We offer the YES! perspective on 10 great innovations that prove change is not only possible, but underway. Tired of feeling powerless? See how to bring your economy home.
1. The Appollo Alliance
The Apollo Alliance is challenging Americans to avert global warming and create 3 million jobs'in 10 years. Inspired by Kennedy's moon launch challenge, the Apollo Alliance is challenging U.S. leaders to achieve this new goal. The Alliance wants a quarter million supporters by fall 2006. Signing the Apollo Challenge means supporting energy independence and creating jobs in conservation and clean energy. Above, Van Jones joined with other Oakland leaders in October to announce the city's resolution to make Oakland "Oil Independent by 2020." It is the first U.S. city to do so. 'Sarah Kuck
2. Micro-Loans
The Golden Jubilee Biotech Park for Women Society, in southern India, gives rural women a path out of poverty while creating environmentally friendly enterprises. Communally organized self-help groups invent ways to transform local, renewable resources into marketable goods, such as the salsa pictured here. Golden Jubilee grants microcredit loans to cover the cost of the space and tools needed to 'mass produce? the products. Once the microloan is repaid, the women are independent business owners. Enterprises include hair, skin, and beauty products, prepackaged and instant foods, biofertilizers, and natural pesticides. 'Catherine Bailey
3. Local Energy
Denmark was hit as hard as the rest of the world by the 1970s oil crisis. Now it's a net exporter of energy. The country achieved this turnaround through government incentives for local, cooperative energy production, especially wind power. Today, nearly 20 percent of Danish energy comes from wind turbines, about 80 percent of which are owned by small cooperatives or individuals. Wind energy employs more than 20,000 people, and turbine exports bring in $3.4 billion a year. According to the World Alliance for Decentralized Energy, 50 percent of Denmark's energy comes from renewable sources. For the U.S., the figure is 9 percent. Above, wind turbines off the coast near Copenhagen. 'Catherine Bailey
Has the cash economy swallowed up your life? Here are some ways to extract some of your time and "life energy" from the cash economy.
1. Reduce debt. If you can't pay cash, don't buy it. Practice being mindful about what you buy and why.
2. Do it yourself. Grow food, pick berries, can and preserve food, make wine, bake bread. Make or repair clothes, furniture, and gifts. Create your own entertainment. Walk, bike, run, or play basketball instead of joining a fitness club.
3. Share & Exchange. Take care of neighbor kids and elders. Play music, sing, act in local theater, write poems, hold art shows. Exchange haircuts for applesauce, bike repair for massage, language tutoring for babysitting.
4. Reduce waste & pollution. Weatherize your home or apartment. Reduce your car usage, or get rid of a car.
5. Buy local. Run buy-local campaigns, print stickers, publish or post a directory of local businesses. Acknowledge business owners who foster the well-being of the environment, employees, and the whole community. Convert public funds from luring outside corporations to supporting local businesses.
6. Start a new local business. Start a food market, credit union, wifi network, or even an electricity co-op. Explore ownership options like cooperatives, nonprofits, for-profits, or single proprietorships.
7. Buy Fair Traded when you buy imports. Vote with your dollar for a better world for all.
This article is part of YES! Magazine´s Go Local! issue.
Also see 10 Ways to a Human-Scale Economy, our photo-essay of great innovations that prove change is not only possible, but underway.
Want to be a socially and environmentally conscious consumer, but often find it difficult to know which companies to buy from, especially when it comes to clothing? Here is how to find out whether you are buying your clothing from a company that uses sustainable materials and manufacturing practices.
The question is one that is often on the minds of socially responsible consumers. There's good news and bad news, so we'll get the bad out of the way first: As far as we know, there's no comprehensive list of which companies are eco-friendly and which aren't, nor is there any industry-wide standard that clothing companies are held to. This often makes it difficult to find much information on a given company's practices other than what it posts on its own website (which you may want to take with a hefty grain of salt).
Fortunately, there's plenty of good news. For one thing, the industry as a whole is moving in a more sustainable direction, with many companies working to phase out sweatshop labor, and reducing their use of dangerous pollutants such as PVC. Even Nike has come out with a new line of sustainable shoes, called Considered (see nike.com for more info), which uses recycled rubber and eliminates plastics and adhesives from the construction process.
Of course, many consumers are still justifiably leery of buying from companies like Nike or The Gap. The second annual Corporate Social Responsibility ranking from Canadian financial news source Globeinvestor.com indicates a great deal of improvement on the part of companies like Adidas, Reebok, and Nike. But there is still a very long way to go before these companies could be considered green.
Luckily, there are alternatives. Many online stores carry extensive lines of eco-friendly apparel. Veganessentials.com and Global Exchange's online store (www.gxonlinestore.org) are two sites with good selections. Another useful website, responsibleshopper.org, rates many well-known companies on both environmental and social issues. Unfortunately, it mostly rates larger corporations, so it won't direct you to smaller, independent companies.
If you're looking for information on smaller companies, there are a few good resources to point you in the direction of independent, sustainable, and socially conscious brands. Co-op America's National Green Pages (go to www.coopamerica.org and select National Green Pages from the publications menu) lists thousands of eco-friendly businesses and their products.
Another good site to check is www.sweatshopwatch.org. Clicking on the Shop With a Conscience! link on the left of the page gives you a list of clothing companies whose products are produced either by unionized workers or in co-ops.
Most of the brands you'll find on these pages are available online, but if, as a socially responsible consumer, you want to put your money into your local economy rather than shopping online, look for these brands in your local stores, or check out their websites for information on where they may be available in your area.
Andrew Lovejoy wrote this column for YES! Magazine. Find more green living advice on our YES! But How' page.
Forging direct, stable, democratic trade relations between producers and sellers for 50 years, the fair trade movement cuts out middlemen and creates alternatives to the imbalance of power and limited market-access that have hobbled producers in developing countries. Fair trade today accounts for more than a million small-scale farmers and workers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Many more farmers, however, are still forced to accept low prices from large corporate buyers. The recent coffee crisis, with world market prices too low to cover basic production costs, has affected 25 million coffee producers. The crisis has forced coffee farmers to remove children from school, sell their land, or turn to more profitable drug crops.
In contrast, fair trade is based on solidarity between consumers and producers--a mutually advantageous collaboration between farmers and their communities, on the one hand, and buyers and consumers, on the other. Fair Trade certification guarantees that products meet these standards: Farmers get a fair price set by a recognized certifying body; buyers are committed to long-term trading relationships; farmers receive up to 60 percent advance payment to avoid debt at the start of a production season; buyers contribute a portion of profit to community development; information about product origins is offered to consumers; and ecologically sound farming is encouraged.
The fair trade movement supports democratic community-building in the South and encourages activism for economic justice in the North. The range of available fair trade products that can be purchased directly from producer cooperatives and businesses worldwide has expanded to include tea, chocolate, fruit, crafts, and clothing. The benefits of fair trade extend to consumers, as socially and environmentally responsible products are added to store shelves.
In the past decade, the public has been besieged with ever-growing (and often frightening) evidence that some of the 80,000 industrial-age chemicals in wide use can have negative impacts on our health. As research on environmental health has ramped up, so has economically motivated backlash aimed at discrediting environmental risks. As the environmental health movement comes of age, these two books present analyses helpful to anyone interested in understanding the broader context of the struggle for a healthier world.
Focusing on breast cancer, asthma, and Gulf War-related diseases as case studies, Phil Brown examines how scientists, patients, and environmentalists are learning to work, live, and do battle with uncertainty and denial. Although true progress has been slow and fraught with obstacles, scientists and health activists are winning gradual acknowledgement of chemical contributions to disease. But the controversy manufactured by industry propaganda continues to confound understanding of the chemical role in these diseases and add uncertainty about what actions to take.
New research and heightened public advocacy are challenging established ways of doing business, both scientific and industrial. Brown has also been directly involved in community health work and ends on an uplifting note about the power of collective advocacy: stories about scientists, environmentalists, and health activists who have successfully advocated for precautionary policies in professional associations, municipalities, and entire nations. But any such progress is an uphill fight.
In the midst of uncertainty, we are faced with choices--often between the political and the personal. In Shopping Our Way to Safety, Andrew Szasz raises some uncomfortable issues. He demonstrates how much of the public's energy has been diverted into 'quarantining' ourselves from the health threats we fear lurk in our food and homes--buying air filters, drinking bottled water, and otherwise attempting to avoid personal exposure.
Not that this is necessarily bad'other than the wasteful scam of selling water in plastic bottles--but as Szasz illustrates, many of us come to feel that protecting ourselves is enough. Like the fallout shelters of the 1960s, our self-quarantine gives us a false sense of security, Szasz argues. We distance ourselves from the source of the problem without addressing its roots. Under a spell of greenwashing and what Szasz calls "political anesthesia," we often fail to hold industry and government accountable.
Protecting ourselves and working for broader change are not exclusive, but the latter is a messier proposition. The problem is ultimately profit. Eco-product companies may benefit from marketing to and playing off of our fears. Corporations stand to lose large profits if their products are seen as tainted by risky chemicals, and they overwhelm politicians and the public with vast lobbying and media relations campaigns.
Sorting out the truth can be difficult, but it is getting easier as scientific evidence builds, advocates partner with scientists to make good information available, corporate and chemical lobbying is exposed, and policy is built on this body of evidence. Szasz points out that back in the 1960s, anti-war advocates "won their struggle to convince Americans that building fallout shelters was folly and suicidal." For a more current example in environmental health, Brown looks to Europe, which has developed health and safety policies based on precautionary protections with some success to date. In this arena, the New World might well take some lessons from the Old--that the longstanding European concept of 'solidarity' among people and communities can, and probably must, apply to environmental health if we are to truly have cleaner, healthier bodies.
Steve Heilig wrote this review as part of A Just Foreign Policy, the Summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Steve Heilig is the director of public health and education at the San Francisco Medical Society and co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics.
