Over the past few years fair trade products have expanded into many new markets. With this trend we inevitably have to reevaluate the micro and macro systems involved in producing and providing fair trade products.

There is a rather large difference between fair trade products and fair trade companies, says Mary Morison, executive director of the Fair Trade Resource Network. Large corporations that sell or promote individual products are likely to have a weaker effect on their overseas labor practice or at least are not dedicated to effecting reform. “Large companies are counting on consumers to make the leap so they look good and can access a particular market segment they’ve been unsuccessful in reaching,” she says. On the positive end, by providing fair trade options in big box stores, more people have access to making responsible decisions and voting with their dollars.

While some debate that big can also be fair, others work hard to keep fair trade small and protect the purity of fair trade programs. Some support the efforts of McDonald’s, for example, which purchase coffee from the fair trade company Green Mountain Roasting Company. This type of opportunity sustains the jobs and wages of those who grow the coffee. On the other hand, some say it dilutes the standards and morals of the movement.

This debate on how far to go with sustainable and healthy products and services is the topic of the decade. Do we go big with organics? Are we willing to sacrifice the intensity of the source to make the product/service accessible to more consumers who could benefit from healthier food?

When I think about fair trade, I think of model companies such as Equal Exchange that goes above and beyond the fair trade model. Since 1986, the company imports organic coffee, tea, sugar, cocoa, and chocolate bars. With all their ingredients grown on democratically run farmer co-ops in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, Equal Exchange is able to play a large role in building democracy in these areas. They are equally passionate about building a fair and responsible work environment as they are supplying great coffee and chocolate to American consumers. “We want more profound transformations than just a kinder, gentler version of the status quo,” says Rodney North, spokesperson for Equal Exchange. “Fair trade’s historic focus has been on bottom-up economic development.”

Rodney North of Equal Exchange also argues that the “entrée of multinational corporations threatens the original goal of the fair trade movement, which was to build an alternative approach to international trade that addresses the endemic poverty, economic vulnerability, and isolation for the millions of small scale farmers who grow most of the world’s tropical agricultural commodities”.

It is hard to say what is good or bad. If we keep in mind that in supporting fair trade practices we are respecting our food and thus respecting all of those involved who bring it to us. This movement is meant to allow consumers to simply and consciously vote with their dollars, and provide fair opportunities worldwide. With this in mind, and we can help to keep the potency of the movement strong.

The majority of these quotes were taken from the Utne Reader’s Fair Trade Tradeoffs

This November 7-9, Chicago will host the largest GreenBuild Expo in history. Put on by the USGBC (United States Green Building Council), this year over 18,000 attendees will gather to learn about the trends in green construction and get inspired about future projects. In a city aiming to be the greenest, this is a monumental event. On top of it all, GreenBuild will be held in one of Chicago’s LEED certified facilities, the McCormick Place West Building.

According to the USGBC, "Chicago mayor Richard Daley has pledged to make Chicago the most environmentally friendly city in the world. Building on its legacy as a center of American architecture, Chicago was one of the first cities to adopt LEED. Today it has the most LEED projects of any city in the world."

Included in the Expo is an international conference with headlining speakers such as Paul Hawken (author), Sadhu Johnston (Chicago Commissioner of the Department of Environment),  Thom Mayne (Founder and Principal of Morphosis), Maria Atkinson (Global Head of Sustainability at Lend Lease), and former US President Bill Clinton. USGBC President and CEO Rick Fedrizzi on is especially excited about Clinton’s planned appearance:

"This is an unprecedented opportunity for our green building community to hear from one of the greatest philanthropic and environmental leaders of this century. The William J. Clinton Foundation is facilitating a series of global action plans that are addressing some of the most intractable problems of our times — AIDS, economic sustainability as a way to eradicate poverty, the elimination of childhood obesity. His framework has shown the power that groups of individuals have to effect real change."

"Reducing the C02 emissions that lead to climate change is another key area of focus, and it’s being addressed by the Clinton Climate Initiative, with green building as a cornerstone of that effort,” Fedrizzi noted. “We are making a difference, and President Clinton’s unique ability to inspire individual action will add incredible momentum to this important work."

The event has a full schedule of networking and educational opportunities. Whether you are a homeowner, a builder, designer, architect, engineer, and, heck, even a programmer or a banker, there is something applicable to everyone’s life. With over 850 exhibit booths displaying the newest products and technologies, the expo itself will be an educational and eye opening experience. If you leave thinking, "I still can’t do it," then you didn’t pick up enough tools while in attendance.

Who ever thought that asking your neighbor for sugar could carry more connotations than that of baking necessities? Well, Sony is working on a product that will make your neighbor think twice about your consumptive demands.

Sony recently announced their current activity in developing a new bio-battery. The battery generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. The sample battery has proven to be able to output 50 mW, or enough to power a portable mp3 player. This is the world’s highest yet for a passive-type bio battery.

According to the Sony Press Release:

Sony developed a system of breaking down sugar to generate electricity that involves efficiently immobilizing enzymes and the mediator (electronic conduction materials) while retaining the activity of the enzymes at the anode. Sony also developed a new cathode structure which efficiently supplies oxygen to the electrode while ensuring that the appropriate water content is maintained. Optimizing the electrolyte for these two technologies has enabled these power output levels to be reached.

The newly developed bio battery incorporates an anode consisting of sugar-digesting enzymes and mediator, and a cathode comprising oxygen-reducing enzymes and mediator, either side of a cellophane separator. The anode extracts electrons and hydrogen ions from the sugar (glucose) through enzymatic oxidation as follows:
Glucose -> Gluconolactone + 2 H+ + 2 e-
The hydrogen ion migrates to the cathode through the separator. Once at the cathode, the hydrogen ions and electrons absorb oxygen from the air to produce water:
(1/2) O2 + 2 H+ + 2 e- -> H2O
Through this process of electrochemical reaction, the electrons pass through the outer circuit to generate electricity.

Since the battery does not require the user to do any mixing or formulating, the process is quite simple and it requires very little of the owner. But, each cm2 can only produce 1.5 mW in the first minute, so the battery has to be quite large. The current dimensions are 39×39x39mm- I don’t know how portable and functional it makes this object, but it is a step in an interesting direction.

The most applicable situation I see for this technology is for remote electrical generation necessities (which puts an interesting spin on neighborly sugar supply). For locations or trips that could not benefit from portable solar panels, sugar is a new alternative. As the design progresses and the technology is tuned, I am sure they will be able to come up with something on a more practical and portable scale.

Again, the question arises about genetically modified sugar due to increased demand of the material. Will we begin manufacturing it in the lab and what will this do to the sugar farmers across the world? These questions are always something to consider with the development of any technology using a finite, consumable resource.

It is although fun to imagine one day giving your cell phone a shot of liquid sugar when it starts beeping with low battery indication… Instead of cords, we will have IVs of liquid sugar lying about our apartment floor with a portal into our computer, our radio, our coffee maker…interesting.

Ever since the French monk Dom Perignon searched for the perfect closure for his new sparking wine in the early 16oos, the cork stopper has been a cultural staple that is synonymous with the celebration of opening a new bottle of wine. Since the new millennium, worldwide wine production has become a larger and more popular industry. New wine producing regions are moving towards alternative wine closures, therefore putting the entire cork industry at great risk. Can anyone remember why we started putting plastic, rubber, and foam “corks” into our wine bottles? I was always told one of two things: a more controlled (more synthetic) material allows for more stringent product, and that cork was scarce so we don’t want to destroy the cork forests. The former is a problem that has since been solved, and the later is hardly the case. Cork is a naturally sustainable material and therefore commercialization of it is easy on nature- not a single tree has to be cut down.

Cork, as we know it, comes from the outer cell layer of the bark on cork oak trees (Quercus Suber). The stopper layer is easily separated from the mother cells when the connecting layer (phelogen) becomes brittle. Once the bark (cork) is stripped off the tree in the late string and early summer, it renews itself naturally. An added bonus: each time cork is harvested, the tree stores more CO2 as a result of regenerating. It is reported that the tree stores 3-5 times more CO2 when harvested regularly.
The cork industry has found its home for centuries in the Mediterranean. Portugal has the world’s largest cork industry, yet it is an important forest crop to Italy, Spain, Algeria, France, Tunisia, and Morocco. The forests cover nearly 2.7 million hectares in total, and produce over 15 billion cork stoppers.

What’s the news? Due to “cork” alternatives, the cork industry is losing its intrigue as a cultural staple for wine bottle closures. The World Wide Fund reports that cork sales in the wine industry fell 20% between 2000 and 2005. Portugal has reported a severe drop in cork stoppers exported to Australia and the U.S. “New consumer trends and winemaking techniques, as well as more competitive markets, have led producers to look for more technical or cheaper closures – plastic ‘corks’ and metal screw tops”. Despite the optimal performance of cork as a stopper material- high elasticity, natural insulatinsulating qualities, light weight, and durability - the plastic and metal screw tops are becoming more accepted as standard wine closures to us consumers.

This increase in market share is leading to a decline in the global cork market, and thus degradation of cork oak forests that have (and could for years to come) provided one of the most diverse ecosystems and community-based industries of the region. They report that this could potentially lead to a loss of 60,000 jobs, and thus could severely harm the biodiversity of the forests.

Although the market demand for cork is slowly shifting to flooring and wall coverings, wine stoppers still account for about 70% of the industry profits. Whatever the reason might be, there is a reason that we still call a cork a cork, synthetic or woody. "We’re fighting back,” says Antonio Amorim, third generation owner of one of Portugals largest wine stopper producers. "We may have lost market share in some places but we are gaining in others.” "The shares, which shot up 79 percent in the past two years, are set to rise more as he wins back customers by virtually eliminating cork taint," said analyst Sonia Baldeira.

To help: do your best to find wine bottles that sustain the true cork community’s integrity and unscrew the cork.

To see more intensive case studies and future scenarios, view this pdf file.

For more information:

Amorim Corkfacts

WWF: Changing Markets

Amorim Cork

Images source: Amorim Corkfacts

an organic farm

People used to say that the world would go hungry if farmed organically, but that has recently been proven to not be the case. Two studies recently conducted, one by the University of Michigan, and the other by the USDA, report that organic farming can yield more food than conventional farming, and sustain a healthier soil quality for annual food production. The benefits don’t stop there.

A University of Michigan study conducted by the School of Natural Resources and Environment was geared towards investigating the benefits of organic farming in developing countries. They found that the crop yields in developed countries are nearly the same on organic and conventional farms. In developing countries, although, by using organic farming methods they can double or triple their food production.

The researches defined the term organic as "sustainable practices that utilize non-synthetic nutrient cycling processes, exclude synthetic pesticides, and sustain and regenerate the soil quality." Their study set out to disprove two common objections to organic farming: lower yields and lack of organically acceptable nitrogen sources.

"Corporate interest in agriculture and the way agriculture research has been conducted in land grant institutions, with a lot of influence by the chemical companies and pesticide companies as well as fertilizer companies—all have been playing an important role in convincing the public that you need to have these inputs to produce food," says Ivette Perfecto, Professor at the University of Michigan and principal leader of the study.

What they found was that, contrary to conventional wisdom, organic farms could produce not only more food but do it on the existing land. This is due to the regenerative properties of the organic farming process and the natural organic fertilizers. The nitrogen levels in the soil aren’t an issue as long as the farmer rotates his/her crops and plants green manures between growing seasons. Green manures are cover crops that naturally fix nitrogen and other nutrients into the soil, and naturally replace the need for synthetic fertilizers.

“This is especially good news for developing countries, where it’s sometimes impossible to deliver food from outside, so farmers must supply their own. Yields in developing countries could increase dramatically by switching to organic farming," Perfecto said. Developing countries often don’t have access to expensive fertilizers and pesticides; therefore, organic farming is not only more economical, but simply a more viable, efficient, and accessible solution to sustain their communities with enough food. This research is to be greatly applauded because the pioneers of the organic food industry such as Aldo Leopold, Robert Rodale… are finally getting vindicated by university research. Organic farming keeps the land of developing countries healthy, the surrounding ecosystem clean, manages their food production waste, and not to mention provides more nutrient rich food to keep their people healthy.

Sustainable Food News

U.S. National Bird: image courtesy of Ackerlund's Guide ServiceYesterday, June 28, 2007 the Interior Department took the American Bald Eagle off the Endangered Species List. After 40 years of living threatened and lonely, the Center for Biological Diversity released a report stating that there are over 11,000 pairs in the contiguous U.S. This is a startling number when compared to the all-time low of only 417 pairs in the 60’s. This population's decimation was always said to be due to hunting, habitat destruction, and the use of DDT on our agricultural crops. For so many years it was an honor and a surprise to spot a Bald Eagle and know you were in the presence of such a survivor, but what will happen to their flourishing population when asked to remove their “Federally Protected Property” sign from their nest?

From an FWS press release June 28, 2007 Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne states:

After years of careful study, public comment and planning, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are confident in the future security of the American Bald Eagle," Kempthorne said. "From this point forward, we will work to ensure that the eagle never again needs the protection of the Endangered Species Act.

The good news is that earlier in June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service implemented the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and published a set of National Bald Eagle Management Guidelines. These rules protect the birds from developers who might be tempted to destroy their nests. Also, to stabilize this healthy, flourishing population, the Service is establishing a permit program that will allow a limited take of bald and golden eagles. This means we can still remove some from the wild by permit, but without permit we are prohibited to take, sell, kill, or harm eagles.

More good news is that we have a month to adjust to the fact that there are more Bald Eagles out there than most of us thought. The removal of the Bald Eagle from the list will be official thirty days after publication.

The original weakened population was due to widespread use of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), the first modern agricultural pesticide used widely after World War II. The eagles began laying eggs with weakened shells, which put a great stress on the population. When it finally reached the low point of 417 pair, protection was set in place in 1967. The Endangered Species Act followed, and was initiated in 1973, headlining the Bald Eagle as one of the first species.

The fact that the population has risen due to this protection is a national model for cooperation with environmental protection laws. Yet the question is, if we were doing so well, why stop protecting them? And, I hate to say it, but if we take them off the list and dilute the penalty, will the population continue to flourish? Certain states with a lower population are requesting to keep their state protected under the Endangered Species Act, but they have been denied thus far. Arizona governor Janet Napolitano requested their exemption, saying Arizona's native populations (which use eagle feathers for ceremonial purposes) were not adequately consulted. That request was denied, saying the region had "the appropriate number of eagles" and that Arizona's eagles did not meet the criteria to be protected as a distinct population segment.

What will happen? We will have to find out, but there is a way to communicate with the top dogs in charge. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is currently accepting public comments on this topic.
Comments on the monitoring plan must be received 90 days after publication in the Federal Register. Comments may be sent by mail to Bald Eagle Post-Delisting Monitoring Plan Comments, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Rock Island Field Office, 1511 47th Avenue, Moline, Illinois 61265. Comments may also be transmitted electronically to baldeaglePDM@fws.gov or by following the instructions at the Federal eRulemaking Portal: .

A little history on DDT, I thought you might like to know:

• In World War II it was used as a mosquito repellant the prevent the spreading of disease like malaria and typhus
• Paul Hermann Muller won the Nobel Prize in 1948 “for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against arthropods”.
• Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, which catalogued DDT as the most detrimental pesticide in terms on environmental impacts. Her
• Silent Spring let to a public outcry that eventually got DDT banned in the U.S.

See also:

Environmental Defense, "Eagle's Return Shows Species Law Works"

Devils Lake installation: image courtesy of Green Museum

There is a little family of asexual plants commonly known as duckweed, and otherwise known in the botanical world as lemnaceae. These smallest flowering plants are lean, lime-green, clean, eating machines. Lemna is the most common of this family, and has quite a profound impact for its size. Each plant has one paper thin leaf the size of the tip of an eraser. They thrive in freshwater lakes, streams, and ponds high in nitrogen, ammonias, and phosphorus. As they feed on these “excess nutrients” the tiny plants help remediate the water on which they live atop.

Though these lime-green plants are tiny, there is no need to call them fragile. They can grow in full sunshine or dense shade, and they endure a challenging range of ph levels. They hibernate during the cold months at the bottom of their watershed and, come May, the plant “springs” up and gets to work cleaning its ecosystem. This tiny plant has been known to cover bodies the size of football fields in just a couple months. It goes unsaid that these tiny soldiers are friend and not foe when it comes to water remediation.

When artist and engineer Viet Ngo established a company back in 1983 called Lemna International that applauds and utilizes the capabilities of these mini soldiers, we weren’t surprised. Ngo, a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant, and his colleagues got a little fame when they designed a carefully engineered art installation in 1990 on Devils Lake, ND. Funded by the EPA, they designed and implemented the beautiful 50 acre, 9 channel, intestine-like system that extracted all detrimental phosphorus, nitrogen, and algae from the wetland before the water reached a bay of Devils Lake. This $50 million project encouraged the group of designers, artists, and engineers to combine the profoundly simple yet complex water remediation technology with other environmental infrastructure problems to clean up the earth. Over 25 years later, the company is managing its success with innovation, consciousness, and integrity.

Lemna International designs environmentally responsible and economical wastewater treatment technologies that naturally clean our polluted waterways. They design for everything form dams to freshwater remediation to drinking water treatment plants, pipelines, and distribution systems. Based in Minneapolis, MN the company has designed and implemented over 300 projects in 16 countries.

The company does not stop at only providing us with clean water. They make sure our water stays clean by removing any harmful waste and either safely putting it in landfills built to international standards, or incinerating it to generate electricity and heat in facilities equipped with air pollution control systems. Their impressive profile of clients ranges from industrial food manufacturers and tire plants to hospitals. They additionally serve a number of cities worldwide.

As the company gained momentum with their patented water remediation technology, they have branched out into additional sectors of environmental infrastructure including transportation, alternative energy, and general infrastructure. Like the lean, lime-green, clean, machines that duckweed are, Lemna International is actively seeking to fix any environmental problem a private or public client might have with an ingenious and unique solution!