greenlagirl’s Recent Comments

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  virtual water trade

  A related concern's the virtual water trade inherent in flower export / imports. Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, talks about this often -- i.e. how Lake Naivasha in Kenya's shrinking in addition to getting polluted.

  http://greenlagirl.com/

  On The not-so-fragrant side of fresh-cut flowers posted 11 months, 1 week ago 6 Responses

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  why must grist force me to title each comment?

  Thanks for the props, Mark! Now I have to pick up the book --On A review of Joel Makower's Strategies for the Green Economy posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 5 Responses

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  value of certification and issues with the system

  JMG -- I think you'd find what Dean Cycon of Dean's Bean's had to say about first leaving fair trade certification to later return to it interesting. Dean's a long-time fair trade activist and the owner of one the first fair trade coffee companies in the US. In any case, he raised the issue that you're talking about in a post I wrote:
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  "More and more companies are coming up with their own version of fair trade, and not all of them are playing by the same rules," Dean said. Some of these companies, Dean noted, buy coffee beans from fair trade farms, then call their coffee fair trade without bothering to pay TransFair to get the official fair trade certification logo. "There's something inherently wrong with that," Dean said, since if it weren't for the certification system of which TransFair is a part, these fair trade farms couldn't even reap the benefits of fair trade.

  "How can you take advantage of that system and not pay for it?" Noting that one critique of fair trade is that farm inspections are not done frequently or throughly enough, Dean said, "we can't have money to inspect farms if we're not paying the fee." By opting not to get the certification sticker from TransFair, these coffee companies are "helping drive the system down" via a sort of self-fulfilling critique.
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  I did want to add, though, that some of the concerns you raised about organic certification applies also to Transfair USA, which does the FT product certifications in the US. I've written about some of them here; they're the reasons why some uber fair trade companies (Dean's Beans included) decided against fair trade certification at that time.

  What's interesting about these serious fair trade companies though, is that the question they'll raise is rarely about the cost of certification (though complaints -- most unsubstantiated -- about Transfair's mismanagement of funds abound). The committed fair trade companies, when nixing their Transfair certification, tried to find other ways to certify their products and promote transparency. Cooperative Coffees, of which Dean's Bean's is a part, put its coffee contracts online for all to see, for ex.

  In addition, I believe these companies went so far as to establish a fund to which they contributed a sum equivalent to the certification fees. That money  was then given to the coffee producers -- the point being that these companies always saw the value of certification (for transparency, consumer education / involvement, etc.) and were willing to pay for it, but simply had qualms about the certification system (in this case, Transfair) they had to work with.

  http://greenlagirl.com/ http://latimes.com/emeraldcity

  On If you support the standards but not the certifiers, then what? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 14 Responses

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  the underdog nail polish brands?

  Hey Sarah -- Do you plan to do a roundup of the non-major brand "green" nail polishes one finds at co-ops, Whole Foods, green nail salons, etc.? I'd be v. curious as to how they compare to the major brands --On A five-fingered review of less-toxic nail polishes posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

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  Not quite what I thought

  Really? I went to Hollywood Goes Green, and thought it was mostly about corporate sponsorships. I wasn't the session with Paula Silva though -- That panel sounds like it was actually both interesting and relevant --On Big ideas come out of Hollywood Goes Green summit posted 1 year, 11 months ago 1 Response