion.”

7. “Natural” doesn’t mean anything.

The FDA has not defined the word “natural” for use on product labels, nor has it regulated front of package claims. This means any claim you see on the front of the package has been defined by the company making the claim. The FDA only regulates the “nutrition facts” on the back of the label. Many companies selling processed snack and junk foods rely on the “natural” label to bolster their appeal as a harmless thing to consume.

8. The vast majority of Frito Lay’s products are not natural, anyway.

Even under Frito Lay’s definition of natural, at present, only five product lines out of 33 are listed as “natural.” Nowhere near the touted half (see number 4 above). And Sunchips isn’t even one of them. Here’s a full list of Frito Lay brands. You’re free to look at all the ingredient labels.

9. Frito Lay’s compost smells bad.

In 2010, Frito Lay got a lot of positive PR for introducing a compostable bag – for one flavor in one product line out of 33 lines. Even then, all it took was a little whining by consumers for the company to abandon the trial temporarily. Then it was revealed that the newly re-engineered quieter compostable bag was hardly compostable at all. Why bother?

10. Frito Lay is accidentally green, not proactively green.

The New York Times reported in 2007 that Frito Lay’s efforts to save energy and water, though good for the planet, are more about saving money. Of course it’s smart to save money, but their marketing would have us believe that they’re doing it for philanthropic reasons.

Remember that corporations are in business to maximize their profits and everything they do is aimed at that goal. Though some corporations may do things that benefit some people some of the time, the ultimate goal is profits. Any advertising, anywhere, should be evaluated with a critical eye.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: jronaldlee via Flickr

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Let me make this clear: I am not someone who is averse to complaining. In fact, a good part of my workday is devoted to griping about the minor annoyances of everyday life. It may not be something to be proud of, but I make an almost-decent living just by complaining.

So it is only fitting, I suppose, that I should now be complaining about how annoying I find it when other people complain – especially about things that I find perfectly acceptable and inoffensive. To wit: I was shocked and dismayed this week to learn that Frito Lay has abandoned its efforts to package a line of their salty snacks in compostable packaging because consumers felt that the bags were too loud. To which I can only ask: too loud for what? Were people bringing Sun Chips into opera houses, where the crackling of the bag distracted the audience from the second act of La boheme? Were cardiac surgeons being startled in the middle of heart transplants because someone down the hall was recklessly opening a bag of Cool Ranch Sun Chips? Were librarians around the country up in arms because Story Hour was being drowned out by raucous packets of savory corn snacks?

What does this say about us as people? Do we really feel that a bit of noise is too big a price to pay for reducing the amount of waste in landfills? Can we really not tolerate a little paper rustling if it will help to reduce ozone-destroying carbon emissions?

I also have to say that I find it hard to believe the biodegradable bags were so unbearably loud. I live in the path of an airport – there are planes booming over my house on a regular basis, causing me to pause in the middle of phone calls or – even worse – to miss several precious seconds of dialogue on Project Runway.

Were the Sun Chip bags louder than that?

And even if they were, I defy anyone to look at a photograph of polar bears clinging to the remains of melting icecaps and then say to my face that “global warming is bad, and all, but dang those bags were loud.”

I don’t care. And neither should you.

We have become a nation of cranky, coddled malcontents – like The Princess and the Pea, we are unwilling or unable to handle the slightest discomfort, even if it will lead to the greater good. People need to suck it up and stop making a big deal about such minor problems. And they should leave the complaining to trained professionals. Like me.

Image: cogdogblog

The post What? I Can’t Hear You Over the Sun Chip Bag! appeared first on EcoSalon.

Three sacred cows from the eco-food world – sustainable packaging, compostable coffee cups and veggie burgers – have recently landed on alert lists.

Sound storm

When Frito-Lay’s research and development chief Mike Zbuchalski signed off on the totally compostable Sun Chips bag, he obviously didn’t realize its crunchy sound effects would inspire dozens of snarky YouTube videos (plus warnings of hearing loss) a few weeks after it hit the market. Our friends at the Greenwash Brigade suggest composting the bags with a large, loud tractor.

Bad chemistry

Another packaging faux pas involves the Dixie PerfecTouch insulated cup. Georgia Pacific touts it as “commercially compostable,” but according to the Greenwashing blog, the cup is made of non-compostable polyethylene and has not passed the necessary tests to be certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute – a must for the compostabilty claim. Two words for GP packaging prez Terry Cinotte: false advertising.

Mind-blowing meals

Turns out most veggie burgers are not a kinder, gentler companion for fries. Most of them are made with the neurotoxin hexane, which is also an EPA-registered air pollutant according to Mother Jones. Nobody knows for sure if the hexane residue in the patties is enough to cause nervous system disorders like those suffered by workers exposed to it in soy processing plants. Among the culprit brands is Amy’s Kitchen; good thing Amy Berliner’s favorite food is pizza.

Click and cry

The European Union stamped its eco-label seal of approval on two brands of copy paper made from timber logged from a rapidly disappearing Sumatran rainforest.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment in Liz Barrett’s news column, Green Scene, covering what’s fascinating in green weekly.

Image: ingridtaylar

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