Environment and food update

U.S. Declines to Protect the Overfished Bluefin Tuna

Curbing our junk-food appetite. Regulating the country's way to slimness is a complicated task, if it can be done at all.

If only food were as simple as cigarettes. There are no ambiguities about the evils of smoking. It sickens people who do it and endangers those around them. Despite remarkable progress in persuading people not to take up the habit in recent decades, smoking is still the No. 1 preventable cause of death in this country, and it has no known health benefits.
Overeating, especially of low-nutrition junk food, is a bad habit too. Obesity is a fast-rising threat to American health. Yet, unlike with cigarettes, we can't "quit" food. An occasional indulgence in dessert or potato chips is unlikely to hurt most of us as long as our overall diets are sound. While it is illegal to sell cigarettes to children, it's not illegal to manufacture junk foods that are meant to appeal to children or to sell junk food to them.
Regulating the country's way to slimness, then, is a complicated task, if it can be done at all. For the last two years, the Federal Trade Commission has headed up a multi-agency group attempting to tackle one corner of the obesity epidemic by proposing rules on the marketing of junk food to young children. Food commercials are a staple of children's programming on television, and most of the ads are not pushing fresh broccoli and steamed halibut. The clever ads and promotions aimed at consumers who are too young to be aware that they're being duped are a troubling part of life in the American marketplace; kids can be easily persuaded to do things that are unhealthy for them, and they have little concept of long-term consequences. The appealing advertising makes it harder for even conscientious parents to keep a lid on the amount of soda, sugared cereal and fast food in their children's lives. The nagging for a Happy Meal can be nonstop, and the peer pressure is intense.
This spring, the FTC panel produced a preliminary set of voluntary guidelines for the food industry, a document that could be labeled "Advertise This, Not That." It calls on companies to promote foods to children that contain fruits, vegetables, whole grains and other nutritious ingredients, and to steer away from marketing products high in saturated fat, sugar, salt and the like. After the public comment period (which ends June 13) and amendments, the guidelines would take effect in five years, enough time for food companies to reformulate their products and make them healthy — or at least healthier.

The guidelines have been fiercely criticized for being just that — guidelines, rather than mandates. We certainly don't expect them to have a huge effect on American nutrition or obesity. The hope is that companies will feel pressure to comply voluntarily, but the reality is that companies will probably make just enough improvements in their foods, and remove enough of their most egregious ads, to look like good citizens. PepsiCo, which sells Fritos corn chips, Cracker Jack and many other snack foods along with its sodas, has been reformulating products on its own — experimenting, for instance, with salt crystals that give chips the same flavor with less sodium. The big profits are in processed foods, and as long as that's true, Saturday morning cartoons will not be interrupted with pitches for homemade broiled chicken and brown rice but for somewhat more nutritious versions of the same old stuff.

Obama taps John Bryson for Commerce secretary, highlighting green energy initiatives at Edison

NASA's Sustainability Base generates buzz for its eco-friendly architecture. The $20-million Silicon Valley office building, expected to be completed by mid-July, incorporates technology used by astronauts and will generate more electricity than it consumes.

Wal-Mart's green hat. The company gets that a smaller carbon footprint is good for business.

Since 2005, Wal-Mart's "evil empire" has lowered the carbon footprint of its stores by more than 10% and of its trucking fleet by several times that amount. Better fuel and energy efficiency, streamlined trucks, energy-saving lighting and refrigeration and better route planning have saved Wal-Mart hundreds of millions of dollars. The retailer also has shown its suppliers in the United States and China how to lower their carbon emissions and energy bills by 20% to 60%.
Reducing packaging, meanwhile, has saved hundreds of millions in shipping and materials costs and comparable numbers of trees, and an ongoing effort to shrink all product packages by 5% and make what's left more recyclable will save the company an estimated $3.4 billion. (The most familiar example: A Wal-Mart demand to manufacturers to shrink laundry detergent bottles saved, over three years, 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic, 125 million pounds of cardboard and half a million gallons of diesel fuel because of the reduced shipping weight and bulk.)
A seemingly unrealistic goal of zero waste to landfills is suddenly looking attainable; the company cut its waste 81% in California, a pilot program now going nationwide. The trick to it was finding new uses for former trash: turning plastic waste into dog beds, food waste into compost sold in its stores, expired but still healthful foods into food bank donations. The waste Wal-Mart once paid to have hauled away is now earning the company more than $100 million a year.
Big manufacturers such as Unilever and General Mills, as well as sustainability pioneers that once criticized Wal-Mart — Patagonia and Seventh Generation — have partnered with the retailer on green efforts. Lately, whole industry groups, including leading apparel companies, electronics and dairy, have announced related initiatives to become greener and to go public with the information on how clean — and dirty — their products are.
The golden age of environmentalism is long over. The days when 20 million Americans showed up forEarth Day and pressured Congress into creating landmark bipartisan legislation to protect air, water and endangered species are unlikely to return any time soon. Back then the enemy of the environment was big business. Today, businesses provide one of the few encouraging trends on the environment, a way to turn the tables and show that opponents to investing in green are the ones hurting America.
Outsourced global companies like Wal-Mart can never be completely green or sustainable. But they can do better, and some of them are doing better. Their realization that profit and planet can and must live on the same side of the ledger sheet puts them way ahead of most politicians and voters.
For environmentalists, this business case for sustainability should be one of the most critical messages of our time. There's a lot of talk about it among insiders and true believers at green business conferences, but it's barely a whisper as far as Washington and the American public are concerned. It ought to be a drumbeat.