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The Majestic Plastic Bag

Posted by Cynthia on September 07, 2011

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Food Safety and Two Obama Appointments

The Organic Consumers Association is mounting a campaign against two very ominous appointments by the Obama Administration to key positions in the Food and Drug Administration andthe US Department of Agriculture. The OCA seeks first to reverse the appointment of former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor as a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety. The OCA is also opposing the rumored appointment of current Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff as Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety. Quoting the OCA: "Michael Taylor has shuttled between positions at the FDA and USDA and as a lawyer and lobbyist for GMO-seed giant Monsanto. According to OCA, he "is widely credited with ushering Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) through the FDA regulatory process and into the milk supply -- unlabeled." "Taylor is also responsible for the FDA's decision to treat genetically modified organisms as

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb: Landfill and Biodegradation

Archeology and paleontology are not always glamorous jobs. There’s very little Indiana Jones, for instance, to excavating middens – ancient heaps of trash left behind by ancient peoples in ancient holes (or by ancient animals, such as packrats, in ancient holes.) Yet, despite the fact that it’s basically time-lapse dumpster-diving, you can find a lot of neat stuff in middens. Stone tools, metal artifacts, and shards of pottery. Oyster shells and the preserved bones of, say, a Great Auk. And bits of plants. Bits of plants? Yes. Because one of the many interesting facts that middens demonstrate is that biodegradation, although it seems like a powerful and immutable law of nature, is surprisingly easy to thwart. Lack of oxygen and sunlight, the wrong temperature, or the absence of suitable microbes can slow it to a crawl. Thus prehistoric packrats, who had never even heard of a time capsule or a paleontologist and probably wouldn’t care if you told them, were able to preserve gra

Textile Recycling

Did you know that the average New Yorker tosses 46 pounds of clothing and textiles in the trash each year? Much of this is recyclable at your local greenmarket. Bring your old clothing, shoes, towels, sheets, scarves, hats, bags and belts to the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket on Saturdays from 8am to 4pm . For other locations as well as a printable textile recycling poster to post in your building or workplace click here . Clothing that is in good condition can be donated to other places for reuse. But ripped or stained clothes or sheets, not suitable for reuse, can be brought to the greenmarket for recycling.

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Environmental Committee - Park Slop Food Coop