This rule requires stores to tell you what country some of your food comes from Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)
Starting this week, supermarkets are officially required to tell you where some of your meat and produce comes from. But as Rebecca Williams reports it can get confusing at the store:
Transcript
Starting this week, supermarkets are officially required to tell you where some of your meat and produce comes from. But as Rebecca Williams reports it can get confusing at the store:
This rule requires stores to tell you what country some of your food comes from.
The rule covers things like beef and pork, chicken, and vegetables.
Supermarkets have already been adding these labels over the past few months.
Deborah White is with the Food Marketing Institute. The group represents supermarkets. She says they don’t like being forced to label specific products – and the law is quirky.
“The law applies, for example, to chicken but not turkey. It applies to peanuts and pecans but not almonds and walnuts and those were decisions that Congress made.”
And there are other quirks. Frozen peas have to be labeled and so do frozen carrots. But a bag of peas and carrots mixed together doesn’t have to be labeled.
The new agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, says he wants to fix these quirks. He’s asking the food industry to voluntarily add more information to labels than the rule now requires.
Melissa Rosen and her husband Greg Horos opened Locali's - LA's first "ecovenience" mart. (Photo by Devine Browne)
The only convenience store staples you won't find on Locali's shelves are cigarettes and lotto tickets. The owners say there are no clean versions of those. (Photo by Devine Browne)
Vegan condoms are Locali's most-blogged about item for sale. (Photo by Devine Browne)
Not that long ago, if you wanted to buy eco-friendly at the grocery store, your options might have been limited to the granola and beans in the bulk bins. Then stores started carrying organic produce. Later vegetarian fast food appeared. Devin Browne reports now eco-friendly is hitting convenience stores:
Transcript
Not that long ago, if you wanted to buy eco-friendly at the grocery store, your options might have been limited to the granola and beans in the bulk bins. Then stores started carrying organic produce. Later vegetarian fast food appeared. Devin Browne reports now eco-friendly is hitting convenience stores:
They’re called ecovenience stores and they’re showing up all over the country. The point is that they sell convenience store food, only greener.
(sound of a store)
“This is our organic hot pretzel, we have organic hot pretzels. It’s organic flour.”
That’s Melissa Rosen; she co-owns a new ecovenience store in Los Angeles, called Locali. Which is actually spelled L-O-C-A-L-I.
And they’ve got hot pretzels, but organic. Hot dogs, but grass-fed. The store even looks like a convenience store: It’s in a strip mall, it’s near a freeway. They’ve got cold drinks in the fridge and impulse buys like candy near the cash register. The customers are in a hurry, but a happy hurry. They rave about the chips
“It is a flavor explosion in your mouth, it is beyond savory.”
and the slushies.
“Slushies! There you go, the slushies are amazing.”
But then you get closer and you see that the cold drinks are not soda or beer: They’re Kombucha, the fermented tea. The candy is vegan gummy bears and organic lollipops. And the slushie, their signature item, is sweetened with agave.
There are a few 7-11 staples that are missing from the shelves, like cigarettes and lotto tickets. The owners say there are no green versions of those.
Some of Locali’s products are really pragmatic and not that exciting like energy efficient light bulbs and ecological laundry drops. Others are kind of sensational, silly, really.
“For example the vegan condoms. What is that, what is Glyde? I didn’t know my condoms weren’t vegan.”
So, vegan condoms, vegan caviar. Snow cones sweetened with brown rice syrup. They have this really big variety of products that have never been greened before.
And so the question becomes: will new green products like these, however silly, really mean new green consumers? Matt Kahn is an Environmental Economist at UCLA. HE thinks maybe so.
“So the goal might be to create buzz. That if you only sell green light bulbs and a tofu turkey burger, people might say oh yeah, that’s the green place. But if you do some truly wacky stuff, generating this green buzz, might tip, that even a Dick Cheney might come with his grandson hearing that it’s this wacky.”
Which is more or less the point – Locali wants to recruit new green consumers. Consumers who right now live in neighborhoods that don’t really have supermarkets and so they buy most of their food at liquor and convenience stores.
Of course, one of the problems will probably be price. A 16 oz slushie at Locali is $5.49, while a 22 oz slurpee at 7-11 is just $1.40. But Kahn, the economist, thinks because Locali is smaller and more flexible than say a Whole Foods, it might actually have a better shot at making it in new neighborhoods.
“And so a smaller business might have to pay only a couple hundred thousand dollars rather then multi million dollars to build a big boxed store. And that lower fixed cost of entering a market makes it more likely that smaller green stores might experiment more.”
And apparently, the ecovenience experiment is something that a lot of people want to try. In the first six days of business, the owners received phone calls from people in Seattle and DC and cities all over Southern California. And they all asked the same thing: how soon can we open a locali in our local neighborhood.
Shopping at organic foods stores is one thing consumers are cutting back on
(Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)
Watching paychecks shrink and
retirement funds dissolve is making people
change their buying habits. Many are
skipping things like natural foods because
they’re seen as luxuries. But Julie Grant
reports some analysts say this is just a
short term trend:
Transcript
Watching paychecks shrink and
retirement funds dissolve is making people
change their buying habits. Many are
skipping things like natural foods because
they’re seen as luxuries. But Julie Grant
reports some analysts say this is just a
short term trend:
Michelle DeSalvo’s daughter plans to go to college next
year. But her husband might need to take a pay cut just to
keep his job. So they’re trying to save money wherever
possible. That means no more shopping at the natural foods
store.
Michelle DeSalvo: “It’s definitely more expensive. You have
to go to things that are less expensive and natural is
definitely not that.”
Julie Grant: “So what has changed in your shopping habits?”
Michelle DeSalco: “I go to Wal-Mart. (laughs) Yeah, for
food. It’s cheaper.”
Not everyone is rushing to Wal-Mart.
Brenda Fisher says her family is struggling to pay for two
kids in college, and they’re looking for different ways to buy
food. She used to stop at the butcher shop at Whole Foods
– the national, natural foods supermarket. But not anymore.
“So I would buy their meats because their meats are
incredible. So um, I just can’t afford it. I would actually like
to buy a whole cow from a farmer, because they’re cheaper.
And I just have to get the money together.”
Okay, so not everyone wants to buy a cow. But a lot of
people are moving away from things that seem more
expensive – like natural and organic products.
In recent years, those foods have seen huge sales growth.
But as the economy has turned sour, so have their sales.
Whole Foods Store has seen a considerable sales drop at its
stores. And the company’s stock prices plunged more than
70% this year.
Nancy Koehn is professor of the history of retailing and
consumer behavior at the Harvard business school.
She says some people see upscale stores such as Whole
Foods as an indulgence – and that’s not what they’re
wanting.
“I think we will see, we are seeing, a rush away from a lot of
luxury right now.”
Koehn says that’s short term. She says consumers have
been floored by the tanking of the stock market and the
vulnerability of the financial systems. And they’ve done
something we haven’t seen in 25 years: they’ve stopped
buying.
But Koehn says this is just one moment. She says people
will walk back into stores. But they will have revised
priorities for their homes and families.
“There’s no way anyone’s coming out of this moment without
being effected by it. It’s a much more complicated story than
the rush to Wal-Mart.”
Koehn says natural foods stores, like Whole Foods, and
other environmentally-centered companies, are actually in
just the right place for the long term economic trend. When
consumers start buying again, she thinks, many will spend
money in places that are taking care of workers, animals,
and the environment.
“And I think we’re going to see that the same things that built
Whole Foods, that have made the environment and our
interconnectedness so important to people, and moved that
from item number 10 or 20 on people’s lists of important
issues up to the top 2 to 4. Those aren’t going away because
we’re in the trough of a business cycle.”
Koehn expects that many people will spend their holiday
money at big box discount stores. But she says many who
feel they’ve been treated badly in the economic downturn will
go back to the companies they think treat people and the
environment better.
Koehn expects that by early next year, companies that get
behind sustainable products will wind up being the economic
winners.
A study by the University of Arizona estimates that the average household wastes about
14% of the food that’s bought (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Thanksgiving is just around the
corner. A consumer expert says you can
avoid wasting a lot of food with just a
little planning. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Thanksgiving is just around the
corner. A consumer expert says you can
avoid wasting a lot of food with just a
little planning. Lester Graham reports:
A study by the University of Arizona estimates that the average household wastes about
14% of the food that’s bought. Some of it spoils. Some of it becomes leftovers that
never get eaten.
Bob Lilienfeld is the author of the Use Less Stuff Report. He says you can keep a
couple of things in mind. If food is left on the serving platter, it can be re-used. If it
makes it to your plate and it’s not eaten, it’s wasted.
He also says, on Thanksgiving, plan for leftovers.
“Think, when you buy turkey, ‘What else does my family like turkey. Oh, they like soup.
They like chili.’ Buy the ingredients for the next round when you buy the turkey so that
everything is sitting in your home the day after Thanksgiving, and you’re wondering,
‘Alright, what am I going to do with this bird?’”
And, Lilienfeld says, label and date your leftovers. You’re more likely to use them
before they go bad.
A lot of people want to know what
they can do to be more environmentally friendly.
Ellis Jones says you make a vote on environmental
issues every time you pull out your wallet.
Jones is a sociologist at the University of
California Davis. And he’s written a pocket-sized
booklet called ‘The Better World Shopping Guide’
that grades companies that make the things we buy.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked to
him about the guide:
Transcript
A lot of people want to know what
they can do to be more environmentally friendly.
Ellis Jones says you make a vote on environmental
issues every time you pull out your wallet.
Jones is a sociologist at the University of
California Davis. And he’s written a pocket-sized
booklet called ‘The Better World Shopping Guide’
that grades companies that make the things we buy.
The Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked to
him about the guide:
Ellis Jones: “I think that people will use this guide to make sure that the companies that
are doing good work get their dollars. And the companies that are not doing good work,
they don’t get their dollars until they improve.”
Lester Graham: “I chose three topics. One of them is gasoline. No one gets an A+? But
you did give an A to Sunoco and you gave an F to Exxon-Mobile. Can you tell me really
quickly what went into those grades?”
Jones: “It includes everything from how polluting their petroleum refineries are, what
their human rights records are when they deal with communities abroad, how they deal
with consumers, what their advertising is like and how they do or don’t ‘greenwash’ – to
really give a sense of, you know, the difference between the good guys and the bad guys
in gasoline.”
Graham: “I also looked at bread, and you gave an A+ to local bakeries.”
Jones: “Supporting a local bakery is really about as good as it gets. Far above and
beyond what you can get supporting even the most organic bread company.”
Graham: “The third thing I looked at was water, because bottled water is such an issue
these days. The A+ was given to tap water, which, in most communities, is as good as
anything you can buy in a bottle.”
Jones: “The most powerful difference a consumer can make is actually avoiding the
product all together. So, anything to really minimize the impact because this industry
itself is inherently problematic.”
Graham: “Just casually flipping through looking at who rated an F in your guide, often it
seemed like it was the most recognizable name. Kraft, Nabisco, Libby’s. Those kinds of
companies. Why is it these really large corporations tended to do so poorly in your
guide?”
Jones: “Well, you know, I think this really points out a kind of inherent problem within
our current economic system. And that is that the way to get ahead in the system is to
grow larger, to gobble up smaller companies, to basically out-compete the other
companies around you by cutting costs wherever you can by using larger economies of
scale. And the process that gets lost in the system is the impact on the people and the
planet.”
Graham: “I’m wondering how this changes your view of things when you go shopping
now.”
Jones: “Well, let me tell you, I really have put in as much research as a human being can
into this. And I am still filled with questions. These questions are out there and we need
to keep companies accountable and the government accountable to be able to provide us
with good data so we can make smart decisions as consumers.
Graham: “So your guide doesn’t let us off the hook, we still have to do some of our own
homework.”
Jones: (laughs) “Exactly. We have to actually make do with the information that we
have now, make the best choices available, and then as new information comes in, then
we’re responsible to make even better choices. But in that process we have to build in
quite a bit of forgiveness, because one thing this book is not about being perfect or pure
in the world. It really is about trying to make the best choice at any given time in any
given place.”
Whole foods Store Manager Sherry Wiseman, says her Cleveland store hasn’t had plastic bags since February and her customers have hardly noticed. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
Wal-Mart stores are stocked solely with plastic bags and paper is not an option. The company says it won’t discontinue plastic in favor of paper, because it says plastic bags are more suited for items sold at its stores. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)
It’s one of the eternal questions, ‘paper or
plastic?’ They’re both recyclable, but only paper
bags come from a renewable resource. And since only
1% of all the plastic bags on earth are actually
recycled, Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports some cities and
even one national company are wondering why we need
plastic bags at all:
Transcript
It’s one of the eternal questions, ‘paper or
plastic?’ They’re both recyclable, but only paper
bags come from a renewable resource. And since only
1% of all the plastic bags on earth are actually
recycled, Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports some cities and
even one national company are wondering why we need
plastic bags at all:
(garbage truck sounds)
Americans send around 100 billion plastic bags to landfills every
year, where they’re supposed to be compacted by bulldozers.
(sound of plastic bag in the wind)
That is, unless they catch the wind and transform into mini
parachutes.
Carmine Camillo is a spokesman for the national company Waste Management.
“The tree lines and fence lines can be littered with bags, until we get
a chance to get out there and clean them up.”
This happens so much around the world, it’s picked up the nickname ‘tree condoms’. Besides that,
they clog storm drains, and
eventually end up in waterways and oceans, where fish
mistake them for jellyfish.
The solution, it would seem, is to recycle them.
But shopper Mary Jo Wickliffe says that’s too much of a hassle.
“You unload your groceries and you go home and throw them away. That’s what I do with them.”
Since Wickliffe shops at the organic market Whole Foods she
says she’s been doing less of that. Because the
chain recently bagged the plastic.
Cleveland Store Manager Chery Wiseman says to stop offering plastic bags is a decision that goes against busines school 101.
“It costs us more money to buy our paper recyclable bags, but we
feel that’s worth it to keep the plastics out.”
Whole Foods’ paper bags are made from 100% recycled content and
shopper Bruce Kane says it’s about time plastic went out of
style.
“I notice that China has fines for stores that use plastics. I think it’s a
positive trend and I’m glad to see it coming to Whole Foods and coming to the
United States.”
The trendsetter in this country is San Francisco. It’s the only city to successfully ban plastic bags.
New York City, Annapolis, Maryland, New Haven,
Connecticut, Santa Monica, and Portland, are looking to shun plastic too. But the bruising the city of Oakland took might make them think twice.
A plastics industry group, called the Coalition to Support Plastic
Bag Recycling sued Oakland over its ban and won. It
claimed the city didn’t do its homework on alternatives such as compost-
able plastic bags or a recycling program.
Sharon Kanise is a spokeswoman for the plastics industry at the
American Chemistry Council.
“We certainly hope that the city of Oakland will work with the state of
California on recycling, because it
doesn’t belong in the roadways, it belongs in the recycling bin.”
Plastic bags are made from petroleum and natural gas, but
Kanise says their manufacture and transport uses 70% less
energy and produces half the carbon dioxide that making paper
bags does.
But for some, choosing between paper and plastic isn’t enough. A few people are starting to shop with reusable cloth bags. Some
stores sell them for about a dollar and Wal-Mart recently gave
away 1 million free to its customers.
But the concept of bringing
their own bags to the store is still foreign to some Wal-Mart
shoppers.
Customer 1: “It really doesn’t matter to me, but I’m going to need a
bigger bag than this.”
Customer 2: “It’s easier just to throw these out and come back to
the store with nothing in our hands.“
Customer 3: “Well, it’s just becoming popular, so I’ll start to.”
Whether it’s paper, plastic, or cloth, each can be environmentally-friendly, if
consumers go to the extra effort. But if people keep throwing them away, local governments might attempt to
reduce plastic bag use. A move the plastics industry will certainly
contest.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.
An outfit from American designer Rogan Gregory, which is made of 100% certified organic cotton. The collection arrives in Target stores on May 18th (Photo courtesy of Target)
If you want to buy organic clothes, chances
are you’ll have to order them over the Internet.
But that’s about to change. Lester Graham reports a
big retailer will soon be selling eco-friendly clothes:
Transcript
If you want to buy organic clothes, chances
are you’ll have to order them over the Internet.
But that’s about to change. Lester Graham reports a
big retailer will soon be selling eco-friendly clothes:
The big-box retail store, Target, will soon be carrying a line of environmentally-
friendly clothes for women.
Tim Craig is Editor in Chief for the magazine “Retailing
Today.” He thinks if Target starts carrying eco-friendly clothes, other retailers will take
notice.
“Without a doubt there will be some me-too-ism. And they watch each other very
carefully. Certainly, Kohls and Target go back-and-forth as to who has the leadership position and I
wouldn’t put it past them to have some one-upsmanship, if you will, in the area of
offering sustainable, organic product.”
Craig says it’s unclear whether there’s a demand for those kinds of clothes. But for
women who want eco-friendly clothing, being able to see, touch, and try on clothes
before buying them might persuade them to skip ordering on the internet and instead shop at
the store.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Used resources can be remade into all kinds of things. These street signs were made into switchplates. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Used chopsticks are cleaned and sandblasted to make a bracelet. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Reused fabrics made into baby booties. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Old toothbrushes are used as handles for cutting blades. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
The people who make everyday items – from cars to chairs to cell phones – attractive and functional are called industrial designers. Now a new generation of industrial designers is learning how to create products that are environmentally friendly as well. That makes their jobs a bit more challenging. Ann Dornfeld reports:
Transcript
The people who make everyday items – from cars to chairs to cell phones – attractive and functional are called industrial designers. Now a new generation of industrial designers is learning how to create products that are environmentally friendly as well. That makes their jobs a bit more challenging. Ann Dornfeld reports:
A lot of the things you buy have a pretty limited life cycle. Think about it. Before you buy a product, it uses up raw materials, then you use it for a while, then it ends up in a garbage dump. But that doesn’t have to be its fate.
A group of industrial design students at Western Washington University was given this challenge: create attractive, useful products that are also completely recyclable, reusable or biodegradable. On top of that, they had to use waste that would have ended up in the dump.
Rachel Bjarnasson explains what’s known as “closed-loop” design:
“Instead of a product life cycle and a designer’s job ending with that product when the product is at the end of its useful life, that that is just a new material that can be reused and turned into a new product.”
This sustainable design principle has caught on in Europe. There, household appliance manufacturers are required to take back old dishwashers and clothes dryers to reuse their components. U.S. factories are adopting closed-loop systems, too, as a way to save money on raw materials and benefit the environment.
One of the first lessons the students learned was that in closed-loop design, it’s not enough to use recyclable materials. You have to think about how you attach one material to another.
“If you have a recyclable material like an aluminum bonded to a plastic that’s non-recyclable, suddenly the recyclable component is no longer recyclable.”
Bjarnasson says they had to avoid using strong glues for that reason. And also because the adhesives can release toxic fumes.
The students also had to figure out where to get their raw materials.
Seth Tucker wanted to make bracelets out of disposable chopsticks.
“I found that between Japan and China, one billion pairs of chopsticks are thrown away every year. They’re taking down whole forests just for chopsticks!”
He asked local Asian restaurants whether he could install chopsticks recycling bins to collect enough for his project.
“Some restaurants, it was kinda funny, they gave me this kinda look like ‘you’re crazy, I would never give you used chopsticks.’ But it was really cool, ’cause other places were like, ‘oh yeah, totally, we’re definitely cool with the idea.'”
Tucker sanitized the chopsticks he’d collected, cut them into pieces and sandblasted them into what look like little driftwood beads. He strung them into bracelets along with natural turquoise and antique African trade beads.
One student turned newsprint into biodegradable flower pots.
Another made used-up retail gift cards into colorful luggage tags.
Rachel Bjarnasson challenged herself to use fabric scraps that she usually throws away in her job as a seamstress. She stitched strips of silk into baby booties, and lined them with scraps of fleece she got from a local glove manufacturer. Then she cushioned the soles with leftover carpet padding from a flooring company.
“And so all of this was materials that would’ve been thrown out, and I turned them into little striped baby booties.”
Several stores agreed to carry the products. One of them was Goods for the Planet in Seattle. Suzanne O’Shea is the co-owner.
“We were thrilled to do it because one of our goals is to find products as close to home as possible and support the local economy.”
The students’ products were a hit with her customers. O’Shea says some even sold out right away – like the chopsticks bracelets.
And sushi rollers made from stainless steel bicycle spokes flew off the shelves.
“And a lot of chefs that have come in and people that make sushi at home have really been impressed by this design because it has more weight than the standard bamboo sushi rollers.”
And that’s the idea. Student Rachel Bjarnasson says they learned the ideal sustainable product is at least as attractive and useful as the competition.
“You still need to make a product that looks beautiful and has good tactile sensation and is something that people ultimately want to buy. Even if it has the best of intentions in saving the environment, it won’t do its job if it’s not something that people want or need.”
The students say they’ll try to integrate the closed-loop design principles they’ve learned into all of their future products. They don’t want anything they design to ever end up in the trash.
Retail groups say consumers will purchase nearly one-third of their holiday gifts
online this year. Using your computer to shop might help you beat high gas prices and
pollute less. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Retail groups say consumers will purchase nearly one-third of their holiday gifts
online this year. Using your computer to shop might help you beat high gas prices and
pollute less. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Ordering items online usually means less driving around to retail outlets, and at
the price of gas, your savings can add up. But online orders often mean a
delivery truck still has to bring you a product.
Bryan Welch of the website EarthMoment.com says you can even cut the
delivery company’s costs and vehicle pollution by having items sent to your
workplace:
“If you work in an office, in all likelihood there are several deliveries a day to that
office already. So there’s no incremental energy used to deliver one more little
box to you at the office.”
Earth Moment is owned by Ogden Publications. It’s also running a program
where money from some online purchases goes to reforestation projects and
other means of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.
An environmental marketing firm wants shoppers to be a little more discerning this
holiday season. They say a practice known as ‘green-washing’ is alive and well. That’s
when companies make false or misleading environmental claims about their products.
Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
An environmental marketing firm wants shoppers to be a little more discerning this
holiday season. They say a practice known as ‘green-washing’ is alive and well. That’s
when companies make false or misleading environmental claims about their products.
Mark Brush has more:
The marketing firm Terra Choice looked at more than a-thousand products making
environmental claims. They said all but one product made false or misleading
statements. They found most companies are not lying about what they sell. But they are
making statements that disguise a product’s total environmental impact.
Scot Case is with Terra Choice. He says one example of green-washing is the little green
dot on some canisters of shaving cream or hair sprays marked ‘no CFCs’:
“And that makes it seems like, ‘Oh, this is an environmentally friendly product.’ Except
CFCs were banned in 1978. So all that green dot is really saying is ‘Hey, we’re obeying
the law.’ Well whoop dee doo dah. That is not helping me buy a more environmentally
friendly product.”
Case says consumers should look at all products making environmental claims with
skepticism.
This rule requires stores to tell you what country some of your food comes from Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)
