www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

How did this one slip by the radar?
Colgate Palmolive, once knocked by Tom’s for putting artificial ingredients & sweeteners like saccharin in their toothpaste, paid $100 million cash for an 84% stake in the Kennebunk, Maine based business. However, Tom Chappell, the man himself, said that neither Tom’s of Maine’s business philosophy nor its product lines would change despite the majority share of Colgate.

With annual sales of around $50 million, Tom’s will remain a stand-alone subsidiary of Colgate, though the familiar packaging will make no reference to its new owner.

Despite the mixed feelings of loyal & long term customers, Toms hopes to utilise the financial muscle and distribution of its new parent company to reach a wider market with aims to expand in the rapidly growing U.S. market for natural products. Growth in natural healthcare products in the U.S. is around 15% per annum with Tom’s products distributed in Canada and here in the U.K.

Let’s hope Tom’s of Maine keeps doing what it does best - natural products and benefiting the environment.

Oops! Todays the day Britain starts eating the world!

We have just run out of our own natural resources and are about to become dependant on supplies from abroad, according to a study by the New Economics Foundation.

The UK Interdependance Report (PDF 2.45Mb) maps out our dependance on the Earth’s resources and shows that the average UK citizen is living beyond their means by going into “ecological debt” on April 16th 2006.

What this means is that if annual global consumption levels matched our own we would need 2.1 more planets with Earth’s resources to meet the demand. Back in 1961 the world was big enough for everyone to have a lifestyle similar to those enjoyed by UK citizens. Now that has increased threefold!

France, Germany and even Russia are behind us with environmental footprints of 3, 2,5 and 2.4 respectively, but the USA is way ahead, needing the resources of 5.3 planets to fuel it’s vast appetite.

The ecological footprint is calculated by measuring the amount of land and water humans need to a) produce the resources they consume and b) dispose of the resulting waste.

As with Friday’s stark warning on climate change the burgeoning nations like China and India are increasing their own “standards” of living, demanding more from their lifestyles and putting further pressure on the planet’s resources.
The reports authors hope the findings will highlight the need to curb our rising consumption levels, saying that current lifestyles are becoming incresingly unsustainable and placing greater pressures on the global environmental system.

At a time when our self-sufficiency on food has been in decline for a decade and our need for natural gas has led to imports from abroad it is time to start taking serious steps to avoid the threat to the earth’s ability to sustain future generations.

The UK government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, warned today that the earth is likely to experience a temperature increase of 3°C because we are all failing to agree on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor King warned that even if international governments agreed and acted to restrict CO₂ emissions climate change is inevitable.

The UK and the EU are aiming to curb emissions with a target of climate change being at no more than 2&deg:C but the USA, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is refusing to cut emissions and the fast-developing industrialisation of China & India is compounding the problem.

A recent report from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction & Research, part of the Met Office and one of the world’s top institutions for its work on predicted climate change, has produced a report called “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” (PDF, 900kb)

The report warns that climate change could damage half the world’s wildlife reserves, severely affect major forest systems and lead to stravation for around 400 million of the planet’s human population.

The Hadley report’s main focus is on stabilising atmospheric CO₂ levels at 550 parts per million with Professor King stating this as the figure PM Tony Blair wants world leaders to agree upon.

In an interview with Radio 4, Professor King said that;

“We don’t have to succumb to a state of despondency where we say that there is nothing we can do so let’s just carry on living as per usual.

“It is very important to understand that we can manage the risks to our population.

“What we are talking about here is something that will play through over decades - we are talking 100 years or so.

“We need to begin that process of investment.”

550ppm is almost double the level of CO2 in the atmosphere since before the industrial revolution over 200 years ago, and Professor King admits it is a big risk to allow the levels to get so high.

But he also states that the UK government believes this is the lowest attainable figure considering the increased emissions from devloping countries and the United States’ reluctance to cut down on atmospheric pollution.

The “3 degrees inevitability” has been criticised for not being tough enough and that we have the technology to restrict warming to 2°C… have a look at the report A Bright Future (PDF 170kb) from Friends of the Earth; it is specific to the electricity sector but identifies ways to largely reduce emissions and help achieve secure energy supplies.

Well, the Green People fennel toothpaste ran out, so it was nice to find the Tom’s of Maine spearmint toothpaste on the shelves again. This time we’ve gone for their “nature’s antiplaque toothpaste with propolis & myrrh”.

As with the green people paste it contains no fluoride and doesn’t have that super-sugary taste that affects so many of the usual household brands.

And the really great thing about Tom’s is they print the ingredients, their purpose and source in the box for all you green geeks to know exactly what’s in your product, why it’s there and where it came from. Fantastic!

Check out the table for the Spearmint antiplaque with propolis & myrrh…

Now… if only every manufacturer could be that forthcoming with their ingredients…