Organic & Sustainable Christmas Trees and Wreaths: North Carolina 2013 Buying Guide

by Toxic Free NC staff and Margaret Vaughn, volunteer

This holiday season, we hope you'll consider an organic or low-spray Christmas tree or wreath! Check out our updated buying guide to find a pesticide-tree near you.

Buying an sustainably-grown Christmas tree means that you will:

• Protect your family from pesticide residues being brought into your home.
• Keep Christmas tree workers and their families from being exposed to pesticides on the job.
• Support local growers who respect their workers and our environment.

Find out more about the pesticides commonly used on Christmas trees and why you should avoid them.

Toxic Free NC's 2013 Organic & Sustainable Christmas Trees and Wreaths: North Carolina Buying Guide was also recently featured in the news, along with one of the growers on our list, Doug Murphy (of Murphy's Tree Farm and Nursery).

You can also learn about other growers who use sustainable and/or organic practices, such as What Fir Tree Farm in Boone and a host of others!

Nathaniel Maram of What Fir! Tree Farm

Margaret Vaughn has a strong interest in environmental health issues and, in particular, their relationship to the food that we grow, buy, and eat.  She is excited to be back in her home state of North Carolina after completing a graduate degree in public health at New York University.

Growing gardens and relationships with farmworkers

By Anna Jensen, Community Organizer

I've been thinking a lot this summer about how change is made, and I keep coming back, in various ways, to the centrality of  relationship building.

This year, we made a conscious choice to narrow the scope of our farmworker outreach in order to focus on building deeper, more meaningful relationships with farmworkers. Instead of presenting information about pesticide protections to as many workers as possible, we decided to return to the same three camps at least twice a month during May through August, with the goal of having repeated conversations with workers about their experiences, needs, and ideas for the future. We wanted to support workers not only in their quest for better protections from pesticides at work, but also in other aspects of their lives so that they felt they had what they needed to advocate for themselves.

As we have done in previous years, we brought seedlings and supported farmworkers in organic gardening. We arranged for someone to cook dinner for the largest camp three times over the course of the season, and we sat down and ate dinner with 25 farmworkers, and we listened. By listening, we learned more about workers' food traditions, their knowledge and work backgrounds, and what motivated them to fight for safer work places, or what prevented them from protecting themselves or speaking up.

We distributed over 80 tomato, cucumber and pepper seedlings to 3 camps, increasing access to pesticide-free food for more than 50 farmworkers during the agricultural season this year. The chile peppers in the largest camp did especially well, and one farmworker there said that "one of them is worth ten of the ones we buy at the store." We also conducted hands-on gardening workshops in each camp several times during the season, identifying problem bugs and what to do about each one without using pesticides, as well as finding good bugs to leave alone. Each of those workshops facilitated deeper conversations about the harms that pesticides can cause and the importance of protecting themselves and fighting for alternatives. The workers ended the season with knowledge they can use next year, and pass on to other farmworkers if they don't come back to our area again. Most of the farmworkers we talked to, however, plan to be back in the same place next season, and we ended the season with stronger relationships with those farmworkers that Toxic Free NC can build on next year. We are building a network of farmworkers ready to engage in advocacy, or serve as resources to their friends and coworkers about their work rights and about organic gardening.

Some of these workers will participate in focus groups on pesticides and reproductive health with us before they leave, providing us with information we can use to educate more workers next year. And we will rely on the relationships we have built this year to help spread the word, educate others, refine our work, and involve more farmworkers next year. As the harvest season ends here, I am grateful to all of the farmworkers who welcomed our visits, took time to talk with us, and gave us feedback to improve our work after completing their own long, difficult workdays.

Commissioner Troxler: How will you protect sustainable farms?

Photo by haansgruber via Flickr

by Fawn Pattison, Executive Director

Were you one of the thousands of concerned North Carolinians who read about House Bill 379 and contacted Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler recently?

House Bill 379, An Act To Clarify The Authority Of The Board Of Agriculture Over Plants would strip authority away from local governments to regulate plants. Why? Because back in 2004, three California counties passed local ordinances banning the cultivation of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). That act set off a wave of "pre-emption" bills across the country, as the multinational corporations who sell GMO seeds to farmers sought to make sure that the movement to ban GMOs never left California.

We've been calling H 379 a zombie bill, because it returned from the dead after an unsuccessful effort to pass it back in 2005. If you emailed Commissioner Troxler, you probably got a response back recently that says:

"Some of the information you have received from Toxic Free NC about this bill is not correct. We support and promote small farms and organic growers, and there is nothing in this bill that would harm organic growers or small farms."

The good folks at the Department of Agriculture are clearly interpreting the language in this bill differently than we are. That's understandable -- it's a very short bill, with very broad language. They don't see any reason for small farmers or organic farmers to be concerned about harms. Did they ask any? 

Here's what Jamie Ager of Hickory Nut Gap Farm near Asheville had to say about the bill in a recent news story: 

"Stay out of the way," he [Ager] warned. "You know, we don't need more regulatory burden on creating a food system that consumers are demanding." Ager is worried that H 379 is a tool to increase the level of control that a small number of multinational corporate seed and chemical companies already exert over our food supply. We think he's exactly right. 

Troxler's email goes on to say:

"In North Carolina, farmers have chosen to plant nearly three million acres of crops produced from seed that would be considered “genetically-modified”. That includes 96 percent of all cotton, 93 percent of all soybeans, and 85 percent of all corn."

Wow. That's a lot of genetically-modified crops. Whatever your position on genetically-modified crops, it would be imprudent for local governments in North Carolina to try to prohibit farmers from growing them (which is probably why none of them ever have, to the best of our knowledge). Toxic Free NC has certainly never encouraged a local government to do so, and has no plans to try. Yet the Department of Agriculture's staff stated in legislative hearings in 2005 (when this same bill was first filed) that the bill came about because of the GMO ban in Mendocino, California, and was intended to prevent North Carolina's local governments from ever doing the same. This is a solution in search of a problem.  

Growing a strong, vibrant organic agriculture sector in North Carolina depends on protecting the organic certification of our farmers. Anything that puts that certification at risk - including contamination from GMO crops, and pesticide drift from neighboring farms, for example - is a risk that should be taken seriously. Filing a bill like H 379, and then dismissing valid criticisms, shows just how little heed the NC Department of Agriculture pays those risks - particularly when lobbyists from the likes of Monsanto show up asking for a favor. 

Meanwhile, in our state legislative efforts are also underway to eliminate the NC Sustainable Local Food Advisory Council, ensure that farmers don't necessarily have to pay fines when they violate pesticide regulations, and eliminate or slash funding from state programs that have benefited small, local farmers, such as the Golden LEAF Foundation and the NC Tobacco Trust Fund. H 379 is certainly not the only example of the NC Department of Agriculture's legislative agenda leaving sustainable and organic farmers out in the cold. It's just the one that got a lot of attention because we used a picture of a zombie in the action alert. 

I'm glad we got your attention, Commissioner Troxler. Now please explain to us why on earth this bill is needed, and how you plan to make sure that organic and sustainable farmers are not harmed by it?


Update: 
H 379 passed the NC House on April 30, with a vote of 93-23. See how your Representative voted here. A companion bill, S 639, has already passed the Senate. We expect the two versions to be reconciled soon and sent to Governor McCrory for his signature.

Toxic Free NC wants to be BPA-Free

by Ileana Rodriguez, Development Director

Back in February, our staff adopted a Sustainability Initiative for 2013. Each quarter, we're taking a new step to reduce our carbon footprint, our toxics exposure and/or cost efficiency.

Last quarter, we started using cloth napkins and dish towels in our restroom and kitchen. Not only are we saving money by ditching paper products, but we're also reducing the amount of trash we send to the landfill. That's a win-win situation for our budget and the environment!

For the second quarter of this year, wanted to reinstate our composting program. For almost two years,  vermicomposted at Toxic Free NC, but we recently let our worms retire to a colleague's urban farm.

We really miss having the option to compost at work. But after hearing Dr. Pete Meyers give an inspiring guest lecture at Catawba College about endocrine disruptors and their effect on our health and environment, we were motivated to shift our focus.

Too-Long Receipts by herzogbr on Flickr

This quarter, we're banning BPA from our office files. 

BPA, or Bisphenol-A, is an endocrine disrupting chemical that interferes with how the endocrine system controls hormones in the body. Even small exposures to endocrine disruptors can be linked to a host of health problems such as developmental defects, reproductive problems and certain types of cancer.

We're amending our accounting and reimbursement procedures to limit our exposure to the BPA-laden thermal paper found in receipts from gas pumps, restaurants, packing slips, etc.

From now on, our staff can snap a photo of a receipt instead of submitting the receipt with a paper expense report. And we can submit that documentation via email, which will drastically reduce the amount of paper we use in our record keeping.

Accepting photo receipts will limit our own individual exposure to BPA as we handle and store receipts for office expenses, and it will lessen the amount of BPA in public currency that gets transferred from receipts to the dollar bills we all carry in our wallets.

We hope that one small change in procedure will make a big difference!

If you keep financial files at home or in your place of work, do you have tips for ways that you make your record keeping more sustainable?

Sustainability at Toxic Free NC

by Fawn Pattison, Executive Director

At our office, we try to be as green as we can. We use only recycled paper, we have a local purchasing policy, we recycle everything we can, and recently we even bought non-toxic dry erase markers. But why stop there?

This week at staff meeting we decided to start up a new Sustainability Initiative. Each quarter, we'll choose a new step to reduce our carbon footprint, toxics exposure and/or cost efficiency. One staff member will captain each quarter's project and see it through.

This quarter's project: Ditching paper towels. We're going to get a little laundry system going so that we can have washable hand towels, cleaning rags and cloth napkins.

Next quarter will be composting. Stay tuned to find out how it goes!

Want to start a Sustainability Team at your workplace? It's fun and easy! Check out Duke University's guide to starting a Green Team in your office for tips and ideas.

Need some new ideas for your office Green Team? Get inspired by the City of Portland (OR)'s Green Team Guide!