Shopping for the Environment: Big Green Purse

I don't know about you but I make most of the purchasing decisions in my household. Not that my husband cannot do it, but come on, he does not want to buy clothes for the kids, groceries, etc.  And I am not alone, women purchase or influence the purchases of 80% of all consumer goods -- trillions of dollars per year.   That is a lot of spending power!  So how can we take this purchasing power and save the environment?

Well, for years, environmental writer, Diane MacEachern, has been loosing an uphill battle fighting for a better environment.  She decided in addition to fighting to get Congress and companies to adopt better business practices to reverse global warming, and speaking across the country about environmental issues, she would go shopping.

Shopping?  How can shopping help save the environment?

 "Women have a whole planetful of power in their purses," states MacEachern in her new book, released this week, Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World.  

But really, how can my spending help environment?  MacEachern put outs this pledge. If one million of us (men can do this too!) pledge to shift $1,000 of our annual spending on green products, it would create an impact of $1 billion on the market place. That is a lot of influence on companies.  

Her book Big Green Purse guides readers through every section of the marketplace -- beauty, cosmetics, personal care products, cars, food, household clears, clothes, jewelry, garden and lawn care. kids and baby items, lights, appliances, electronics, and home products -- 25 commodities where our dollars can have the most impact. 

In the market for a new diamond ring or necklace? Shop at antique stores, estate sales or yard sales.  If used does not do it for you, buy diamonds mined in Canada that miners rights are protected and the diamonds are mined under stricter environmental regulations than Africa or those that meet the Kimberley Process Certification, non-conflict stones. 

Love clothes? Search out those made of organic cotton, recycled soda bottles , hemp, and bamboo.  Buy clothes with less color and dyes and shoes made out of cork and recycled rubber. 

Big Green Purse is not just a list of things you should buy or avoid, rather MacEachern explains in detail the current marketplace, the issues and what the impact of buying these green purchase will make on the environment.  

For example, the section on foods, because we know I am obsessed with food, entitled "We are what we Eat,"  goes into detail on the impact of eating beef, poultry and pork has on the environment.  The difference between certified organic, natural and grass-fed meats. How to choose sustainable seafood.  How to afford organic foods.  There is even a section on which you should use plastic or paper bags.  (Answer:  reusable bags!) 

So I've begun to shift my $1,000.  Who's joining me?  

BTW, kudos to the publisher of this book for publicizing Big Green Purse via a "paperless PR campaign!"

What do we eat now?

I recently finished reading the book by Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Yeah, I know I am a little behind the times. The book was released in 2006 but a figured it could be revisited because his newest book came out last month and is a follow-up to Omnivore's Dilemma.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan investigates the American food system to find out what we should have for dinner. He examines both industrial and organic foods in addition to hunting and gathering for food. Pollan visits the corn farm in Iowa, the feedlots in Kansas, organic farms in California, a pastoral farm in Virginia, a free range chicken farm and even a fast-food restaurant to learn the difference between industrial, organic and pastural farming and ultimately finds out what goes into our food.

Although, Pollan does not end with a definitive answer of what we should eat (he saves that for his next book, In Defense of Food: A Eater's Manifesto, which I have not finished yet), you are left with such a distaste for the American food system that you have trouble eating anything without throughly examining its ingredients, origins and process by which it was produced or farmed.

Never in my life did I read a book that has forced me to make changes in my eating and shopping habits. Until this one.

So what did I learn? What can you take away from me reading Pollan's book? A few key things:

1. Corn is evil. Well, not exactly. Corn on the cob is still good. But most of the corn grown in the U.S. is either fed to animals which where not meant to eat corn in the first place or made into high fructose corn syrup, corn oil or a derivative and then used in some highly processed food such as soda. Laboratory analysis as reported by Pollan revealed that soda from McDonald's, a.k.a. Coca-Cola, is made of 100% corn!

2. Avoid industrial beef as much as possible which is fed a mixture of corn and antibiotics. Cows stomachs cannot digest corn so they are given antibiotics to ward off bacteria in the gut and other diseases from living in such close quarters. Chickens are no better.  

3. Free-range chickens do not exercise their option to roam free. They are given two weeks to exit their living quarters through tiny doors on each end of their home the size of a football field. None of them do.

4. Our food system uses way to much fossil fuel. For every calorie of process food it takes 10 calories of petroleum energy. A McDonald's meal for Pollan's family of three was a total 4,510 calories. "To grow and process those 4,510 food calories took at least 10 time as many calories of fossil energy, the equivalent of 1.3 gallons of oil." *  Petroleum is used from the start of the food process at the farm, for fertilizer, transport and then processing and cooking to serving.

5. Organic foods are the lesser of the evils.  Although organic farmed food is much better for the environment and our health, many of the organic foods travel a very long distance to get to our grocery stores from farms in South and Central American and other far off places using a lot of fossil fuel to transport.

6. Locally grown foods seems to be the way to the way to go.  The best organic foods are the ones grown closest to home.  It is estimated that some food travels more that 2,000 miles from pasture to plate.  Eating locally grown food means less fossil fuels burned in transport and preparation.  Better for the environment, better for your health, and better for the community.