Archives – April, 2011
Guest post by Josh Harkinson, Mother Jones
Last May, a group of movie stars gathered at a schoolyard garden in Venice, California to raise money for the Environmental Media Association, a prominent Hollywood green group that supports organic gardens at public schools. Among the publicity photos snapped that day was a product-placement shot of Rosario Dawson planting vegetables alongside a sack of Kellogg Amend, an “organic” soil supplement sold by Kellogg Garden Products, one of EMA’s corporate sponsors. “This was one of those unfortunate weird things,” says EMA president Debbie Levin, who hadn’t known anything about Amend before the shoot. Amend, she later learned, is not approved for organic farming because it’s made from municipal sewage sludge. (more…)
April 27, 2011
For more news on the sewage sludge scam, click the “Toxic Sludge” tab above or here, which will take you to the information clearinghouse we have created on SourceWatch about sewage sludge being promoted as “compost,” along with information about products made from sewage sludge that may be in a garden store near you.
For more information about the “Environmental Media Assocation,” please click here.
John Stauber, author and adviser to the Food Rights Network reveals one of the biggest toxic scams in America, sewage sludge being sold as garden “compost” for growing vegetables. Watch the video here.
Sewage Sludge, Celebrities and School Gardens
Guest post by Mitch Anderson, The San Francisco Chronicle
I have a strange little story to tell. It involves sewage sludge, celebrities and school gardens. It is set in the City of Angels, naturally. This story has several characters, which we can lump into two basic categories: the children and the adults. The children are the most important, and as always, are innocent and have virtually no say in the outcome of the story. They are the ones in the garden. The adults can be generally divided into three groups: the green celebrities, the company, and the environmentalists. First there are the celebrities (as we know, fame is big currency in LA). They are part of the Environmental Media Association (EMA), a good organization that is seeking to make the green movement go mainstream. The tension of the story is built around EMA, which as you’ll see, has a very important ethical decision to make. The EMA has a worthy project creating organic gardens in schools, so that, as Rosario Dawson says in a video on their site, “kids can be clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy.” Sounds great. We definitely need more organic gardens in schools.
(more…)
Guest post by Josh Harkinson, Mother Jones
Last May, a group of movie stars gathered at a schoolyard garden in Venice, California to raise money for the Environmental Media Association, a prominent Hollywood green group that supports organic gardens at public schools. Among the publicity photos snapped that day was a product-placement shot of Rosario Dawson planting vegetables alongside a sack of Kellogg Amend, an “organic” soil supplement sold by Kellogg Garden Products, one of EMA’s corporate sponsors. “This was one of those unfortunate weird things,” says EMA president Debbie Levin, who hadn’t known anything about Amend before the shoot. Amend, she later learned, is not approved for organic farming because it’s made from municipal sewage sludge.
April 27, 2011
Guest post by Mitch Anderson, The San Francisco Chronicle
“Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.” David Letterman
I have a strange little story to tell. It involves sewage sludge, celebrities and school gardens. It is set in the City of Angels, naturally.
This story has several characters, which we can lump into two basic categories: the children and the adults.
The children are the most important, and as always, are innocent and have virtually no say in the outcome of the story. They are the ones in the garden.
The adults can be generally divided into three groups: the green celebrities, the company, and the environmentalists.
First there are the celebrities (as we know, fame is big currency in LA). They are part of the Environmental Media Association (EMA), a good organization that is seeking to make the green movement go mainstream. The tension of the story is built around EMA, which as you’ll see, has a very important ethical decision to make. The EMA has a worthy project creating organic gardens in schools, so that, as Rosario Dawson says in a video on their site, “kids can be clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy.” Sounds great. We definitely need more organic gardens in schools.
(more…)
April 27, 2011
SAN DIEGO–Leading organic gardening and food safety advocates who oppose growing food in sewage sludge are attending the national BioCycle magazine conference Tuesday, April 12, 2011 in San Diego to demand an apology and retraction from Sally Brown, a columnist and editorial board member of BioCycle magazine, and from Nora Goldstein, the executive editor of BioCycle. (more…)
April 11, 2011
Dear Dr. Brown and Ms. Goldstein:
Dr. Brown’s column in the March 2011 edition of BioCycle magazine makes a false and defamatory charge calling us “ecoterrorists.” We are the individuals who initiated and led the successful effort that on March 4, 2010 stopped the San Francisco Public Utility Commission (SFPUC) from giving away sewage sludge as “organic biosolids compost” for home and school gardens. (more…)
April 11, 2011
PBDE Flame Retardants and Triclosan Found in Tests Conducted for the Food Rights Network
This news release was written by the Food Rights Network and published via PRNewsire August 10, 2010. FRN provided test results to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commissioners at a City Hall Meeting, 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, August 10, 2010.
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 10 — Independent tests of sewage sludge-derived compost from the Synagro CVC plant — distributed free to gardeners since 2007 by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in their “organic biosolids compost” giveaway program — have found appreciable concentrations of contaminants with endocrine-disruptive properties. (more…)
April 8, 2011
This report by Food Rights Network consultant John Stauber appeared on the Center for Media and Democracy website July 9, 2010:
The celebrity chef Alice Waters is probably the world’s most famous advocate of growing and eating local, Organic food. In February 2010 her Chez Panisse Foundation chose as its new Executive Director the wealthy “green socialite” and liberal political activist Francesca Vietor. Vietor’s hiring created a serious conflict of interest that has married Waters and her Foundation to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and its scam of disposing of toxic sewage sludge waste as free “organic biosolids compost” for gardens. (more…)
April 8, 2011
