Climate Culture

How toxic is your breast milk?

A nice treatment of this topic in today's New York Times Magazine, from Florence Williams.

When we nurse our babies, we feed them not only the fats, sugars and proteins that fire their immune systems, metabolisms and cerebral synapses. We also feed them, albeit in minuscule amounts, paint thinners, dry-cleaning fluids, wood preservatives, toilet deodorizers, cosmetic additives, gasoline byproducts, rocket fuel, termite poisons, fungicides and flame retardants.

If, as Cicero said, your face tells the story of your mind, your breast milk tells the decades-old story of your diet, your neighborhood and, increasingly, your household decor. Your old shag-carpet padding? It's there. That cool blue paint in your pantry? There. The chemical cloud your landlord used to kill cockroaches? There. Ditto, the mercury in last week's sushi, the benzene from your gas station, the preservative parabens from your face cream, the chromium from your neighborhood smokestack.

Williams very effectively uses the personal angle of breastfeeding her daughter to approach the larger topic of toxic substances in our environment, brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) in particular. Yes, it's a highly approachable article on flame retardants -- imagine that.

The green guide to gift giving

The plain truth is that Americans love to consume, and we do it with more abandon than ever during the holiday season. Nearly a quarter of all retail goods move out of stores and into homes between Thanksgiving and Christmas (and, we suspect, often into landfills by January). That poses a dilemma for the thoughtful […]

Joe Sherman’s Gasp! explores the history of air and finds it’s anything but empty

Oxygen may not strike you as a likely protagonist for a book. It's invisible, it's all around you, it's something you inhale 19,000 times a day and take utterly for granted. But Joe Sherman's Gasp! The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air is a masterfully inventive biography of air, weaving together geology and history, myth and science, to deepen our understanding and appreciation of life's most precious gas.

I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Low-impact gifts can make holidays more eco-friendly This year, holiday sales in the U.S. are projected to hit $219 billion — up 4 to 6 percent from last year. That’s a lot of ties and trinkets. And while that might be good news for some retailers, it’s anything but a holiday for the earth; between […]

Kevin Doyle, environmental-career guru, answers questions

Kevin Doyle. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m one of two national program directors at The Environmental Careers Organization (authors of the new book The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference — see below). At least, that’s my current title. I’ve worked for ECO since 1984, and in that time I’ve […]

O Conserve All Ye Faithful

London’s big Christmas tree powered by fuel cell This year, Christmas is getting an eco-friendly boost in London. All 648 energy-efficient light bulbs on the massive Christmas tree bedecking Trafalgar Square will be powered by a hydrogen fuel-cell generator in lieu of the traditional fossil-fuel-powered beasts used in years past. Roughly the size of a […]

Umbra on Christmas trees

Dear Umbra, Please settle our office dispute. Which is better for the environment: real or fake Christmas trees? Some believe that cutting down juvenile trees, displaying them for two weeks, then throwing them in the garbage is destructive, wasteful, and highly unfriendly to the environment. Others say that the Christmas-tree business keeps land that would […]

Mongo and Found uncover the hidden pleasures of reduce-reuse-recycle

Flo and Channing, a pair of occasionally employed, twentysomething hipsters in lower Manhattan, live well. At least, they eat well. They favor sushi and vegetarian pizza and soy milk and artisan bread, and they also like to indulge in custard pastries, chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate croissants, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They're especially fond of waffles. And they eat it all for free. All they have to do is spend a few hours each night lurking outside restaurants, rescuing their favorite menu items from the trash. "Sometimes, people see what we're doing and say, eee-yew, how gross," says Flo. "Other times they offer to buy us a meal. We just say, no thanks, we have plenty of food here."

Reindeer Power

Umbra on cat-pee stains and dry cleaning

Dear Umbra, I am aware of how polluting regular dry cleaners can be and therefore make a point to wash clothes at home. Recently, however, my charming cat peed on my comforter. I was wondering if you knew of any environmentally friendly ways to clean “dry clean only” clothes or, in this case, comforters. HeidiFalls […]