The Shanghaiist
Last year China Daily reported on a farmer in Yunnan who admitted that he would never dare to eat the vegetables he sells, due to the amounts of chemicals pesticides and fertilizers used on them. Instead he grows a separate chemical-free patch of vegetables for personal consumption. A practice that is unlikely to be restricted to this farmer alone.
Just in the last year Greenpeace has exposed several pesticide scandals: we found banned, toxic pesticides in tea (including Lipton) and banned pesticides on vegetables being sold in several major supermarket chains, or at levels that are illegal (including Tesco). It’s sadly not so surprising considering we’re living in a country whose pesticide use is, per unit area, 2.5 times the global average.
But there is something you can do about it: eat organic.
Not only is it better for your health, but you’ll be supporting a far more environmentally friendly mode of farming. (Think about it – poisoning pests also means poisoned soil and poisoned water.) The more people in China who eat organic, the more we’ll see a shift away from chemically-intensive farming and an improvement in the country’s soil and water quality.
What is organic food?
Production of organic food doesn’t allow for the use of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, growth regulators, feed additives and genetically engineered organisms. Organic food producers often use sustainable farming practices that protects bio-diversity, such as crop rotation and conservation methods.
How can I tell if food is organic or not?
Look out for these certified organic stamps:
These stamps means the food has been certified by one of the 23 organic food certification groups in China. While these are independent institutions, they’ve all been accredited by the Chinese government’s Certification and Accreditation Administration. In order to qualify organic producers have to produce a range of records and have a traceability system in place in order to ensure their goods sit in accordance with national standards for organic products. Certification bodies are expected to conduct tracking and surveillance of these goods, with certification inspectors carrying out spot checks.
Yeah, but is it really organic?
Well, like anything in China, supervision and control systems can be lax, and cheats and frauds (like Wal-Mart) occasionally manage to find a way of getting their goods onto market. That said, organic food products are still far more likely to be better than non-organic (in terms of having none or lower amounts of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers and hormones).
What else can I do to avoid pesticide consumption?
Besides eating organic, buy fruits and vegetables that are in season – they are less likely to have needed chemical enhancements. Here’s an article that highlights Chinese fruits and veggies by season (and their health benefits according to Traditional Chinese Medicine.) Remember, when you see a ginormous, bright red tomato – out of season – there’s a good chance it’s been pumped full of chemicals.
You can also peel your food, although this isn’t a foolproof method.
You can also go shopping at supermarkets which have decent traceability systems and pesticide control systems. Greenpeace’s supermarket ranking guide will come in handy, with our 2011 edition listing Carrefour, Auchan and Shanghai City as the best options for Shanghai shoppers.
Where can I buy organic food?
Besides big supermarkets like Carrefour, blog Slow Food Shanghai has listed four organic food producers that deliver to your door. You can visit these farms (in fact, most of them encourage you to!) and some require membership. Remember, buying organic means accepting that sometimes certain foods won’t be in season, or subject to weather conditions. On the upside, it means you’ll have a real and direct relationship with the people making the food you eat.
Biofarm
http://www.biofarm.cn/en/index2.html
Ph: 400 620 0789
Yi Mu Tian
http://www.1mutian.com/Engymt/Index.html
Ph: 021 3453 7900
Tony’s Farm
http://www.tonysfarm.com/en/index.aspx
Ph: 400 820 2162
Mahota Biodynamic farm
http://www.mahotafarm.com/index.php/en/
Ph: 021 6944 1040
You can also try Fields, a (very expat-friendly) website that among its offerings includes organic food, and can be delivered to your door. The company claims to have direct relationships with a number of reliable local organic food suppliers across the country.
Also head to Slow Food Shanghai’s events section to find out about upcoming farmer markets and tours of organic farms.
If you want to head out to an organic food restaurant in Shanghai you can try:
Organic Kitchen Shanghai
http://www.organickitchenshanghai.com/
Ph: 021 6288 3312
Qimin Organic Hot Pot
http://www.qi-min.com/
Ph: 021 6258 8777
Ming Tang Organic Dining Wine & Bar
http://www.mingtang.com/
Ph: 021 6152 6668
The Shanghaiist, May 2012.
Image (cc) foxxyz
The Diplomat
The tea fields of coastal Chinese province Zhejiang cover the hills in rows of lush, green tea bushes. The image is reminiscent of the rolling vineyards of Tuscany. And in many ways, tea is to China what wine is to the West. Pu’er tea ages just like a bottle of red, with raw Pu’er from the 1950-70s commanding as much as $20,000 a pound. And whether it’s high-end “luxury” teas being exchanged through the hands of China’s elite or ordinary household brands being brewed in just about every household of China, tea is an essential part of Chinese culture.
But is this tea safe to drink? A recent report from Greenpeace has uncovered the presence of illegal pesticides in some of China’s most popular teas such as Methomyl and Endosulfan, the latter of which has been banned globally under the Stockholm Convention due to its toxic properties.
In December 2011 and January 2012, Greenpeace took samples from nine well-known tea companies in China. Eighteen different kinds of medium-grade tea were purchased at random, and sent to an accredited third-party laboratory for pesticide testing. Twelve of the 18 samples contained at least one pesticide banned for use on tea. Every single sample contained at least three different kinds of pesticides, and on the sample Richun’s Tieguanyin 803 tea a total of 17 different kinds of pesticides was found.
One of these 17 kinds of pesticides was Endosulfan, a chemical that the U.N. Stockholm Convention in 2010 called “highly toxic to humans,” with a global ban negotiated last year. The pesticide has also been identified by the U.S. EPA as a potential endocrine disruptor, while other studies suggest effects on male reproductive development.
China is the world’s biggest producer of tea, and also the world’s largest pesticide producer and consumer. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, in 2009, the country’s total output of pesticides reached 2.26 million tons. In recognition of this problem, China’s Ministry of Agriculture last year announced its goal of reducing nationwide pesticide use in 2015 by 20 percent.
This massive pesticide use isn’t just putting the health of consumers at risk; it also threatens the health of the tea planters and tea processers who come into direct contact with the chemicals. A study last year conducted on 910 pesticide applicators from two villages in southern China found that more than 8 percent suffered pesticide poisoning. This followed a 2006 WHO workshop in Beijing that also looked at how pesticide poisoning was the most common method of suicide in China, mainly due to the ready availability and accessibility of highly toxic pesticides that are otherwise banned in many developed countries. Moreover, the workshop noted that an additional 17,000 annual deaths are estimated to occur from unintentional exposure to pesticides (both ingestion and occupational exposure).
There are several reasons why China’s pesticide use has reached such epic levels.
One major factor has been a response to the negative impact of climate change. Rising temperatures has helped many pests and pathogens survive the usually cold, winter months, and farmers have reacted by bumping up their pesticide application. These farmers have little in the way of training, support or knowledge of the best way to deal with these changing conditions, so their attitude has become one of “spray, baby spray.”
The problem, of course, is that in the long term, applying vast amounts of pesticides may do more harm than good. “In the quick pursuit of a high yield many Chinese farmers consider pesticides as the most effective, even the only way, to cope with pest and disease. But in spraying more pesticides or using more fertilizers you upset the natural balance of the soil which can lead to more disease,” says Food and Agriculture campaigner at Greenpeace, Wang Jing.
Good quality soil and clean water are the foundations of China’s famed tea products, and yet these basic components are being quickly compromised. Greenpeace is therefore calling on companies to switch to eco-agriculture, which make use of methods such as intercropping, light traps, and integrated pest management. Despite the vital importance to the country’s future, the Chinese government’s funding for research and development of eco-agriculture is currently dwarfed thirty times by that for genetically engineered food. This is particularly risky at a time when GE is proving impotent to the rapidly changing climate-affected landscape.
Replying to the grave challenges of drastic climate change, and doing so in a way that is sustainable, will only be achieved with a combination of modern knowledge and techniques, along with a revival of the time-tested farming techniques that were once a mainstay in China’s long history of eco-agriculture, extending back for thousands of years.
And even if the debate around pesticide use is put aside, the fact remains that this recent report proves that there is a large-scale use of illegal pesticides in the local tea growing industry. Seven of the tested firms sit within China’s top 10 tea sellers and are brands that are either turning a blind eye or being complicit with their suppliers’ illegal conduct. As with many things in China – be it the release of toxic chemicals by manufacturing companies or big brands breaking the law in regards to working conditions – it’s the lack of an effective traceability and supply chain control system that time and time again sees laws being broken.
As this story of China’s compromised quality control in their tea begins to spread around the world it remains to be seen whether it will have an impact of tea exports, one of the country’s most important export commodities. In 2010, the country exported 302,400 tons of tea valued at $784 million.
“That more than half of China’s top 10 tea sellers are selling tea tainted with banned pesticides is a huge embarrassment for China’s tea industry,” Wang Jing says. “It shows a totally lack of responsibility from the tea sellers, who have failed to exercise any control over pesticide usage.”
The Diplomat, April 2012.
Image © Greenpeace
The Diplomat
Early one morning in 2011, environmentalist Lei Yuting was crouched by the side of the Fenghua River, which snakes through the Chinese province of Ningbo. Despite his face mask and protective goggles he could smell the chemical dyes that polluted the water. His gear drew the attention of a few locals passing by on their morning exercise. They stopped to tell him that the area always smells bad, and that the color of the wastewater changes throughout the day.
Moments later they hurried off. Lei says he got the feeling few chose to linger by a river that a few decades ago would have been clear and teeming with fisherman, tourists and local children. Now, nothing broke the lifelessness except the occasional freight-carrying barge and a couple of lonely white egrets, perched on the muddy banks. There were certainly no more fishing boats.
Lei is a campaigner with Greenpeace, and was in the area collecting water samples for an investigation that would eventually reveal how two textile manufacturers, supplying some of the world’s biggest fashion brands, are discharging hazardous substances such as nonylphenol (NP) into Chinese waterways. NP is a chemical with hormone-disrupting properties that’s persistent (i.e. doesn’t readily break down in the environment), moderately bioaccumulative (it builds up in the food chain), and hazardous to aquatic life even at very low levels.
The use of NP in clothing manufacturing has effectively been banned within the EU, with similar restrictions also in place in the United States and Canada. Of course, this is hardly the first time multinational companies have taken advantage of lax standards in other countries. Exporting the manufacturing industry hasn’t been accompanied by the export of high environmental protection standards, and has led to a host of pollution problems in China, most pressingly water pollution. Ask any local, it seems, and it’s hard to find a river clean enough to swim in in this country.
“These are supposed to be some of the most scenic mountains and clearest waters in China. How is it that they are now poisoned by industry and filled with sorrow?” Lei asks.
Consumers often find it easy to turn a blind eye to the conditions in which their clothes were manufactured, but when a good produced using hazardous chemicals means those items themselves contain hazardous chemicals, then it unsurprisingly becomes a little harder to ignore.
In the latest toxics report to be commissioned by Greenpeace, simulations of standard domestic laundering on 14 clothing samples found that a single wash can wash out a substantial amount of the nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE) residues present within textile products. More than 80 percent were washed out for half of the plain fabric samples tested. This suggests that all residues of NPEs within textile products will be washed out over their lifetime, and that in many cases this will have occurred after just the first few washes.
These NPEs are then discharged to wastewater treatment plants, which don’t effectively treat or prevent the release of these hazardous substances into the environment. Indeed, they can break down NPEs to form toxic and hormone-disrupting NPs that are then released within the treated water.
In short, brands are making their consumers unsuspecting accomplices in the release of these hazardous substances into public water supplies. And, let’s not forget, we’re talking about a substance that has been effectively banned or heavily restricted in the EU, United States and Canada.
NPEs are a compound belonging to a broader group of chemicals known as alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs). It’s not enough to set a lower limit for the concentration of APEs in finished products (although we need this as well.) Suppliers could attempt to give the final product additional rinsing, which may help reduce the chemical levels in the product. But this would still be discharged into the rivers, lakes and seas of the manufacturing countries. That’s why the chemicals should be eliminated from the process entirely.
Greenpeace has already convinced six major brands – Puma, Nike, Adidas, Li-Ning, H&M and C&A – to collaborate on a “draft joint roadmap towards zero discharge of hazardous chemicals.” This roadmap sets out the steps that the brands commit to take to achieve the zero discharge of hazardous chemicals, and invites others to partner in this endeavor. However, the roadmap doesn’t yet include a specific commitment or a date to eliminate all uses of APEs.
In Europe, restrictions on the marketing of products with NPEs above a specified level are under development. Equally important is that measures are taken to restrict the use of APEs in manufacture for the countries where the majority of manufacturing takes place, such as in East Asia and Southeast Asia.
As global citizens, it’s surely time to start applying some pressure.
The Diplomat, April 2012.
Image © Lu Guang / Greenpeace
HelloGiggles
Sisterhood can be a slippery thing. After all, half the population running around on this earth has girl parts, and you’re just not going to like all of them.
But heck, let’s just put that aside for a second and look at a few things of the things women do have in common. Like the fact that if we’d been around 100 years ago, we wouldn’t have been allowed to vote and might not have been able to own property. Some of us would have been sold into arranged marriages and almost all of us would have been denied the same educational and work choices as our male counterparts.
And while this is, sadly, still the case for women in some parts of the earth, for most of you reading this now things have improved a great deal. Which is a hella piece of awesome that ought to have us all making like a toddler and tiara on a krump mission.
WOMEN’S STATUS = SO MUCH BETTER THAN BEFORE!
We’ve come a long way. And when we look at the long walk that’s been taken, it might be difficult to identify a single suffragette as renowned or universally loved as civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King JR. Whether that’s a symptom of the patriarchy or a facet of womankind in which we prefer to share – rather than take – the credit, what matters more is that we never forget the fact many brave strides were taken by generations of women before us who recognised their own worth, and the men who saw their potential.
Today is International Women’s Day, and whether you’re a dude or dudette, it’s time to contribute to one of the world’s most successful and long running social movements. Feminism is the perfect poster girl for change. She shows us that change is not only possible, it’s positive, violence-free and lasting. And that’s something that all of us, no matter what we do or what bits are between our legs, can throw a woop! woop! into the air for.
This week, global action crew Lane Change (of which I’m a co-founder) are asking you to sign on and Give the Ladies Some Love. We have five practical actions that you can take to do your bit for the ladies. Take, for example, mentoring a woman. Last year, only 20% of leadership roles at top private companies worldwide were occupied by women. But by sharing our skills and giving working girls a leg-up, we can help a new generation of women make smart career decisions.
Another really simple thing you can do is celebrate a lady hero in your life. Our Facebook page is already teeming with some incredibly moving stories of strong women who embody the kind of awesomeness that we should tip our hats off to. Women who joined underground resistant movements, women who endured poverty and hardship in the name of love, not to mention fearless movers and shakers in the world of media, law and activism.
I particularly love this story submitted by Hannah Ren from Australia about her badass grannie:
“My lady hero is my grandma who, at the age of 95, still has the spirit of an 18 year old. Growing up in a little village in China, at the age of 15 she rebelled against her parents who wanted to wrap her feet so that she could be fixed for a proper marriage and instead joined the underground revolution. Later she became the first generation of Western-trained doctors to serve as a surgeon in China. She was also one of the first people to come back to her village and bring girls out of the village to enroll them into school. This photo was taken on her 95th birthday with the youngest member of our family, my little niece.”
Head to Give the Ladies Some Love for more actions that you can complete today. Then head to Twitter and our Facebook page, to share your tales of how you gave the ladies some love.
Hello Giggles, March 2012.
Image © Hannah Ren and Karen Horton
Persephone Magazine
Let me firstly say, that I’m a casual feminist. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel strongly about certain issues, or that I’m uncommitted to improving the status of women, it just means that it’s one of many interests. I’m a feminist hobbyist, rather than a full-time, professional player.
And as a casual feminist, feminism can sometimes seem like a pretty wild beast. There’s feminism for ethnic minorities, feminism for the LGBT crowd, feminism for Christians, feminism for right-wingers, feminism for sex workers, feminism for stay-at-home mums, the list goes on. It’s a raucous house with many rooms, and as Alex wrote recently wrote here on Persephone, “try to find a leader of our feminism, a unified ideology, and you will fail. That makes us stronger, not weaker.”
No, there’s no one leader, or unified ideology. But that doesn’t mean that all the feminists living in their separate rooms (with the occasional spat between neighbours), can’t sometimes come together for a good old-fashioned party. Say, perhaps, to take down a certain obnoxious talking head. Internet may have accelerated the fragmentation of feminism (multitudes of niches groups), but it has also served those same groups to come together when needed (leaderless, rapid response activism). Making feminism a thoroughly modern affair.
And let me just say, it is important that the feminist movement comes together every now and then. It’s important for the casual feminist, the numbers of which will always outnumber the professional feminist. The casual feminist isn’t going to hang out in one of the rooms, but she will rock up to the party. And when there are enough people at the party, the ground shakes and the world splits open into a giant, earth shattering smile.
Today is International Women’s Day, and my activist group Lane Change is inviting you to ‘Give the Ladies Some Love‘. We want every feminist – casual or otherwise – to come to the party. Let’s celebrate how far feminism has come already. When I think about all the great strides taken in the last 100 years (we can vote! we’re allowed to work and own property!) I don’t just feel hopeful about the women’s movement, I feel hopeful about movements altogether, whether that’s environmentalism, or human’s rights. Feminism is the perfect poster girl for change. She shows us that change is not only possible, it’s positive, violence-free and lasting.
Let’s cheer on the lady heroes of past and present. Let’s foster a new generation of brilliant, strong women. Let’s lend each other a professional hand so that women can learn to make smart career decisions. Let’s do what we can to support women who are fighting huge battles against poverty and discrimination. Let’s take a moment to open our mouths (or update a Facebook status) on a women’s issue we might not usually.
At ‘Give the Ladies Some Love‘ we have five, practical actions that you – boys included – can carry out to do your bit for the women’s movement. Head to the site for more details, but in short these are:
- Share with us your lady heroes
- Mentor a woman
- Support women who are overcoming adversity
- Don’t be afraid of the F-word
- Speak out! The world is listening
But if you have more ideas, we’d love to hear them. We also want to hear from all of you that complete an action over on the Facebook event page.
Persephone Magazine, March 2012.
Image © Glamour Magazine
