Energy Star Approval Gets Tougher

  • This week the EPA and the Department of Energy started requiring complete lab reports to review before approving products for Energy Star labels.(Photo courtesy of Energy Star)

The agencies in charge of the Energy Star Program are making it less vulnerable to fraud. Lester Graham reports, a covert investigation revealed corporate self-reporting could be faked.

Transcript

The agencies in charge of the Energy Star Program are making it less vulnerable to fraud. Lester Graham reports, a covert investigation revealed corporate self-reporting could be faked.

The Energy Star Program certifies whether appliances and other products lower energy costs. But, it was based on the honor system. If the company said its product qualified, it got the Energy Star label.

The Government Accountability Office submitted fake products to the Energy Star program. Jonathan Meyer was one of the investigators.

Meyer: We initiated our work by submitting fairly common products and those made it through the certification process without any real scrutiny, so we increased the level of, you know, ODD products toward the end of our investigation to see if there’s any type of information that would raise red flags.

Even a phony gas-powered alarm clock was certified as Energy Star compliant.

This week the EPA and the Department of Energy started requiring complete lab reports to review before approving products for Energy Star labels.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Food Safety on the Farm

  • The government isn't requiring farms comply with its safety rules yet, but some grocery chains and food distributors are. (Photo courtesy of These Days in French Life CC-2.0)

More than year ago peanut butter made in the southern U.S. sickened hundreds of people and killed as many as nine.
The outbreak set off a scramble to make food safer and the impacts are starting to be felt on the farm.
But it’s not clear how much the push for “food safety” will change anything.
Peter Payette reports.

Transcript

More than year ago peanut butter made in the southern U.S. sickened hundreds of people and killed as many as nine.
The outbreak set off a scramble to make food safer and the impacts are starting to be felt on the farm.

But it’s not clear how much the push for “food safety” will change anything.
Peter Payette reports.

The government is not requiring farms comply with its safety rules yet, but some grocery chains and food distributors are.

Chris Alpers runs two farms in northern Michigan that grow both cherries and apples.
He figures he’ll spend $7,000 getting them certified.
When asked if that will make his fruit any safer he pauses.

“That’s a hard one to answer. I don’t think we’ve had any issues in the past, nor would we if we continue the way we are currently doing things. But I guess the possibility is there that something could happen so certain things they are requiring us to do might make the fruit a little safer I suppose.”

In fact, nobody has ever heard of this region’s main crop making anyone sick.
It’s hard to imagine tart cherries being a little safer.
They grow well off the ground. They’re not picked by hand and are soaked in water on the way to be processed.
Nevertheless, growers along the coast of Lake Michigan will line up this summer to pay inspectors ninety-two dollars an hour to make sure they’re following a list of rules.

These include things like making sure workers only water drink in the orchard and that they wash their hands properly.
Nobody complains the rules are unreasonable.
But Dave Edmondson says they’re impractical.

“They want me to sign a piece of paper that this is going to happen every single day. I can’t guarantee that!”

Edmondson says he’s happy to run his farm according to the new rules but there are limits.

“It’s like the Indy 500 come harvest time. You have to focus on the movement of the fruit and taking care of it.”

There’s also concern in this region about what new rules might do to the growing number of small farms.
There’s a trend here of farmers growing food to sell locally rather than for processing or to ship cross-country.
There’s even a distributor that supplies area restaurants, schools and grocers with local food.
That company, Cherry Capital Foods, is not requiring its farms be certified.

The manager Evan Smith says he doesn’t want to see the local food movement killed with new costs and paperwork.
Smith says they visit farms they work with and he thinks small farms selling to neighbors are not the problem.

“That’s not to say it can’t be better but I’m not sure we’re going to see a significant change in the amount of food-borne illnesses or a decrease in those because quite frankly we’re not seeing that occur right now.”

Still the dangers of a tomato or spinach leaf making someone sick are real.

That’s why Don Coe says it will be better if everyone tries show their farms are clean and safe.
Coe owns a winery and is a Michigan agriculture commissioner.
He says one illness caused by a small farm selling locally would smear the movement.

“That’s my concern, is that we have to have an acceptable level of compliance with good food handling systems. We have to back it up with some kind of inspection service. It doesn’t have to be as rigid as foods going into the major food channels.”

The U.S. Congress might soon decide who needs to pass what sort of safety tests.
Under legislation now pending a farmer selling a few bags of spinach at a farmers market could be subject to the same standards as huge processing plant.

For The Environment Report, I’m Peter Payette.

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Greenovation: Eco-Certified

  • When doing home improvement projects, WaterSense, EnergyStar, GREENGUARD, and FSC certifications are some to keep an eye out for. (Photo by Michelle Miller-Freeck, courtesy of FEMA)

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Transcript

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Julia Weinert and her boyfriend like the idea of making their place nice, but even something as simple as painting causes concerns.

JW: “We want to support environmentally friendly options and we just don’t want to be smelling it for three days out and have to be running the fans. We just want it to be convenient and we think it would be an easy thing to do.”

LG: “Well, you’re in luck. We’re at the local Home Depot and we just happen to have Greenovation.TV’s Matt Grocoff here. Matt, you’ve got some advice for her.”

MG: “And it’s really, really simple. When you’re trying to find a paint that’s healthy for you or another product, you shouldn’t have to be a chemist when you go to the store. There’s a really simple thing you can look for. Just look for the simple GREENGUARD label. GREENGUARD is an independent organization that lets you know with a simple label that that product is safe for you.”

So, none of the really strong paint smells that mean polluting chemicals are being released. GREENGUARD Environmental Institute sets indoor air standards for products and buildings. Julia and I sniffed a can of paint WITH the GREENGUARD label, and then one without.

LG: “I’ll let you sniff first.”

JW: Okay. Oh! Yeah! Oh my gosh! That is ridiculous. I mean, it smells so much stronger than this one. You can’t even smell that one compared to this one.”

A gallon of paint with the GREENGUARD label DOES cost a few dollars more, maybe as much as ten bucks.

Matt then herded us to another part of the store, the plumbing section, where Julia and I were confronted by all kinds of shiny chrome and brass faucets.

JW: “There’s a whole wall, a whole aisle of faucets here and I just don’t know which ones to look for.”

LG: “So, Matt. You got any fancy labels here?”

MG: “Absolutely. Again, if you’re looking for that eco-friendly option, a way to save yourself some money and some water, it’s simple. Just look for the WaterSense label. The EPA does EnergyStar labels for appliances. The EPA also does WaterSense label for plumbing fixtures.”

WaterSense means the fixture – whether a faucet, shower head or toilet – will use less water but still works well.

As we wandered over to the lumber section of the store, Matt told us the last label he wanted to show us is the most ignored label – and it might just be the most important one.

MG: “FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council. And what that means is they’ve made a commitment that they’re not going to be tearing down forest and clear-cutting them in order for you to build some bookshelves in your home. This is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases is that we don’t have these forests capturing this carbon any more. Instead of having to have a PhD in forest management, you can just simply look for a piece of wood that has an FSC label on it.”

So, labels. Julia says, works for her.

JW: “It’s going to be great, taking my boyfriend around the store and showing him all these cool things I can get to make our home improvements a little more cheap and environmentally-friendly.”

LG: “Alright remind me, go over this again. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

MG: “It’s very simple. If you’re looking for paint, look for GREENGUARD. For plumbing, WaterSense. For lumber, FSC, Forest Stewardship Council certified.”

LG: “That’s Matt Grocoff, Greenovation.TV. Thanks again, Matt.

MG: “Lester, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you.”

For The Environemnt Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Investigating the Organic Label

  • Some organic watchdog groups say the National Organics Program has been too loose with its rules. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

Congress wants to dig deeper into an ongoing investigation of the National Organics Program. The program puts the little green “USDA Organic” label on products. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

Congress wants to dig deeper into an ongoing investigation of the National Organics Program. The program puts the little green “USDA Organic” label on products. Mark Brush has more:

Congress passed a bill that will put more money toward investigating the USDA’s organic program.

Some organic watchdog groups say the National Organics Program has been too loose with its rules.

Mark Kastel is with the Cornucopia Institute. He’s one of those critics.

“They have been accused by reputable independent auditors of having ignored the will of Congress in how they are managing the organic program – favoring large factory farms – favoring unscrutinized products being imported from China – all this competing with our family farmers here in the United States.”

Kastel says that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

But he says the USDA organic label is still the gold standard. And most producers follow the law.

He and some leaders in Congress say an expanded review of the program will make sure that little green label keeps its credibility.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Organic Meat Hard to Find

  • Organic steak is hard to find, partly because so few slaughterhouses are certified organic. (Photo by David Benbennick, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef. It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices. But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.
Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Transcript

Organic farmers would love to have you dig into more of their pork, chicken and beef.

It’s not just because they’re proud about how they raise their animals – it’s because certified organic meat fetches high prices.

But organic meat is harder to find than you’d expect, and it’s partly because there are few organically-certified slaughterhouses.

Shawn Allee found a farming community that came up with a solution:

Dennis and Emily Wettstein turned their Illinois farm organic a while ago, mostly because conventional farming wasn’t practical for them.

“All the money seemed to go to pay for the fertilizers and the chemicals. And then I was more or less allergic to the chemicals. And so we were interested in getting away from that, especially if we were going to raise a family out here.”

The Wettsteins didn’t just raise grain organically – they kept chemicals and hormones out of their cattle.

“We started raising meat for ourselves and our families. Then, pretty soon, just word of mouth, friends and neighbors wanted meat.”

And, they found people who’d pay top dollar for their meat.

“We sell at the Oak Park farmers market.”

That’s just west of Chicago.

“Right. The Oak Park market managers, they are working on all the farmers to go towards organic.”

And that worked for the Wettsteins – they had USDA certified organic chicken.

“There’s one other meat vendor there – it’s not organic. So, we have no competition. We feel that, with that label on there, we can set our price to where we can make a profit.”

But Emily Wettstein says that term – organic – gave them trouble when it came to beef and other meat.

“We were getting a little bit pressured from other people, ‘Well, you can’t call your item organic. You don’t have a processing facility with the term of certified organic.'”

Here was the problem: For meat to get labeled USDA certified organic, it’s gotta be certified from the farm to the slaughterhouse.

The Wettsteins had someone to process organic chicken, but they were out of luck with pigs and cows.

There was no certified slaughterhouse for beef or pork in Illinois.

So, the Wettsteins and some relatives prodded meat lockers to get certified.
There was one taker.

“I’m inside a meat locker that’s about a fifteen minute drive from the Wettstein farm. It’s owned by Scott Bittner, and I’m here to understand what organic certification means for his business. How do I put this, there’s a headless, hoofless, skinless cow hanging from your ceiling. Where are we exactly?”

We’re on the kill floor. We had seventeen, eighteen cattle today. Seven of those were organic.

So, walk me through how you have to treat that organic cow differently.

It’s the first thing we did this morning – that’s one thing. Other than that, it’s segregating it in the cooler from the non-organic product and then processing it at a later time, which, again, you have to do first thing in the morning.

So, the basic idea is segregation?

Yeah, it is. The whole way through. Exactly.

Bittner’s simplifying things, but not much.

He has to clean or swap equipment between batches of organic and conventional meat.

There are rules on the kinds of chemicals he can use. And he hires a certification company to monitor his paper work.

Bittner says overall, it’s easy, and he’s surprised more slaughterhouses haven’t done it.

“Here we’re doing all our fabricating – grinding sausage, ground beef. Cutting some chops, ribs.”

“How does it feel to be the only guy who can process an organic side of beef?”

“I want to keep it quiet – I don’t want too many people to get started doing what I’m doing because it’s nice. I get two or three customers every year that I didn’t have before. When you go to bed at night and think about this economy being the way it is, every little bit helps.”

Bittner says farmers drive animals up to four hours to slaughter their animals here.

He says he’s proud of his work but can’t take too much credit; he knows he’s got a local organic slaughtering monopoly going.

That might change some day, but for now it’s reason enough to keep his knives sharp.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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What’s Behind the Organic Milk Label?

  • Many people now choose organic milk, but there are some problems with the USDA organic certification. (Photo by Adrian Becerra)

Products labeled “organic” used to be associated with
hippie culture. Ever since the National Organic Standards
went into effect five years ago, organic has become big
business. Sales of organic products now total about 20-billion dollars a year in the U.S. But that quick growth
spurt is coming with some growing pains. Julie Grant
reports:

Transcript

Products labeled “organic” used to be associated with
hippie culture. Ever since the National Organic Standards
went into effect five years ago, organic has become big
business. Sales of organic products now total about 20-billion dollars a year in the U.S. But that quick growth
spurt is coming with some growing pains. Julie Grant
reports:


Kara Skora is a part-time college professor, and her family
doesn’t make a lot of money. She’s wearing a hand-me-down
sweater. She’s been eyeing some bracelets at this Target
store, but she quickly walks away. She isn’t going to
spend her money on something so frivolous. Instead, Skora
goes to the dairy case and pulls out a carton of organic
milk. At $3.50, it’s nearly double the price of a regular
half gallon. But Skora thinks the higher cost is worth it
for her two sons:


“Because it’s the one thing. I mean, we don’t go out to
dinner, we don’t waste money on things. We don’t have much
money to spend. But I figured, this is becoming their
bodies. This is becoming their bones and their flesh, and what
little they have, they’re both skinny little boys. So I’m
willing to go into debt to get organic milk.


Julie Grant: “You really go into debt?”


“Oh yeah, we’re in credit card debt. I think a couple
thousand dollars of that every year is organic milk. It’s
the one thing we splurge on.”


Skora used to have to go to a health food store to find
organic milk. These days, she can buy it a lot of places.
And whether she’s buying it at Target or somewhere else,
she trusts that the government’s organic label means the milk
meets certain standards.


It used to be, a label that said “organic” could mean all
kinds of things. Different state agencies and private
organizations each had their own organic standards. Each
trained their own people to inspect farms – to make sure
farmers were meeting their organization’s rules.


Then, five years ago, the US Department of Agriculture
launched the National Organic Program. Now, the people who
inspect organic farms are all looking at the same set of
rules: the USDA’s national standards.


A national standard means farmers know what they need to do
to sell milk as organic in every state. So now big dairy
farms are churning out organic milk to be shipped out
across the nation.


Leslie Zuck is director of Pennsylvania Certified Organic,
one of the certifiers for the USDA. Zuck says the national
program has some problems. The standards aren’t always
specific, so it can be difficult for certifiers and farmers
to know if they’re doing the right things. For instance,
one big concern is how long dairy cows get to be out on grass:


“You go out there and you say, we don’t think enough
pasture, and they say how much is enough and we say, well, we don’t really know but we don’t think you have
enough.”


Since some rules are a little fuzzy, some certifiers are more
lenient than others:


“Some certifiers have interpreted that part of the regulation as
not really requiring that cows have pasture all the time, and that they don’t
really have to have a lot of grass to eat, they just have to be out there walking around few hours a day.”


Zuck says some dairy producers find out which agencies will
interpret the standards the way the farmers want, and hire
those certifiers:


Barbara Robinson: “Well, that shouldn’t be the case.”


Barbara Robinson is USDA administrator of the National
Organic Program.


“Certifying agents should all be applying rules in the same
way.”


Robinson concedes many issues, such as the required amount
of pasture, need to be clarified in the national rules.
Some environmentalists were appalled that a large dairy
producer in Colorado was certified organic. Aurora Farms
confined its cows indoors for nine months out of the year.
Robinson says the USDA considered revoking the company’s
certification, but instead signed an agreement – and she says Aurora
Farms has been improving its practices:


“I don’t have any problems telling consumers who go into
retail market and purchase organic milk at Wal-Mart that
they are purchasing properly labeled certified organic
milk. They can feel comfortable with that.”


And Wal-Mart and Target are exactly the kinds of retailers
that Aurora Farms supplies with its organic milk.


Meantime, the people who buy that milk say they expect the
government to make sure the dairies are living up to the
national standards. Especially since customers like Kara
Skora have to sacrifice so much to pay the higher prices of
milk with an organic label.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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New Lead Paint Rehab Rules Coming Soon

The Environmental Protection Agency is drafting a rule that would require contractors to be certified before working on projects that involve lead-based paint. It’s part of a larger push to eliminate childhood lead poisoning as a major health concern. The GLRC’s Christina Shockley reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency is drafting a rule that would
require contractors to be certified before working on projects that involve
lead-based paint. It’s part of a larger push to eliminate childhood lead
poisoning as a major health concern. The GLRC’s Christina Shockley
reports:


Under the rule, contractors would have to take training courses, and get
formal certifications, before being allowed to work on projects that could
disrupt lead-based paint. It would apply to work done in homes built
before 1978, where a child under the age of six resides.


Ben Calo is the president of a lead-abatement company in southeast
Michigan. He says the measure would be a hassle for contractors… but it’s a
good idea for homeowners.


“They know that there’s something wrong with lead, but they trust that
the contractor that comes in is going to take all the proper precautions.
I’m not saying that they’re not good contractors, it’s just that if you’re not
required to do this, you don’t do it.”


The EPA says the rule would add about 500-dollars to the cost of large
renovation projects involving lead-based paint.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley

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Companies Push for Forest Certification

  • Magazine publishers and other companies are thinking ahead and getting their paper from forests that have been certified. But what does this really mean? (Photo by Stanley Elliott)

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousands of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousand of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


It’s lunchtime and employees on break from Compuware in downtown Detroit are browisng through the magazine racks at Borders. Melody Kranz says she reads three different magazines every month. She says she is an avid recycler and an impassioned environmentalist, but never considered what kind of paper was going into her magazines.


“I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it, I just haven’t. I will now. Because I’m a gardening nut, I love to garden. So yeah, I just never really thought about it.”


But executive David Refkin is betting that Franz and others like her would think twice before picking up Time Magazine if they thought a forest was demolished to make the paper. Refkin is the Director of Sustainable Development for Time Incorporated. He says he’s noticed a strong surge in environmental awareness over the past two or three years.


“We don’t want people looking at a magazine and feeling guilty that a stream has been damaged and the fish are dying in there, or that habitats aren’t being protected because people are practicing bad forestry practices.”


Refkin says his company wants to take action now, before consumer groups decide to boycott its magazines over ecological issues. Time uses more coated paper for its publications than any other company in the U.S. The company is asking that 80 percent of all paper products Time buys be certified by 2006.


To the average consumer, that may not seem like big news. But for paper producers and foresters, it’s earth shattering. Larry Pedersen is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Pedersen says getting certified means years of work for state employees. The government has to prove to investigators that its management standards take into account issues such as biodiversity, water quality, soil erosion and wildlife habitat. Pedersen says the state is also required to provide records for each tree from the moments it’s planted or inventoried to the time it’s cut down and then made into planks or paper. But he says it’s worth the effort.


“A number of wood and paper-using companies brought it to our attention that they needed to have certified products because their consumers were demanding those. And with us having four-million acres of state forestlands, we saw the writing on the wall that we needed to jump on this.”


State forests in the region generate a lot of revenue. Wisconsin’s forests earn two and a half million dollars from timber sales and Ohio pulls in almost three million. Michigan’s forests bring in 30 million dollars annually. Earlier this year, Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that all state forests will be certified by January 1st of 2006. And the Great Lakes State is not alone… New York, Wisconsin, and Maine are also pursuing certification and Ohio and other states are considering it.


Andrew Shalit, with the environmental activist group Ecopledge, says he’s glad Time Warner is encouraging paper companies and state governments to get certified. But he says that doesn’t necessarily mean the paper is produced in an environmentally friendly way.


“It’s great to say that they’re going to get all of their paper from certified forests. The question is, who is certifying? And in the case of Time Warner, a lot of the forests are certified by a group called SFI, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and their standards are so weak as to be almost meaningless.”


There’s a heated debate over just what certification means. There are currently two groups that certify forests in the U.S. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, was originally founded by the timber industry but is now an independent body. The Forest Stewardship council, or FSC, came out of the environmental movement… or more specifically, out of the effort to protect South American rainforests. Shalit says he doesn’t think SFI certification is as rigorous or as comprehensive as FSC.


“It really is a problem for the consumer because you see something in the store and it has a little green label on it with a picture of a tree and it says sustainably certified, and you think you’re buying something good. It’s hard for the individual consumer to keep up with that.”


Shalit says several states, like Michigan, have solved the dilemma of rival certification programs by getting dual certification. he says although the system has flaws, it will improve if consumers demand more stringent forestry regulations.


Executives at Time Warner hope they can avoid boycotts and pickets by taking action preemptively. The company is leading the push for forest certification in the U.S., and environmentalists say the federal government may have to bow to pressure eventually and get the national forests certified as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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