via One Good Move.

Pretty alarming (though not completely surprising) article on Medical News Today regarding cell phone usage.

Lloyd Morgan, lead author and member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society says, “Exposure to cellphone radiation is the largest human health experiment ever undertaken, without informed consent, and has some 4 billion participants enrolled. Science has shown increased risk of brain tumors from use of cellphones, as well as increased risk of eye cancer, salivary gland tumors, testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia. The public must be informed.”

I would recommend highly getting that phone out of your pocket all day long and limiting time on the phone as well as using some type of headset or earbuds to get the actual device away from your brain.

Or just go all the way and get a pocket full of quarters and start remembering peoples phone numbers again like in the good old 20th century.

+++UPDATE+++

Here’s a link to the Environmental Working Group’s list and ratings for radiation associated with using various cell phones. Looks like the iPhone 3G I use is pretty high on this list. Might have to look into downgrading back to a Motorola Razr which is less convenient for email and gps maps, but will be less likely to give me testicular or eyeball cancer, which I could do without. o_o

Really interesting film coming shortly from Lauren Greenfield exploring the culture of wealth and excess and it affect on children. The film focuses specifically on LA. Put out by Wholphin.

So last year saw the release of FLOW about water rights and the developing world, and this year we’ll see the release of Tapped, which it seems will deal more with bottled water and it’s industry and issues.

Also Good this issue is all about water. Some great resources and tips here.

Beautiful and disturbing photography of the evidence of our pollution from around the world here.

I grew up in the mountains, and spent a lot of time alone in the forest. As a result, I suspect, I have always been keenly aware of trees, and always had an awe-struck respect for them. I find few things more emotionally effecting than, on my frequent train trips to Vancouver, the fields of incredible numbers of felled trees at the various logging operations along the train line. I can only hope that the logging in question is FSC certified, but even if so, it would be of little consolation. And regardless, there is something so shocking and disrespectful to me in the act of cutting down a tree that even the seemingly responsible stewardship of some organizations appears inconsequential.

To kill a being which might well have been alive for many hundreds of years, or as in many cases of the logging industry’s past: trees of many thousands of years in age . . . to kill these beings is to me indicative of the near-zero reverence many humans give to nature, akin to the massacre of countless bison on this continent in the early-to-mid 1800s.

(above: 19 men on a tree stump, and two men standing with a mountain of bison skulls.)

Somehow though, cutting down trees seems more perverse than killing animals or even humans (as the early settlers of Australia would hunt Aboriginals for sport (I’ll spare you those images)). Perhaps this perversion i interpret is because of how fundamental trees are to the life sustaining powers of the earth. It is nearly literally as if we chose in our early industrial history to slowly cut out our lungs, using the material to house and heat ourselves. Surely trees were unmatched as a cheap, readily available resource for powering trains, and building furniture, as well as houses, and indeed: whole cities even into the early 20th century. Cheap, and perhaps only considered a unchecked resource, because of an economy which systematically devalues nature. I wonder sometimes if our growth and advances were truly worth the losses.

Incidentally, concern for the loss of trees / nature to industry is no new idea, as the following quote illustrates:

One thing is sure, the Earth is now more cultivated and developed than ever before. There is more farming with pure force, swamps are drying up, and cities are springing up on an unprecedented scale.  We’ve become a burden to our planet. Resources are becoming scarce, and soon nature will no longer be able to satisfy our needs.

—Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, Roman Theologian. 200 B.C.E

Concurrent with Tertullianus’ writing, 2 centuries before the birth of Christ, fig trees in the the land now called Israel were planted. Some of these trees still exist, and under some, we can still sit. From some of these trees, we can still gather fruit. These trees are treasures, a part of our cultural and environmental heritage, and reminders of the scales on which the Earth reckons time. This is all the more amazing considering that merely 10% of the forests and trees now present on our planet are of this ‘old growth,’ as we call it. Which is a shame, especially because they are now understood to capture carbon from our atmosphere at a much greater rate than any newer forests. (It is believed that the old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. of A and in Russia account for up to 20% of the total global carbon sequestration.)

Obviously the early loggers in our country didn’t realize the extent of the damage they were causing to the planet, they lacked the ecological framework by which to understand their actions. But it’s hard to forgive them their ignorance. And I readily admit an element of hypocrisy in my derision of the early zealousness of the industry, as an artist and musician, woods are one of the most delightful, beautiful materials to use. It is only with a bitter sweetness that i enjoy my many guitars and piano. At times the experience borders on shame, in fact.

Still, it certainly seems at present that better choices can be made for a good many of our uses for wood, as an industrial material. And while it at least can be said that using trees for art is a semi-noble pursuit, rather than burning it as fuel and for heat, it is a shallow excuse at best.

Read more »

An article in Business Week caught my attention recently, one on ‘The Girl Effect.’

First a bit on the concept: the phrase is one of practical wisdom well known by many on the outer edges of economics, social sciences, and human rights movements, but it has been recently codified, organized, and brought to the the mainstream of the business world by, of all groups: Nike.

A lot of ill can be said of Nike, in both their business practices and their human rights effects, but a lot of good can be said of their efforts in sustainable design as well, and so too of this: their efforts with the Girl Effect. (The company would seem to be one of deep ambivalence about it’s place in the global community. But i would argue that that’s better than the alternative of completely disregarding the good that the company can do, as so many do.)

A video from the organization, explaining the concept:

And an excerpt rom the article:

There are 600 million adolescent girls in developing countries, but they are largely invisible to the world at large. Included among them are girls affected by armed conflict, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, sex trafficking, and internal displacement, as well as girls in child-headed households or locked in early marriages. To ignore them is to miss the “girl effect,” which could be an unexpected answer to the global economic crisis.

Consider the situation in Kenya. Some 1.6 million girls there drop out of high school every year. If they finished their secondary education, they would make 30% more money and contribute $3.2 billion more to the Kenyan economy every year. Instead, many take their place among Kenya’s 204,000 adolescent mothers and cost the economy $500 million a year.

[ . . . ]

In Ethiopia, if you are a 15-year-old girl, you have a 43% likelihood of being already married. A pilot program run by the Population Council gave families a $25 goat as an incentive to allow their daughters to go to school instead. Within two years, some 11,000 girls, or 97% of the participants, had stayed in school, gained confidence, and delayed marriage and childbirth.

The article mentions another organization, BRAC (an NGO founded in Bangladesh in 1972), a group offering, among other things, micro-finance opportunities for us in the affluent west, to support our friends in the south. Remember that estimates (by the likes of Ashraf Ghani) are that 1 dollar invested in the ‘developing world,’ can be roughly equal to 20 dollars of ‘foreign aid.’ That is, with a minimal investment, each of us, can have a major impact.

Back at the Girl Effect website, they have a 72 page PDF you can download, for more information.

(and John Podesta, but watching his part is not so necessary, nowhere near as focused, and i dare say, less interesting.)

A Green World is a Safer One from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Now, this is a recording of a museum lecture, which means (for those of you who have never been to one) there’s about 10 minutes of introduction and thank you’s to supporting organizations, et cetera, ad nauseum. Just skip ahead. Also, it is a longish talk (Ed’s part is about 35 minutes long).

and dont’ worry worry less about the packaging.

Two relatively new drink packaging ideas worth thinking about:

First, paper bottles, by the multi-national design firm BrandImage.

As far as my research has led, this is not being used in the production of any beverages as yet, but did win an IDEA (International Design Excellence Award). Questions of practicality abound on the web with issues of coatings / linings, compostability, durability, taste effects, et cetera being argued, and with nary and answer in sight from BrandImage or anybody else. Still, an interesting concept to be sure, and something i’d be willing to try out.

For another take on eco-friendly beverage packaging, we turn to Tetra Pak, the 50 year old Swedish company who semi-recently recreated itself as an environmentally sound business. While their packages have always been unusual, they now claim to be 100% recyclable, though with packaging made from layers of plastics, foil and paper, it’s hard to imagine how easy to recycle the material can be.

In any case, the wine maker French Rabbit uses the Tetra Prisma packaging for their product, to reduce shipping weight (and thus, C0₂ emissions).

The packaging has it’s problems, of course, but again, it’s a good direction.