How can the world’s two consumer “superpowers”- the U.S. and China – work together to reduce the impact that consumption has on us and our world?

That was the topic a capacity crowd addressed on March 22 at the U.S. – China Greener Consumption Forum. The event, held at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and co-sponsored by Big Green Purse and the International Fund for China’s Environment, pulled together scientists, consumer advocates, public policy advocates, and green entrepreneurs to share ideas about strategies to inspire manufacturers to create greener goods — and get consumers to buy them.

HIGHLIGHTS:

The Forum focused primarily on women because women spend 85 cents of every dollar in the  marketplace – and we’re not just buying cheese doodles and diapers. As I say here on CCTV, the national television network of China, we buy more clothes. More food.  More cosmetics and personal care products than men. We also buy more electronics, more home furnishings, almost as many tools, just as many cars. Women are spending billions of dollars, day in and day out, year in and year out.

But even with all that clout, we won’t be able to use this power of the purse effectively until we achieve true gender equity
worldwide, points that both Ban Li, Deputy Counsel of the Shaanxi Women’s Federation, and Liane Shalatek, Associate Director of the Heinrich Boll Foundation North America, made very powerfully.

 Christine Robertson of Earth Day Network facilitated a provocative panel on the impacts consumption has on our health and the health of the planet. Sarah Vogel of Environmental Defense Fund was peppered with questions after her presentation on the way the toxic chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) affects the reproductive systems of men and women alike.

Ping He of the International Fund for China’s Environment, the co-sponsor with Big Green Purse of the Forum, moderated the session on barriers to sustainable consumption and solutions that help surmount them. Meaningful eco-labels and standards can make a big difference, pointed out Arthur Weissman, President and CEO of Green Seal, especially when those standards are set by an indendent third party (like Green Seal is) whose primary interest is not in selling products, but in helping manufacturers become more sustainable over time.

LISA JACKSON, Former EPA Administrator

 Lisa Jackson’s luncheon keynote address was the highlight of the day for many people. As a mom, scientist, and long-time public servant, Lisa has a unique appreciation for the impact consumption has on us as individuals and on society as a whole. She spoke movingly about being the first African-American to serve as head of the EPA and how important it is to bring women as well as people of color and low-income populations into the conversations we’re having about pollution and climate change.

Lisa noted that her favorite law is the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act because it empowers people to protect themselves wherever they live. She is also proud of technology EPA has shared with the city of Shanghai to help monitor air pollution there.

Lisa agreed that the way we use both the purse and the pocketbook can inspire manufacturers to reduce pollution and energy consumption.

AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS

In the afternoon, one set of workshops focused on specific campaigns that have been particularly succeessful in reducing consumption. Peggy Neu explained the extraordinary success Meatless Monday has had in inspiring consumers to cut back the amount of meat they eat at least one day every week. Mary Murphy of the Center for a New American Dream explained her work to promote a sharing economy. “The biggest obstacle to sharing is trust,” she said. The more we can build communities of trust, the more sharing will occur.

Meanwhile, Julia Cohen of the Plastic Pollution Coalition moderated a provocative session on how to reduce plastic and re-utilize waste. Stephanie Tobor of Green Apple Supply described her work providing plastic-free alternatives to municipalities and businesses, and Kate Judson of the Washington DC Department of the Environment explained how the region’s plastic bag fee of five cents per bag has helped reduce the use of plastic bags by over 60%. Youlin Zhou of the Heilongjian Province Center for Agricultural Science and Technology describe her work to convert corn waste into animal feed.

At the same time, a third workshop was focusing on strategies to promote energy efficiency and clean energy. Moderated by Nora Maccoby of IFCE, the panel featured Peter Banwell, Product Marketing Director for ENERGY STAR, Gina Mathias of Eco-Beco, a company that offers energy audits for homes and businesses, and Hua Yan, of the Qinghe Spring Biomass Energy Company.

After a short break, a final set of workshops addressed home renovation, food and drink, and cosmetics and personal care products. While the earlier workshops focused on public education campaigns and behavior change, these workshops gave green entrepreneurs a chance to shine. They included Cheryl Newman, the VP for Honest Tea, describing how her company has gone from a dorm-room idea to a product distributed in over 300,000 outlets in the U.S., to Charis Smith of MOMs Organic Market, which sells only organic produce, and to Paul Ward, whose company Advanced Energy Growing, LLC is teaching hydroponic lettuce growing to both American and Chinese farmers. On the cosmetics front, Ashley Prange of Au Naturale Organic Cosmetics and Sarah Damelio of Skincando Body Products took the audience through the trials and tribulations of getting a new natural product off the ground, while Steve Ma, founder of Live Green, offered his insights on building a green consumer movement in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

WRAP-UP

In the final plenary session of the day, Forum attendees took the microphone to offer their suggestions for possible next steps. Ideas ranged from creating a dialogue on Facebook to promoting more information and expertise exchanges. The focus was not on “if” there would be another Forum, but “when” and where. In the days ahead, we’ll be brainstorming ideas for the next steps we could take to help the U.S. and China go from consumer superpower to sustainability superpower. Have any thoughts? Please let us know.

SEE MORE ON TWITTER

If you want to see more play-by-play reports of the Forum, follow our Twitter stream at #USChinaGreenForum.

GREEN SISTERHOOD NETWORK

The Green Sisterhood Network was the Forum’s outstanding media partner, generating blog posts in the network and covering the Forum live (Anna Hackman, a co-founder with Karen Lee of the Network, is seen here taking notes and Tweeting live at the Forum).

You can read Karen’s recap here and a post on the Green Sisterhood Network here.

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The post US-China Greener Consumption Forum Lays Groundwork for Future Projects Together appeared first on Big Green Purse.

When I returned this past September, I felt like I’d landed in the middle of the most modern metropolis on earth. The dank terminal I remembered had been replaced by a gleaming mini-city, complete with automated teller machines (ATMs) and fancy shops and restaurants. I sped to the phalanx of taxis waiting outside the arrival doors via bright and shiny high-velocity trains, with destinations announced in English as well as Chinese.

What People Eat, How They Dress

Once in Beijing, I had my choice, not just of rice and dumplings, but of McDonald’s hamburgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken strips, and sandwiches from the Subway just around the corner from my hotel. I was curious about food quality, given the news reports that have swirled around everything from contaminated dog food from China to tainted milk. My unease increased on my second day in Beijing, when the newspapers reported the use of gutter oil by some restaurants. “Gutter” oil is so named because it is reclaimed by dredging the drains behind restaurants. It is supposed to be recycled into other uses, but some cooks reuse it in their own kitchens, regardless of what it contains. Reading that report made me shudder! Fortunately, there were many excellent restaurants in Beijing and especially Xi’an, where I enjoyed a feast of delicious traditional dishes, including a variety of stir-fried meats and vegetables.

The television in my room offered a variety of channels in English; 28 years ago, there were few hotel room tvs, and no offerings in anything other than Mandarin. The dress code had changed, too. Whereas most people – men and women alike – were still wearing “Mao” suits in the early eighties, today, women stylishly head off to work in short skirts and stilettos, while men wear Dockers, jeans, Oxford shirts or full Western-style suits and ties.

Playtime!

Meanwhile, the parks brimmed with people not only doing traditional tai chi, but jitterbugging in groups and salsa line dancing, too – something I would never have witnessed in the much stricter political climate that reigned 28 years ago. Before and after work, people exercised in public without the least bit of self-consciousness. It was quite common to see men, women and kids using outdoor stationary bicycles and other gear made from steel to withstand the elements. Elsewhere, groups of friends were challenging each other to games of mah jong, cards, badminton, and hackey-sack, the latter played with a large sturdy shuttle cock rather than the balls more common in the U.S.

What About the Environment?

Environmentally, some things have changed for the better, but most have changed for the worst. A new subway system, built to accommodate the hordes of tourists that descended on Beijing for the 2008 summer Olympics, now whisks hundreds of thousands of people around the city with ease. But almost as many commuters have the means to drive their own cars to work, and air pollution in the region suffers as a result. In fact, during the entire week I was in Beijing and Xi’an, the other city I visited, I never saw blue sky or the sun, thanks to the smog that obscured the heavens.

Water quality has not improved in the city, either: you couldn’t drink H2O from the tap three decades ago, and you can’t drink it from the tap today. According to scientific reports, as much as 70% of China’s rivers have been polluted from industrial discharges as the country’s factories work non-stop to meet global consumer demands that were negligible when I originally visited.

It doesn’t seem like using plastic is given a second thought. All drinking water is factory-processed and bought or served in plastic bottles. I never saw anyone using their own reusable water bottle – what would be the point? You’d still have to fill it up from a plastic jug!! That said, many people were drinking their own tea and coffee from reusable mugs. In fact, the airport and some public spaces offered safe water dispensers where you could fill up for free.

A plastic bag ban went into effect on June 1, 2008. Initially, it was targeted at supermarkets and shopping malls; this year, the ban was extended to book stores, restaurants, and drugstores. The Beijing News reported that the number of plastic bags produced and used in China has dropped by more than 24 billion a year since the ban occurred, saving 600,000 tons of plastic or 3.6 million tons of petroleum. Yet it didn’t seem to me that the ban was being enforced. All of the purchases I made, whether in drugstores, supermarkets, large stores, or from roadside vendors, would have been packaged up in throwaway plastic bags if I hadn’t brought my own reusable one.

In 1983, I remember many more vendors selling fresh fruits and vegetables, and cooks boiling pots of fresh noodles on the street to serve on glass plates. People would sit down at benches to eat, then return the plates for washing to the cook. Today, as in the U.S., food shoppes and supermarkets are filled with plastic-wrapped food. I was amazed to see everything from a single roasted chicken leg to a clump of cooked noodles shrink wrapped in plastic to extend their shelf-life. Organic food doesn’t seem to have made many inroads in China yet. I only saw one grocery store offering organic fruits and vegetables, and it was on the outskirts of Beijing.

 Friendly People!

No matter where I went, people seemed warm, friendly and eager to practice English with me. In Tian’an Men Square, a beaming couple approached me with a camera. I thought they wanted me to take their picture. But no – they each wanted their picture taken with me! I traveled throughout Beijing on my own, and never felt nervous or threatened. Of course, I was never, ever alone, either. Every subway car was packed, every street corner crowded, every restaurant filled. If I were a permanent resident, I might eventually feel like I had no room to myself. As a traveler, it was somewhat reassuring to have a lot of company, even if it was the company of strangers.

Here are a few more photos from the trip, all taken with my trusty Nokia smart phone.

Here I am in the old part of Beijing, outside a small shop that sold beautiful tea pots and many varieties of tea.

This is my favorite building in Beijing, the ancient Temple of Heaven.  It’s where the emperors used to pray for abundant harvests.

I found the Buddhist temples particularly inspiring. Despite the presence of tourists like me, many people were there to pray and light incense and candles.

Have you been to China? Please share your stories!

Related Posts:

Michele Bachmann wants to crush EPA. First, she should go to China.

The post China Then and Now: Field Notes from My Recent Trip appeared first on Big Green Purse.

I’ve just returned from a seven-day trip to Beijing, China’s capital, and Xi’an, the country’s cultural heart and soul and home to its famous terra cotta soldiers. In that entire time, I never saw the sun or sky. Nor was I able to drink the water that came out of any tap.

Why? The sky was cloaked in grey smog so thick it obscured the tops of buildings, not to mention the heavens above. The air, while not exactly putrid, smelled dank and dangerous — a result of massive numbers of polluting cars on the road and regional industrial plants that spew contaminants into the air.

I could have worn a surgical mask like many of the city’s permanent residents. Instead, I opted to be a “guinea pig” and see how much the smog would affect me as I went back and forth to various business meetings and tourist destinations.

After just three days in Beijing, I developed a sore throat and itchy eyes, and lost any desire to explore the city’s beautiful parks. I could have easily walked distances of a mile or two. Instead, I took the subway to avoid breathing the outdoor air unnecessarily. Back at my hotel, I kept the windows closed, choosing a stuffy room over a polluted one.

The water coming out of my faucet looked cleaner than the air — but I would have been a fool to drink it. Water treatment anywhere in China is thoroughly inadequate. The country’s drinking water is tainted not just by household waste but from relentless industrial run-off.

Some government figures estimate that over 70 percent of the nation’s rivers have been contaminated by the discharge of heavy metals and other toxins directly into streams and tributaries that feed into China’s waterways. Water treatment facilities remove a smattering of contaminants but never clean up the water to the point where it is drinkable. And this creates another problem.

Independent companies are privatizing the water, purifying and bottling it, and selling it to the public by the tons. What happens to all the empty plastic water bottles? They end up back in the rivers and streams when they’re trashed.

Why is China so polluted?

In short, because it has neither a power federal environmental protection agency nor adequate laws for such an agency to enforce. Yes, the government gives lip service to reducing pollution and protecting public health. But local activists in Beijing told me that given the physical size of the country, a population of more than 1 billion people, and tens of thousands of “renegade” manufacturing facilities, neither air nor water quality will improve significantly until the government makes a real commitment to strengthen and enforce its environmental laws.

This is not to say that air and water in the U.S. are perfect, or even good enough. A recent study by Environment America, using data provided by the American Lung Association, reported that nearly half of all Americans — 48 percent — live in areas plagued by unhealthy smog pollution. A water quality analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council concluded that 22 million Americans may be drinking water that contains excessive levels of poisonous arsenic, among other chemicals.

Still, the same Environment America study notes that “air quality has improved significantly in the last decade as a result of policies at the state and federal level.” Likewise, the non-profit Environmental Working Group found over 90 percent compliance by water utilities in applying and enforcing standards that exist. Their recommendation: that EPA set even more effective standards so water quality will continue to improve.

We can continue cleaning up our air or water. Or, we can abolish the EPA and look a lot more like China. I suggest Michele Bachmann go to China before she decides.

Follow me on twitter @dianemaceachern.

(NOTE: This article originally appeared at Huffington Post.)

The post Michele Bachmann Wants to Crush EPA. First, She Should Go to China. appeared first on Big Green Purse.

I hope to find out during an eight-day trip I begin later this morning. I’m heading first to Beijing to meet with environmental groups there who are trying to clean up manufacturing and promote renewable energy. In particular, I’m hoping to meet with representatives at Greenpeace who have been studying the impact of manufacturing on Asia’s air and water. I also hope to connect with researchers at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs – they’re intensely involved in research and policy efforts to reduce pollution in China’s waterways and green manufacturing along the way.

Then I head to Xi’an, the home of China’s famous Terra Cotta Soldiers, to speak to the International Forum on Women and Green Living, sponsored by the Shaanxi Women’s Federation.

Along the way, I’ll report back to you on what I’m seeing and hearing.

What would you most like to know?

The post I’m Heading for China… appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Because of this negligence, thousands of children are getting sick. One 4-year-old boy who swallowed a charm coated with lead died a horrible death after suffering seizures, vomiting and respiratory failure.

Scott Wolfson of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, says “We want to get to a point of not having to do recall after recall and simply make the marketplace safe.” Good idea.  As my blog yesterday (see below) reports, legislation is in the works, but it will no doubt take months before any law is passed to protect our kids.

We don’t have to wait that long. First, stop buying toys made in China right now. There are plenty of safe toys being made in the U.S. and elsewhere. Second, let toy stores know they’ll lose your business unless they demand safe products from their manufacturers. Let store managers know in person, where you shop, or call corporate headquarters of the major toy retailers (names and phone numbers in my blog below).

Here’s the link to the most recent NY Times story.

Check out these safe toy tips from WhattoExpect.com.

The post Lead in Kids’ Toys a Crisis appeared first on Big Green Purse.

The story in USA Today about the crisis is particularly alarming. In the last four years, the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued 27 recalls for children’s jewelry made in China due to high lead levels in paint or other health threats. On June 13, 2007, the CPSC recalled 1.5 million Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railway toys produced over the last two and half years because high lead levels were detected in the paint used to decorate the trains. Other toys manufactured in China have been found to contain kerosene.

USA Today reports that, despite known developmental delays, IQ impairments, and impact on healthy kidney and liver function, the Chinese government told the CPSC that it’s unnecessary to limit the lead content in the products it manufactures for kids because it believes much of the lead wouldn’t seep out of jewelry so would “do little harm for children.”

Maybe the Chinese didn’t hear about the 20,000 kids who were treated for lead poisoning between 2000 and 2005 thanks to the toys and jewelry they chewed on and, in some cases, swallowed.

We should not put our kids’ health and safety on the line just so they can play with a few trinkets. You can find wonderful alternatives at local crafts fairs or online at our sister site, TheWorldWomenWant.com.

And next time you visit Toys R Us? Tell them you’re not buying toys imported from China until China shows it cares about kids by getting the lead out of its toys.

The post Stop buying toys made in China appeared first on Big Green Purse.

At least 4,000 dogs and cats have died and thousands more have gotten sick from pet food manufactured in China that contains melamine.  Melamine is an industrial chemical that’s supposed to be made into plastic plates, among other things. Instead, it appears to have been intentionally added to animal feed to trick Chinese farmers into thinking they’re buying protein. It’s ended up in pet food, where it hasn’t turned dogs and cats into durable dinnerware. it’s killed them.

Here’s where the story goes from bad to worse. It turns out that the melamine is showing up in chicken feed, too. On Friday, reported the Associated Press, officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency placed a hold on 20 million chickens raised for market in several states because their feed was mixed with pet food containing melamine.

We don’t know yet if the chickens could harm us. And the 20 million chickens represent a tiny proportion of the 9 billion chickens raised every year in the U.S.

Still, it’s bone chilling to think that we could be eating poultry that was intentionally fed industrial chemicals rather than actual nutrients.

It’s at grim times like these that I’m reminded of the value of locally grown, organic food. When I shop at my farmers market, I have a chance to look the person who grew my tomatoes or raised my eggs directly in the eye. I suppose it’s possible they’d try to cheat me, harm me even, by spiking their feed or their soil with toxic chemicals that might somehow temporarily enrich them while devastating me. But I doubt it. They have too much to lose — not just money or business, but the actual human relationship with their customers that is as valuable to them as it is to us.

Yes, I relish the delicious quality of the locally grown, organic food I buy. But just as much, I savor the accountability and trust I have in the grower.

Buy local. And look the grower in the eye when you do.

The post First, deadly dog food. Now, contaminated chickens. Locally grown, organic fruits and veggies never looked so good! appeared first on Big Green Purse.