Examined Lives

On the Kindle: To Buy or Not to Buy?

This may sound like a Waste or Want but it's not, only because I have yet to try the Kindle. The New Yorker's Nicholas Baker just did, and boy does his review of the e-reading machine feel like a takedown. Among some of his complaints: The typeface ("it had a way of reducing everything to arbitrary heaps of words"); the background color ("it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray."); what it doesn't include ("Photographs, charts, diagrams, foreign characters, and tables don’t fare so well on the little gray screen."). 

I'll have to get my mitts on one before I give my final review, but there was one point Baker made that I totally appreciated. Fans say that among the Kindle's many virtues is that it's environmentally friendly, and if there's anything you may have learned about BurbMom and me, it's that we're hugely invested in trying to be ecologically sound. But sometimes, a decision feels far more virtuous than it actually is. 

Baker acknowledges that one does, to a fashion, conserve paper when one switches to an electronic reading advice. Then again, there are other ramifications: 

"On the other hand, there’s no clutter, no pile of paperbacks next to the couch. A Kindle book arrives wirelessly: it’s untouchable; it exists on a higher, purer plane. It’s earth-friendly, too, supposedly. Yes, it’s made of exotic materials that are shipped all over the world’s oceans; yes, it requires electricity to operate and air-conditioned server farms to feed it; yes, it’s fragile and it duplicates what other machines do; yes, it’s difficult to recycle; yes, it will probably take a last boat ride to a Nigerian landfill in five years. But no tree farms are harvested to make a Kindle book; no ten-ton presses turn, no ink is spilled."

My takeaway? Get a Kindle if you want one, but don't think it's because you're being green. As for me, I'm sticking to books for now. When I'm done, I'll do what I always do: Keep them for re-reading later—that is, if I'm absolutely floored by them—or pass them on. There's nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned recycling.

  

—CityMom

Stylin' leather-free accessories

I was fondling a nice pair of Merrell slip-ons the other day, admiring their firm yet plush foot bed and easy-in styling, just right for plodding to the park and yoga in the summer. I was just about to slip my foot into them, when I remembered:  I'm not wearing leather any more.

Drats! This was going to be like vowing not to eat any more chocolate-covered cherries after just finishing one, and then facing the inevitable craving next month -- harder than I'd thought.  But I've seen a few cute vegetarian items, as I've mentioned, so I figure there's got to be more out there. Let's take a look, shall we?

I started my online search with bags. LeSportsac has cute stuff, including fab bags from Stella McCartney, though most are just too loosely styled for my taste. These tidy bags from MATT & NAT are more my speed, particularly the awe-inspiring Japanese paper line. (I do hear some of their bags are made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), though, which is full of nasty phthalates.) For winter, you can always go wool, but so many have leather handles and trim. Might as well by an indestructible ballistic nylon piece by my beloved Tumi.

For shoes, Zappos.com is searchable by a "vegetarian" option, which yielded hundreds of results when I tried. Most of the items were for lounging (if you're a Tibetan monk) or hiking (if you're seriously punk), though, and some were just non-leather because, well, they were cheap. I did better at mooshoes.com,  where all the options are vegan, including these darling ballet flats.

Sometimes, though, you have to go off the grid, and buy a regular brand, but in non-leather. I've been doing poi de soi in heels for some time now, simply because it makes a nice all-season shoe. I also have a nice pair of stretch-fabric Cole Haan with 2-inch heels that have the added advantage of being waterproof, which is the reason I bought them many years ago.

 As for summer sport sandals, I'm eyeing these Keen Newport H2's at left.  Keen has a reputation for durability and comfort, and I can snap these up on various places on the Web starting at $44.95 (or barely used on eBay, at prices hovering around $9-15). Stella McCartney has come to the rescue here again with great sneakers and such with her line for Adidas. I'm craving the Menari, which I might be able to scam on eBay for less than $50. But - a note to Stella: Tell your pal Gwynnie to stop hawking Tod's huge leather bags, o.k.?

~BurbMom

Why do vegetarians still buy leather?

There has finally been more talk over the past year or so about how eating meat contributes to our environmental ills. Mark Bittman devoted much his latest book, Food Matters, to reasons why going vegan helps the environment, and the energy cost of raising meat, the colossal amounts of environmental crud produced by factory farms, and the hideous treatment of the animals (and workers) have been well-documented.

Curiously, though, you never see folks like Bittman and Michael Pollan talking about not wearing leather, or buying leather furniture, or avoiding a car with leather seats. These things, though, can be even worse for the environment.  Much leather is produced shipped from overseas, particularly from India and Mexico, where tanneries may be subject to far fewer environmental regulations. They spew millions of liters of toxins every day, including hexavalent chromium, the kidney-killing stuff Erin Brockovich went to bat against.

Worse, tannieries often use child labor, particularly those in India, which has the largest number of laborers under the age of 14 in the world. Check out this piece from the Times of India:

Next time you visit the Park Circus area, after adjusting your olfactory organ to the stench tanneries are associated with, if you take a peek behind the high brick walls of a tannery, chances are that you might catch a glimpse of a group of children. Ranging from six to 16, they are working hard from dawn to dusk making shoes. Take, for example, Mintu Mondal (12), Sonu Khan (8) and Salim Akhtar (9). They work daily in one such tanneries for nine hours a day for a meagre Rs 10 daily wage. Sonu, the youngest, has developed white patches all over his hands. “It itches, but what to do? I’ll have to earn money,” he said.

The children who are engaged in these tanneries rinse, sink, conserve and dye hides with chemicals, apart from drying, pigmenting and measuring finished hides. Dr Jayanta Das, a city dermatologist, said, “These children are most susceptible to skin diseases like dermatitis, fungal infection etc because of over-exposure to corrosive chemicals. Bacterial contamination from the raw skin may lead to deadly diseases like anthracosis and tuberculosis. Even research reveals, these children develop a serious psychic problem.”

The whole leather topic seems to be a sticky wicket, because my vegetarian friends, even those who are committed to animal rights (most are unaware of the child labor issue), seem unable to completely do away with leather.

One says, "You gotta draw the line somewhere." (Yo, L., that's a dead cow on your back!) Another, tries her best to avoid leather but, like me, sometimes ends up buying leather shoes, and bags with the occasional leather trim. When she talks about why she's a vegetarian, she says she never mentions humane or environmental issues, being acutely aware of the hypocrisy.

As far as I know, there are no products out there trumpeting sustainably or humanely raised and processed leather. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please.) The alternative, then, is to avoid leather, just like I avoid factory-farmed meat. And the more I look, the more possibilities I'm finding. In fact, I think it's easier to stop buying leather than to find humanely raised meat. Low-hanging fruit.  I'm going for it, and I'll document each time I successfully avoid leather.

In my next installement on this topic, I'll do a roundup of the groovy vegan accessories available.

~BurbMom

Photo:  A tannery spills effluent into the water near Kasur, a border town in Pakistan. Kamila Hyat/IRIN

 

Can we be car-free in the 'burbs?

The New York Times ran an environmental story a few days ago that got my heart pounding -- the kind of thing that leaves me panting with desire and sick with green envy. Vauban, a crunchy suburb in Germany, was built to be and remains car-free, to it's residents' joy and convenience. They are able to walk to stores, schools and parks unmolested by autos. They also breathe more easily, presumably, without choking on exhaust fumes. (Check out the slideshow of the slim, smily people. The kids look especially thrilled.) 

You see, I hate driving.  I've always been scared of it, thanks to the gory pre-drivers' ed video I was forced to watch in high school; sort of an auto version of scared straight. ("This could be your pulpy, bloody head if you switch radio stations while driving!")  The advent of Monster Mobiles, which are oh-so-apt to back into people, tip over, run over small objects, crush cars, and persistently block my own view while driving, made things that much worse. 

Then I had kids, who love to scooter and bike all around of our little condo compound, while the developer of course never thought to put in sidewalks...you get the picture. And we don't even need to hash over the environmental ramifications of driving, right?

I was happier than a cat napping while we were living in Amsterdam a decade ago; I got around everywhere on a sturdy bike, just as these happy (and trim!  Can I say that again?) people are doing in the photo above.  

The thing is, even with all this, it was hard to sell one of our two cars, like we did a couple of years ago. We felt like the oddest of 'burbites to even consider it, and when we mention it we still get the occasional raised eyebrow. We live two blocks from the train station, food store, and charming (albeit small) downtown, and only a few blocks from the grade schools, so we took the leap. And we've been doing just fine without it. We probably could do without owning a car at all if we had to.

Thing is, one of my friends here told me she would do the same if she only had one vital ingredient:  A sidewalk. It's awfully hard to break out of a cul-de-sac without a safe place for foot or bike transit. Could the streets be retrofitted, in this and other small towns?  After all, we do have a thriving downtown area, as do many (surprise!) towns in Jersey; we just need to be able to get there. If you build it, we'll use it.  Any leftover stimulus cash for this, Mr. President?

~BurbMom

Book Talk: Food Matters by Mark Bittman

"Slow global warming! Lose weight!" Oh, and stop cruelty to animals. And save money.

So trumpets Mark Bittman's Web site about his latest book, Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating.

Bittman seems to be everywhere these days: issuing huge tomes on cooking everything; traipsing through Spain with my gal Gwynnie; cooking on YouTube. One can be forgiven for thinking: Can there be anything new to uncover?  Perhaps not. This new book is less a unique idea than a compendium of a few New York Times articles Bittman has done or contributed to about why eating too much meat is bad for the environment, and what he, Bittman, did about it.  

However, these things do bear repeating. Meat, especially beef, takes huge amounts of energy to grow and transport, energy that could go toward feeding people instead -- or warming houses or putting gas in cars. One of the more stunning facts Bittman cites:  It requires 40 calories to produce one calorie of beef protein. "Eating a typical family-of-four steak dinner is the rough equivalent, energy-wise, of driving around in an SUV for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home." Say what?  Oh, and meat production is supposed to double globally by 2050.

There are other  gems, too, like the 2,200 calories it takes to produce a can of diet soda, or the 2,400 calories it takes to make a 1-quart polyethylene bottle of water. Just the bottle. I love this stuff!

Bittman's recourse is almost brutally simple:  Don't eat animal products before 6 p.m. (Nor any junk food. Nor any alcohol.  But let's not ruin the simplicity of the message.)  In doing so, he reigned in his iffy cholesterol and blood sugar numbers and lost 25 pounds. He freely admits that he's an all-or-nothing kind of a guy, so this may not work for everyone. But for many of us, like yours truly, its a fabulous idea to impose more discipline during daylight hours, when you're feeling more alert and perky.  It does work. In fact, it's taken me closer to going meatless than anything else I've tried.  And it's nice to think I'm doing my green bit, too.  Like getting your workout done early in the day.

Plus, Bittman has an ace. His recipes almost always rock (I have several of his books), and this book has some 70 of them. I might buy the book for these alone, particularly the awesome breakfast ideas:  breakfast couscous, bread pudding, burritos.  It also includes many, many strategies for cooking and storing beans, an important staple if you're cutting back meat and dairy.

If you want a full modern food education, wade through Michael Pollan's An Omnivore's Dilemma and its companion, In Defense of Food.  But for a shortie intro, this is your book.  Me, I'll take 'em all -- from the library, of course, thereby saving the energy required to print and distribute new books.

~BurbMom

Help! My pets are an environmental nightmare

So far, so good with my two new rescued cat-children (believe me, they're more work than my human kids right now.)  They have adapted to the munificent pampering they receive in our home, and seem to at least tolerate if not enjoy each other.

There was one factor, however, I kept delegating to the back of my brain as I focused on getting the cats acclimated. Finally, as I scooped poop from the litter box into a plastic (gasp!) bag, I could no longer ignore the fact:  These cats are an environmental shitfest. 

Their "wet" food, of which they eat two or three helpings once a day between the two of them, comes in itty bitty one-serving cans. I do painstakingly rinse and recycle each one, but still. Further, unless I completely bankrupt myself and buy organic cat food, it's undoubtedly factory farmed mystery meat.  (And don't give me that crap about vegetarian cats -- they have fangs, people. That's for ripping and tearing meat, not brown rice.)  I feel badly about this, more about perpetuating the practice than by giving them less-healthy stuff, honestly.  These are rescue cats, and I'm already giving them a warm, loving home. I mean, if it weren't for me, they might be living in an alley eating homeless people's leftovers.

Then I thought about the flea-tick prevention thing we put on their skin. Isn't that a pesticide?  Would it hurt the cats, or my kids?  Thankfully, a bit of research shows that these meds (Frontline, Advantage) are a better solution than sprays, powders or dips.

And then, I find out that apparently most kitty litter is non-compostable, and clumping litter in particular is very bad for cats' digestive systems if/when they digest it from self-grooming.

Now, I hadn't had a cat for years, and the new scoopable litter we're using now is like a miracle to me.  I only remembered the old clay stuff, which I simply dumped en masse in the woods near my house in Pennsylvania. But this scoop stuff -- the poop doesn't even look like poop anymore. Even the pee clumps. Awesome.  But you can't flush it, and it does smell like deodarant, among its other evils.

If you're looking for a good alternative, as I now am, I found some good user reviews. I understand my beloved Grist.org has some great info, too, but their new site Beta just isn't quite functioning yet.

Does anyone have any advice to share about any of this?

~BurbMom

Finally, a really Good green-buying Guide

I was flipping through the latest issue of Oprah magazine (having succumbed to actually buying a woman's glossy because "Mo," as I reverentially refer to Michelle Obama, is on the cover), and I saw, tucked away in the middle, a short piece on an economist who has written about greenwashing products.  Actually, he spoke about how calling any new product "green" is essentially only half the story, because we have to look at what really goes into making/shipping/disposing of a thing before we can really assess how green it is.

I've thought so for a while, actually, since a friend sent me a link to The Story of Stuff, which presents the down-and-dirty of our throwaway culture in a very funny format.  Anyway.  The rest of the magazine was, of course, devoted to buying crap, except for the nice interview with Mo.  But the economist did mention a new Web site devoted to really tracking every aspect of a thing -- it's chemical health ramifications and carbon footprint, which I thought was really cool.

Created by an academic with a fleet of scientists, consumer researchers, technologists and industry professionals on his side, GoodGuide.com has an extensive product-rating database. It does a whole lot more, actually, with thoughtful issues writeups on everything from high-fructose corn syrup to the social impacts of the food we eat.  Check it out.

~BurbMom

NYC dims its lights for Earth Hour

For an hour starting at 8:30 pm Saturday (yesterday), cities and citizens across the globe dimmed their lights for Earth Hour. (I'll be honest; I didn't hear about this until Thursday night and only in passing, and meant to research it but got caught up with hectic life stuff and forgot. Thank goodness most of our lights were off, anyway, but I feel totally lame. Where's the public relations machine when you need it? But I digress ...) It's a great start—one hour for man, and one hour for mankind. Maybe next year there'll be more participants, and hopefully, we can get the word out on the blog before it happens. 

Anyway, here are shots of the city doing its bit (even Times Square):

And the Empire State Building:

And a pretty cool video:

—CityMom 

(Photos and video from iReport.com.)

The end of shopping as we know it, part two

At least two authors of op-ed pieces in Sunday's Times covered the end of shopping as we know it, which delighted me no end, as I have had many vehement conversations on this topic with CityMom and my friend L. (who gets particularly steamed up about planned obsolescence).

Tom Friedman talked about how the endless cycle of making-buying-throwing away-buying again crap just is not sustainable ecologically, as the world's resources are so indubitably finite.  He's talked about this before, but as we very well could be seeing the end of capitalism as we know it, the two dovetail nicely in this new column. 

I've said for a while that pure capitalism isn't sustainable, and been called a freak (even though that bald fact is nothing new), so it's nice to have company here. But Friedman never went into the nitty gritty details of how pared-down consumerism might look, probably because his own lifestyle is more is more rather than just say no.

The other op-ed, "Cushioning the Blow," got it. In this one, the writer (Marc Fitten) talked about the absurdity of a $30 throw pillow ($30 after a steep discount) and an economy that would have such a profligacy of expensive throw pillows in the first place:

"And there’s the rub: credit is dead and rich ladies don’t grow on trees. And how many times a year did the rich ladies of Atlanta ever need to buy a pillow anyway? It was impossible for the finite number of wealthy housewives of Atlanta to keep the pillow industry afloat. Why would a company speculate and order more and more seasonal pillows when they knew they would never sell them? How could everyone supporting this system, from the foam manufacturer to the seamstress to the salesperson, think this great big pillow shuffle would last? For this kind of system to be sustainable, a society would either have to make more rich ladies or fewer pillows."

This guy knows that it comes down to saying:  Hell, no, I don't need a throw pillow in the first place, let alone another one, and certainly not one that costs $30.

~BurbMom

Photo: Crate and Barrel jungle pillow, $59.95

The most extreme recycling

I was extolling the virtues of Freecycle.org ("Changing the world one gift at a time") to my neighbor -- a site where people can find someone in their area who needs something the owner no longer does, or can't store or properly care for. The recipient picks up the item and (hopefully) gives a wonderful second life. Suddenly, my thoughts wandered toward adoption.

I think a lot about adoption. I wanted to adopt a child, a while back, and still think about it from time to time. The way I figure it, there's no bigger good deed than adopting (or fostering), no better way to pay it forward, no more visible and concrete way to improve our world. And it is, when you get right down to it, Freecy*cling.  Momentous Freecy*cling.      

I once saw Angelina Jolie criticized on some Web boards for her brood-gathering ways.  "A life at a time is no way to save the world," the poster scoffed.

Au contraire, friend, I say (and many religions would also disagree with you). Given the myriad difficulties of global and domestic aid, it may be the most certain way to help children in need of stable environments, education and basis sustenance. In fact, most aid agencies strive for local delivery; village to village, house to house, life to life.

Each time an adoption happens, so many people benefit: Birth parents who are brave enough to seek a better life for their child, or who at least needed help caring for him; adoptive parents and families, and of course the child. And with so much to fear and hate in these tremulous times, each adoption seems like a miracle of hope. Have a look around the Web for beautiful stories like this the next time you're feeling down.

~BurbMom

Photo of Chinese orphan: Wen-Yan King