Bamboo-zled

One of my loyal readers posed a question in response to my last blog entry about cotton's environmental impact: what about bamboo? A lot of people are asking that these days, and the answer is complicated.

Bamboo grows very quickly (up to a foot a day!) with little pesticide and herbicide use and little water. Hence its reputation as an eco-friendly alternative to cotton. Bamboo also produces 30-35% more oxygen than a hardwood forest on the same amount of land, and is an excellent soil erosion inhibitor. But if you've ever seen bamboo growing, you know that it doesn't so much resemble a soft fabric as a bunch of hollow sticks. The controversy about bamboo stems from the process of turning the stalks into wearable clothing.

National Geographic's The Green Guide has this to say:

According to Morris Saintsing, sales development and operations partner of bamboo clothing retailer Bamboosa, all bamboo stalk intended for clothing in the United States is converted into raw fiber at one factory in China. "This is a proprietary process and they have a patent on it," says Saintsing. "It's hard to find out what is going on from an R&D standpoint," he adds. Other sources have compared it to the viscose process used on rayon, which involves sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide, both of which are caustic, and carbon disulfide has been known to cause breathing and sleeping problems among workers. Sodium hydroxide can threaten aquatic wildlife when released into groundwater and streams. Saintsing said that greener ways of creating bamboo fabrics are being tested, but those generally result in a linen-like product that doesn't have the silky texture people are looking for in clothing. Few of the alternatives are in use, but "We're doing what we can to make it a greener process," he says.

Like many decisions we have to make in our quest to be more environmentally friendly, finding green clothing is tricky. Bamboo may not be a perfect choice because of its controversial manufacturing practices. As consumers, we need to pay attention to how our clothes are made so that we can exert pressure on companies when their processes don't match our values. Just as you would try on clothes to make sure they fit, investigate how that bamboo shirt is made before you spend your money on it.

Debunking the Cotton Ads

I am fed up with the cotton ads I've seen lately, touting cotton as the greenest thing you can wear. I understand what they're trying to say: that it's better to wear clothing made from plant fibers than clothing made from petroleum-based fibers. But these ads totally ignore the fact that conventionally grown cotton takes a huge toll on the environment.

Here are the sobering facts:

• Just 2.4% of the world's arable land is planted with cotton, but it accounts for 24% of the world's insecticide market and 11% of global pesticides sold, making it the most pesticide-intensive crop grown on the planet.

• In California, five of the top nine pesticides used on cotton are cancer-causing chemicals (cyanazine, dicofol, naled, propargite and trifluralin). If you read my blog entry on mosquitos, you've heard of naled before.

• In Egypt, more than 50% of cotton workers in the 1990s suffered symptoms of chronic pesticide poisoning, including neurological and vision disorders.

• In India, 91% of male cotton workers exposed to pesticides eight hours or more per day experienced some type of health disorder, including chromosomal aberrations, cell death and cell cycle delay.

• 14 million people in the U.S. are routinely drinking water contaminated with carcinogenic herbicides and 90 percent of municipal water treatment facilities lack equipment to remove these chemicals.

• In California, it is illegal to feed the leaves, stems and short fibers of cotton plants known as "gin trash" to livestock because levels of pesticide residues are so high.
  

• In the United States, 1/3 pound of agricultural chemicals are typically used in the production of a single cotton T-shirt.

• $2 billion’s worth of chemicals are sprayed on the world’s cotton crop every year, almost half of which are considered toxic enough to be classified as hazardous by the World Health Organization.

According to Steve Trent, Director of Environmental Justice Foundation, “With no less than 99% of the world’s cotton farmers living in the developing world, the pesticides are applied in fields where illiteracy is high and safety awareness is low, putting both the environment and lives at risk.” He adds, “The dangers faced by poor illiterate children and farmers, to keep our clothes cheap, is unacceptable.”

Organic cotton, grown without pesticides and herbicides, is the only truly green cotton you can wear. If you're not sure who to believe, keep in mind that the cotton industry has a vested interest in getting the general public to believe that wearing conventionally grown cotton is a green thing to do. They're probably a little biased.

A Bright Idea or Not?

CFLs, or compact fluorescent lamps, have been touted as the environmentally friendly way to light our homes and businesses. According to Energy Star, if every American home replaced just one light bulb with an Energy Star-qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

Sounds good to me: save the environment, save the pocketbook! My husband and I have been slowly replacing the burned-out lightbulbs in our house with CFLs, and many of my friends have done the same. But we couldn't help noticing the warning on the package:

"Lamp contains mercury. Manage in accord with disposal laws."

Wait a minute. Mercury is a known neurotoxin! Acute exposure to mercury vapor has been shown to result in profound central nervous system effects, including psychotic reactions characterized by delirium, hallucinations, and suicidal tendency. Fetuses exposed to mercury in the womb are at a much greater risk for developmental disorders.

Energy Star says there's no need to worry. CFLs only have a small amount of mercury vapor in them, which is sealed off in the glass tubing. The amount of mercury contained in the average CFL is 4 milligrams—about the amount that would cover the tip of a ballpoint pen. (As a comparison, old-fashioned thermometers contain about 500 milligrams of mercury, equal to 125 CFLs.) Besides, mercury is an essential part of a compact fluorescent lamp; it allows the bulb to be an efficient light source. No mercury is released when the bulbs are intact (not broken) or in use.

I have yet to crack one of these sturdy bulbs, but there are guidelines (too complicated to go into here) you should follow if you do manage to break one. What I want to address is how to properly dispose of burned-out CFLs. I didn't bother exploring my local laws; I wanted to know the most environmentally responsible option.

The EPA recommends that consumers take advantage of available local recycling options for CFLs, because the mercury in CFLs can be fully recovered and reused through the recycling process. I discovered that both Ikea and Home Depot have CFL recycling programs. At Home Depot, you just give them to the store associate behind the returns desk. You can also take expired bulbs to a hazardous waste drop-off location in your community, but then they may not be recycled.

Why would we want to use a product in our homes that has to be so carefully handled? Because according to LighterFootstep.com, using CFLs can actually reduce the amount of mercury released into the environment each year. Half of the power in the United States is still generated by coal-fired plants, and burning coal releases mercury into the atmosphere (about 10 milligrams over the life of an average incandescent bulb). Because of its superior efficiency, a CFL will only be responsible for about 2.5 milligrams. Even if you add the 4 milligrams of mercury contained in the typical CFL, a CFL is actually responsible for putting less mercury into the wild than its incandescent equivalent.

So lighten up. You're doing the right thing using CFLs. Just try not to break them and don't put them in the trash.