modern life vs. human nature

As part of my research into sustainable business practices I came across PLA when trying to find an eco friendly sticker for promotion; yes, like the stickers people put on cars, bikes, skateboards etc. I don’t pretend that the following information is at all entertaining so beware. In consideration of this I would like to add a provocative statement beforehand; the best environmentalist is a dead environmentalist. Think about it.

Plus I came across a great quote that more eco critics should recite every night before they go to bed.

“Let’s not kill the good in pursuit of the perfect” -Eric Lombardi, Pres., Grassroots Recycling Network

So now onto plastic made from corn.

This article explains why PLA(corn based plastic) just may be better than oil based plastics.

Smithsonian.com

Here are a few key aspects of the story:

PLA is biodegradable. Plastic is not.

Supposedly they say no one has gone to war over corn. But no one asked the Native Americans is this statement was true.

According to Natureworks(ie. Cargill who worked with Dupont on PLA) who is the maker of PLA, producing PLA uses 65 percent less energy than producing conventional plastics, according to an independent analysis commissioned by NatureWorks. It also generates 68 percent fewer greenhouse gases, and contains no toxins. Considering Cargill is a multi-national corporation I would consider this information approximately half true because as we know corporations regularly use half truths to promote their product.

PLA is said to decompose into carbon dioxide and water in a “controlled composting environment” in fewer than 90 days. Controlled seems to mean really high heating temperatures that are not always available at recycling facilities.

But the manufacture of PLA does save oil and generates far less air pollution. As the article notes, a number of independent analysts believe that PLA is a good start to solving our oil dependency problem. Using less plastic is also a way to help.

In the most absurd ruling I have ever heard of in the US, 5 Republican appointed chief justices ruled that corporations could spend without limit to sway voters in federal elections. The court essentially said that corporations have the same rights as individuals to free speech.

As someone who owns a corporation I know that corporations are like individuals without bodies or morals; sort of like zombies that anyone can control. If a corporation slanders someone you cannot put the corporation in jail. You can sue the corporation but bankruptcy is an easy out if that corporation doesn’t happen to have the funds to bankroll a lawsuit. Chances are that a corporation backing a particular candidate would have a lot of money. Plus, corporations were originally created to avoid personal responsibility(lawsuits) and personal taxation.  In the simplest of comparisons if a human came over to your house and pissed on your lawn you could

1)kick his ass

2)call the police and have him arrested

3)charge him with somekind of trespass and destruction of property and

4) tell everyone you know and have them ostracized in the community.

What if a Coca Cola truck dumped 100 gallons of Coke on your lawn..killing all of your grass what are you going to do? Call the police? Sure, but they wouldn’t know what to do and would most likely say call Coke. You would have to call Coke and talk to their customer service department. Then you would have to call a lawyer and pay a heap of money to sue Coke if your grass died. After dropping $5000 on a retainer for a lawyer, that lawyer would then tell you that it wasn’t worth your time…”go buy new grass”. How about them apples? Satisfying isn’t it. Now extrapolate that to every political view you have ever held and throw them all out the window onto your dead grass, shut your mouth and go to Walmart and buy new grass.

But seriously, I don’t even think I need to make an argument why this is such a terrible idea for a democracy. But here’s an example. If I owned an oil company and I wanted to make huge profits and destroy the environment without having to deal with things like laws, and pollution I would just find a candidate that agrees or is too stupid to understand anything..let’s say Sarah Palin. Not that she is stupid or doesn’t understand much but she just makes a good example here. So me, as a big oil guy wants less environmental restrictions, less education on the pollution caused by oil and less competition from alternative sources of energy. I can now have a discreet conversation with Sarah and let her know that my corporation will put together a multi-million dollar ad campaign that will promote her if “wink-wink nudge-nudge” she does what I want, therefore saving her campaign money to spend on other things. As a bonus, I would even throw in ads to say the other candidate is a “bad man, that hasn’t done anything for the country” but not in so many words that I could get sued…because I would pay for a good ad agency that could put depressing music and poor, starving, helpless americans in the advertising. Or..even better… let’s say I was an owner of health insurance company. Think about it. Getting a healthcare bill in America is already seemingly impossible but add a few billion dollars in corporate advertising blaring at people everyday and consider the healthcare debate over. No politician will ever be able to take on a big evil corporation again without fear of never ever being elected again.

So ultimately this means that elections will be won and lost by powerful corporations whose primary reason for being is profit. Does that sound like a good place to live? Does that sound like individual freedom? Hopefully this decision is overturned somewhere and somehow but it seems like just another step toward a sort of capitalist takeover of the largest democracy in the world.

Good bye America. It’s been nice knowing you.

This is going to start happening more often as the bigger companies try to add less toxic materials to their supply chains. There are always going to be cheaters on the supply side because there are always greedy, careless business owners. However, H&M admitted the mistakes and are trying to correct them. Am I letting them off the hook? Not really. But I’m not going to trash them today.  You can read the full story at treehugger.com.

It is interesting to note that third party certification agencies EcoCert and Control Union were fined. Why is this interesting? I’m not sure because I just realized I won’t remember these names come purchase time anyway..or will I?

Oh and I chose this picture because India is the largest producer of organic cotton.

Enjoy.

Before I begin I would just like to say that I don’t like eating. I would rather be doing something else; biking, swimming, playing sports or even working on a project. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be fat. Maybe it’s because my Mom would force me to eat canned peas when I was young or maybe I’m missing something very important in my life..such as a cook.

However, when I do eat 75% of the time I want it to be healthy, nutritional food because I understand that good food means energy to do the things I like to do. Accordingly, I like to know what I’m eating  and if it’s crap I want to know.

So I recently watched a documentary about Monsanto. If you don’t know this company, it is a bio-tech company that now makes seeds; mainly corn and soya beans. Yes, they make genetically modified and patented seeds. Cool technology. In the past they have produced “agent orange”(think millions poisoned in Vietnam), bovine growth hormone(banned in Canada and Europe) and now genetically modified organisms(GMOs).  So although the first two items might be a little on the “holy crap, that’s some evil stuff” they seem to be working toward a nicer, gentler albeit genetically enhanced future.

Oh I forgot to mention that Monsanto has created some of the world’s most famous food chemicals including aspartame; a yummy, sweetener that causes cancer and is found in all gum and most carbonated beverages.  But I wrote about aspartame earlier so let’s move along to these franken-seeds. The patent part was the real kicker. It’s a savvy business strategy whereby Monsanto creates genetically modified seeds that are immune to it’s own weed killing pesticide so that the farmer can grow more crops with less labour. By spraying on the pesticide the farmers don’t have to hire weed pickers and therefore save money. The unfortunate part of the tale is that the pesticide contaminates everything but the genetically modified crops(or so they say). The really smart part is that Monsanto charges farmers a royalty on all crops that use GMO seeds. The crazy smart part is that when the GMO seeds mysteriously show up in farmers crops who don’t buy Monsanto’s gmo seeds they can can still charge the farmers a royalty; because Monsanto owns the patent on the seed and therefore the plant. Now , the insanely ingenius part is that through natural pollination the gmo seeds creep into other crops anyway so the farmers don’t really have a choice. So when the farmers use the Monsanto pesticide to kill the weeds it kills all the other non-gmo seed and plants as well because only the Monsanto seed is engineered  to withstand the pesticide. If that isn’t the best strategy for domination of the global food chain I don’t what is. Move over McDonald’s your methane spewing, rainforest wrecking, steroid induced cow burgers have just slid down the scale of “world’s biggest super evil, greedy pig corporation”.

So what does this mean for you and me? Well, for me it means no more soy or corn unless it is from a non-gmo crop and more so that organic and local vegetables are the way to go…even if I have to eliminate strawberries in the winter.

Here’s the link from youtube.

enjoy!

Looks like a good party..oh, wait! They’re not throwing wine on each other!

Canadian politicians in Copenhagen were reportedly embarassed today because of a spoof press release that stated that the country’s governing party  would reduce emissions by 40% below 1990 levels. It makes their real plan look even worse now.

However, the general consensus among countries at the conference seems to be that Canada’s climate plan is a joke considering that the Tar Sands are rated as one of the planet’s worst areas of pollution.

For the entire story click here.

The issue I have with not putting together a practical emission plan for Canada is that it stands a chance of ruining Canada’s reputation around the world and forcing a seriously negative stigma on average Canadians who don’t make money from the Tar Sands and pay taxes to subsidize it. Now we will potentially be caused greater harm than just the destruction of the planet; destruction of our “nice” reputation by our Conservative government! I think it might be time to politely suggest we do something about it.  After all, who wants to tear off that Canadian flag on our backpacks when traveling in Europe.

Enjoy!

I am going to define a new category of people based on their lifestyles and perceptions (a psychographic class as they would call it in marketing speak) considering the new economy that is facing us and our old habits of doing things. It is an entirely useless term but it may help those of us who are trying to find out where we do, or don’t, belong in today’s over -marketed, under-achieving, instantaneously ungratified society. Also these marketing classifications were created so that it would be easier to sell ourselves stuff.

I think that the group might grow quite quickly once people realize that a) your yuppy life is over or b) you killed your yuppy life because it was shallow and useless or c) you are depressed and wondering why you and your friends are boring turds with no hope for the future.

Quite simply MUC means middle-aged, urban and cynical. Welcome to it. The age group would be 30-40 or even 35-45 depending on how long you hang on either way. Once you fall into the MUC in the first few years it’s a little overwhelming but then you kind of ease into it after a awhile and then midway through you may even start to get wise and realize that life isn’t about your ex-girlfriend being a bitch or your ex-boyfriend being a total douchbag. But more about that later, we’re only at the beginning here..and the beginning is  guys “god damn it I’m tired today and I don’t feel like doing shit.” and girls, well for girls it’s more internal, they just kind of look at the world in a different way and say things like “you know, there’s a lot of strollers around this neighbourhood. It’s kind of depressing sometimes.”  Honestly, I have no idea what girls are thinking. Maybe I’ll start asking…

Anyway, consider the fact that you have a good education, understand in small various ways how the world works, live in the richest part of the world and that we are all going to die from catastrophic climate change so there is no hope..oh, and you will probably make less money in the next few years while everything gets more expensive..and you are there. Welcome to the MUC years!

Enjoy…or not.

Fossil Fuels could be the death of us all; no seriously oil and coal are great sources of energy and economy but the downside is a little phrase that goes something like “the death of humankind”. Not a fun topic to discuss but I see it as more of a challenge. After all, what other causes do we in North America have besides complaining about too many commercials on tv, stupid hollywood movies and mean baristas.
So our newest cause can be fixing the economy and greening the planet at the same time.  So here’s the deal with coal. China is now the biggest polluter in the world. They need a lot of coal to make all the crap that we buy.  That same coal is what is going to kill us. So the more cheap, useless….(I mean come on..how big does your tv need to be?)…useless crap we buy from china the more we destroy the planet. But in North America we have better environmental policies so that we don’t pollute as much when we make stuff; we use less coal for energy therefore less pollution. So it costs more to make stuff here because China does not have pollution laws like we do. If we make China play on the same field..level playing field that is..then we will have a more competitive economy.  Forget about the cheap labour part because the cost of oil to ship useles crap to us is soon going to offset that advantage.
So how do we do it. We impose a carbon tariff on polluting countries who want to import crap and/or stuff into our countries..and we take that tax and put it directly into renewable energy. Sounds simple now go out and vote that way. Make politicians put up a carbon tariff…for a our future… existence and economy.
Oh and we also have to put a carbon tax on domestic polluters as well…Fort Mc Murray!!
Enjoy!

I have spent the last few years researching and building eco friendly clothing for clients and have decided that it is time to launch a new line of clothing that is performance driven, stylish and eco friendly and/or sustainable.  The line will be called Modern Nature or actually Modernature.  I changed it to one word because ..well because I like the way it looks.

Unfortunately, it presents a somewhat perplexing problem for the attention deficit minds of modern consumers; myself included. Most people will assume that the company name is spelled Modern Nature and therefore google it that way. How do I get around this and bring traffic to my site? I am not completely sure but this last paragraph is part of a new ongoing experiment called embedding. If anyone has any advice on how to optimize my site for the eco world I am open to suggestion.

Otherwise, stay tuned to www.modernature.org and .ca and all other derivatives of this name to find the best in sustainable gear.

Enjoy!

The Canadian Competiton Bureau and the US Federal Trade Commission have both come out recently to stop clothing makers from labelling garments as made of bamboo that is “eco friendly” claiming that the fabric is rayon and the process of making rayon with bamboo in it is not only “not” eco-friendly but very toxic. The FTC recently charged 4 companies in the US with improper labeling and making false claims.

Bamboo is actually polyester(rayon) fibers with bits of mashed up bamboo pulp attached to the fibers.

I have put in links this time because this information is very important to consumers and clothing makers.

The FTC states the case quite clearly here.  The Canadian Competition Bureau states it..well..not so succinctly here.