Ten Thousand Villages of Austin’s Blog

Reduce, reuse, recycle. We’ve all heard about the importance of recycling.  Places in Austin like Ecology Action and the City of Austin’s Curbside Recycling Program make it pretty easy for most of us to recycle.  Most of us know about the importance of reducing waste and reusing things as well.  But what about altogether new uses for some of your favorite products?

 
Some of the best ideas for new and unusual uses for Ten Thousand Villages products come directly from our customers.  A Ten Thousand Villages customer in Nova Scotia has been using soaps from Palam Rural Center artisans to make her own, non-toxic, environmentally friendly laundry soap.  The recipe is “easier than no-bake cookies,” but the best part about doing this is you can choose whatever scent suits your mood.  All you need is:

Each year, Ten Thousand Villages USA organizes a gathering of staff, board members and volunteers at Nationals Workshop in Akron, PA. This year’s badges were etched on recycle motherboards (above).

This past week, Kitty and three board members attended on our behalves. Below is a reflection from one of our board members, Jo Krouse, who attended a session with Albert Espin Lopez, a visiting artist from Quito, Ecuador, and a owner of a workshop employing 50 artisans.

Reflections from the 2007 Annual Workshop:

Tagnua Tagua nut is very hard–it will dull your knife or carving tool. It is also scattered throughout remote forests in marginally accessible areas. There is a long, involved, coordinated process for collecting the nuts, drying, soaking, drying, peeling off the husks, drying, soaking in dye, drying (each step measured in days) before carving begins. It takes active organizing to get all this focused and to a product center.

Senor Lopez owns a workshop which is a member of Camari, our artisan partner. His goal is that 50 people have steady work with 12 month’s pay (their working season is 10 months) and that they can send their children to school. He took a leap of faith, a risk of investment, to organize and launch this enterprise. He risked his own children’s dinner and future to invest in and launch his enterprise. I took the children’s dinner as a metaphor for the kind of risk he took.

The key moment for me was the question, “Do you pay the people you hire or do business with by fair wage standards?”

There was a moment of confusion / interaction while he understood, by way of the interpreter, what the question was.

Then he answered, “Of course. I treat these people - all people - as I would want to be treated.”

We of the developed world did not teach him the fair trade concept. He had skills, determination, brains, and values that made him my equal by any standard. I had a moment of humility that shattered my image of the first world superiority. Impoverished countries have all the same values, hopes, dreams, vision, integrity as people anywhere. Perhaps one thing that differentiates the first from the Third World is greed.

Technorati Tags: ecuador workshop

I’ve previously blogged about the use of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs in our store.  Today’s Weekend Journal has a front page story about the push for “a nationwide energy-saving lighting standard that, if enacted by Congress, would effectively phase out the common household light bulb in about 10 years.”  Additionally, CFL gained some traction from Home Depot’s free CFL giveaways in honor of Earth Day.

CFLs are warmly endorsed by Popular Mechanics based on its test of seven common CFLs (image above) against the common incandescent bulb. (Test results in PDF.)  My paraphrase of its conclusion:

• CFL produce better light
• Generates approximately $180 savings per average U.S. household
• Is better for the environment–uses less than one-third the energy of the common bulb and last up to 9 years

A word of caution: CFLs contain an average of 5 milligrams of mercury (roughly the amount in the tip of a ballpoint pen) which helps increase the bulb’s efficiency and must be properly recycled when burnt out and carefully handled (gloves, airing of room, etc.) if broken.

Resources:

• Energy Star Q&A: What should I do if a CFL breaks? and What should I do with a CFL when it burns out?
• See Earth911’s info about mercury handling and disposal

Technorati Tags: cfl, lighting, mercury, bulb

This fall, American Public Media shows like Marketplace, Weekend America and Speaking of Faith will air a week of stories about our consumer economy and whether it’s sustainable.

Help shape this series, dubbed Consumed!, by sharing your thoughts on how pop culture - through music, movies, TV shows, books, ads or commercials - helps to create, encourage or criticize the modern consuming lifestyle.

Submit your thoughts: What does pop culture have to say about the consumer economy?

Technorati Tags: consumerism, publicradio, economy, culture

It makes my day to learn that Jane Goodall launched a new line of “chimp-friendly,” fair trade coffee to call attention to environmental degradation and fund raise for the Jane Goodall institute (JGI). The Gombe Special Reserve line will be marketed throughout the United States by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and 10 percent of the sales proceeds will go to the JGI.

Chimps don’t drink coffee; they won’t eat the fruit or leaves, or even linger in areas dense with coffee plants. That’s a good thing, says Jane Goodall. “Coffee can act as a buffer to protect chimps and people from each other,” and minimize the exposure to disease that threatens chimps, she says.

“I realized that some of the best coffee was being grown in the high hills [in Kigoma], but the growers weren’t making any money,” Goodall says. “How can we think of [making arguments for] saving the chimp beings if the human population around is clearly struggling to survive? There are more people than the land can support with current practices.”

Goodall has been a heroine of mine since my college days when I learned about her goods works through an anthropology elective.

Technorati Tags: fairtrade, coffee, goodall, Tanzania