after pressure from Greenpeace, Costco improves seafood policy

Some people say that in a romance, passion eventually dies. To all those people, I would just like to say that Greenpeace still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside--especially this huge Costco victory.

Thanks to pressure from Greenpeace and over 100,000 Greenpeace grassroots activists, Costco has publicly announced that it will:

- Eliminate 12 red list species, unless the company can find an MSC-certified option, including:

- Atlantic cod
- Atlantic halibut
- Chilean sea bass
- Greenland halibut
- Grouper
- Monkfish
- Orange roughy
- Redfish
- Shark
- Skates and rays
- Swordfish
- Bluefin tuna

-- Pledge to play more of a leadership role within aquaculture;

-- Partner with World Wildlife Fund to examine its remaining wild-caught species and determine how to best transition to the most sustainable alternative; and

-- Acknowledge the role that the canned tuna industry plays within the global sustainable seafood movement and is in the process of shifting to more sustainable tuna sources in all sectors (fresh, frozen, and canned).

Gotta love the power of consumer pressure.

Whole Foods color-codes sustainablity of wild-caught seafood

Like everything in life, Whole Foods (WF) has done some super awesome things and some super annoying things. Thankfully, today's report is super awesome!

If you haven't heard the news, WF is amping up its sustainability efforts by filling a gap in its treatment of wild-caught fish. While some of its wild-caught seafood at WF is MSC-certified ("meets the highest benchmarks for credible certification and ecolabelling programs, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization guidelines and the ISEAL Code of Good Practice"), consumers are left to wonder about the rest--until now.

Enter Blue Ocean Institute and Monteray Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch--both of which use color coding to rate the sustainability of wild-caught seafood. WF is using these to cover wild-caught fish not from WSC-certified fisheries.

Groovy!

oil spill--blessing in disguise?

While coverage of the oil spill makes me cry, the disaster might prove beneficial after all. In its nascent stage, the spill cast energy reform as a "political impossibility," primarily because compromises expanding offshore drilling attracted otherwise-opponents to the measure. Post-spill, those compromises would be pulled, and opposition would increase.

But that assessment was nearly a month ago. Six weeks later and still no solution, the spill has become truly frightening. So frightening that, despite my heated criticism of Obama's stagnant efforts to push an energy bill in the past, looks like we are both singing different tunes. Now the President is actually willing to do something, and now I believe it.

The New York Times reports:

President Obama will call Wednesday for rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies, and will vow to push for climate change legislation “in the coming months,” setting the stage for another potentially divisive battle in Congress. full article

Holler.

Regulators Approve First Offshore Wind Farm in U.S.

Factory farms? No. Wind farms? Yes, please.

Check out some exciting news:

After nine years of regulatory review, the federal government gave the green light Wednesday to the nation’s first offshore wind farm, a highly contested project off the coast of Cape Cod.

The approval of the 130-turbine farm gives a significant boost to the nascent offshore wind industry in the United States, which has lagged far behind Europe and China in harnessing the strong and steady power of ocean breezes to provide electricity to homes and businesses.

But hold your horses:

Several regulatory hurdles remain, and opponents of the wind farm have vowed to go to court, potentially stalling Cape Wind for several more years. full article

Traitor Joe's strikes again: the seafood scandal

I have been blogging about excessive waste of plastic used to package vegetables at Traitor Joe's, but now I have stumbled upon other very disturbing TJ practices.

Trader Joe's sells extremely unsustainable seafood. In fact, it sells 15 of 22 redlist seafoods. What is the redlist of seafood? This includes seafood that:

• They have a life history that makes them very vulnerable to fishing
• They are commonly sourced from overfished and depleted stocks, or are being fished at such a high rate that stocks are being depleted rapidly
• The fishing methods used to catch the fish are often highly destructive to other oceans creatures and/or habitats. more info

Greenpeace has launched a campaign against Traitor Joe's, demanding more sustainable seafood policies. Here is the quirky sum, written from the witty 1st perspective of Trader Joe himself:

Did you know that Chilean sea bass is one of the most sought-after fish in the world? They are so scarce, I have to hire pirates to help me catch them and secretly put them on store shelves. Unless people stop eating Chilean sea bass, it may become commercially extinct within five years. Whoa! Maybe I can sell more and more and the fish will become commercially extinct in 3 years. That's the Traitor Joe way of doing business.

Another one of my favorite fish to sell is orange roughy. They live in deep cold waters, hiding among seamounts and canyons. The way to catch orange roughy is to use a big bottom trawl. It scoops up and destroys everything in its path. So, when you buy an orange roughy, it comes with a side of tree coral, deep-sea sharks, dogfish and deep-sea catfish. Now, I say that's getting your money’s worth! more info

Tell Traitor Joe's that you do not stand for unsustainable fishing practices--and remind the store manager next time you're in.

Aside from the sheer disregard for our scarce natural resources, TJ deceives consumers through attempting to greenwash itself. If a store knowingly acquires fish from methods including bottom trawling (when a net scrapes the bottom of the ocean floor, collecting/destroying coral reef and other sea life in the way...not to mention the coral may be 100s of years old...), that is a spit in the face of sustainability.

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Mexico City gives plastic bags the boot

Finally, some good news. Last week, Mexico City outlawed stores from giving consumers plastic bags in which to carry their purchased goods. Now, these bags must be biodegradable.

Here's some more background info from CNN:

Mexico City becomes the second large metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw the bags. San Francisco in March 2007 enacted an ordinance that gave supermarkets six months and large chain pharmacies about a year to phase out the bags. Los Angeles is set to impose a ban if the state of California does not enact a statewide 25-cent fee per bag by July.

About 90 percent of the bags used in the United States are not recycled.

Bans and other restrictions on plastic bags are in place in several countries.

China has adopted a strict limit, reducing litter and eliminating the use of 40 billion bags, the World Watch Institute said, citing government estimates. Although compliance has been spotty, violation of the law carries a possible fine of 10,000 yuan ($1,463), World Watch said.

In Tanzania, selling the bags carries a maximum six-month jail sentence and a fine of 1.5 million shilling ($1,137).

Mumbai, India, outlawed the bags in 2000 and cities in Australia, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan have imposed bans or surcharges. Ireland reported cutting use of the bags by 90 percent after imposing a fee on each one.