A February 16, 2012 press release from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) states “Without notifying their customers or PETA, Avon, Mary Kay, and Estée Lauder—which have been on PETA’s list of companies that don’t test cosmetics on animals for decades—have been quietly paying for poisoning tests on animals at the behest of the Chinese government in order to market their products in China.”

I am as surprised as PETA that this is happening and it warrants two calls to action: one is to discontinue use of the cosmetics produced by the three companies until such time as they discontinue the practice and the other is to find a way to dissuade the Chinese government from imposing these requirements.

Most companies started to ban these tests back in the late 1980’s after graphic campaigns depicting lab animals helped raise awareness and create demand for cruelty free products in the home. We continue to move forward with those sentiments in our food supply; seeking free run chicken, pushing for the end of using cages for pregnant sows, and for some becoming Vegetarian or Vegan has become more attractive as a lifestyle choice.
While the cosmetic companies sited all promote statements that they will not test on animals, they also all contain the caveat “unless specifically required to do so by government”. I don’t know how much effort went into trying to convince the “Chinese government” that the products have been used satisfactorily on humans for decades now and that the products have passed scrutiny in the EU where standards have been quite stringent. My suspicion is that access to this massive market outweighed the rights of the animals not to have chemicals dripped in their eyes or scrubbed into their skin.

The jerking in my knees comes from the not so distant memory of the melamine incidents that killed thousands of animals with tainted pet food and worse caused organ damage and loss of life to infants through tainted baby formula, and the extensive human rights abuses we hear about daily by this same government that is allegedly so concerned about their citizens applying cosmetic products on their skin after a day of hard labour. Although those are probably not the citizens who will ultimately get to use the products, rather it will be the more equal ones.

So in questioning the Chinese government and Estee, Avon and Mary, I also ask –how much animal testing is going on still to this day and why? To quote toxicologist Thomas Hartung, the Doerenkamp-Zbinden Professor and Chair for evidence-based toxicology at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, “We are not 70 kg rats.”

From an article in Science Magazine that speaks to the alternate ways in which chemicals and toxicology can be tested, it explains that these are being mapped much like the human genome, only being called “toxome” by Hartung. Of all things, the massive oil spill in 2010 from the stricken Deepwater Horizon, presented the opportunity to showcase some of the new technologies as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) struggled to assess the safety of the chemical dispersants being used to treat that oil.

“Eight commercial dispersants and 23 reference compounds were put through the analytical ringer, being probed for their cytotoxicity and activity on some 73 transcription factors, and—because one component of several of these dispersants was nonylphenol ethoxylate, a known “endocrine disruptor” for their ability to activate estrogen and/or androgen-responsive pathways. The take-home message from this analysis was that the compound then in use, Corexit 9500 appeared relatively safe, at least regarding endocrine activity. But perhaps the bigger take-home message concerns how those data were collected. Rather than laboratory animals, the traditional go-to method of toxicity testing, the research team used a high throughput cell culture-based approach, finishing their analysis in about two weeks.

Ok – so faster and less cruel – but oh, so expensive with hundreds of millions of dollars being invested. That means less countries will have the available funding to use the non-animal methodology. But the information is being shared, and the maps provide insight into the likely results of certain chemical compounds, thus reducing the need to test everything.

Some 55,000 chemicals or more were grandfathered in when the U.S. Congress first passed the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976. About 100,000 chemicals are similarly situated in Europe. No toxicological data has ever been filed on most of those, a “knowledge gap” that represents the vast majority of compounds in use today.

ToxCast is part of a broader federal program called Tox21, in which the EPA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are collaborating to rapidly put some 10,000 compounds through 30 assays in 1,536-well plates on a robotic platform at the NIH Chemical Genomics Center in Rockville, Maryland. The goal is to map the complete set of biochemical pathways implicated in toxicologic responses, so that more targeted assays of toxicity may be developed.

According to the article, Industry, too, is moving away from animal testing. Proctor & Gamble (P&G), for instance, has been developing animal-free alternatives to toxicology testing for nearly 30 years, says Len Sauers, the company’s vice president for global sustainability. “The ethical and moral issue is a primary driver, but there are some real business drivers for wanting to get out of animal testing,” he says. Over the years, he says, P&G’s toxicologists—there currently are 150 on staff—have developed some 50 methods and published nearly 1,000 papers on the subject.

“P&G employs a multi-tiered process for toxicology testing. The first step, says Sauers, is structure-activity relationship (SAR) analysis. To feed those SAR studies, the company has compiled a database of “every toxicity study that’s ever been run and is in the public literature,” says George Daston, a Victor Mills Society Research Fellow at P&G, including published papers, public domain EPA submissions, and so on. “That literally results in hundreds of thousands if not one million or so line item pieces of information on the toxicity of materials,” he says.

“That database allows the company to make intelligent predictions about possible toxicities, and to test them directly. For instance, Daston says, perhaps some new ingredient has a structural fragment that previously has been associated with thyroid peroxidase inhibition. “We’ll just set up an assay and evaluate the new chemical and see whether it does that.”

So is this the beginning of the end of animal testing?

Sadly there is this:
For P&G, this emphasis of animal-free testing has reduced animal testing dramatically. Ninety-nine percent of our assessments today are done without animal testing. As the toxome comes into focus and the platforms become more widespread, the broader research community can likewise reduce their animal usage. Yet no matter how sophisticated the system, cell culture and in vitro assays—not to mention computer models—are just no match for live animals whose many organ systems and cell types can react differently to chemical agents. For instance, researchers cannot reliably predict a priori a chemical’s bioavailability and biodistribution as well as how it will be processed in the liver. “We’re very good with in vitro methods at telling you, assuming a chemical reaches a cell, what happens,” says Maurice Whelan, head of the systems toxicology unit at the European Commission Joint Research Centre. “We’re not very good at saying how much of that chemical will be bioavailable in a certain tissue over time based on the exposure.”

“Some animal testing is thus inevitable, especially as pharmaceuticals are not covered by the European testing bans. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be improvements. For decades, the mantra in the world of laboratory animals has been the so-called 3Rs, which encourages researchers to Reduce the number of animals they use, Refine the assays to reduce distress, pain, and suffering, and ultimately, Replace animals with alternative methods.“

The U.S. regulatory body charged with validating animal-free alternatives, called Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods, has to date approved 44 such methods. The equivalent European body has validated six more in such areas as eye irritation and reproductive toxicity. Yet one area for which no alternatives exist is long-term toxicity testing—mimicking, for instance, the allergic responses that might result from repeated, long-term exposure to a chemical.
Researchers are on the case, but the bottom line, says Robert Kavlock, director of the U.S. EPA National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT), “is we’re a long way away from animal-free toxicology.”

I am heartened that there have been great strides and disappointed that there is still suffering no matter how minimalized. I still believe that it is completely unacceptable to ask for (and to provide) testing on animals to enable product lines that are tested acceptably in North America and Europe to be imported to China. So I choose not to support Mary Kay, Estee Lauder and Avon or any other company that willingly goes back to test an already marketed product on animals.

Note: PETA is financially supporting the efforts of the Institute for In Vitro Sciences (IIVS.org) to promote the Chinese government’s acceptance of non-animal testing methods that are in wide use in the U.S. and the E.U. IIVS is spearheading an international consortium to represent companies that wish to market in countries where tests on animals are required.

By K E Peterson
I have RSS feeds and automatic subscriptions to a plethora of Sustainable/Green/Business online magazines, newsletters and informational sites. I scan them for common themes and scroll through quickly to pick up the threads of current conversations.

For example today I picked up that there was a significant bust related to stolen recyclable plastic (definitely a sign of our times), the EPA’s 2010 national analysis of its Toxics Release Inventory indicated that the release of toxics are actually up from the prior years’ data (boo), more electric vehicles are being designed (even VW coming out with an e-Bugster) and everyone is busy with their predictions for 2012 or summaries of the prior year – as is common for January (Greenomics does this too.)

But one of the writers decided that instead of looking to the future for our groundbreaking technologies and innovations – we should be looking around the corner. While I appreciate what he is saying, I find that we are all really into saying things these days – like we are looking for innovation in language itself. Hmmm. Maybe we should be looking down the alley or how about scanning the dumpster? Got me thinking about how we are using language in the Business of Sustainability.

One of the things I find interesting and useful but also irksome is the continued addition of terms and the need for redefining them. I know they all are important and specific to different things like supply chain management and not all of them are that hard to remember because they paint a reasonable picture in our minds– closed loops, cradle to cradle, biomimicry are all good examples. While we introduce this vocabulary to the mainstream to describe processes and resource usage I suspect we lose ever more people’s interest because they cant keep up with the jargon. No one likes to feel like they are out of the closed loop.

There is the added problem that comes from Greenwashing which is an abuse of words at its finest – eco in the front of anything is good, like eco-clean, or enviro – perhaps there should be an enviro-girl and she has green tights, but no cape. She will fight stains in her laundry and the bathtub with eco-alert enviro-particles. But most of us are used to this type of marketing – think of the invented names for facial creams; “micro vive cellular extending molecules”.

The other problem is the boring debate between professionals who are specialists in one field or the other. I did rather enjoy an article that talked about the difference between eco-efficiency and sustainability and that is because it answered for me why I am so uncomfortable every time they trot out Wal-Mart as a shining example of anything. The difference in these words is resource use versus resource availability.

Measuring how much water or energy we used compared to last year is simply about use itself and if we use less of anything – that must be better. But the main point is that we need to look at the location of the business, how much water is actually available and reasonably shared by the community at large, and what should be the prorata allotment to the business compared to what it takes out of the system. Is it sustainable at the current rate? And what if companies actually reported in those terms?

Because I have to say when I hear that someone used a whole lot less of anything than they did before I think –Wow, they are putting a really good spin on the fact that they were horribly inefficient and irresponsible with their resource use. Damn straight they better fix that before somebody catches on and determines fees and regulations around paying for those inefficiencies and waste…but then that’s probably just around the corner.

I think the best way to alienate people from what you are about to say is to start with “in my day”. Well, today is “my day” and I don’t like filling it with unnecessary information and wasting time on menial chores. I have a friend who remembers everything – no matter how unimportant. Used to win all his pie in that trivial game with answers to obscure questions. But did he know about melamine in milk based products and candies from China? Grocery shopping used to be a simple task and we were more brand focused – trusted brands. More families, more doctors, more vets trust Brand X. That trust made shopping a little easier, not necessarily fun, but certainly not fraught with angst. Why angst? Well for one thing, not everything is what it seems and I want to have a positive impact through my purchasing power.

If a product is great, I want them to keep making it. I dislike the feeling of being tricked into buying something for reasons that don’t make sense. I don’t buy dish liquid that’s great for my hands (because I wear rubber gloves when I do that hated chore) and I want the stuff that gets the dishes clean – I will use hand lotion for my hands if I need it. I can use common sense to tell me that’s not a factor for my purchase, but for instance, I am not sure about the true biodegradability of many cleaners – how long does it take? And under what conditions? Do I long for the day when things were simpler? Not really, because from what I hear most people had to walk 20 kilomters to school, uphill both ways. No, I just want better tools to figure out the truth. ( ok – I hear Jack Nicholson telling me I can’t handle the truth and sometimes he’s right – look up “cashews from Vietnam” and tell me you still want those buttery nuggets soaked in the tears of forced labourers in drug reform camps where an overwhelming percentage of the world’s cashews are processed.)

I remember spraying aerosols around like there was no tomorrow (pun intended). It was fun – I liked the sound and the even spray. I actually enjoyed dusting and cleaning windows and all of that spraying stuff. Yes, I know some people’s parents used vinegar and newspaper. No fun at all. But then there was a hole in the ozone layer and boom – bye bye CFC’s. Hello pumps. Early versions really sucked too – big thick irregular splats, little hose tubes that didn’t reach the product on the bottom that you could clearly see but not use not matter what angle you tilted it to. Those have definitely improved.

On the food front, I would say the mighty chicken and its proverbial eggs did come first. I crossed the road to get the free run eggs. I paid more but the benefits of the eggs were really simple to grasp. Then they started to offer free run organic eggs. So then I had to wonder – were my free running chickens chased through pesticides and eating chemicals? Okay so Organic it is -more money, better tasting eggs, no poison for me or the earth. Again, clear benefits. And then there is the Humane Society stamp of approval that has started in the UK and is spreading to points here. New question: was my free running organic chicken treated well? Killed kindly? How could I not want this too? But here’s where the angst comes in – all these eggs sit beside each other on the shelf with their various price differences, and I see people taking the regular, tortured, poisonous, cooped chicken eggs and I think about them. I wonder if it is a budget issue – poor person has to eat those eggs because they haven’t got much money and can’t pay $6.99 for a dozen eggs or else you might think – evil person, doesn’t care – just to save a dollar his chicken is tormented and forced to do drugs.

I can’t expect everyone to feel the same way I do about making decisions in the aisles of the grocery or drug store. But if you know fully what goes into things, it really helps make the decision clear about whether or not to buy them. I don’t think it’s too much to ask – tell us what it is and where it came from. Not who it’s “imported by” because that is not “where”. When we heard about the melamine it didn’t take any time at all for us to say no to that. But can I know every ingredient and what its affects are? Should I know the reputation of every company that makes the products and should I be on top of any regulations that come along? Can I spot green washing and green halos on products that don’t deserve them? There is this great opportunity to take a stand on things right where it counts – at the checkout counter – and I feel horribly under-informed about the options. And I don’t have time to study every product, not to mention that they keep changing them so they are “new and improved”.

When I first discovered the Good Guide app for my iphone, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Here is a free app that lets you scan a product barcode with your phone and reveal a rating for some 140,000 products from personal care to pet food based on the environmental, social and health aspects of the product, plus it has additional filters you can select to indicate what matters to you most from fair trade to nutrients to scientifically proven hazards, energy efficiency and so on. Wow. I reviewed the website, looked at how the ratings were derived, noted that they give companies the opportunity to contest, with evidence, their rating and that they do not appear to be guided by advertising. A quote “Use our ratings to help make purchasing decisions that match your preferences for healthy, green or socially responsible products. Our ratings provide a credible way to easily rank products and companies, enabling you to pick the best in a category or identify alternative products you could switch to”. The biggest problem with this app is that it works on the standard UPC codes of US products.

I thought the whole point of Universal Product Codes was to make them universal. The universe is smaller than I thought. I scanned dozens of products in my home and in the store. Not found. “There is another bar code called EAN-13, which is commonly used in Europe and other countries. Since Canadian products are coded using both systems, the scanner will not work with everything on the shelves” according to Mia Gralla, Marketing Manager, GoodGuide, Inc., who responded very promptly when queried, “Currently, we are focusing on profiling products that comprise most of the market share in the U.S. There is a possibility to expand to other countries such as Canada in the future, but we do not have any concrete plans.” This is disappointing not only to me, but too many of the folks rating the app in the iTunes store. While we can’t effectively scan in Canada or Europe or anywhere outside the US at the moment, you can still bring up the items currently rated in categories such as personal care and hope that you recognize some labels on your local shelf that have a decent rating. It’s a good start, GoodGuide.

I’d like to see it really bloom – maybe using those cute little QR (Quick Response) codes that are popping up. They take up less space than UPC and offer thousands of pieces of information in one quick scan. They are being used to send scanners to websites for details on everything from upcoming movies, new product launches, real estate listings, feature comparisons for electronics, and more. Maybe in Our Day we will have a tool like this and can use it to make some real social and environmental change. After all – we got rid of the CFCs, and hopefully the melamine, maybe we can get rid of grocery store angst too.

The Costco Conundrum

by Karen Peterson

The Green Eye takes a look at the struggles we face every day trying to do the right thing. The path toward sustainability requires a conscious effort to change, especially as a consumer. There is more pressure on us now, much self inflicted, to think about “what becomes of things once consumed” and we are also ever more mindful of the old adage “you are what you eat”.

Short of time, and sometimes money, we find ourselves in the impossible position of trying to:

• get good value for what we spend,
• enjoy the things we like, deserve and want, and
• do the right thing for the world, our families and our futures.

It shouldn’t be as hard as it is to sort this all out- 20 minutes in front of the dish soap aisle at my local grocer is an unreasonable amount of time to spend deciding between price points, ingredients, trusted brands, and assessing environmental claims against green washing. The Green Eye grows weary of weighing out chemicals, colours, fragrances, biodegradability, natural, organic, and everything else. Fragrance was a dirty word for a while but now there are scents in absolutely everything again. Are they ok now? What’s changed?

It should not be surprising that the first time you read the Green Eye it focuses on why it might be time to chop up that Costco card. I have to start somewhere, and Costco, I am sorry – but it has to start with you.

Beyond the fatiguing experience of concrete warehouse aesthetics, the disbelief at the till tape before the bouncer at the door runs a felt pen through it (maybe they didn’t remember that 4 gallon jug was $3 off?) and beyond the knowledge that I have never escaped with just what I came for and a bill of less than three hundred dollars, there must be a reason that I continued to go there. I have stood in the aisles with an overwhelming sense of doom under looming stacks of products that are all going to end up in the landfill or recycling bins or in the ocean somehow. Does the excitement of getting a good deal really override my conscience that tells me – this kind of shopping is wrong?

When you buy things in volume, you become the warehouse. Your fridge and freezer, your cupboards and shelves. All overstocked. And the oversupply of products renders their use a little bit haphazard. Because you want the cupboard door or the fridge to close, you may use more product, more recklessly than if it were, say, the last toilet paper roll instead of one of 48. Interesting just how few squares you can get away with when you know your supply is limited. And when you have a vat of anything with an expiry date – you better find a way to eat all of it before it goes. And it goes…. down the drain, in the toilet, in the garbage and sometimes in the compost.

While many say “Costco is great for a family” I am pretty hard pressed to meet anyone with more than one or two children these days, if any. Do they need loaf sized blocks of cheese or cereal boxes so big they don’t fit in the pantry? And incidentally we are all so sick of a brand or flavour by two thirds of the way through the mega size that we might just throw its stale remainder out after a month or so.

I have found that juice boxes, toilet paper, and just about everything else, go on sale in the regular grocery store often enough that with an only moderately watchful eye, you can save money, have variety, and waste far less. The other big plus is that Safeway, IGA, Whole Foods and all the others are wising up to consumer demand for local and organic, refillable, enviro-packaged, and all else more in keeping with the way we should be headed.

We still have some decisions to make in the aisles – there’s a lot of choice out there, but I believe that by keeping the products in your home and office in a manageable, human scale, you will use less and make wiser choices. If you pay a bit more, maybe you will treat things as just a little less disposable and a little more precious. If sustainability’s biggest hurdle is change in behaviour, then this little change could mean a lot for old mother earth and for your sanity.

Sorry Costco – snip snip.

Next Month
Examples of Greenwashing, and the “Good Guide”