Cascadia Scorecard Weblog

Dead Man Walking

(Editor's note: See two other posts in series, "Carless in Seattle," and "A Mile From Home.")

Transit and walking are time consuming. Most people are just too busy. That’s obvious, right?

Well, as my family begins the ninth week of its experiment in car-less living, I’m finding a few flaws in that logic. Here are two.

1. Time spent on transit is different from time spent driving. People vary, of course, but for me, transit time is a pure gain over driving. I don’t enjoy driving. I’d rather read than listen to music or talk radio. And I can read without queasiness on all forms of transit. For me, then, car time is a waste of life, but transit time is living, and I’ll happily choose a 30 minute transit trip over a 15 minute car trip. For me, driving is time consuming.

2. Just so, walking doesn’t consume time, for different reasons. In fact, walking creates time. For one thing, if you walk for transportation, you don’t have to go to the gym as often.

More profoundly, walking gives you time you wouldn’t otherwise have at all. Walking makes you live longer, as Clark posted here. The largest ever study of the subject found that walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week, adds 1.3-1.5 years to your life, on average. (More vigorous exercise adds even more.) On reasonable assumptions (detailed below the fold), this relationship means that for every minute you spend walking, you get three back.

Time spent walking, then, is utterly free. It’s time you would have spent dead.

Nowadays, when I’m walking, I get a little pleasure in the thought that I’m cheating death, that every minute I spend afoot is an extra moment of life.

Boring, wonky, calculation notes:

My assumptions—which I’d appreciate some astute blog reader checking against the original journal article that reports the study on which Clark posted—are that you have to walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week, for thirty years to get the 1.3-1.5 year lifespan bonus. I made up the 30 year figure (too busy to read the journal (wink)).

Then I calculate 30 minutes x 5 (days) x 52 (weeks) = 7,800 minutes of exercise per year x (guess of) 30 years = 234,000 minutes of walking, repaid with 1.4 years or 736,000 minutes of added life. That’s about three minutes extra for every minute you walk.

Note that even if have to walk five days a week from birth to age 90, you’re still getting every single walking minute back, though you wouldn't get three.

One Mile from Home

(Editor's note: See the two other posts in the walkability series, "Carless in Seattle" and "Dead Man Walking.")

Last week, I displayed the wreckage of our 1986 stationwagon; this week, its replacement: our 1996 Burley stroller/bike trailer. (It’s Cascadia-made in Eugene, Oregon.)

The kids have long-since outgrown the thing. But since we decided to experiment in car-less living, we’ve resurrected it to haul groceries, library books, and (recently) a broken vacuum cleaner.

The Burley’s range is only as far as you want to push it. And for my family, that limit seems to be about one mile. Less than a mile is a comfortable walk; more is a burden. (To extend the range, we can fit the Burley to a bicycle—on which, more another day.)

A one-mile perimeter, therefore, defines this car-less family’s pedestrian travel zone—call it our “walkshed.” Fortunately, because we chose to live in a compact community, our walkshed turns out to be well stocked.

We can stroll to scores of shops and services—248 to be precise. I know because I counted. You can, too, in less than 60 seconds. I’ll tell you how in a moment.

Among the establishments in our domain are a bowling alley, a produce stand, a movie theater, and a hardware store, plus public institutions such as our post office, swimming pool, farmers’ market, and skate park (new and very cool!).

We’ve got pairs of independent booksellers, thrift stores (we know them well), and bakeries (ditto). Three pharmacies, three yoga studios, and three video stores offer us medication, meditation, and mesmerization, respectively. Five grocers and six dry cleaners compete for our appetites and our wrinkles. Nine barbers eye our locks. Dozens of specialty shops hawk their curiosities in the range of our Burley: one sells only flags, another only gifts from Norway, a third only old magazines.

True coffee houses number six, only one of them a Starbucks (which, because it's so low, may be the most surprising number in this tally). Restaurants? We’re provisioned with 54! (And there are 151 within two miles: we’ll walk farther for great eating.)

Two neighborhood ice creameries are counteracted by an astonishing 42 dentists (none of them covered by our insurance, sadly). Two local smoke shops are outnumbered by an even more astounding 74 doctors (again, not covered by our insurance). And then there’s our one neighborhood orthodontist: he has straightened or is straightening all three of our kids’ teeth, for which we've paid him enough to buy three used Volvos or most of a new Prius.

I should perhaps note that, despite these large counts, we do not live downtown. Far from it—-in fact, five miles from it. Our neighborhood of Ballard is a typical streetcar community developed largely in the 1920s and replicated in every North American city of similar age.

I should also probably note that our neighborhood is definitely not Mayberry. It's got 44 auto shops, 10 taverns, and a liquor store. Oh, plus two sex-toy shops and two strip clubs. (Or so the signs say -- I’ve never been inside. I swear.)

All of these counts I did in my head or using the yellow pages, and you can do the same for your home if you live in the United States. (4/10 Update: This tool is really only reliable in states where Qwest offers local phone service. Elsewhere, the count is incomplete. Here's a map of their area. Tip of the hat to Joseph W., in comments, for this catch.)

Here’s how:

To get a fairly complete count of businesses (in Qwest's 14 states), go to this Qwest online phone directory, select the business listings, type “all” in the category field, click “near a street address,” type in your address, and choose “1 mile.” (Sorry, Canadians, I have yet to find a .ca that performs this trick.) If you’re lucky and the database gods are smiling on you (the site is temperamental), Qwest will promptly reveal how many businesses there are within a one-mile walk of your front door. Call this your Walkshed Index, your Burley Score.

Ours, as I said, is 248. There are two hundred and forty eight places where my family can do business within a mile of home, not counting public facilities. That number is not remarkably high: the walkshed index at my downtown office address is 6,623. Nor is it remarkably low: one suburban family I know has a score of 0. But it means that living car-free is more viable for us than it would be for many families.

What’s the Burley Score where you live?

P.S. More than one quarter of car trips in the United States are shorter than one mile, as we noted in Seven Wonders. One quarter!

P.P.S. Realtors provide detailed information to prospective home buyers on schools and resale values. They could as easily report the Walkshed Index-—high scores translate into thousands of dollars of potential savings in fuel and car payments.

P.P.P.S. According to one map-making friend, creating walkshed maps and yellow pages would be a relatively simple Google Maps “Mash Up.” Anyone know of such a tool? Anyone volunteer to do this project? I’d love to have a detailed map stowed in the “glove box” of our Burley of all 248 businesses in my home zone. (I can get close with the Qwest online directory, plus the cool mapping tools at Map24, Google Local, and Windows Live Local. But these tools are designed for car drivers, not walkers.) Ideally, I would want a walking map or PDA application that shows me the whereabouts of public restrooms, water fountains, bike racks, curb cuts, bus stops, and benches. Besides, the Qwest tool is clunky and imprecise. (My total score of 248 is inexplicably less than the sum of all the categories of establishments listed above!)

UPDATE: A reader points out (in comments) that Canada411.ca will calculate a metric version of the Burley Score. Leave "category" blank, choose 1 or 2 kilometers, enter your address, and you're set. I calculated a 2-kilometer Walkshed Index of almost 7,000 for  an address in Vancouver's West End.

Car-less in Seattle

(Editor's note: Also see "A Mile From Home" and "Dead Man Walking.")

Six weeks ago, my 18-year-old son slammed our 19-year-old Volvo stationwagon into the rear of a high-clearance pickup. All the people were fine. So was the pickup.

But the Volvo wasn't, as you can see in this photo. Repairing It would have cost many times the Blue Book value. So we accepted the insurance company's check for $594 and bid farewell to the family car.

Happenstance thus made us car free. But we decided to stay that way . . . at least for a little while. OK, actually, it's more of an experiment, to see whether a middle-class family of five can live a contented life in Cascadia's largest city without owning their own car.

Why are we doing this? Cost, conscience, and capability.

Cost: Owning a car is expensive. Replacing our car with another old Volvo would cost us, well, several thousand dollars up front plus at least $400 a month in fuel, taxes, insurance, and depreciation. Buying a new Prius would cost about $650 a month, including the same things (and more than $1,000 a month during the first year!). (There's an automatic cost calculator at Edmunds.com, a manual one at Seattle's One Less Car Challenge, and a guidebook about car costs--if you want to understand the data--at Todd Litman's invaluable website for Victoria Transport Policy Institute.)

Conscience: As Al Gore said the other day, climate change is not a political issue. It's a moral issue. If I won't give car-less living a try, who will? (And I've ratified Kyoto in my own life, so I was looking for ways to further trim emissions.)

Capability--in other words, because we can. Thanks to past choices plus some good fortune, car-free living is a smaller disruption for us than for most people. Our kids are old enough (the youngest is now 11) to walk or bike unaccompanied to a lot of places. We live in a compact city neighborhood with an abundance of nearby amenities. We've got respectable local transit service and five FlexCars stationed within a mile of our home.

We're only six weeks into this new lifestyle, so I don't want to make too many conclusions. But so far, what's surprised me haven't been the moments of inconvenience (I expected those). It's been two unexpected pleasures: more little adventures every week and fewer backseat arguments to referee.

We're walking more, biking more, planning our activities more thoughtfully, and appreciating the FlexCar when we use it. My 12-year-old daughter said to me the other day, laughing at herself as she said it, "I'm noticing that cars go fast, really, really fast."

It's all very new, so this feeling may dissipate with familiarity. But so far, the biggest bonus of car-free living has been an added increment of mindfulness. Who'd have thought that wrecking the family car would be good for our souls?

There's much more to say about this experiment, but I'll save it for another installment. In the meanwhile, I know there are lots of car-free readers of this blog. I'd welcome your advice, especially if you've got kids.

Eat More Veggies

Lots more. According to a new biochemical analysis, the nutritional value of US vegetables has declined over the last 50 years. That's because new varieties of fast-growing crops designed to maximize output cannot take up or synthesize nutrients as quickly as more slow-growing plants. The result:

...of 13 major nutrients in fruits and vegetables tracked by the Agriculture Department from 1950 to 1999, six showed noticeable declines -- protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin and vitamin C. The declines ranged from 6 percent for protein, 15 percent for iron, 20 percent for vitamin C, and 38 percent for riboflavin.

Yikes. Just when the slow food movement is taking off, it turns out we need a slow-growing food movement too.

Bottle Battle

About yesterday's post on glass recycling -- some astute readers noticed that by focusing on recycling, I'd ignored more important priorities:  reducing the use of packaging, and reusing glass bottles where practical.  That's a fair enough critique.  But it did make me wonder:  what happened, exactly, to the practice of reusing glass bottles?  I can still remember drinking Coke from reusable bottles as a kid, but I rarely see that anymore. How come? And, more to the point, how would a system of reusable glass bottles stack up against recyclable glass and plastic containers?

On the first question -- what happened to reusable bottles? -- there's this recent article that sums up the situation nicely.  In a nutshell:

• Beverage marketers prefer customized bottles, with a unique shape and feel for each brand; but a reusable bottle system is most cost-effective if all bottles are interchangeable.
• Food stores don't like to take back bottles.  It's an administrative hassle and takes up time and space that they'd prefer to use for other purposes.
• Consumers don't like to return bottles.  Given the option, they'd prefer to recycle a bottle than return it for reuse.

Obviously, those barriers aren't insurmountable by any means.  But they also don't seem to be uniquely characteristic of North American consumer culture.  Though Japan's economy is far more energy-efficient than ours, its reusable bottle system, which used to be extremely effective, now seems to be falling by the wayside.  (Sigh.)

Some of the same forces are at play in Japan as in the US -- beverage makers are introducing customized shapes and sizes of many drinks.  But perhaps just as importantly, Japan's beverage delivery services -- which would pick up empty bottles at the same time they delivered new ones -- have declined, with more people getting their drinks from supermarkets.  The decline of reusable bottles is just a side-effect of other economic and social forces.

Of course, there are public policies that could stimulate a resurgence of reusable bottles -- mandatory bottle deposits, requirements that stores accept reusable bottles, perhaps seed money for local bottlers to restart the reusable bottle system.  An uphill battle, to be sure -- but it could have its benefits.

Then again, before we consider that sort of thing we should take a careful look at the possible hidden costs of reinstating a returnable bottle system.  Consumers might avoid reusables; unreturned and broken bottles can eat into the energy savings of a reusable bottle system; it's even conceivable that a reusable bottle system could generate extra car trips, reducing the net-energy benefits. 

Of course, reusable bottles could still save energy, reduce waste, and create local jobs, compared with glass recycling, or even with lightweight recyclable plastics.  But I think we'd owe ourselves a careful accounting of just what these benefits might be before spending all the political capital needed to reboot the reusable bottle industry.

Pain in the Glass

A random call from a reporter piqued my interest -- does recycling glass really save energy?  That is, after you take into consideration all of the energy spent to collect glass from people's homes, truck the collected glass to a distribution center, route it to a glass manufacturer, and then melt it down for reuse, does glass recycling really save anything, compared with using virgin materials?

I was actually fearing the worst here.  Obviously, given all of the energy costs of recycling glass, it's conceivable that it isn't a very good deal for the environment.  Plus the reporter was asking specifically because he'd heard some mention that the benefits of glass recycling were overblown.

As it turns out, though, I shouldn't have worried.  From just about every serious analysis I dug up, it seems that glass recycling really does save energy, compared with using virgin material.  Some handy citations: here, here, here, and this extensive lit. review (pdf).

But as with most things, there is a bit of a twist.

As several of the studies point out, glass recycling saves energy -- but much less energy per ton of glass than, say, recycling newspaper, steel, and aluminum. (See, e.g., page 31 of the lit. review.)  And because the theoretical energy savings of glass recycling appear to be relatively slim, it could mean that actual savings could depend on lots of devilish details -- how far the glass is shipped, how dispersed are the neighborhoods from which glass is collected, whether people make special car trips to recycling centers, etc. 

One of those devilish details -- covered here, about 3/4 of the way down the page -- is the type of furnace used to melt the recycled glass.  From the article...

[C]leaner-operating electric furnaces...use less energy and thus create less emissions than natural gas-powered furnaces, [but]  cannot use as much recycled glass, so they are not as efficient.

That is, by using an efficient, low-emissions furnace, you can actually decrease the overall energy efficiency of your glass recycling operation.  Darn.

And then there's this:  even though using recycled glass does appear to have a lower environmental cost than using virgin materials, the environmental cost is not zero.  Obviously--from an energy standpoint at least--it's better to drink water from the tap than water shipped in glass bottles, even if the bottles are made from recycled glass. 

But more to the point, it may be that buying a drink in a lightweight plastic bottle uses less energy than buying a beverage in container made from recycled glass -- even if the glass bottle is re-recycled, and the plastic bottle just gets thrown away after a single use.  This study from Israel (pdf) suggests as much -- though it points out that this is only true for certain types of plastics.  And in the same vein, this analysis from the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Analysis suggests that paperboard cartons have a lower environmental cost than bottles made from recycled glass.

Of course, I'm no expert here.  All the information I have on the subject comes from a bit of googling -- and much of it seems to be at least a decade old.  But it looks like glass recycling really is worthwhile...and, simultaneously, that the gradual trend among beverage bottlers to replace glass with plastic is in all likelihood a good thing.

The Backyard Bog

Not quite two months ago, my wife and I became home owners. We love it. But in additional to the pride of ownership, there are also the worries: Can we really afford this house? Should we get earthquake insurance? Why does a small lake appear in the backyard when it rains?

That last one has been on our minds a lot lately. After 26 consecutive days of rain (and counting) here in Seattle, there's a frighteningly large pool of water that has swamped the roses and turned the lawn into something resembling the Everglades. My dad jokingly suggested that we stock it with trout. But I have a better idea: I'm going to landscape my way out of the problem.

There's a growing movement in sustainable landscaping that emphasizes not only native plants and summer drought tolerance, but also managing water runoff during our many wet months. Lisa Stiffler over at Dateline Earth (the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's environmental blog) puts it thus:

The gist of it is this: By creating some very shallow depressions in your landscaping and planting them with hardy grasses, shrubs and trees in well-draining soil and covering the ground with a thin layer of mulch, you can catch and slow the flow of rainwater. This "rain garden" gives the stormwater a chance to soak into the dirt, helping trap pollutants and preventing the water from harming streams where salmon and other cool creatures chill out.

Lisa also includes a bevy of links to handy resources. Check them out.

In particular, I'm fascinated by some advice from the Puget Sound Action Team. They describe how one home owner in Shoreline, Washington--who was similarly cursed with saturated soils--created a bog garden. He built a retention pond and used a variety of plants to create a yard that can process an estimated 10,800 gallons of water a year on his quarter-acre lot. Total cost? Just $600.

Landscaping for water management helps ameliorate some of the environmental effects of impervious surfaces: less pollution runs off roofs and city streets. And during storms, less water deluges the city drain system that discharges untreated sewage into the Sound when it gets overloaded. Plus, there's another benefit: I won't be freaked out about my basement flooding.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me. I'm going to start digging just as soon as this rain stops.

Is Local the New Organic?

Editor's note: This is the first post from Jennifer Lamson, founding partner in Good Food Strategies LLC. Read her bio here.

Last week, the New York Times ran a feature by Marian Burros on New Seasons Markets, a grocery store chain in Portland that is banking on consumer interest in local, sustainable food--as opposed to simply organic.

The chain recently completed an inventory of the origins of its stock and have labeled everything grown in Oregon, Washington and Northern California “Homegrown.” They’ve already got 6 stores and 3 more on the way but remain adamantly opposed to expanding beyond the Portland suburbs--a testament to their commitment to being grounded in the local food economy.

People concerned about health, taste, and the environment have long sought out organic products. Once a cutting-edge concept for gourmets and health food junkies, organic is now mainstream, with many familiar major food brands launching organic product lines. I bought organic milk at a Seattle Safeway the other day that was packaged under Safeway's own new “O” label. Organics are the fastest growing segment of the food industry, with sales increasing by some 20 percent per year.

But, as the New York Times piece noted, organic alone is not the answer to the question of the fundamental role that food plays in our local economy, environment, food security, community vitality, or even health and enjoyment. I don’t know where that organic milk I bought from Safeway came from. I like the idea of sticking with my delivery from Smith Brothers dairy each week. Even though it’s not organic, there’s no growth hormone used and I am supporting the last of the independent dairy farms in my state, Washington.

We won’t be seeing New Seasons outside of the Portland area soon--but other Northwest areas are making progress on the local food front.

In the Seattle area, for example, cutting-edge projects are exploring food as a driver in the local economy and as a focal point for public policies ranging from health and nutrition to urban planning and even transportation.

Sustainable Seattle is launching a first-of-its-kind research project looking at how dollars spent on locally produced food affect the local economy as a counterpoint to the dollar spent on the average grocery item that has traveled 1500 miles to reach the consumer.

Washington State University’s King County Extension office is leading an effort to establish a food policy council for Seattle and King County that would bring together a broad spectrum of food system participants-- from farmers to hunger activists to grocery executives to land use experts -- to work jointly on solutions to current challenges like childhood obesity, disappearing farmland, and alarmingly high levels of hunger in our community. Leaders of that effort talked about how a food policy council could be a source of innovative, community-based solutions in an OpEd in the Seattle PI in December.

The local-food movement may even help us close the divide between rural and urban, red and blue. From the NY Times piece:

“Doc and Connie Hatfield, who founded the Country Natural Beef cooperative in 1986, said the co-op now has 70 ranchers, who raise beef on a vegetarian diet free of hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified feed. ‘Most of the ranchers are rural, religious, conservative Republicans,' Mr. Hatfield said. 'And most of the customers are urban, secular, liberal Democrats. When it comes to healthy land, healthy food, healthy people and healthy diets, those tags mean nothing. Urbanites are just as concerned about open spaces and healthy rural communities as people who live there. When ranchers get to the city, they realize rural areas don't have a corner on values. I think that's what we are most excited about.’"

I have always believed in the power of coming to the table together to hash out issues, find common ground, and be reminded of one another’s humanity, but I have most often thought about it in the very personal context of family and friends. In these times of bitter division, can coming to the table in celebration of delicious local grown bounty help remind us of our many shared values and experiences?

How Green Is It?

Many of us in the Northwest have explored “green” options for consumer goods and services. Whether this means purchasing organic fruits from the farmers market or buying hybrid vehicles, we’d like to be healthier and reduce our ecological footprint.

But sorting out fact from fiction when buying green can be daunting. To help you clear up some of the confusion, NEW has put together a short list of some good online sources to answer questions you may have about, say, whether or not that eyeliner truly wasn’t tested on animals.

We’d also like to hear about guides and resources that you’ve found helpful in making the right choices—we can’t cover them all! Please comment below to share those sites with other readers.

Pedestrian Safety in Numbers

Pedestrians: be safe, flock to Portland!

In the past 6 years pedestrian crash rates have fallen by 38 percent, according to a report on Oregon Public Broadcasting. The decline is especially impressive because there are likely more pedestrians today because more people (32 percent more) are using Portland's public transit. And similarly, while the number of bicyclist injuries has remained fairly constant, the total number of cyclists has gone up so that, on average, bicyclists are safer than they were 6 years ago.

Crash rates don't increase directly in line with walking and biking rates because there's safety in numbers. A study that looked at walking, biking, and crash rates in several cities found that individual pedestrians and cyclists are safer when traveling in cities with greater numbers of pedestrians and cyclists. The study's authors estimated that if the number of pedestrians were doubled, then the total number of pedestrian injuries would increase by only a third, but the rate of pedestrian injuries would actually decrease by a third. The theory is that the more often drivers encounter walkers, the more they expect to encounter them, and the more cautiously they drive.

Of course, infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as traffic regulations and customs, also greatly affect safety. I suspect that Portland's reductions are due to both safety in numbers and infrastructure improvements because the number of car crashes dropped as well. But it seems as though investments in pedestrian and cyclist safety could generate a feedback loop of benefits: if a city increases safety with better intersections and more bike lanes, then more people feel safe to walk and bike, so walking and biking become even safer, so more people feel safe to walk and bike. Eventually it would reach a plateau, of course, but we have a long way to go to match pedestrian rates in other countries.

The Not-So-Big Way-Too-Big House

A good news update to my previous post on the up-sizing of houses: Americans may have reached their limit. The New York Times reports that the size of new houses may be leveling off. While the average size of new homes grew by around 50% from 1970 to 2001, the past few years have seen very little increase.

What could be causing the trend? According to the New York Times, people are trading quality for quantity. Not only do builders have anecdotal evidence, but a nationwide survey in 2004 found that, for the same price, 63 percent of respondents would prefer a smaller house with more amenities than a larger house with fewer amenities. That's up from 49 percent in 2000. The article also suggests that houses have finally become as large as people say they want them to be -- reality finally matches the American Dream.

I wonder if the housing boom plus the recession curtailed house sizes: people frenzied to buy a house, who don't have the money for the big house they really want, settle for smaller. But optimistically, I'll hope that people's preferences for McMansions have actually changed (not just as a fad) and that they've realized how much more giant houses cost to furnish and maintain. With rising energy prices, size can make a big difference.

Just You Weight

From today's New York Times:  new results from a long-term health study suggest that 9 out of 10 men, and 7 out of 10 women, will become overweight or obese at some point in their lives.  In fact, even if you've never had a weight problem as an adult, you could still at risk -- half of men who made it well into adulthood maintaining a body mass index in the normal range ultimately became overweight.

But weight, there's more!  According to one expert:

"What's particularly concerning is that these results actually may underestimate the risk of becoming overweight or obese among the general population" because minorities, who are at increased risk for obesity, were not included in the study.  [Emphasis added.]

That's it, I'm joining a gym...

Complex Carbohydrates

Has it come to this? Do careful shoppers really need to bring a book to the grocery store to help pick their way through the flood of labels claiming "100 percent organic," "made with organic ingredients," "natural," and many others? Yes, says a new book titled A Field Guide to Buying Organic, which offers an aisle-by-aisle guide to a wide range of labels and tips on when they're worth the extra cash you usually pay.

When I read through the book, though, I found it doesn't quite deliver on its promise. It's certainly a thorough and even-handed examination of labeling and standards, and offers lots of comparisons of, say, pesticide residues found in various conventional vs. organic produce. But it's a bit lacking in new and useful practical advice. (This is partly because of the cumbersome way they separate tips for health-oriented shoppers from tips for environmental shoppers or socially conscious shoppers.)

The exception for me was an eye-opening chapter on dairy products: how they're regulated; the kinds of contaminants that regularly show up in conventional and organic milk; why organic butter might be especially worth the price; and many other troublesome issues, such as somatic cell count (yikes).

The authors conclude that buying milk from smaller farms--organic or not--is probably worth the extra money, because they do a much better job of caring for cows, preventing infections, and restricting drug and hormone use. (This is especially in true in western states such as Washington, which tend to be dominated by large, industrial-size dairy operations.)

And a recent article in Grist on organic food prices is worth a read. It looks at the history of the organic movement, what share of the marketplace organics need to capture before prices come down (one-third, according to one study), and the contradictions inherent in the price issue, like: Is organic food too expensive or is conventional produce too cheap?

Mobility Without a Motor: Notes From Buckley, WA

Editor's Note: This is the second post in a series by Dan Staley on land use and quality of life in Buckley, Washington, a small town near Mount Rainier. (See the first here.)

Recently I commented on Clark’s post about Vancouver, BC’s decision to create dedicated bike lanes on a bridge, where I stated I wished I could get that kind of varied participation here in my little town of Buckley, Washington.

Well, what the heck am I doing to encourage different ways of traveling out here?

First, folks have to want it--you can’t force something (anything) on anyone and expect it to be accepted unless people understand why they are doing it--be it recycling, wetland preservation, stringent searches at airports, living in compact neighborhoods. One must ensure the public understands, accepts and trusts what you’re trying to do--if you don’t have this, forget it. We’ve found that the best strategy to get acceptance is still word of mouth. In Buckley, we primarily work with homeowners, businesspeople, and decision-makers to make this happen.

It turns out that folks here want to walk, want to ride their bikes, want to have children skateboard safely to school, want to get out of their cars. It’s just that nobody gave them the chance to have this kind of infrastructure before. 

We have a robust portion of the Foothills trail (when completed, some 30 miles long), a formal Park and Ride planned, some compact neighborhoods. For transit, we really need more people here before it is a viable option, but we are working on that for the future too; density and population drive transit, and we’re not there yet (our human population is about 4500). We work directly with developers to ensure their development connects to trails, bike paths, and sidewalks--which means few culs de sac and no gates. Developers appreciate knowing, early, what they need to do to get their project done--surprises cost money and establishing a relationship has positives for both sides.

In our struggles to update our Comprehensive Plan—which we take to City Council in a few weeks--we are also trying to create more walkable neighborhoods by narrowing the streets, bringing houses closer to the street, and ensuring that design guidelines don’t result in boring cookie-cutter neighborhoods that aren’t conducive to walking. We want to create something to walk TO--the neighbors’ house, parks, small businesses owned by someone we know, the river.

Is it enough? Who knows? You can only do your best, and hope. But something’s started. The five people running for mayor are discussing the plan changes, which shows people are engaged.

People seem to understand how the non-motorized ideas we’ve put forth benefit them, and also how they benefit their neighbors. And that seals the deal, because we know our neighbors out here.

Rhapsody in Blueberry

One of my supreme August pleasures is eating juicy blueberries by the handful. It’s those local blueberries, and the latest installment of The Tyee’s series on "The 100-mile diet," that are inspiring me to cook an all-local-food dinner party next week.

As we noted here, a British Columbia couple is reporting on their experience eating only food produced within 100 miles of their home for a year. Their summer report doesn’t make it sound too rough: salmon with organic sage butter, fresh fava beans, and sweet gypsy peppers anyone?

The series is a good reminder that eating locally produced food not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but puts the eater more in touch with how food is produced. As one of the writers--J.B. MacKinnon--puts it: “It is easier to make ethical decisions about sustainability and animal husbandry when you can walk onto the farm and see for yourself. Distance is the enemy of awareness.”

Eating locally also supports the economy of local producers that are using organic and sustainable practices.

Since August in the Northwest is the time for enjoying hiking and eating blueberries, MacKinnon uses part three of the series to sing the praises of the flavors, variety, and cuisine within miles of his home. And he suggests (with recipes!) we all try our hand, even if just for one evening, at the 100-mile diet.

Marketing With Trees II

A brief follow-up to Jessica’s urban forests post: urban forests have additional benefits to businesses; however this information is, sadly, not widely known.

Other research--in addition to the study by Kathy Wolf that Jessica cited--has found customers were willing to travel farther (hopefully on transit) to reach well-vegetated businesses [1], and the quality of landscaping along approach routes to business districts has also been found to positively influence consumer perceptions [2].

And a study using a detailed pricing model on existing commercial building rents found a clear relationship between quality landscaping and higher office rental rates; quality landscaping (neat, well-groomed, attractive, able to see the business) increased rental rates by 7 percent, as did good building shade [3].

Businesses also experience increased productivity when their employees are exposed to green spaces: Desk workers who can see nature from their desks take 23 percent less time off sick than those who don’t see any green from their windows, and they also report greater job satisfaction [4].

Expanding on this worker satisfaction trend a bit, social and nature researchers Rachel and Steve Kaplan have a theory (attention restoration theory) that “nearby nature” helps alleviate mental fatigue caused by directed attention-- the fatigue caused by our brains trying to filter too many competing messages. And others are noticing and quantifying the apparent fact that urban greenery has positive social effects as well.

Those are just a few of the benefits provided by urban forests. Some of my research in urban forestry included writing a lit review on all of the benefits of urban trees for a client who--for whatever reason--hasn't published it. If any of you wishes to follow up on the topic, I'll send the lit review along in its current draft form (e-mail: dstaley@cityofbuckley.com)

Referenced studies

[1] Bisco Werner, J.E., Raser, J., Chandler, T.J., and O'Gorman, M. 2002. Trees mean business: a study of the economic impacts of trees and forests in the commercial districts of New York City and New Jersey. New York: Trees New York. 141 pp.

[2] Wolf, K.L. 2000. Community Image - Roadside Settings and Public Perceptions, University of Washington College of Forest Resources, Factsheet #32.

[3] Laverne, R.J., Winson-Geideman, K. 2003. The Influence of Trees and Landscaping on Rental Rates at Office Buildings. Journ. Arbor. 29:5 September 2003 pp. 281-290.

[4] Wolf, K.L. 1998 Urban Nature Benefits: Psycho-Social Dimensions of People and Plants, University of Washington College of Forest Resources, Factsheet #1.

Driver's Ed, Hybrid Style

Much has been made of the discrepancy between the rated fuel economy of hybrid cars and the actual results that drivers get on the road. Sure, "actual mileage may vary," but that variance proved particularly wide for hybrids, and was especially aggravating since fuel efficiency was the main reason people bought the hybrids in the first place.

Now comes the Dean of Energy Geeks, Amory Lovins, to offer a solution. According to his half-page piece in the current issue of the Rocky Mountain Institute newsletter (p. 15 of large pdf), hybrid owners need to learn a new style of driving to take advantage of their cars' technology. Lovins calls it "pulse driving," and it has two main components:
- Brisk acceleration, then letting up once you reach cruising speed. "The engine is most efficient at high speed and torque," he writes.
- Gentle braking, anticipating the need to stop. This allows the car to recover as much energy as possible and feed it into the battery. If you try to stop more suddenly, the mechanical brakes kick in, and they dissipate that precious energy as mere heat.

Lovins claims that this strategy has enabled him to eek out 63 mpg with snow tires on his 64-mpg-rated Insight, and will bring in 53 to 55 mpg on the 55-mpg-rated Prius.

Not having a Prius, I can't test-drive this advice, but I'd be curious how it squares with the observations of all you hybrid drivers out there.

Sea Food, See Food Travel

Globalization in action: some locally-caught seafood is now being shipped to China for processing, and then back to the Northwest for sale. This saves on labor costs -- labor is a fifth to a tenth as costly in China as it is here -- but massively increases the amount of energy consumed.

For the most part, I prefer to buy food that's grown or caught locally. But sending locally-caught seafood on an 8,000 mile journey in search of cheap labor definitely strains the definition of "local".

But as long as international markets remain open, transportation remains cheap, and disparities in international labor costs remain wide, we're likely to see more and more of this sort of thing. Which means, unfortunately, that green-minded consumers may have to remain vigilant not just about where their food is grown, but also where it's processed.

Survive Locally

This would make a great reality TV show: As chronicled in online magazine the Tyee, a couple in British Columbia decides that for one year they will only eat food that is grown or raised within a 100-mile radius of where they live--with a few exceptions.

Why? The short answer is "fossil fuels bad." The average American (and probably Canadian) meal, they point out, uses 17 times more petroleum products than an entirely local meal. And:

Let's translate that into the ecological footprint model devised by Dr. William Rees of UBC which measures how many planets'-worth of resources would be needed if everyone did the same. If you had an average North American lifestyle in every other way, from driving habits to the size of your house, by switching to a local diet you would save almost an entire planet's worth of resources (though you'd still be gobbling up seven earths).

And how hard could it be to eat within 100 miles? After all, they live in an area rich in fertile farmland and seas. They imagined they would eat seasonally, their table heavy with the best produce, fish, and free-range meat that British Columbia has to offer, even while their neighbors were chomping on cardboard tomatoes flown in from Mexico and California.

It turns out it’s both difficult and expensive. Local grains don’t exist, except for a few heritage grains. Yes, there are local free-range cows and chickens, but the animals are raised on non-local feed. In summer, BC's abundant farmer's markets serve them well, but many of the supermarkets still sell much shipped produce, except for, say, local organic salad mix at $17.99 a pound. Summer, of course, only lasts so long.

And here’s the kicker: Vegetarianism doesn’t work well because soy isn’t grown locally. So they’re forced to ask this question: “Does vegetarianism fit into a local, sustainable diet?” And the answer isn’t clear at all. (Part II--"Wanted: A Perfectly Local Chicken"--covers this tricky issue.)

Their few exceptions--and funny moments, such as an attempt to make strawberry preserves with honey--begin adding up. Their butts also begin to shrink. (Add a diet book to the reality TV show .)

Their experiment points (again) to this fact: Eating is complicated for thoughtful people who believe that everyday actions such as buying food have a heck of an impact on the world. On the other hand, just the fact that they're attempting the feat, and that they have an attentive audience, bodes well for efforts to limit our impacts.

I happened to pick up a July 2005 copy of Gourmet magazine this week, and noticed that writer Bill McKibben was trying a similar experiment in the Vermont/Lake Champlain area. Interestingly, his take was more positive than the BC couple's. Does that mean that  Vermont is ahead of BC in small-scale food production?

Thriving Commons?

For the last several weeks, we've been collecting comments on a series of values and principles of sustainability, called the 'Fundamentals.' Our hope is to get your feedback about the best way to frame the issues that we address in our work. Thanks to all of you who have left such thoughtful comments!

In an early focus group we floated the idea of a value called thriving commons. ("We are all trustees for a common inheritance: our grandchildren’s birthright of schools, parks, forests, rivers, climate, and even our democracy.") But some folks thought we needed to be more explicit about the environment. So we proposed the language of thriving nature, instead.

"Commons" is a word that has captured the imagination of many. How does it strike you? What does it mean to you? When you hear about the "commons" does it evoke for you the bounty of nature?

Please let us know what you think! Check out our special blog devoted to the Fundamentals and leave your comments there. Thanks!

Long Distance Runaround

When shopping for food, how important is it to buy local?  This question isn't rhetorical:  I no longer know quite what to think about this.  Obviously, transporting food long distances requires fossil fuels and creates air pollution, among other ills. So all else being equal, it's better to buy local.  But how much better, I'm just not sure. 

Studies such as this one (reported on here by the BBC, blogged about here) suggest that, in terms of net environmental impact, it's even more important to buy local than to buy organic.  The authors of the study didn't look at human health issues, but did attempt to quantify all sorts of environmental "externalities" -- i.e., costs not borne by the consumer -- resulting from food production. And they found that transportating food was far and away the largest component of external environmental costs. In other words, the closer to home the food is grown, the better it is for the planet.

But then there's this analysis, from the Earth Policy Institute: 

The U.S. food system uses over 10 quadrillion Btu (10,551 quadrillion Joules) of energy each year...21 percent of overall food system energy is used in agricultural production, another 14 percent goes to food transport, 16 percent to processing, 7 percent to packaging, 4 percent to food retailing, 7 percent to restaurants and caterers, and 32 percent to home refrigeration and preparation.

Wading through all these numbers, it looks as though food transport is not as big a deal as I'd thought. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the US consumes about 100 quadrillion BTUs (or "quads") of energy each year.  If the Earth Policy Institute is correct, then transporting farm products takes about 14% of 10 quads, or about 1.4 quads a year.  That's a huge amount of energy, admittedly, so buying local certainly helps. But still, transport is only the fourth largest component of the food system -- which means that, as a consumer, you can probably squeeze out significantly more energy savings by getting a more efficient refrigerator or stove, or eating more grains and veggies and less meat.

And then there's this, from p. 62 of the Union of Concerned Scientist's venerable Consumer's Guide to Effective Enviornmental Choices...

Transportation accounts for 26 percent of ghg emissions from the fruit, vegetable, and grain category, but only 0.6 percent of all emissions traceable to consumer purchases.

Now, if this is right, then moving food all around the country (as eco-unfriendly as the practice may seem on its face) is a relative drop in the bucket. Or, er, oil barrel. According to the book, personal transportation and household operations -- what and how far you drive, and how you heat and power your house -- account for nearly two thirds of an individual's GHG emissions. That's about 100 times as much energy as is used transporting fruits, vegetables and grains. So by this reckoning, growing all of your food in your own backyard isn't as important as improving your car's gas mileage by a mere 3 percent. Or, put differently, all else being equal, it may be wiser to choose a home within walking distance of a grocery store than one that's adjacent to the fields where your food is grown.

Obviously, there's a lot to consider here. First of all, the numbers feel, well, squishy to me. When I was researching this post, I found all sorts of estimates of how much energy goes into agriculture; the sources I highlight in this post seem credible and well-reasoned, but probably aren't definitive. Second, one shouldn't just consider the global-warming implications when making consumer choices.  There are all sorts of good reasons -- practical and emotional, environmental and economic -- to buy locally grown food. But since my time, money, and attention are all limited, I like to concentrate my efforts on the choices that make the biggest difference. The problem is that now I'm just not sure how big an environmental priority to assign to buying local food: is it the most important choice you can make, or a relatively minor one? What was once clear is now, to me, opaque.

And finally: high oil prices have spawned renewed concern over fuel shortages in the coming decades--and since modern agriculture certainly requires lots of fuel, some folks seem especially worried whether there will be enough food to go around. That's a reasonable enough thing to worry about. But again and again I hear people argue that the best solution is to go "back to the land" -- to spread out over the landscape, and carve up corporate mega-farms into 40 acre homesteads so that the food doesn't have far to go from farm field to table. That could work, I suppose. But that sort of low-density sprawl runs exactly counter to the examples of the world's most energy-efficient economies, in which people tend to concentrate in compact urban areas where they don't have to drive much to get around.

Which suggests that how much I drive is likely of far greater consequence than how much my food does.

PBDE-Free Shopping

Because NEW has done a study on the high levels of PBDEs in northwesterners, people often ask us about what they can do to protect themselves and their children from the toxic flame retardants.

A good new resource on this topic is Green Guide's handy clip-and-save Smart Shoppers PBDE card (pdf). The card gives general tips on avoiding toxics in your diet and--most useful--lists computer and furniture companies that have chosen not to use PBDEs in their products, including Intel, Motorola, IKEA, and Lifekind. (Green Guide also has a good article summarizing the risks of PBDEs.)

It's worth keeping in mind, though, that ultimately the best way to avoid PBDEs--which have been found in everything from dust to grocery store food--is to phase them out of all new products and get rid of old PBDE-laden products. They are so ubiquitous that exposure isn't a choice. So consumers need to pay attention to policy as well, as the mothers from our study know well. (To see what your region is doing to phase out PBDEs, go here.)

Green Beauty Label Axed

Last week, the US Department of Agriculture announced it won’t allow the “USDA Organic” label on cosmetics or personal-care products. The decision comes as a blow not only to the natural-product companies that have been spending money and time to coordinate their practices and products with the USDA’s standards, but to consumers as well.

Standardized labeling helps consumers identify products that adhere to criteria for sustainability—-like the Forest Stewardship Council’s sustainable lumber label-—or gives them more information, like the recently implemented Country of Origin labeling for seafood, which tells not only where fish is from, but whether it’s farmed or wild.

Those labels help consumers make informed choices, and as the demand rises for eco-friendly products (for organics, it’s been rising about 20 percent per year for a decade), those choices will have a bigger impact on the marketplace. Aligning markets with sustainable practices—and letting consumers know about it—is a key method for creating a sustainable economy (see This Place on Earth 2001, p. 70, pdf).

P.S. Widespread standards, like the USDA’s organic label, are also designed to help consumers cut through the clutter of information. But sorting through labels can also be tough; here’s one website that helps.

Talking the Talk vs. Walking the Walk

Via Planetizen News, here's an interesting sustainability ranking for 25 US cities.  The Northwest fares pretty well:  Portland ranks #2, and Seattle #4.  (The Bay Area beats the Northwest by a nose:  San Francisco and Berkeley, CA rank  #1 and #3, respectively.)

I haven't had time to look through the methods thoroughly.  But my first impression is that it gives undue weight to intentions, and not enough to actual performance.  For example, Portland does exceptionally well in climate and energy policy, while New York City's rank on energy policy is only middling.  But this only measures what cities say about energy, not what they actually do.  In fact, at least in terms of transportation efficiency, Portland eats The Big Apple's dust:  New York has by far the most energy efficient transportation system in the country, largely because higher residential densities let many New Yorkers get around on public transit or on foot.  So even though Portland is doing a good job of talking the talk on energy efficiency, in New York City they're (literally) walking the walk. 

That's not to say that Portland's energy policy is irrelevant, or that rankings like these aren't a useful exercise.  Far from it.  Still, actions speak louder than words -- and any attempt to measure sustainability should look far more closely at what cities actually do than at what their leaders say.

Share and Share Alike - Northwest CSAs

In this month's Cascadia Scorecard News, we profile the Northwest's community-supported agriculture movement, which has exploded in the past 15 years. (Community-supported agriculture farms--or CSAs--are growers who sell prepaid “shares” of produce directly to consumers, either for the full season or for a shorter commitment.)

My personal indicator of their growth is that the last time I wrote about CSAs, in 1996, there were around five serving King County, Washington; now there at least 29 farms serving King County and 65 in the state. This is a story that is paralleled throughout the region: small sector, big growth.

Do you have your own story about CSAs and other local-produce efforts in the Northwest? If so, please share them with other readers (by commenting below). We'd love to hear your tips on how to choose a farm, how long to commit, and how to make sure your dollars are doing the most good.

Tips on British Columbian CSAs would be especially appreciated, as online resources were scarce.

Two-Wheel Drive

The first time I celebrated Bike to Work Day, I didn’t have a job (I was a recent college graduate in search of one) so I experienced the event as more of a Bike-to-Free-Food-Booths Day. Luckily, the sponsors only asked for proof of biking, not working, and since my ancient 10-speed was my main form of transportation at the time, I fit right in.

That was in 1988. Since that time, I’ve gained jobs and various commute modes (including hitch-hiking by pickup truck), but biking remains my favorite. I feel lucky that my home, Seattle, has bike racks, bike lanes (the Sammamish trail is a recent victory), and bike advocacy groups. And hey, I’ve only been doored once.

It’s discouraging to note, though, that bike commuting is only slowly catching on in the US, despite that it’s healthy, cheap, and the most energy-efficient form of travel. According to the 2000 Census, while the number of bike commuters increased slightly from 1990, the percentage was still very low--0.4 percent of all commute trips.

Seattle and Portland do rate third and fifth of US cities in their population category, respectively, in percentage of workers who commute by bike. But I have to say I expected Portland—where the Hawthorne Bridge swarms with two-wheeled businesspeople on weekday mornings, I’m told--to beat Seattle; anyone have different or more recent numbers?

According to this VTPI report (pdf, p.21), Canadians pedal to work at a higher rate than Americans (1.2 percent of work trips were by bike in 2001), particularly British Columbians. Victoria ranked highest of any Canadian metropolitan area--4.8 percent in 2001--for share of work trips by bike.

And then there are countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, where “bike modal shares of travel” average 20-30 percent.

How to encourage more folks to hop on their two-wheelers for the short, everyday trips that they don’t really need a car for? Compact urban design obviously plays a big role. Gas price hikes probably aren't hurting.

Bike paths and lanes are also often promoted as a way to get people to pedal more. I’m also intrigued by the “shared streets” model of integrating transportation modes rather than separating them—which would turn streets into public spaces where children, pedestrians, cyclists, and streetcars mix with slow-moving cars.

With destinations closer together and bikes on equal footing with cars, we wouldn't need a Bike to Work Day--or free goodies--to help us choose two wheels over four.

Sometimes the Cloth Does Not Make The Baby

Ok, that's a dumb headline.  But the problem itself -- whether to diaper my babies with cloth or disposables -- was one I spent a bit of time agonizing over. 

But perhaps I shouldn't have.  A new study commissioned by the British Environment Agency (reported on here and here) suggests there's almost no difference between the two, at least in terms of environmental impacts.  Which is roughly the same answer that this 1992 study, at the website of our friends at the Institute for Lifecycle Energy Analysis, came to. 

The British study made some suggestions for ways that both disposables and cloth diapers could be improved, to reduce their impacts: for example, the study recommends reducing washing temperature, using efficient washers, and line drying for home-washed cloth diapers.  (Which, of course, is good advice for all your washing, not just diapers.)

Mr. Potato Head

News of the weird:  Idaho governor Dirk Kempthorne is lobbying California governor Arnold Swartzenegger to exempt fried potatoes from a list of foods that cause cancer -- even if they do, in fact, cause cancer.  Says one potato-head:

"If the french fry business in California drops, it would hurt everybody," said Keith Esplin, director of the Potato Growers of Idaho. [Emphasis added.]

Everybody, that is, except the folks who might otherwise develop tumors.

Backing up a bit -- frying potatoes and other carbohydrate-rich foods creates acrylamides, which are known to cause cancer in rats.  That evidence is strong enough that the World Health Organization and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization have recommended that people try to avoid acrylamides in their diet.  To be fair, a recent Swedish study found no apparent link between acrylamides and cancer in people, at least at concentrations found in the Swedish diet.  Still, economic risk to potato farmers is absolutely no reason to withhold information about dietary risks from consumers.

In other odd food happenings, (and coinciding with the release of the latest installment of the Star Wars saga), there's this.

Oregon Food Processor Labels Itself

Good news from the Capital Press for northwesterners who like their food without a side of pesticides and unfair trade. The 240 farms that make up Norpac, Oregon’s largest fruit and vegetable processor, have contracted with a third party to certify that their production practices are sustainable.

The certification standards were developed by Norpac growers, with help from Oregon State University scientists and the Food Alliance--an Oregon nonprofit with a highly rated certification program--and include environmental and social standards in areas such as pest and disease management, treatment of farmworkers, soil and water conservation, and wildlife impacts. Growers will be recertified every three years.

For consumers, this means that eventually we'll see a seal on products that have met Norpac’s standards. While some might sigh about another label to contend with—see this Wall Street Journal article (pdf) on the bumper crop of beyond-organic labels--it’s still noteworthy that a company as large as Norpac is buying into certification. (Perhaps the boycott of its products in the 1990s made PR more of a priority.)

“This is market-driven,” said Rick Jacobson, president and CEO of Norpac. “Our growers realize what a tough market this is. We have to find a way to distinguish ourselves.”

P.S.  Ecolabels.org is a good source on how labels stack up, gives the Food Alliance label a high rating, but notes that it's been criticized for copyrighting its label (Norpac's label is also proprietary).

Update: Corrected an error on 5/18 (OSU scientists, not U of O scientists).

Pyramid Scheme

Alan's been critical of USDA's old food pyramid--particularly because it appears to promote a diet filled with starch and low in oils. Recent research suggests that plant oils can be good for you, while over-consumption of refined carbohydrates may be contributing to rising levels of obesity and diabetes.

Responding to his concerns (ha!) USDA just released its new food pyramid.  Behold:

Oh my. Talk about incomprehensible.  This thing is worse than useless. The only clear message I get out of it is that, when making choices about my diet, I should be sure to avoid eating things that aren't food.

To be fair, the USDA website does give custom-tailored dietary guidelines, based on your sex and age. (I'm obviously not qualified to comment on the quality of those recommendations, but wouldn't be surprised if they were of similar, er, quality to the pyramid itself.)

But to the extent that the food pyramid is supposed to be an handy memory aid to remind you of what sort of things you should be eating, it fails. Miserably.

You have to wonder about the political process that creates something like this. No, wait; actually, you don't.

Update:  I'm just sitting here getting angrier and angrier about this thing.  Why?  Bad diets are KILLING PEOPLE. Giving people some useful & accurate information about healthy eating is the easiest & least intrusive thing the government could possibly do to change that.  But this thing is neither useful nor accurate -- which makes it both a waste of money and a wasted opportunity.  And that makes me think that it's mostly a sop to the food industries that were unhappy about being at the skinny end of the old pyramid.  Facts and cash collided; the facts bounced off, and cash stood firm.

Grande Latte, Hold the Smog

In what some researchers have dubbed "The Starbucks Effect," it seems that people's morning coffee-buying habits have added miles onto morning commutes.

It's an interesting piece of social-science detective work, actually.  Researcher Nancy McGurkin analyzed federal transportation data, and found that between 1995 and 2001, many people added errands to their morning commute.  And unlike afternoon errands--typically done by women--many of the new morning errands were being done by men.  From the Washington Post:

A closer look showed that...while younger men were sharing in more household-related errands such as ferrying children, older men were devoting many of their morning trips to coffee and such portable breakfast food as bagels.

Of course, this is about much more than Starbucks:  there are lots of other places that people can get take-out breakfast foods.  But it is, perhaps, a sign that we are doing much more of our living inside our cars, and less inside our homes.

ET's Old Phone

You can’t walk down the street anymore without seeing folks chatting on their cell phones. Wireless phones are everywhere and have dramatically altered our public spaces, filling them with unprecedented levels of noise, as one columnist has remarked.

They're also filling something else: our desk drawers and landfills. An estimated 500 million unused models are floating around, with about 130 million more added every year. This is disturbing news considering that cell phones contain lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic that end up in the water supply when we dispose of phones improperly.

Luckily, there are a bunch of options available for those of us who want to see our old phones reused or recycled. The most comprehensive programs are national or international in scope, including an effort called CollectiveGood. With CollectiveGood, you can safely recycle your old cell phone—any make or model—and help support one of a long list of nonprofits at the same time.

To find local cell phone recyclers in the Northwest (or other spots US and Canadian), a good resource is earth911.org. Just type in your zip code and a long list of programs and drop-off points will pop up. Staples stores show up again and again as places to recycle used phones.

Unfortunately, earth911.org didn’t yield results for recycling cell phones in British Columbia, but the folks at the Recycling Council of BC tell me that any Bell Mobility store will take any model of cell phone for their Recycle, Reuse and Redial Program. Some of the phones go to women's shelters and some are refurbished for reuse in developing countries.

Another BC program is the Phone for Food program at the Vancouver Food Bank, (604) 876-3601. Donations of phones translate into revenue for their food program.

Here are a couple more resources: King County, WA residents can visit this “What do I do with…?” site—choose electronic equipment from the dropdown list; then you’ll be able to narrow your search to cell phone recycling. And anyone can consult these two long lists of phone reuse and recycling options: here and here. These lists include both nonprofit programs and efforts sponsored by wireless corporations.

If any readers are aware of other Northwest programs or outlets for recycling, please post a comment.

Cash Cows

While sales of regular old conventional milk have been flat in recent years, sales of organic milk are soaring, according to the Dallas News. According to one estimate, organic milk sales now make up 8.2 percent of total milk sales, which represents a huge increase since 2000 (when it was anywhere from 1 to 4 percent of sales).

Markets around the nation are having a hard time keeping it in stock. Seattle food cooperative PCC confirmed that demand for organic milk is outstripping supplies, and has attributed at least part of the product’s popularity to concerns over bovine growth hormones and antibiotics. I'm sure milk’s association with purity—the drink for children—has helped make organic milk a leader. Customers who don’t buy anything else organic, says PCC, will reach for organic milk.

Supplies might become even tighter. The USDA is expected to make grazing requirements stricter for organic cows, after complaints from smaller farms that big producers—such as Horizon Organic, which has been called the “Microsoft of organic milk”—are getting around the rules.

The debate—described in this article—is another example of the challenges of terms like organic, especially when it comes to animal products. Most people would expect that organic milk means cows aren’t given hormones or antibiotics; that their feed is organic; and the land where the feed is grown is farmed without chemicals. But should it also mean cows get to graze daily?

And should we care that the organic milk market is dominated by big producers like Horizon and Organic Valley, which buy milk from, say, a Washington dairy, but process it elsewhere before shipping it back?

Consumers now face a dizzying array of milk choices--including organic, raw, non-pasteurized, homogenized, kosher, free-farmed, and, of course, goat. And while they're probably not in Albertson's yet, they might be soon. The PCC article is a good intro to the medley of terms, labels, and tradeoffs.

What a bummer.  Now, even milk is complicated.

Fishy Salmon

Along with many other northwesterners, I cringed when I saw the New York Times story that Manhattan markets were selling farmed salmon labeled as wild—a practice that apparently is not unique to New York. (A consumer affairs expert referred to it as “improperly baiting customers.”)

Tests performed for The New York Times in March on salmon sold as wild by eight New York City stores, going for as much as $29 a pound, showed that the fish at six of the eight were farm raised. Farmed salmon, available year round, sells for $5 to $12 a pound in the city. <p>Along with many other northwesterners, I'm sure, I cringed when I saw the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/dining/10salmon.html"><em>New York Times</em> story</a> that Manhattan markets were selling farmed salmon labeled as wild—a practice that apparently is not unique to New York. (A consumer affairs expert referred to it as “improperly baiting customers.”)</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Tests performed for <em>The New York Times</em> in March on salmon sold as wild by eight New York City stores, going for as much as $29 a pound, showed that the fish at six of the eight were farm raised. Farmed salmon, available year round, sells for $5 to $12 a pound in the city. </p></blockquote>

Since farmed salmon are fed artificial coloring to make them look pink, even experts have a tough time telling the difference by appearance alone.  Taste may be a different story.  But by then it’s too late. Store officials, meanwhile, had any number of excuses. My favorite is the one who said his sales clerks "must have gotten the salmon from the wrong pile in the back."

It might seem a little odd that the Times is sending reporters to investigate salmon fraud. I see it as a positive sign, testament to growing demand for information about the “secret lives” of consumer products—how they’re produced, what’s been added to them, and what the environmental and health impacts are. Farmed salmon, for example, have been shown to contain more PCBs and other toxics than wild salmon.

One recent win for consumers is a new eco-labeling law for fish, requiring that markets carry information on where certain seafood originated, and whether it was wild-caught or farm-raised. But the law only applies to full-service markets, not to fish markets. So, unfortunately, it's still up to consumers to remember that when they see “fresh, wild salmon" advertised in the store, it might just be a fish story.

Bloom and Bust

I intend to celebrate this piece of news with a pint of strawberries and a bunch of arugula: the number of farmers markets in the United States doubled from 1994 to 2004.

Of the Northwest states, Washington may have the greatest total number of markets (more than 90, according to this Seattle Times article (the USDA lists 87) with a record number, at least two dozen, expected to open in Seattle and King County this spring. Many have already opened.

The article cites signs that the King County area is in the early stage of a farmers-market boom, despite some resistance from shopkeepers in parts of Seattle where stores still sell produce outside their storefront groceries.

Oregon’s farmers markets are also booming, with a number of new locations this year and lots of creative additions to markets, from preserving and pickling workshops to health education classes. The Portland Farmers Market opens a full month earlier (starting this Saturday), expecting that if they open the shoppers will come. The state has more farmers markets per capita than Washington or Idaho (62 total, with 13 in Portland alone). Idaho has 26 farmers markets, according to the USDA; and BC has around 90.

Why do farmers markets matter? For consumers, it’s a no-brainer. We get greater access to produce that’s fresh, local, often organic, and often reasonably priced for the quality. Many local markets have become gathering places where you can hear music, try out unusual fruits and vegetables (kohlrabi, anyone?), pick out a nosegay of local flowers, and have a chat. And the money we spend directly benefits the community (fewer greenhouse gas emissions per carrot, no pesticides in runoff and soil, money kept in the local economy, and so on).

And for growers, it’s, well, a market: an opportunity to sell their wares directly, to cut out the middleman, and to develop relationships with customers.

It’s worth remembering, though, that markets are only one sliver of the story. A big threat to farming--especially farms on the urban fringe--is sprawl, which is still the Northwest’s predominant land use pattern. A case in point: Snohomish County, north of Seattle, just unveiled a new plan to help its small farmers, including an advisory group, a media relations and marketing program; even a proposal to create a year-round public market similar to Pike Place.

The plan did not include, however, steps to help ease development pressures for farmland in the county, which has suffered a 26-percent loss of farmland in the past 20 years.

And while Oregon’s cities have done a better job of curbing sprawl than Washington’s—especially rural sprawl--the recent passage of a property-rights law may erode that record.

What can consumers do? Continue to support local agriculture by patronizing farmers markets and other methods of buying local produce (ie, community-supported agriculture). And pay close attention to the pubilc policy issues—particularly sprawl and climate change (see this post on drought)--that will affect the future of your community's farms.

P.S. Tim Steury, a guest contributor to this weblog and a small farmer himself, wrote a lovely piece for last month's issue of Washington State Magazine on whether we should worry about the future of the family farm and rural communities.

Cost Consciousness

Via Worldchanging:  Check out this handy gas savings calculator for hybrid vehicles.  It's simple, but nifty--and good for minutes of uninterrupted fun!

The take home message -- high-mileage hybrids can, in theory, save you a bundle.  But just how much money depends not only on how much gas costs, but also on how much driving you do, and what your other alternatives are.

So let's say you expect to drive 2,000 miles per month, and that gas prices will stay at today's level -- in Washington state, roughly $2.21, as of this morning.  And let's say you're trying to decide whether to trade in your 15 mpg SUV for a Prius (56 mpg, on average).  In nominal dollars, you'll spend $25,800 less on gas over 10 years if you buy the Prius -- meaning that the gas savings alone would pay for the entire cost of the new hybrid.  The trade-in value of your SUV is just gravy.

But, on the other hand, let's say you drive only 500 miles a month, and you're choosing between a new Prius and a used car that gets 30 miles per gallon.  In that case, the Prius only shaves about $2,000 off your 10-year gas bill: not nearly as good a deal.  A used car might be more economical.  And, as we've said before, if you're willing to invest some of the cost difference between the Prius and the used car on other pollution control efforts, you can do quite a bit of good for the environment at the same time.

Obviously, this is a fairly simple calculator.  It doesn't factor in tax breaks for high-mileage vehicles, resale values of hybrids, or discounting of future spending on gas. But it certainly suggests that hybrids can pay for themselves over the long term -- depending on how much you drive, and what your other options are.

Walking Tall

According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, three of the 10 best U.S. cities for walking are in the Northwest:  Seattle (#3), Portland (#4), and Eugene, OR (#8).  Other cities in the top ten, in order, were Arlington, VA; San Francisco; Boston; Washington, DC; New York City; Jersey City; and Denver. The APMA ranking is based on a number of measures of physical activity, ranging from dog ownership to the share of people who go to museums. 

Obviously, to some extent, lists like this are a bit silly -- they project an appearance of precision that just isn't justified.  But on the other hand, maybe living in a walking-friendly city will make up for all of those