green consumerism

Back in July, I wrote about the lengths to which shoppers sometimes have to go in order to find legally required energy efficiency information about appliances for sale online. In response, more than 10,000 of you wrote in supporting our petition telling the Federal Trade Commission to require online retailers to display that information front and center in their product listings.

Cars sure are important. I mean, we design our towns and cities—heck, our whole civilization—around their ubiquitous presence. We construct massive parking structures where cars live for temporary periods, have a whole dining subculture based on the automobile, and dot the sides of our city streets with parking spaces deemed so valuable as to demand a fee for their use.

That’s why what I saw when I strolled into work today was so refreshing.

Every lifestyle has its de facto soundtrack. Depressed suburban teens have emo music. Trust funders living beachside have a steady supply of Bob Marley to keep them chanting down Babylon.

In the quiet moments after her two-year-old daughter has gone to bed, actress Jessica Alba scours the Internet in search of how to protect her children from toxic chemicals in consumer products.

Like so many other parents, she’s distressed by what she finds: BPA in baby bottles, lead and cadmium in toys, formaldehyde in furniture.

“Our children are being used as the testing animals,” she realized.