It’s right there in President Clinton’s 1998 Executive Order 13101. "Agencies," it says, "are encouraged to use all of the options available to them to determine the environmentally preferable attributes of products and services
" Unfortunately, the key word is "encouraged," rather than "required," and that means the federal government is moving at its usual incredibly slow pace.
"Typically, we bring the concept of lifecycle pricing to the table," says Mark Petruzzi of Green Seal, which offers environmental certification for a range of products. "Looking only at the first cost of a product is a disingenuous way of doing things. With paint, for instance, you have to consider not only the initial price, […]
Highlights in recent green purchasing efforts around the country include these, part of an extensive Center for a New American Dream listing at www.newdream.org/procure/activities.html: Santa Monica, California, which is buying 100 percent renewable electricity for all city facilities, with a net reduction of greenhouse gases totaling 13,672 tons annually
From the time I was eight until I was 10, I lived in a pea-sized town down the road from the chemical plant and the munitions factory. Buffalo, Illinois had a bank, a grocery store, a post office and a park. And enough houses to hold three hundred people. This was where we moved, a few miles from my grandparents, after we left Phoenix.
Pleather is a Versatile, Though Controversial, Alternative to Leather Just when you were getting used to "fake" meat, faux fur and drinking milk from a plant, along comes "pleather," also known as "plastic leather." Before you hit the runway in your new non-leather jacket, however, you should know why some environmentalists still prefer hides or […]
The Slow Food Movement Takes on the Fast Food Culture The sun was setting for the Delaware Bay oyster. Once a prominent cash crop for harvesters along New Jersey’s southern shores, mismanagement, parasites and pollution depleted the river’s raw bar and decimated a once-thriving trade. This seafood lover’s treat, with its "fine, mild flavor [and] […]
Environment and Diet are Factors in Rising Adult-Onset Diabetes Seventeen million Americans have diabetes, and the incidence of new cases has increased 32 percent since 1990, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People are being diagnosed at younger and younger ages. Experts are still searching for the cause, but most say […]
Now that Internet stocks have boomed and busted, wonder how to get in early on the next big thing? Investors aren’t the only ones looking for the next darlings of Wall Street—stock market con artists are also busy inventing the next hot stock. How can you tell the difference between a scam and a good […]
Taos is More Than Great Skiing It was nearly 50 years ago that Swiss-born Ernie Blake flew over the Taos mountains in his Cessna 170, and noted that it offered skiing comparable to his native land. The Taos Ski Valley resort, now named as one of the top 10 destinations in North America by Skiing […]
The provincial outpost of Puerto Montt is home to one of Latin America’s fastest-growing industries: farmed salmon. If everything goes as scheduled, over the next five years an estimated $8 billion in salmon exports will flow from this sparsely populated backwater. While traditional fishing companies around the world sink into bankruptcy because of the plummeting […]
