Sunscreen Safety Questioned

  • Many chemicals in sunscreens have not been tested for safety. (Photo courtesy of U.S. General Services Administration).

An environmental group is critical of the claims by many sunscreen manufacturers. They’re calling for better regulation of the industry by the government. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

An environmental group is critical of the claims by many sunscreen manufacturers. They’re calling for better regulation of the industry by the government. Lester Graham reports:

Health experts say sunscreen should not be your first line of defense for protection from the sun. They recommend protective clothing and staying in the shade.

Once you’re out in the sun, though, health experts say sunscreen is a must.

But a new study by the Environmental Working Group found a lot of problems with sunscreens. The study says many contain suspect chemicals, some known as hormone disruptors. And Sonya Lunders says her group is skeptical about sunscreens that claim SPF protection of 50 and as high as 100.

“And we know that those products don’t offer a similar amount of protection from the sun-damaging UVA rays.”

Giving users a false sense of security about protection from sun damage.
Of the hundreds of sunscreens on the market, the group only recommends 39 of them on its website.

It blames the FDA for allowing a lot of confusing claims about sunscreens.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham

A Greener Way to Work?

  • Some researchers say telecommuting can be more energy efficient if it's done 5 days a week. (Photo courtesy of Penarc - Wikimedia Commons)

Telecommuting is becoming more popular in the U.S. There’s an assumption that working from home saves energy. But some experts say whether it actually saves energy depends on how you do it. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Telecommuting is becoming more popular in the U.S. There’s an assumption that working from home saves energy. But some experts say whether it actually saves energy depends on how you do it. Rebecca Williams has more:

Something like 33 million of us work from home or a coffee shop at least once a month. And the whole idea of telecommuting just sounds like it saves energy. I mean, you’re cutting out your commute. So it saves gas.
And it can save a lot of gas money.

Sun Microsystems has what it calls an Open Work program. It allows employees to work wherever they want… from home or from a coffee shop. The company studied its teleworkers’ habits in 2007. And they found the average employee working from home two days a week ended up saving 500 to 600 dollars a year in fuel costs.

But things are more complicated than that.

Arpad Horvath is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Berkeley. He studies teleworking.

“For example one might telecommute, but also maintain an office at the company as well as at home which of course now means we have to support with energy and other inputs two offices rather than one.”


So – if you have a company office AND a home office… and you’re using both… he says the energy savings might be kind of a wash because you’re using more energy at home. And if you’re not commuting… but you hop in the car to run a bunch of errands to get out of the house… you might not save that much gas.

Horvath says… for telecommuting to save the most energy, it can’t be just a couple days a week.

“The ideal situation is that somebody teleworks full time, gives up the company office and doesn’t increase anything else in one’s individual life, doesn’t travel more for pleasure, doesn’t substantially change the setup at home.”

But for a lot of people it just doesn’t work that way.

Surveys from the Telework Research Network show that less than two percent of Americans work from home all the time.
And experts say the main reason is: it can be a trust issue for the boss.
Rose Stanley is with World-at-Work. It’s a human resources organization.

“It’s a cultural shift within an organization to go to the next level of managing without being able to see their employees. That face time is still a stigma culturally speaking.”

Stanley says bosses just need to be trained on how to manage remote workers. She says her boss pops up on an instant message board throughout the day, just to check in.

Another obstacle to full-time telecommuting is… it’s just YOU. There’s nobody to talk to but the dog.
So some telecommuters are trying co-working. It’s a shared working space for people who would normally work from home.

(snd of espresso machine)

Mike Kessler is the co-owner of Workantile Exchange in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s a big, open space… with a coffee shop right up front. Kessler says the whole idea of co-working is… instead of having dozens of individual home offices… there’s one office that dozens of people share when they need to.

“The environmental benefits are everybody needs the same thing to get things done… you need your wifi, table, chair, good coffee, meeting rooms, a bathroom… not everybody needs those at the same time.”

He says also… the space is close to where people live, so they can walk or bike to work.

Some analysts think this kind of setup is where more of us are headed. But they say for most companies… telecommuting is not driven by energy savings… it’s a business decision. It’s more about retaining good employees and increasing productivity. If it saves employees some gas money, that’s just a bonus.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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American Automakers Go Small

  • The new Ford Fiesta will get 40 miles per gallon on the highway. (Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company)

After years of dominating the market for big trucks and SUVs, Detroit automakers are getting into the small car business. Tracy Samilton reports they don’t just aim to compete with Toyota and Honda – they aim to beat them.

Transcript

After years of dominating the market for big trucks and SUVs, Detroit automakers are getting into the small car business. Tracy Samilton reports they don’t just aim to compete with Toyota and Honda – they aim to beat them.

The new Ford Fiesta will get 40 miles per gallon on the highway. That’s several miles per gallon better than the Honda Fit and the Toyota Yaris. Chevy’s Cruze Eco could also hit that magic 40. Erich Merkle is President of Autoconomy dot com – an auto consulting firm. He says Detroit’s new small cars will also be loaded with high-tech features. That could grab the attention of Gen Y, a group of 67 million young Americans.

“And it’s gonna have to be affordable, low-cost of ownership and yeah, if you wanna get them into your vehicle, it’s gotta be cool and have some sex appeal.”

Asian car companies won’t give up their former territory without a fight. Honda may postpone the new Civic in order to boost its fuel efficiency.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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Business Co-Operatives Get Greener

  • Gary Alperovitz says co-op businesses are rooted to the community, and that gives the Evergreen Cooperative a long term customer base.(Photo courtesy of Julie Grant)

Many people think the idea of business co-operatives is a leftover from the hippie generation. In a co-op, the workers own and manage the company. But there’s a new resurgence in the co-op model: there are new co-op bakeries, solar companies, and laundries. Julie Grant reports about these new employee-owned, often green-focused businesses.

Transcript

Many people think the idea of business co-operatives is a leftover from the hippie generation. In a co-op, the workers own and manage the company. But there’s a new resurgence in the co-op model: there are new co-op bakeries, solar companies, and laundries. Julie Grant reports about these new employee-owned, often green-focused businesses.

The last few years have been tough in many inner city neighborhoods. Around the area known as University Circle in Cleveland some experts think the poverty rate is 40-percent. The streets are lined with boarded up, foreclosed homes, and the signs of poverty are everywhere: drugs, crime, and unemployment.

So, Mienyan Smith is glad to have a job. She’s 31-years old and has five kids.

She sorts laundry into large bins – blue blankets in one, white sheets in another. But this isn’t the same as any other job. Smith and the other eight workers are all about to become part owners.

“WE ALL HAVE A GOAL TO EVENTUALLY OWN THIS FACILITY. AND WE WANT IT TO ALSO EXPAND, SO WE WORK HARDER, TO LET THEM KNOW THAT ‘HEY, WE’RE IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL.’”

Smith and the other workers will ‘buy in’ to the cooperative. Since none of them has the 3-thousand dollars upfront, they will each give 50-cents an hour from their paycheck.

Jim Anderson is with the Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University. He signed the papers for 6-million dollars in loans to start-up the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry.

In 3 years, he says the first 9 employees will be owners…

“THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO BE INVOLVED IN DECISIONS. THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE PURCHASING SIDE OF THE BUSINESS. SUPPLIES. WHAT THOSE COSTS ARE. THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE PAYROLL SIDE. THEY’RE GOING TO HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE QUALITY ISSUES THAT CUSTOMERS HAVE.”

Even in the best of times this would be a challenging task. So, starting a worker-owned business during a recession might seem down right crazy. But Anderson says Evergreen is on track to succeed. Their workers really care about the success of the business.

Plus, the co-op has a market advantage. It’s made significant investments to be an environmentally friendly laundry. They bought washing machines with special energy efficient motors that save millions of gallons of water, and they purchased no-steam ironing presses that use less energy…

“WHERE, EVERYTHING ELSE BE EQUAL, WE’RE THE GREEN LAUNDRY. WE’RE GOING TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT MORE THAN ANYBODY ELSE WILL AND WE CAN SHOW WHY THAT IS. AND WE THINK, GIVEN THAT, WE’LL GET THE NOD FROM THE CUSTOMER.”

The co-op’s customers are mostly hospitals, nursing homes and hotels.

Gary Alperovitz says those types of businesses are rooted to the community – and that gives the Evergreen Cooperative a long term customer base.

Alperovitz is author of the book “America Beyond Capitalism.”

He says Americans are sick of overpaid CEOs and companies that abandon a community as soon as they find better tax breaks or cheaper labor…

“BUT COOPERATIVELY OWNED COMPANIES AND WORKER OWNED COMPANIES IN GENERAL, SINCE THE PEOPLE LIVE THERE, RARELY GET UP AND LEAVE TOWN AND GO TO THE SUN BELT. THEY ARE VERY GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY BECAUSE THEY ARE ANCHORED THERE.”

The Cleveland Model, as Alperovitz calls it, includes more than just the laundry. Evergreen has also opened a Co-op Solar Company, that employs a dozen inner city workers, and plans to hire up to 100 people. A Co-op greenhouse and a co-op newspaper are already in the works in Cleveland. Each intends to the be greenest company in its sector.

Alperovitz says the focus on green businesses is unique to Cleveland, but communities all over the U.S. are starting to look at the co-op business model:

“THERE’S A LOT OF SLOGANS, BUT THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE DOESN’T CHANGE, THE LOCAL ECONOMY DECAYS, THE TAX BASE DECAYS, THE ENVIRONMENT DECAYS. AND THE QUESTION BECOMES ‘ARE WE GOING TO SOMETHING OURSELVES? OR ARE WE GOING TO ALLOW THE DECAY TO GO ON?’”

In Cleveland, they expect the group of Co-op businesses to employ up to a-thousand people in the next five years – all from the neighborhoods that need the help. The plan is to start stabilizing the inner city one street at a time…

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Being Green and Being Bad

  • Researchers find, for example, being a green shopper might lead to some not so green behavior. (Photo courtesy of USDA)

We might think it’s virtuous to
buy things that are environmentally-
friendly: recycled paper saves trees,
natural cleaners cause less pollution.
But new research finds that when we’re
good, we sometimes use that to excuse
being bad. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

We might think it’s virtuous to buy things that are environmentally-friendly: recycled paper saves trees, natural cleaners cause less pollution. But new research finds that when we’re good, we sometimes use that to excuse being bad. Julie Grant reports.

Nina Mazar wants more people to buy green products. She’s a marketing professor at the University of Toronto business school. And she thinks people should spend money on things that aren’t harmful to the environment.

But Mazar had some concerns. Research in other areas shows that if people do one thing they define as moral or virtuous – say, helping others or being politically-correct – they are more likely to transgress in other areas.

Mazar wanted to see if the same was true for buying green products.

“In our society, it seems at least, that green consumption is being moralized. And we thought, well, if it’s being moralized, maybe it can have some negative effects.”

That’s the key: if we moralize one behavior, Mazar says, we’re more likely later to do something negative.

So, first they did a survey, and found that, yes, people believe that consumers who buy environmentally-friendly and organic products are more likely to be ethical, cooperative and altruistic.

Then they tested it. They gave money to two groups of college students – one group was asked to buy products in a regular grocery store, the other in a store with mostly green products.

Afterwards, Mazar and her team set up a computer game. The students could see how much money they were making as they played – and they could easily cheat . When the game was over, they were told to take the amount they’d won out of an envelope.

“And what we found was that people who purchased in the green store, as opposed to the conventional store, cheated more on that particular subsequent task, and they actually took out more money out of the envelope than they were supposed to. So not only did they cheat, they also stole money from us.”

If students were totally accurate, they could have won $2.07. Those who had purchased green products went home with $2.90 in their pockets.

Mazar says this finding about green consumption fits right in with the theory called moral regulation or licensing.

“Whenever we engage in virtuous behavior, whenever we had done a good deed, we get a boost in our moral self worth, which will license us further down the road to transgress.”

This has been studied for years in the opposite direction. People who do something bad subsequently do good things to cleanse themselves.

But researcher Sonya Sachdeva says lots of new evidence is coming in that moral cleansing works both ways. She’s a PhD student at Northwestern University. And says she noticed this in herself when she started taking the bus to school.

“And at first, when I would take the bus, it took forever and I just wasn’t used to it. But the fact that I thought that I was doing this really good thing made me feel morally licensed.”

Sachdeva says each person has different things that make them feel this way.

Everyone in the green consumption study was a college student. Sachdeva says they might not be used to buying green products, so they get a boost of self worth when they do. And then might feel morally licensed to transgress: to cheat and steal.

But she says people who buy green and organic products all the time might not get that same boost of self worth and so might not have the backslide. In the same way her attitude toward riding the bus has changed.

“But over time, now that I’ve been taking the bus regularly for the past couple of years, I no longer get that same kind of warm glow feeling, because I’m used to it and my reference point has changed.”

The researchers say there is something practical we can learn from this. If we want people to be more environmentally friendly, the message should not be that be that this will make us better, more virtuous people. But it’s simply what we should do.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Ad Campaign Targets Senators

  • The advertisements are running in eight states whose Senators could be swing voters on the resolution. (Photo courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol)

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski
wants to take away the Environmental
Protection Agency’s power to
regulate greenhouse gases. She’s
introduced a resolution that would
do that. Now, a new radio ad
campaign is urging Senators to
oppose the resolution. Samara Freemark has the
story:

Transcript

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski
wants to take away the Environmental
Protection Agency’s power to
regulate greenhouse gases. She’s
introduced a resolution that would
do that. Now, a new radio ad
campaign is urging Senators to
oppose the resolution. Samara Freemark has the
story:

The ads call Murkowski’s resolution the “Dirty Air Act”. They’re sponsored by a coalition of environmental and faith-based advocacy groups.

Eric Sapp is with the American Values Network, which co-sponsored the ads. He says the spots are running in eight states whose Senators could be swing voters on the resolution.

“They’re moderate Democrats and Republicans who have been getting a lot of pressure to vote the wrong way on this bill. And our goal in these is to make sure the people know what’s going on, and then to let the Senators know that we will be able to stand behind them if they vote the right way.”

It’s not clear exactly when Murkowski’s resolution will move forward – especially now that a major snow storm is blanketing Washington and disrupting the Senate calendar.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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Going Renewable Voluntarily

  • Researchers say some companies bought renewable power because customers pushed them to. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The market for renewable solar
and wind power is growing quickly.
Most people assume that growth
has been mandated by government.
But Shawn Allee found
a report that challenges that:

Transcript

The market for renewable solar
and wind power is growing quickly.
Most people assume that growth
has been mandated by government.
But Shawn Allee found
a report that challenges that:

The report’s from the Center for Resource Solutions, an advocacy group.

Orrin Cook was a co-author. He totaled up growth in sales of wind, solar and other renewable energy between 2003 and 2008. He compared how much growth came from government mandates and how much was bought voluntarily. Cook says the voluntary market grew a tad faster.

“States requiring renewable energy and federal government requiring renewable energy is really just part of that equation. Another part is businesses and individuals buying renewable energy when they don’t have to.”

Cook says this voluntary renewable energy market grew because some companies have eco-minded managers. But he says companies also bought renewable power because customers pushed them to.

Cook looked at federal figures that came out before the financial crisis.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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New Year Brings New Monitoring

  • The US Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas monitoring program will cost businesses about $115 million total this year. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)

The government wants a better
sense of where America’s greenhouse
gas emissions are coming from,
so starting today -January 1, 2010,
more than ten-thousand businesses
will have to report them. Shawn
Allee explains:

Transcript

The government wants a better
sense of where America’s greenhouse
gas emissions are coming from,
so starting today -January 1, 2010,
more than ten-thousand businesses
will have to report them. Shawn
Allee explains:

Oil refineries that fuel our cars now have to report greenhouse gas emissions to the federal government. So do kilns that make cement for homes and businesses. Same thing for landfills that take our garbage.

Ed Repa is with the National Solid Waste Management Association – a trade group.

“The gas itself that’s being generated at the landfill is basically 50% methane, which is what natural gas is, and fifty percent CO2. Those gases are produced by organic materials for the landfill. That’s either paper or grass, or yard waste.”

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas monitoring program will cost businesses about 115 million dollars total this year.

Most businesses can handle the new costs, but some small businesses with big emissions could be hit harder.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Interview: Google’s Green Energy Czar

  • Bill Weihl is currently working on clean energy at Google. Before joining Google in early 2006, he was CTO at Akamai Technologies. (Photo courtesy of Google)

Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:

Transcript

Chances are that you’ve visited the
website google.com. Google is
not only a leader in online tech, but
it’s also investing in high-tech
alternative energy, especially different
kinds of solar power. Lester Graham
talked with Google’s Green Energy
Czar – yes, that’s his real title – Bill
Weihl. His job is not only
to make Google more energy efficient,
but to investigate and invest in new,
cleaner energy use and generation:

Lester Graham: Last year, a report indicated performing two Google searches from a desktop computer could generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea. How true is that?

Bill Weihl: We think, as, in fact, does the scientist who was behind most of the data there, that that report was actually off – that you, in fact, could do several hundred Google searches, if not more, for the emissions that are involved in boiling enough water to make a cup of tea.

Graham: What is Google doing to reduce energy consumption, or, at least, reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Weihl: We have cut our energy consumption in our data centers – data centers are the, you know, big facilities that contain lots and lots of servers. We have cut the energy usage in those facilities by over 50%.

Graham: Is there anything we can do so that when we do use Google we’re being as energy efficient as possible?

Weihl: If you’re buying a new computer, look for one that’s energy efficient. And in the US that means look for one, at a minimum, that’s Energy Star compliant. Laptops also tend to be more energy efficient than desktops, in part because just to make the battery last long enough to be useful, they have to work really hard in designing them to make them energy efficient. The second thing you can do is when you’re not using your system, when it’s sitting there idle, you can set it so that it will go to sleep automatically, or manually, if for some reason it doesn’t go to sleep automatically, you can very easily tell it to go to sleep. That’s much more convenient, obviously, that shutting it down, having to reboot, and restart everything. And it uses about the same energy in stand-by mode as it does when it’s off – which is, in the order of 1 to 5 watts, far less than it uses when it’s just sitting there idle with the screen on and doing nothing.

Graham: Let’s look beyond the world of computers. Google has invested in research for energy efficiency in cars and electric generation. You have a program that’s called ‘R.E. is less than C’ or ‘renewable energy for less than the cost of coal.’ That’s ambitious. Is it realistic?

Weihl: First of all, it’s hugely ambitious. Secondly, I believe it is realistic. And third, I think it’s absolutely necessary. Today, coal is, by far, the cheapest form of energy, or electrical energy, that we consume, except perhaps for hydroelectric power, which is comparable in cost. But at least in this country, and most of the developed world, we’re not going to be building large amounts of new hydroelectric generating capacity. We’ve already dammed most of the rivers that are worth damming. We are, however, still building new coal plants. And coal is not only very cheap, but also it is, by far, the dirtiest, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of any of the sources of energy that we use. So I think it is necessary, in terms of dealing with the climate crisis that we are facing, to find a way to, over time, replace coal with cleaner sources of energy. And the only way, as a society, I think that we’re going to do that is if it makes economic sense. So that’s why we really started to focus on this initiative we call ‘R.E. less than C’ – to really try to drive innovation as rapidly as possible on the technology for generating renewable power to try to drive its cost down very quickly.

Graham: Bill Weihl is the Green Energy Czar for Google. Thanks very much for your time, I appreciate it.

Weihl: My pleasure. Thank you.

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European Cap-And-Trade Example

  • Europe was the first to do carbon cap-and-trade, four years ago. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Congress is haggling over a climate
bill that includes a carbon cap-and-
trade system. In many ways, it’s
similar to the one the European Union
put in place several years ago. Liam
Moriarty looks at what
the European experience has been and
what the lessons for the US might be:

Transcript

Congress is haggling over a climate
bill that includes a carbon cap-and-
trade system. In many ways, it’s
similar to the one the European Union
put in place several years ago. Liam
Moriarty looks at what
the European experience has been and
what the lessons for the US might be:

Slashing greenhouse gas emissions is hard. Our economy is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Switching to clean fuels will be disruptive and expensive, at least to start with.

So how do we get from here to there? The approach that’s proving most popular is what’s called “cap-and-trade.” It works like this – first, there’s the cap.

“We’re going to put an absolute limit on the quantity of carbon-based fuels that we’re going to burn. And we’re going to develop a system to make sure we’re not burning more fossil fuels than that.”

Alan Durning heads the Sightline Institute, a sustainability-oriented think tank in Seattle. He explains that once you put the cap in place…

“Then, we’re going to let the market decide who exactly should burn the fossil fuels based on who has better opportunities to reduce their emissions.”

That’s the “trade” part. Companies get permits to put out a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Outfits that can cut their emissions more than they need to can sell their unused pollution permits to companies that can’t.

The cap gets ratcheted down over time. There are fewer permits out there to buy. Eventually even the most polluting companies have to reduce their emissions, as well.

The goal is to wean ourselves off dirty fuels by making them more expensive. And that makes cleaner fuels more attractive.

Europe was the first to do carbon cap and trade, four years ago. And things got off to a rough start. They set the cap on emissions too high and way overestimated the number of permits – or allowances – that companies would need.

“We have too many allowances. Simple supply means that the prices of those allowances crashes. They don’t have much value, and therefore the price went down to close to zero.”

That’s Vicki Pollard. She follows climate change negotiations for the European Commission. She says the whole system got knocked out of kilter.

For the first two years, European carbon emissions actually went up. After the collapse of Phase One, big changes were made. The next phase of the trading system has a tighter cap, more stringent reporting requirements and enforcement with teeth.


Today, Europe’s on track to meet its current emissions target. But environmentalists, such as Sanjeev Kumar with the World Wildlife Fund in Brussels, say those targets are still driven more by politics than by science.

“We have a cap that’s very weak, i.e. that means that it doesn’t mean that we’re going to achieve the levels of decarbonization that we need within the time scale.”

Leading climate scientists say we have to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by the middle of this century to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Business still has concerns about the EU cap and trade scheme. Folker Franz is with BusinessEurope, sort of the European version of the US Chamber of Commerce. He says companies worry about the additional cost of carbon emissions putting them at a competitive disadvantage.

“If you produce one ton of steel, you emit roughly one ton of CO2. So any ton of steel produced in the EU is right now some 17 dollars more than outside the European Union. And that makes a difference.”

But, Franz says, European businesses accept the need to take prompt action on climate change and are on board with the stricter cap and trade rules coming over the next few years.

Americans have watched Europe struggle with carbon cap-and-trade. The Sightline Institute’s Alan Durning says we can benefit from Europe’s willingness to break new ground.

“It was a big advance when they started it, because nothing like it had ever been done. But, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. In fact, the United States now has an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and leapfrog ahead to a much better climate policy.”

Durning says an American cap and trade system could avoid the costly stumbles that’ve hampered Europe’s carbon reduction efforts.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

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