The greenwashing of toxic consumer products

Have you noticed over the last year how virtually every large corporation is trying to make consumers believe their products are "Earth friendly?" Everything from toxic cosmetics to smog-producing cars are now being positioned as "green" products, and just recently I actually saw a package of mercury-containing compact fluorescent lights with a marketing logo that claimed the product was, "Helping protect the planet!" I have yet to understand the logic of how buying and throwing away mercury-contaminated products has any real benefit to the planet.

Defenders of CFLs claim these lights are good for the environment because even though they contain toxic mercury, they use less energy than incandescent lights. And since coal-fired power plants release mercury into the atmosphere, the use of less energy means less overall mercury is being introduced to the environment. While this sounds sensible at first, it's still junk logic: How does harming the planet slightly less than before deserve a "green" claim of any kind? If I poke you with ten sharp sticks, and then reduce it to just five sharp sticks, I cannot claim that my actions are suddenly "good for your health!" It's still a harmful action with negative consequences.

Corporations, it seems, can claim that practically anything is eco-friendly or environmentally friendly, regardless of all the toxic chemicals it contains or produces. That's what this article is all about: "Greenwashing" or the practice of corporations claiming their products are green when, in reality, they're not at all impressive as eco-friendly products.

I recently saw paper plates positioned as "eco-friendly biodegradable tableware." I remember when we used to just call them "paper plates" and we avoided buying them because we wanted to save the trees. But today, paper plates are positioned as green living products. Fascinating how things shift so quickly, isn't it? (Click here to see my CounterThink Cartoon on this topic...)

Nowhere is greenwashing more overhyped than in the ethanol biofuels industry, where gullible consumers are being told that we can simply farm our way out of an oil crisis by -- get this -- converting most of our food into fuel! Ethanol from corn is so energy inefficient that it takes almost exactly one barrel of oil from somewhere else to farm, harvest, process and produce one barrel of oil equivalent energy from corn. In other words, it's just a massive U.S. energy shell game with absolutely no net gain in energy production, but a huge net loss in food production. Corn prices are already skyrocketing because of the ramp up in ethanol production from corn.

The only people promoting ethanol production from corn are corn farmers, politicians or complete idiots. Some people are all three.

But let's face it: Consumers like to buy products that they think are "green" in some way, even if the green-ness of those products is highly exaggerated or even entirely fictitious. Why? Because it removes their guilt for driving SUVs, eating meat products and spraying pesticides on their lawns. Somehow, buying a little corn ethanol and a few packages of paper plates puts it all back into balance for these people -- folks who live remarkably unsustainable lifestyles that would require five Earths to support if everyone lived that way. Simply eating meat products is so destructive to the environment that you could actually do more to reduce global warming by going vegetarian than by ditching your car.

Magically, the purchasing of a handful of green products each week causes all that guilt to just melt away. The more green products we buy, many consumers believe, the greener the planet will be! Americans are the only people in the world who believe we can save the Earth by going shopping.

Be skeptical of manufacturers' claims
It's more important now than ever to be skeptical of "green" claims by product manufacturers. Everybody's on the green bandwagon, it seems, and even products that are extremely hazardous to the environment often carry some type of green claim. Consumers need to be sharp and do their research on these corporations before blindly buying into their claims of being Earth friendly.

Most fabric softener products (dryer sheets), for example, are positioned as being at least somewhat Earth friendly thanks to a claim in the ingredients list that reads "Biodegradable fabric softeners." Unfortunately, the second ingredient in fabric softeners is "fragrance," and the fragrance chemicals are so highly toxic that they cause cancer in humans and are extremely destructive to aquatic ecosystems downstream. Merely drying your clothes with common dryer sheets, then washing them the next time you do laundry unleashes a chemical tidal wave of toxicity that is shockingly harmful to the environment. But that doesn't stop these companies from positioning their fabric softener sheets as being green, does it?

There are too many examples to cover here, but they're easy to find if you just look around with some degree of intelligent skepticism. Many products that carry "green" claims may in fact be slightly less damaging to the environment in one particular and narrowly-defined way, but if you look at the overall product and consider where it came from, how it was manufactured and what impact it will have downstream, you'll realize it's actually quite harmful to the environment.

No regulation of "green" claims
Today, there is absolutely no regulation of claims of "green" or "Earth friendly" products in the U.S. marketplace. Manufacturers can essentially print anything they want on their products, and there's no requirement that such claims reflect reality.

Some certification companies are trying to change all that, but none have yet achieved a critical mass of consumer recognition. GreenSeal is one such organization (www.GreenSeal.org) that's trying to publicize its certification of environmental responsibility, but many corporations don't like to participate in the GreenSeal program because they don't want to have to reformulate their products using more environmentally responsible (and more expensive) chemical alternatives. The current list of GreenSeal-approved products and companies is frighteningly short: http://www.greenseal.org/findaproduct/i...

The FDA, for its part, has no interest whatsoever in requiring that the products it regulates are Earth friendly. And you know why? Because the fastest growing source of harzardous consumer products are, in fact, pharmaceuticals, and if the FDA admits it needs to start enforcing environmental safety in food and drug products, it would have to face up to the fact that medications are now a primary source of global pollution of rivers and oceans. (Take a guess what all those HRT drugs are causing down stream...)

So what about the EPA? Why doesn't the EPA regulate pharmaceuticals as environmental pollutants? The answer is obvious: Because the EPA mirrors the FDA in its kow-towing to the financial interests of powerful corporations, and it's far easier for the EPA to bury its head in medication-contaminated sand than to take meaningful action to protect the environment from Big Pharma.

Greenwashing is big business, and so is pushing more toxic products to consumers that they will spray on their lawns, shove down their throats, put in their cars or pee away into the sewer system. Most consumer products are highly toxic for people, animals and nature, and before long, nearly all of them will likely carry some kind of greenwashing claim that declares how good they are for the environment.

It's the Big Lie of consumerism, and the American economy depends so much on the continued purchasing of throwaway products that it simply cannot survive unless people keep buying -- and tossing -- products that are mostly harmful to the environment. We've already sent the climate into a tailspin with carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, but that's only the beginning of this story. The Earth is being poisoned, day by day, by greenwashing corporations and gullible consumers, and it's only a matter of time before it all comes back to bite us so hard that we become a race of chemically-induced genetic mutants.

Effects of the depletion of the Ozone Layer on humans and the environment

BACKGROUNDER

The ozone molecule contains three atoms of oxygen and is mainly formed by the action of the ultraviolet rays of the sun on the diatomic oxygen molecules in the upper part of the earth’s atmosphere (called the stratosphere). Atmospheric pollution near the Earth’s surface can form localized areas of ozone. The stratospheric ozone layer protects life on earth by absorbing most of the harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. In the mid 1970s it was discovered that some manmade products destroy ozone molecules in the stratosphere. This destruction can result in damage to ecosystems and to materials such as plastics. It may cause an increase in human diseases such as skin cancers and cataracts.

The discovery of the role of the synthetic ozone-depleting chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) stimulated increased research and monitoring in this field. Computer models predicted a disaster if no action was taken to protect the ozone layer. Based on this research and monitoring, the nations of the world took action in 1985 with the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer followed by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987. The Convention and Protocol were amended and adjusted several times as new knowledge that was obtained. The Meetings of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol appointed three Assessment Panels to review the progress in scientific knowledge on their behalf. These panels are the Scientific Assessment Panel, the Technological and Economic Assessment Panel and the Environmental and Health Effects Assessment Panel. Each panel covers a designated area.

Effects of human activities on depletion of ozone layer and climate change

There is overwhelming evidence that human activities are influencing global phenomena. Natural environmental cycles often span thousands of years but most scientific measurements have been made only over the past 150 years. It is often not easy to accurately determine the influence of humans on any natural activity. In the case of the ozone layer, the depletion of the ozone over the Antarctica cannot be explained by natural cycles but is caused by the increase of synthetic chemicals in the stratosphere. The relationship between these chemicals (e.g. chlorofluorocarbons also known as CFCs) and ozone depletion has been proven by experiments in laboratories, numerical modelling studies and by direct measurements in the atmosphere. By absorbing the infrared radiation emitted by the earth, some gases control the way natural energy flows through the atmosphere. Such gases are known as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, although only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, is an important greenhouse gas.

Measurements show that its concentration has increased by almost 30% as a result of human activities since the beginning of the industrial revolution (around 1750), resulting in enhancement of the greenhouse effect.Methane and nitrous oxide emitted from agricultural activities, changes in land use, and other sources are also potent greenhouse gases. The increase in greenhouse gasses contributes to climate change in the form of increased temperatures on the earth and a rise in sea level. Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels are used to generate energy and when forests are burned. Observations show that global temperatures rose by about 0.6 °C over the 20th century.

Relationship between ozone and solar ultraviolet radiation

There is an inverse relationship between the concentration of ozone and the amount of UV-Bradiation transmitted through the atmosphere. Stratospheric ozone is naturally formed in chemical reactions involving ultraviolet sunlight and oxygen molecules. These reactions occur continually wherever ultraviolet sunlight is present. The production of stratospheric ozone is balanced by its destruction in chemical reactions. Ozone reacts continually with a variety of natural and anthropogenic chemicals in the stratosphere. In the lower atmosphere ozone is produced by the chemical reactions between mainly nitrogen oxides and organic chemical pollutants produced by motor vehicle and industrial emissions. The ozone in both the troposphere and the atmosphere absorbs the UV radiation received at the surface. The radiation emitted by the sun contains an ultraviolet component. As the sunlight passes through the atmosphere, all the UV-C and approximately 90% of the UV-B are absorbed mainly by ozone and oxygen. UV-A radiation is less affected by the atmosphere. Therefore, the ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth’s surface is composed of mainly UV-A with a small UV-B component. A decrease in the concentration of ozone in the atmosphere results in increased UV-B radiation at the surface of the earth. DNA and other biological macromolecules absorb UV-B and can be damaged in this process.

determinants of UV-B radiation at a specific place

The sun is the origin of the ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth. That radiation is partly absorbed by the components of the earth's atmosphere. The amount of potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that is absorbed by one of these components, ozone, depends on the length of the path of the sunlight through the atmosphere. The UV-B irradiation varies with the time of the day, geographic location and the season. The ultraviolet radiation that reaches the earth is greatest in the tropics and decreases towards the poles. For the same reason it is greatest near local noon and least near sunrise or sunset. Outside the tropics it is generally greater in the summer and least in the winter. Clouds, particulate matter, aerosols and air pollutants absorb and scatter some of the ultraviolet radiation and thereby diminish the amount reaching the earth's surface. Under clear skies the maximum irradiation occurs when the sun is directly overhead. Locations at higher altitudes have less atmosphere overhead, as evidenced by the thinner air and lower atmospheric pressure therefore the radiation of the sun is less attenuated. This increase in UV radiation varies between 10% and 20% for each kilometre of height, depending on the specific wavelength, solar angle, reflections, and other local conditions. Frequently, other factors besides the thickness of the atmosphere cause even larger differences in UV radiation between different altitudes. Surface reflection, especially from snow, ice and sand increases the irradiation at a particular site because the reflected radiation is redirected towards the surface through scattering by particles in the atmosphere or on the ground. In some conditions clouds will have the same effect. Snow is more common at higher altitudes, and reflects as much as 90% of the ultraviolet radiation. Dry beach sand and sea foam reflects about 25% of UV-B radiation. Clouds also reflect an appreciable amount of radiation to the areas where they do not directly obscure the sunlight The ultraviolet irradiation to which an individual is exposed is determined by a combination of all these factors.

Effect of pollution of the lower atmosphere on UV-B irradiation

Pollutants emitted by human activities can absorb UV-B radiation near the surface, while particles may lead to enhancement by scattering. While most of the atmospheric ozone is formed in the stratosphere, some ozone is produced in the lower atmosphere by the chemical reactions between pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons. This ozone is a component of the photochemical smog found in many polluted areas. Airborne particles (smoke, dust and sulphate aerosols) block UV radiation, but at the same time can increase the amount of scattered light (haze) and therefore increase the UV exposure of side-facing surfaces (e.g., face, eyes). Comparisons of measurements made in industrialized regions of the Northern Hemisphere (e.g., central Europe) and in very clean locations at similar latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere (e.g., New Zealand) indicate the importance of particulate and pollution-related UV-B reductions.

At any particular location there is a direct relationship between UV-B irradiation and the amount of ozone in the atmosphere. UV-B increases with ozone depletion in the stratosphere but decreases with ozone formation in the lower atmosphere. The natural UV-B variability (e.g., from time of day, or clouds) can be larger than the effect of pollution, but goes in both directions, up and down. The cumulative amounts will depend critically upon local conditions and are therefore difficult to model in a general way. Many detrimental effects of UV-B are proportional to the cumulative UV-B exposure.

Electronic and electrical waste (e-waste)

Electronic and electrical waste (e-waste) comprises of wastes generated from used electronic devices and house hold appliances which are not fit for their original intended use and are destined for recovery, recycling or disposal. Such wastes encompasses wide range of electronic devises such as computers, hand held cellular phones, personal stereos, including large household appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners etc.

e-waste contain hazardous material

E-wastes contains several different substances such as heavy metals plastics etc. which are toxic and potentially hazardous to the environment and human health, if these are not handled in an environmentally sound manner. Classification of e-waste shall depend upon the extent of presence of hazardous constituents in it.

As per the definition given in the Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2003 “hazardous wastes” means any waste which by reason of any of its physical, chemical reactive toxic, flammable, explosive or corrosive characteristic causes danger or is likely to cause danger to health or environment, whether alone or when in contact with other wastes or substances, and shall include the wastes listed in schedule 1, 2 and 3 of the said Rules.

E-waste contains a witches’ brew of toxic substances such as lead and cadmium in circuit boards; lead oxide and cadmium in computer batteries; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in order capacitors and transformers and brominates flame retardant on printed circuit boards, plastic casing, cable and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) cable insulation that releases highly toxic dioxins and furans when burned to retrieve copper from the wires.

The Hazardous Waste (Management & Handling) Rules, 1989 was notified under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and has been amended in 2000 and 2003. The principal objective of these regulations is to establish a control mechanism for the management of hazardous wastes.

Ø These rules provide control for the generation, collection, storage, transport, treatment and disposal of hazardous wastes.

Ø The import of hazardous wastes from other countries purely dumping and disposal in the country is not permitted under these rules.

Ø The implementation of these rules are through the identified State agencies. Viz., the State Pollution Control Boards, Pollution Control Boards, Pollution Control committees of UTs and the State Department of Environment or any other concerned Department.

Ø The non-compliance or contradiction of any section of these rules are punishable under Section 15 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.

The hazardous wastes categories to which these rules are applicable are given in three schedules namely:

Ø Schedule 1 describes processes generating hazardous wastes and the waste streams for 36 categories.

Ø Schedule 2 list of hazardous wastes constituents with concentration limits. 78 categories have been listed under 5 classes A to E based on their hazard potential.

Schedule 3 Part A includes the List of hazardous wastes for the purpose of imports and exports. This includes Lists A & B adopted from Annex VII * Annex IX of the Basel Convention.( Schedule 3 substances, in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention, are chemicals which can either be used as toxic chemical weapons or used in the manufacture of chemical weapons but which also have legitimate large-scale industrial uses. Plants which manufacture of more than 30 tonnes per year must be declared and can be inspected as per Part VIII of the "Verification Annex", and there are restrictions on export to countries which are not CWC signatories. Examples of these substances are phosgene, which has been used as a chemical weapon but which is also a precursor in the manufacture of many legitimate organic compounds and triethanolamine, used in the manufacture of nitrogen mustard but also commonly used in toiletries and detergents.

As with the other schedules, they are sub-divided into Part A substances, which are chemicals that can be used directly as weapons, and Part B which are precursors useful in the manufacture of chemical weapons.Chemicals which can be used as weapons, or used in their manufacture, but which have no, or almost no, legitimate applications as well are listed in Schedule 1, whilst Schedule 2 is used for chemicals which have legitimate small-scale applications.)

Schedule 3 Part B includes the List of hazardous characteristics based on Annex III of the Basel Convention as per the UN classification.

Ø Schedule 4 gives the list of 22 Non-Ferrous Metal Wastes permitted for recycling.

Ø Schedule 8 provides the list of 29 hazardous wastes are prohibited for Import and Export.

Clean Energy

Turnaround in Silicon Valley is happening, and the product is green technology.

Newfound venture capital investment in clean environment technology – spanning from alternative energy such as solar panels and hybrid cars to new methods of solving environmental problems through the use of nanotechnology – grew rapidly in 2006. Growth in the industry accounted for a more than $250 million increase between the first and third quarters of last year in the valley, according to an annual report released January 28 by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a research organization in San Jose, California.

The upward trend to invest in clean energy in the valley has been reflected nationwide, according to numbers from the National Venture Capital Association: In 2006, venture capitalists invested $727 million in 39 alternative energy start-up companies, compared to $195 million invested in a little more than half the number of start-ups the previous year.

Silicon Valley, an epicenter of computer and Internet technology, was hit hard when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. However, while the valley often goes through boom-and-bust cycles, the investment in green technology appears to be one to stay, says Russell Hancock, the chief executive of Joint Venture.

"These waves are nothing new," Hancock told New York Times reporter Laurie J. Flynn. "But the last one was full of hype and excess, and we had to go through a powerful period of readjustment. This time the investing feels more sober and well thought out."

Efforts to advance green technology have, in recent times, dovetailed with other technologies: with the money spent last year in Silicon Valley to produce clean technologies, 15 percent went to companies in the semiconductor industry and nearly a quarter went to software firms.

The increase in investment could correlate to an increase in political lobbying for environmentally friendly technologies and higher efficiency requirements coming from the venture capitalists themselves, according to the New York Times. Venture capitalists invested in clean energy have recently met with members of Congress, people in the Bush administration, the U.S. Energy Department and many of the 2008 Presidential candidates to promote clean technology.