Excellent articles on making sound environmental choices…

There have been a couple of articles in the past month about how to make good choices for the environment that I thought I’d share…

The first is from Ask Pablo, Salon‘s new column on environmental issues. Pablo tackles the question of whether bottles or cans are more environmentally friendly (you might also note my comment, where I briefly took to my soapbox to talk about how bad HFCS, an ingredient in all conventional sodas, is):

Since consumers are ultimately responsible for the production of a can or bottle through their purchases, the embodied energy and resulting emissions are their responsibility as well. Consumers have little control over what happens to the materials after they discard them, so we will attribute the emissions reduction from recycling to the demand side of the recycling system rather than the supply (rewarding consumers who purchase recycled-content materials or packaging).

Full article here.

The next one is from Slate, an excellent online daily that covers a range of popular topics. This one tackles the environmental impact of OJ from concentrate vs. not-from-concentrate. The answer may surprise you:

In the end, not-from-concentrate orange juice sold by the carton comes out slightly ahead of frozen OJ sold by the canister in terms of energy use. As a green consumer, your worst choice would be to buy juice that’s been rehydrated by the supplier, then placed in cartons (such as Minute Maid Original). If you prefer juice from concentrate, whether for the lower price or more Tang-y taste, it’s better to rehydrate it yourself.

Another Ask Pablo, this time about the impact of discarding incandescent bulbs in favor of CFLs:

There are several reasons to get rid of those incandescent bulbs and replace them with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Incandescent bulbs turn less than 5 percent of the electricity they use into light; the rest is wasted heat. Besides being annoyingly inefficient, this can increase summertime air-conditioning costs and present a higher risk of fire. CFLs, on the other hand, are over three times more efficient, meaning they put out the same amount of light but use one-third as much electricity; they also put out much less heat.

And finally, not to plug my own blog, but ToysNaturally reviewed an article by Sierra Club head Carl Pope about how globalization has contributed to environmental abuses and lack of safety in toys:

Pope’s article attempts to explain how top-of-the-line companies like Mattel and Fisher-Price ended up as major culprits in the 4 million toys recalled in 2007. He sums it up in a few words: “In today’s globalized economy, top companies have lost control of the quality of the goods that display their logos. They are powerless to prevent a recurrence onf the toxic-toy tragedy–and they are terrified that their brands could be dragged through the mud when the next epidemic of dangerous products strikes.”

Food for thought, eh?