Great Lakes Compact Stalls

Great Lakes governors are calling on state lawmakers to settle their differences over a plan to protect the lakes from large scale water diversions. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Great Lakes governors are calling on state lawmakers to settle their differences over a plan to protect the lakes from large scale water diversions. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Half of the states in the Great Lakes region have completed or nearly completed work on bills that would ratify the Great Lakes water compact. But some Republicans and developers, especially in Wisconsin and Ohio, say they still have concerns about the agreement.


David Naftzger is Executive Director of the Council of Great Lakes Governors. He says despite what critics argue, the Compact is designed to be good for business.


“The goal of the compact is to ensure that the Great Lakes are available to continue to power our regional economy.“


Naftzger says the compact includes a lot of flexibility for each of the eight states to get water. He says that was built in for the benefit of businesses and communities on the edge of the Great Lakes basin.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Fcc Ordered to Protect Birds

A court is ordering the Federal Communications Commission to protect birds. Rebecca Williams reports the FCC has to find ways to keep birds from crashing into radio, TV and cell phone towers:

Transcript

A court is ordering the Federal Communications Commission to protect birds. Rebecca Williams reports the FCC has to find ways to keep birds from crashing into radio, TV and cell phone towers:


The government says each year, as many as 50 million birds are killed by communications towers.


Darin Schroeder is with American Bird Conservancy. He says birds mistake the tower lights for stars they use to migrate at night.


“They’re drawn to these towers, they circle the towers within this cone of light and they’re unable to escape so they either hit each other or hit the structure, or they fall exhausted, often to their death.”


Schroeder’s group was part of a lawsuit against the FCC. The court ruling means the FCC will need to find ways to protect birds from communications towers. That might mean installing different kinds of tower lights that won’t confuse birds.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Presidential Candidates Graded

An environmental group has graded members of Congress on their voting
records. Rebecca Williams reports that means you get graded even if you’re running for President:

Transcript

An environmental group has graded members of Congress on their voting
records. Rebecca Williams reports that means you get graded even if you’re running for President:


The League of Conservation Voters puts out a scorecard for each session of Congress. It grades members of Congress on how they vote on energy, global warming and other top issues. And whether they show up to vote.


Kerry Duggan is with the group. She says it didn’t matter if you were busy campaigning for President.


“Both Senators Clinton and Obama – they missed four votes each in 2007. Now by contrast, Senator John McCain – he missed all 15 votes that were scored on the scorecard.”


Duggan says each of the candidates lost points on their scorecards for
missing those votes.


But she says overall, the League is happy with the progress Congress made on energy issues last year. But she says Congress has a long way to go to pass laws to reduce greenhouse gasses.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Big Biz Snapping Up Green Companies

Clorox is best known for selling bleach. But the company
recently purchased the natural cosmetics line Burt’s Bees.
That billion dollar sale is part of a growing trend of big multi-
nationals buying up small natural products companies. Julie
Grant reports:

Transcript

Clorox is best known for selling bleach. But the company
recently purchased the natural cosmetics line Burt’s Bees.
That billion dollar sale is part of a growing trend of big multi-
nationals buying up small natural products companies. Julie
Grant reports:

Matt Kohler is a brand manager for Clorox. He says every
day the company is getting greener. It recently bought Burt’s
Bees, which is known for its beeswax lip balms, lotions, and
shampoos. But nearly as important to many people – is that
the company was started by a man who just loved tending
bees. They like seeing a picture of the thick-bearded bee-
man Burt Shavitz on each label. Clorox’s Kohler says
consumers want to buy into that ecologically minded spirit.

“Well, I think if you look at marketplace right now, and where
we’re seeing growth, two of the major trends that are driving
growth, one is health and wellness, and then the second
piece is around sustainability. The nice part is where you
can have products that actually overlap both of trends. They
cover health and wellness and they cover sustainability at
the same time. That’s kind of the sweet spot for growth in
company.”

Kohler says Clorox can help Burt’s Bees – by getting it on
the shelves at Wal-Mart and other big stores. But he says
Burt’s will remain semi-independent…so it can maintain its
own spirit and culture.

“I’m excited about it. I think it really offers not just potential
growth for company. But products that we love and believe
in and that consumers are passionate about.”

But the online buzz about the purchase has not been
favorable. A health blog on The Chicago Tribune
website is similar to many others. Comments range from,
quote, “Say it ain’t, so,” to “I was horrified,” to “We will be
dropping Burt’s from our shelves since we don’t feel the
‘mission’ of the new owners aligns very will with the mission
of our retail operations.”

“You know it’s certainly raised a lot of eyebrows, I think,
within the environmental community.”

Alex Scranton is with the group Women’s Voices for the
Earth.

“I think a lot of people are looking at it differently because
Clorox does own it. And they’re a little bit concerned that
Clorox may not be able to keep to all the commitments that
Burt’s Bees originally had. So I think there are certainly
some consumers who are wondering where the
accountability is and how do we make sure that Burt’s Bees
stays as true as it had been?”

There have been lots of similar buyouts of natural products
companies in recent years. Colgate-Palmolive, one of the
biggest oral care companies in the world, purchased Tom’s
of Maine, a niche toothpaste company known for decades
for using only natural ingredients. Leading cosmetics
company Estee Lauder acquired Aveda, an environmentally
friendly skin and hair care products line, and multinational
giant Unilever bought socially-conscious Ben and Jerry’s ice
cream company.

Tom Lyon is the Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology,
and Commerce at the University of Michigan Business
School. He says the bigger companies can give smaller
companies stronger financial security without changing the
products. But in some cases, like at Ben and Jerry’s, lots of
employees leave.

“They don’t feel that the Ben and Jerry’s that operates within
Unilever is the same company, the same small company,
that it was years ago. And it’s not. Small companies have
to adjust when they’re bought by larger entities. And the
culture is going to change.”

Lyon says the sense of shared commitment at a small,
socially-conscious startup company can make it feel like a
family. He says many people attracted to that type of
workplace aren’t at home in a large conglomerate. So he
says Ben and Jerry’s, for example, lost lots of its committed,
innovative employees.

As consumer demand for natural products grows, Lyon
expects more big corporations will buyout small, green
companies in the future.

“And every time it happens we’ll feel a little bit bad about it.
But I think the consolation is that we’re gradually seeing the
overall market become much greener. And so we take a
little comfort in that.”

JG: “Why do you think we feel bad about it?”

“When we see a small company get bought up I think we feel
like there’s a loss in the culture somewhere. It’s almost a
kind of biodiversity that’s lost. And yet there are some gains
at the same time as that product becomes more widely
available.”

As Burt’s Bees becomes more widely available, Clorox is
anticipating growth from Burt’s. Like a lot of big corporations
that are acquiring smaller green companies, it’s expecting to
cash in on the growing interest in the ideals and practices
that built those small environmentally-friendly companies.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Corporations Go Green to Boost Sales

Sales of household cleaning products don’t increase much
each year. But sales of environmentally-friendly cleaners
are growing at a rate of 20% or more. And that’s gotten the
attention of some of the biggest companies in the cleaning
products business. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Sales of household cleaning products don’t increase much
each year. But sales of environmentally-friendly cleaners
are growing at a rate of 20% or more. And that’s gotten the
attention of some of the biggest companies in the cleaning
products business. Julie Grant reports:

Pam Whittington cleans for a living. Most of her customers
have cabinets full of cleaning products: bleach, Soft Scrub,
Windex. Whittington says those cleaners do a good job.

“They work well, but they’re strong. You get kind of ill.
Sometimes, I mean, I’ve physically gotten ill from cleaning
products, almost to where you have to leave the home
because it’s so strong.”

Whittington tries to use the more natural products, even
vinegar and baking soda, and says they work fine for most
jobs. But sometimes, there’s just too much soap scum, too
much grime – and she needs the big guns – like bleach.

“Oh, yes. Bleach is totally strong. But you need something
to kill the germs. And bleach does that. Or, vinegar does to
an effect, but still you have to get things clean. And bleach
whitens things, and gets rid of all the stains.”

One of companies best known for selling bleach is Clorox.
Matt Kohler is a brand manager for Clorox. He says they
wanted to make a more natural product line for years. But
when they tested the concept with consumers, few people
were interested in buying environmentally friendly cleaners.

“And really up until this year the market for green cleaners,
we weren’t seeing enough consumer interest to be able to
be able launch something that could sustain itself in the
market.”

But a couple of things happened last year that opened the
green door for Clorox. Kohler says the company’s scientists
came up with natural cleaners that worked as well the
regular cleaners. And something else happened. Believe it
or not, Kohler says Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth got people thinking more about environmental issues. So
much so, that for the first time many started worrying about
the chemicals in cleaning products.


“So there’s really this group of consumers out there, and it’s
growing and getting bigger every day, that are looking for
ways to live a greener lifestyle. And they’re just not satisfied
with the options that are currently available. So when we got
all that data together, we really realized the market is really
ready for a green cleaning product, and that Clorox is pretty
well positioned to come out with a product that will meet their
needs.”

Clorox has started stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart, Target,
and most supermarkets with GreenWorks. That’s their line
of ‘natural’ cleaners, made with things like coconut, lemon
oil, and corn-based ethanol. The Sierra Club environmental
group has endorsed the new products line. But others are
skeptical about Clorox’s motivation.

Alex Scranton is science director for a group called Women’s
Voices for the Earth. Last year she surveyed the ingredients
in the major household cleaners – looking for chemicals that
are dangerous to human health and the environment. She
found that the Clorox Company makes 15% of the worst
products on the market. She says it’s hypocritical for Clorox
to now call itself a ‘green’ company.

“Well, you know, this is the question we had when Clorox
released their GreenWorks product. They were very
pleased to make these new products that were effective
cleaners, were 99-percent natural, or naturally derived
ingredients. And so it begs the question: if you can do that
with your new products, can you in fact apply that technology
to your old products? Why sell both?”

Clorox says most people still want their bleach and their
Pinesol. And that the company will keep selling them as
long as people keep buying them. But Scranton wonders if
people would buy them if they knew what was in them. She
says most mainstream products don’t disclose all their
ingredients on the label. It’s not required by law.

“These companies can pretty much use any chemical they
want, with a few limitations in their products, without too
much regard for what the long term impact could be either
on the environment or on health.”

Scranton says if people understood how dangerous some of
the ingredients can be, it might really convince them to buy
alternative products. Clorox says it’s giving people a choice,
and will be watching sales of Greenworks carefully. But it
won’t stop selling products that people keep buying.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Crop-Based Biofuels Increase Co2

  • Sodbusting underway in South Dakota. (Photo by Boyd Schulz)

The government’s new renewable energy standards call for a big boost in biofuels, like ethanol, to replace some of the gas we burn in our cars and trucks. But a new study in a recent issue of Science magazine says not all biofuels are created equal. If they’re grown on land that’s converted from natural prairie or forest, they could make global warming worse. Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

The government’s new renewable energy standards call for a big boost in biofuels like ethanol, to replace some of the gas we burn in
our cars and trucks. But a new study in a recent issue of
Science magazine says not all biofuels are created equal. If
they’re grown on land that’s converted from natural prairie or forest,
they could make global warming worse. Stephanie Hemphill reports:

There’s a lot of buzz about biofuels. American farmers are planting
lots of corn, to be turned into ethanol. In Brazil, they make ethanol
from sugar cane, and they’ve replaced nearly a third of their gasoline
with it. In Malaysia and Indonesia, huge plantations grow palm oil for
bio-diesel.

But there’s a cost to these crops.

“In the top chunk of soil, we lose 40% of the carbon from that soil
when we convert it to agriculture.”

Joe Fargione says there’s almost three times as much carbon in
plants and soil as there is in the air. So when the soil is disturbed, it
releases carbon. When rain forests are cut to plant sugar cane, it
releases carbon. When peatlands are drained to plant palm trees, it
releases carbon.

Fargione is a biologist. He did the study for the University of
Minnesota and The Nature Conservancy.

According to his calculations, clearing land to plant crops releases
more carbon than we save when we burn biofuels instead of gas.

“It’s like taking out a loan and then trying to save money, but you
can’t save any money until you’ve paid off your debt. And the debts
are so large it’ll take decades or centuries for us to pay off that debt.”

We’ve released so much carbon into the air, it’ll take years to capture
it again.

Midwestern farmers are plowing land that was once set aside for
wildlife, to plant corn for ethanol. Fargione says that racks up a
carbon debt that’ll take about 90 years to repay. And cutting down a
rainforest takes even longer to recapture the carbon.

Farmers operate in a global market. So what Midwestern farmers do
can affect the Amazon.

Farmers usually alternate each year between corn and soybeans.
But now some are planting corn every year to meet the growing
demand for corn ethanol. Fargione says that’s prompting farmers in
Brazil to clear more land for soybeans.

“We can’t ask the world’s farmers to feed six billion people and then
say ‘also produce energy,’ without them requiring more land. That
land has to come from somewhere.”

But we don’t have to eliminate biofuels from the scene altogether.

Fargione says waste products from agriculture and forestry can be
turned into fuel. They don’t contribute to global warming. And
farmers could plant perennial grasses like switchgrass, where they
don’t have to plow the field every year.

“We can take land that’s been degraded, plant it to perennials, there’s
carbon storage in the soil, and then we can harvest those perennials,
and use those for biomass, and that could have a real benefit.”

He says we need policies that will make it profitable for farmers to
grow these better biofuel stocks.

Nathaniel Greene is a policy analyst at the Natural Resources
Defense Council. He says the research shows the need to develop
biofuels that really can address climate change.

“We can do biofuels smart, or we can do them stupid, and we have to
really choose.”

Congress has noticed. The new federal energy bill actually does start
encouraging these better biofuels.

The law tells the Environmental Protection Agency to figure out the
real global warming impact of the different biofuels.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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No Nature; I’ve Got Xbox

  • A recent study found that people are spending more time indoors with their video games and less time in the Great Outdoors. (Photo by Lester Graham)

People are spending less time in nature and more time plugged in. That’s what a new
study commissioned by The Nature Conservancy is showing. Kyle Norris has more:

Transcript

People are spending less time in nature and more time plugged in. That’s what a new study commissioned by the Nature Conservancy is showing. Kyle Norris has more:


People in the U.S. are spending less and less time outdoors. The study says they’re not visiting parks as often, and they’re not going hunting or camping as often. That’s because they’re spending more time online, watching TV, and playing video games.


Melissa Soule is with The Nature Conservancy. She says connecting with nature can change your life. That’s what happened to her while she was kayaking on Lake Superior and watching the sunrise:


“I thought about life. And I thought about how small that I am, and about how short of a time that we have here on this earth, and how I don’t want to see places destroyed. I want to see them protected.”


Soule says if people don’t connect with nature, they won’t care about protecting it. And that’s exactly what the study says will happen.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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DUMPING OBSOLETE TVs

Next year, millions of televisions across the country will become obsolete. That’s because the government is phasing out analog television signals. That means Americans will be tossing out one of the most toxic items in their home – their old TVs. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

Next year, millions of televisions across the country will become obsolete. That’s because the government is phasing out analog television signals. That means Americans will be tossing out one of the most toxic items in their home – their old TVs. Mark Brush has more:


Old televisions use what’s called a cathode ray tube to project your favorite TV show into your living room.


On average – these old TVs contain four pounds of lead. That’s in addition to other toxic chemicals such as cadmium, mercury and arsenic.


Zac Trahan is with the National Electronics Takeback Coalition.


Trahan says there are many companies who claim they recycle the old TVs – but most of the time they’re just sending the toxic chemicals overseas:


“Some of the lead that is exported in computers and TVs to China – appears to be a source of the lead being used to make children’s jewelry which is then exported back to the U.S. where it can poison American children.”


Trahan’s group is trying to get TV manufacturers to take back the TVs they made.


So far, the only TV maker that is taking back their old TVs is Sony.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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West Warming Up

  • Scientists say they have enough data to say with certainty that global warming is affecting snow pack and water resources in the West. (Photo courtesy of National Park Service)

A new study says climate change has made water conditions worse in the west. The study, published in the journal Science, says humans are responsible for the bulk of the change. Steve Zelaznik reports:

Transcript

A new study says climate change has made water conditions worse in the West. The study, published in the journal Science, says humans are responsible for the bulk of the change. Steve Zelaznik reports:


Over the last fifty years the West has been warming. There has been more rain, and less snow. The rivers flood earlier; the summers are drier; and the air is warmer.


These changes have been documented before. But now scientists say they know why.


Climatologist Tim Barnett of the University of California San Diego co-authored the study. Barnett says he’s nearly certain humans are responsible.


“So roughly the chances that we got tricked are either one in a hundred to one in a thousand. And I’ll take those odds to Vegas with me any day.”


Barnett says water conditions will only continue to get worse in the coming decades in the west. He predicts some dams may run dry in the next fifteen years.


For the Environment Report, I’m Steve Zelaznik.

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Pesticide Ban?

  • Carbofuran is an insecticide used on corn, alfalfa, potatoes and several other crops. The EPA wants to phase it out because of potential hazards to people and wildlife. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to ban a pesticide
used on crops. The agency says the pesticide is toxic to wildlife. Rebecca
Williams reports the manufacturer might take the EPA to court:

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to ban a pesticide
used on crops. The agency says the pesticide is toxic to wildlife. Rebecca
Williams reports the manufacturer might take the EPA to court:


Carbofuran kills insects that damage crops. It’s used mostly on corn,
alfalfa and potatoes.


The EPA wants farmers in the U.S. to stop using the pesticide. The agency
says the pesticide kills wildlife – especially birds.


Michael Fry is with the American Bird Conservancy.


“If carbofuran is sprayed say on an alfalfa field and migratory birds like
ducks come in and feed on that alfalfa it’s expected that more than 90% of
the birds would die if they fed on that alfalfa field within a week of use
of carbofuran in the field.”


FMC Corporation makes most of the carbofuran used in the world. A manager
at the company says the EPA is overstating the risks to wildlife. And FMC
will fight any major restrictions placed on the chemical.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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