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PVC gets animated

Sam SudsAs part of their campaign against PVC – polyvinyl chloride – the Center for Health and Environmental Justice has an animated awareness video featuring Sam Suds – a private detective/bar of soap whose mission is to keep toxins out of the Johnson household. The message of the video is loud an clear: PVC is bad, it’s all around you, but it’s easy to spot – just look for the 3 or the V.

The Center for Health and Environmental Justice has called on big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target to phase out PVC sales within their stores. According to a recent CHEJ press release as a result of their efforts, “Wal-Mart has already begun to phase out PVC in packaging and children’s lunchboxes. Last October, in response to health and environmental concerns, Wal-Mart announced plans to phase out PVC plastic in private label packaging over the next 2 years.”

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Christmas Cards – what cost to the environment?

It’s traditional for businesses to say thank you to their customers at Christmas time. Thousands of cards are printed, hours are spent signing them, and then there’s the last minute rush to get them all posted before it’s too late. The financial implications of sending thousands of Christmas cards are expected and planned for, but how many businesses consider the cost to the environment?

The thousands of cards that businesses send their clients each year require a lot of paper to make, and only very few greetings card manufacturers are using recycled paper for their cards. It would be fair to say that recycled paper is not a big focus in the greetings card industry. One tree needs to be chopped down for every 3000 Christmas cards, and in the UK alone, around 1 billion Christmas cards will be sent this year [source: Defra]. That’s over 300,000 trees.

The process of making greetings cards can often include further environmentally damaging processes, such as toxic printer inks and fixing agents. Then there’s disposal of the vast quantities of cards, many of which will end up in landfill. And the carbon emissions created by transporting the cards all over the country are substantial too.

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Eco speak: An interview with Anne Summers

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For Anne Summers, going green started with the purchase of a set of Eco Balls and the delivery of some council recycling bins. Before she knew it, she’d accidentally started an online shop selling all those hard to find supplies for making your own, simple cleaning products that are kinder to the environment.

Anne launched Summer Naturals in April this year, stocking essential oils, white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda (in larger sizes than are easily available elsewhere), and lots more besides.

We asked Anne about her journey to becoming environmentally aware, and for her top cleaning recipes and tips.

Eco Street: I’m intrigued, how did the purchase of a set of Eco Balls lead to you changing the way you live?

Anne Summers: My very first step towards adopting a greener lifestyle came after I found a forum on the internet, the ladies on there were chatting about an holistic lifestyle. I didn’t know what holistic meant and I wasn’t prepared to admit my ignorance, but I was intrigued by their attitudes. What appealed to me most was that the discussions were rekindling memories of my childhood and how I was raised; it was all about natural lifestyles. My very first eco-purchase was a set of Eco Balls. I admit to buying them for economic reasons, I’d still not fully grasped the environmental thing. We were then delivered recycling bins; I’d read many discussions about recycling and was eager to participate. I now moan at my local council to improve their recycle facilities, recycling is such a rewarding thing to do. I then moved on to wanting to know how to make my own household cleaners, and decided to remove all chemicals from my home.

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Veg Box Schemes

This is the time of the year when the allotment produce wanes and I look elsewhere to make up the difference between what we need to eat and what I’m able to grow. I’m not the only one in this… Read More »Veg Box Schemes

Top 100 eco-heroes

The Environment Agency have published a list of the “Top 100 eco-heroes” as voted by their peers.

“…some of these people aren’t nearly as well-recognised for their contribution to our planet’s welfare as they should be. We hope this poll will go some way towards putting that right.”
Mark Funnell, Environment Agency

Here are the Top 10:

(1) Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964)
Ian Christie, a New Economics Foundation associate, said: “The transition, from seeing the natural world as a mine, dump or playground, to seeing ‘the environment’ as the system in which we are embedded and that sustains us only as long as we respect its boundaries and rhythms, was to a large extent triggered by Silent Spring.”

“Her message was .. a call for humility in applying our ingenuity to nature, for ‘prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life’, and for ‘full possession of the facts’ to enable open and honest debate about our technological impacts on the Earth.”

(2) E. F. (Fritz) Schumacher (1911– 1977)
“(Schumacher) revolutionised the way we look at economics and provided insights – notably in his 1973 book Small is Beautiful – that have made a genuinely green economics possible. The book, subtitled Economics as if people mattered, sidestepped the main issue of environmental economics – how to price the environment properly in the economic system – and questioned whether the objectives of western economics were realistic or desirable,” said New Economics Foundation associate David Boyle.

Small is Beautiful is among the Times Literary Supplement’s 100 most influential books since the war.

(3) Jonathon Porritt
Educated at Eton and Oxford, Porritt started out as a barrister before switching career paths to teach in an inner London school, before eventually becoming an Ecology Party (now the Greens) activist in the 1970s and was later the party’s chairman. He gave up teaching in 1984 to become director of Friends of the Earth. In 1996 he co-founded the Forum for the Future.

A director of Friends of the Earth and appointed by Tony Blair as chairman of the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission, Porritt’s latest book Capitalism As If The World Matters, argues that capitalism is the only economic game in town, and says the green movement must forge an “evolved, intelligent and elegant” form of capitalism with sustainability at its heart.Read More »Top 100 eco-heroes