Labor · Eco-Chick

Browsing all posts tagged with labor

A Rawcumentary

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by Starre Vartan · 05/11/06

This is the story of a woman who wanted to be a showgirl– and got in shape by going on a raw food diet for 30 days.

I haven’t seen Supercharge Me…30 Days Raw, but it looks fun, in the using-self-as-guinea-pig style of Super Size Me.

In case anyone’s wondering what raw food has to do with environmentalism….actually a lot! Raw food meals (especially if grown locally) are meals that use little energy and create little waste (all of it compostable). Most raw-foodists are vegan, which is almost as low-impact as a diet can get.

As the name implies, raw means uncooked (though food can be gently ‘warmed’ or dehydrated). Much of the labor is done by human hands, and though it’s somewhat anecdotal, I vouch for the fact that raw food for days on end makes you feel kind of ecstatic and it’s very energizing. It IS a lot of work though, and there’s little prepared raw food available. I wrote an article on raw food a while back for E Magazine, if you want more details on what it means to be raw.

If you already enjoy raw food, go see this movie and let us know what you think!

Energy, epa, Food, labor, local, magazine, raw food, style, vegan, waste

Health Care Without Harm

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by Kimberly Jordan Allen · 04/16/06

I remember growing up along Long Island Sound and enjoying its beaches as a child. In the late eighties, when tons of medical waste ended up in the NY rivers and the sound, the beaches became hazardous, or what was perhaps even more disgusting, bio-hazardous. My friends and I heard awful stories of syringes and other medical waste littering the shore. I recently had to undergo a surgical procedure and wondered what was going to happen to the wrappers, tubes, and those hideous little rubber padded socks that all procedure rooms seem to require. Were those awful socks going to end up on some beach next to some poor unsuspecting kid’s sandcastle in Greenwich one day?

Health Care Without Harm is a global coalition of medical practitioners, hospitals, community groups, labor unions, and environmental health affiliates whose constituents include 443 organizations in 52 countries. The purpose of the coalition is to minimize pollution and thereby protect the health of practitioners, their patients and the surrounding environment, a.k.a. the earth.

In 1995 the EPA identified medical waste incinerators as the leading source of dioxin contamination in the environment. This report brought health care workers together to found the organization in 1996. Today, HCWH touts such successes as: eliminating mercury-based equipment completely in the US, promoting safe waste management and helping to close incinerators worldwide, initiating green building programs geared specifically toward hospitals, and helping to improve the food hospitals serve in order to support local agriculture and provide patients with nutritionally viable meals.

The HCWH has come under fire from conservatives who feel the organization is a front for the anti-capitalistic environmental movement that thwarts progress on any level. Perhaps right wingers are just fearing the loss of their extra special golf cart at the club, or their financial panderings from BigBiz. The religious right fear the organization’s manipulation of clergy for their detrimental eco-slander that supposedly does more harm than good by promoting less toxic practices. HCWH stays strong and continues to fight for the removal of PVCs and other dangerous materials and contaminants in medical systems. And then there are religious groups affiliated with the coalition who steer clear of the partisan politics.

Just as the Hippocratic Oath promises to, “first, do no harm,” HCWH is based on the premise that health care providers have a responsibility to eliminate practices that harm people and the environment. Together with our partners around the world, we share a vision of a health care industry that first does no harm, and instead promotes the health of people and the environment. To that end, we are working to implement ecologically sound and healthy alternatives to health care practices that pollute and contribute to disease.

I love good news. To find out what you can do to participate in this movement click here.

agriculture, car, coal, community, contaminants, Dioxin, Eco-Chick, epa, Food, health, health care, labor, local, Long Island, News, Politics, Pollution, spa, Tea, waste

"I swear to God I'm a Virgin"

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by Summer Rayne Oakes · 04/12/06

So I came across Sworn Virgins about a year ago – a very LA brand line of eco-fashion. Not quite sure exactly what their production policy is, but it does mention that they use no sweatshop labor and it alludes to the fact that they may use lenpur (wood pulp). No sign of using organic cotton, though it does seem to me that cotton is a main staple fiber in their design.

cotton, design, Eco-Chick, Fashion, labor, Organic, organic cotton, wood

As Green As Green Can Be?

4 Comments

by Starre Vartan · 03/18/06

There has been debate here lately about whether we, as “Greenies” should buy anything at all. This is a long-standing issue in the environmental community: Should we shun all consumer products and grow our own food, make our own clothes and educate our own kids (the time that takes tends to limit your ability to do much else, I’ve found)?

Or should we engage in society as “regular” folks and try to change the system by supporting environmentally-friendly companies, products and services? I would guess that most Greenies do both, to varying degrees (since I live in the Northeast, I can only garden for part of the year anyway, for example).

I’ve always had trouble with the ‘back to the land’ approach as I see many (certainly not all!) communities that are set up that way as having traditional gender roles. I have little interest in cooking and even less in having babies, sewing my own clothes or spending all day canning food. I love the fact that I get paid for using my brain all day, writing, thinking, researching, asking questions, and interacting with all the other nerds that like that kind of work. At the same time, I realize my existence is predicated on people much poorer than myself doing all that hard (boring!) labor I don’t want to do. OR that some fossil-fueled machine has to do the work. So I try to buy Fair Trade and organic, and I clean my house myself, and I go to farmer’s markets and I grow my own summer veggies and I compost and I adopt rescued animals, and I try not to drive too much, and I recycle and reuse like crazy. How are we supposed to come up with solutions if we are laboring all day? I need time to think, dammit!

What about you? What do you do? What tradeoffs do you make, and why?