This Sunday, show you love mother earth as much as you love your own mother. Check out this Green Gift Guide for Mother’s Day and get ideas about how you can make this holiday a sustainable one.

Or, if you want to give the women in your life flowers, consider buying organic and local. Browse through these organic florists’ online shops and order a beautiful bouquet sent straight to her doorstep: Organic Bouquet and California Organic Flowers. These companies provide an alternative to supporting the majority of flower companies which ship in cut flowers from Latin America where, according to some sources, workers are mistreated. TheCommonWealth.org reports that female workers in flower factories in Colombia, where the U.S gets the majority of its flowers, are mostly not represented by unions, are subjected to forced pregnancy tests, experience sexual harrassment at work, and have an increased risk of contracting illnesses due to prolonged exposure to harmful pesticides.

Image credit: Les Stone / Women for Women International

And why not honor mothers worldwide by supporting Women for Women International, a non-profit that helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives? Skip Hallmark and send her a card that could make a difference: Women for Women Mother’s Day Cards.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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A Stain That Won’t Wash Away

April 20, 2012

Two years after a series of gambles and ill-advised decisions on a BP drilling project led to the largest accidental oil spill in United States history and the death of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, no one has been held accountable.

Sure, there have been about $8 billion in payouts and, in early March, the outlines of a civil agreement that will cost BP, the company ultimately responsible, another $7.8 billion in restitution to businesses and residents along the Gulf of Mexico. It’s also true the company has paid at least $14 billion more in cleanup and other costs since the accident began on April 20, 2010, bringing the expense of this fiasco to about $30 billion for BP. These are huge numbers. But this is a huge and profitable corporation.

What is missing is the accountability that comes from real consequences: a criminal prosecution that holds responsible the individuals who gambled with the lives of BP’s contractors and the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. Only such an outcome can rebuild trust in an oil industry that asks for the public’s faith so that it can drill more along the nation’s coastlines. And perhaps only such an outcome can keep BP in line and can keep an accident like the Deepwater Horizon disaster from happening again.

BP has already tested the effectiveness of lesser consequences, and its track record proves that the most severe punishments the courts and the United States government have been willing to mete out amount to a slap on the wrist.

Prior to the gulf blowout, which spilled 200 million gallons of oil, BP was convicted of two felony environmental crimes and a misdemeanor: after it failed to report that its contractors were dumping toxic waste in Alaska in 1995; after its refinery in Texas City, Texas, exploded, killing 15, in 2005; and after it spilled more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil from a corroded pipeline onto the Alaskan tundra in 2006. In all, more than 30 people employed directly or indirectly by BP have died in connection with these and other recent accidents.

In at least two of those cases, the company had been warned of human and environmental dangers, deliberated the consequences and then ignored them, according to my reporting.

Before the accident in Texas City, BP had declined to spend $150,000 to fix a part of the system that allowed gasoline to spew into the air and blow up. Documents show that the company had calculated the cost of a human life to be $10 million. Shortly before that disaster, a senior plant manager warned BP’s London headquarters that the plant was unsafe and a disaster was imminent. A report from early 2005 predicted that BP’s refinery would kill someone “within the next 12 to 18 months” unless it changed its practices.

After each disaster, Mr. Browne [(an upper tier executive at BP)] pledged to refresh his focus on safety, investment in maintenance and commitment to the environment. His successor, Mr. Hayward, followed suit, saying that BP’s culture had to change. But the Deepwater Horizon tragedy — which bears many of the same traits as the company’s past accidents — shows how difficult it has been for the company’s leaders to shift BP’s corporate values and live up to their promises.

Two years after analysts questioned whether the extraordinary cost and loss of confidence might drive BP out of business, it has come roaring back. It collected more than $375 billion in 2011, pocketing $26 billion in profits.

What the gulf spill has taught us is that no matter how bad the disaster (and the environmental impact), the potential consequences have never been large enough to dissuade BP from placing profits ahead of prudence. That might change if a real person was forced to take responsibility — or if the government brought down one of the biggest hammers in its arsenal and banned the company from future federal oil leases and permits altogether. Fines just don’t matter.

Abrahm Lustgarten is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

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“The messages, some of which investigators recovered, showed that BP knew that the leak was more than three times larger than its official estimates and that its ‘Top Kill’ effort to plug the well at the end of May 2010 was failing.” While BP told reporters that 5,000 barrels of crude oil were being spilled every day, Mix was texting, “too much flowrate - over 15,000″ to his seniors.

Kurt Mix is charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and faces 20 years in prison as well as a $250,000 fine per charge.

Photo Credit: The Bay Ledger

To me, Mix’s arrest represents the mismanagement and irresponsibility surrounding America’s largest maritime oil spill in history. The gulf is still reeling from the disaster and yet, as of October 2011, the government has approved BP’s next drilling venture in the Gulf stating that, “BP has met all of the enhanced safety requirements that [The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement] have implemented and applied consistently over the past year.”

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), expressed concern in a statement last fall: “The fact that BP is getting a permit to drill without yet paying a single cent in fines is a disappointment, and does not serve as an effective lesson of deterrence for oil and gas companies.”

In two years, lawsuits have been filed and settled, fingers have been pointed and fines have been charged. But ultimately, it seems that, as for oil drilling, it’s back to business as usual. President Obama boasts of his drilling expansion: “Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.” And Mitt Romney plans on plowing right past environmental protection regulations all together: “I can cut through the baloney of the task force and just tell him ‘Mr. President, open up drilling in the Gulf’…let’s also start opening up our natural gas resources instead of having it held up by the EPA.”

Will history repeat itself? We have learned and (re-learned) the hard way that offshore drilling is dirty, dangerous and deadly and yet politicians keep signing off on new projects that might seem like a good idea today but spell doom for tomorrow. 

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What is the future of hotels? The Future of Hotels is Green. An initiative brought to you by hotel.info.

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Lush Walls Rise to Fight a Blanket of Pollution in Mexico City: The vertical gardens recently installed by local architects in Mexico City aim to “scrub away both the filth and the image. One of three eco-sculptures installed across the city by a nonprofit called VerdMX, the arch is both art and oxygenator. It catches the eye. And it also helps clean the air.”

Credit: Rodrigo Cruz for The New York Times

What Is the Best Earth Day Pledge?: “One can find a plethora of ‘green’ actions from a variety of websites and programs. It is sometimes overwhelming to the average consumer; what is meaningful?… The one often overlooked opportunity is the yard. The cumulative impact of how people manage their own yards can have significant impacts on local, regional, and global environments.”

Smart Toilet & Sink Combo Uses Greywater to Flush: A Korean designer has come up with a clever way of saving water in the bathroom with his new device which “uses a double compartment system that stores greywater from a connected washbasin to flush the stainless steel toilet bowl below.”

© Jang Woo-seok

Chicago’s $7 Billion Plan to Fix Crumbling Infrastructure: “From expanding its largest airport to replacing century-old water pipes, Chicago introduces an ambitious construction plan that will be partly financed with public-private partnerships.”

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World Water Day is coming up on March 22^nd! For almost 80 years, the global community has been celebrating World Water Day by advocating for a better way to conserve resources and protect our human right to water.

Join the millions supporting this cause by taking action. Here’s how*:

DONATE YOUR VOICE

So far, WWD Twitter and Facebook donors have reached over 37,000 people with the message – and they’re just getting started. Use the links on this page to donate your Twitter or Facebook for the day.

IF YOU’RE IN WASHINGTON DC

1. March 21st: Learn more about Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) at a training session. “Get Schooled on WASH” with other civic leaders, students, professors and development professionals. Registration is FREE! Register here. 

2. March 21st: Join the party. Register to attend “A Drink to the World: Celebrating Success in Water and Sanitation” and hear from celebrities, politicians, field workers and other honored guests at a cocktail reception on Capitol Hill. Reservations required. Register here.

3. March 22nd: Participate in Advocacy Day and connect with Congressional offices on the Hill to advocate for greater attention to WASH initiatives worldwide! Join an advocacy team here.

IF YOU’RE AT HOME

1. Start buying smart and making eco-responsible decisions at home: Install a FloLogic System which helps you conserve water and protect your home from water damage by acting like a circuit breaker for your home’s plumbing system.

2. Advocate for clean water in your congressional district. Register here to hold an “in district meeting” with local leadership!

3. Find a WWD celebration, activity or event near you. There’s plenty going on all over the country. See a list of planned activities in the US here. In other countries here.

* Source– Dig Deep: Field Notes

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On International Women’s Day, Let’s Remember Why Women in India Must Have an Education

On New Year’s Day, Maya and I were eating fried pastries on the side of the road in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. I am living in this northeastern part of India as an AJWS World Partners Fellow, and Maya works with me at an NGO that promotes gender equality and women’s health. Maya rented a car and invited me to join her on a visit to a temple near our home in Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh. Over chai and a snack, Maya started to tell me how she left her village to move to Lucknow, the nearest urban center, to pursue an education. Now she heads the Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights team at our organization and, at 28, is finishing her Ph.D. thesis. She wears jeans to work, owns her own motorcycle and frequents the giant air-conditioned cineplex at The Fun Mall (yes, Fun Mall is a proper noun in this case). Her lifestyle now makes it hard for me to imagine a time when nearly her entire village urged her father to not let her go to university.The picture she painted for me about her struggles puts into perspective the hardships of many girls in India. Maya was lucky enough to come from a middle-class family. She has supportive parents, yet she still had to work hard for everything she has today. For every woman who has left the village to get a college degree, there are probably thousands who will never have that opportunity. In fact, according to the 2011 Indian Census, more than one-third of Indian girls are illiterate, and the rate of women participating in higher education is abysmally low. Maya has beaten these odds but has not forgotten about the obstacles many young women like her still face.

This International Women’s Day, I am celebrating the strength with which Maya has navigated her personal struggles and emerged as a successful, independent woman.

Maya was the second girl to leave her village in order to obtain a college degree. The first girl, Padma, was not so lucky. Thirty-five years ago, Padma left to study in another state. She excelled in school, but her scholastic achievements brought her negative attention from her male classmates and teachers. According to Maya, when Padma received the top grade in her class, outscoring the boy who was accustomed to being on top, he responded by collaborating with Padma’s teacher to poison her. Padma died, but her case was never published or brought to justice. Instead, the school covered up the incident by calling it a suicide or indigestion. When Padma’s village learned of this story, the tragedy turned into a cautionary tale for parents wanting to send their daughters to college.

But Maya’s parents were some of the first to not let Padma’s death scare them from giving their daughter an education. Even though Maya’s father had encouraged her to be independent and well-educated her whole life, the pressure from the community to hold her back was so great that her father wavered until the last second, when Maya was zipping up her suitcase.

“That first year at Lucknow University,” Maya told me as we got back on the road, “I was afraid to cross the street. I was a lion in my village, but in the city I was just a cat.” As a first year student she might have struggled with the English medium classes, but now Maya scolds me in perfect English about how I don’t eat enough potatoes or wear enough eyeliner.

Her confidence was growing as she began to excel in school, but soon after she left for college, Maya’s father fell ill and everything changed. The medical expenses were quickly draining the family’s resources, and her father had no way of paying for her tuition. The one uncle who could provide financial aid was unwilling to do so, figuring that sending a girl to college was a waste of money. Her father died the same day that she borrowed $200 from a friend to pay school fees. Maya was 19. For the next seven years, while working in the non-profit sector and earning her degrees, she became the sole provider for her family of five.

She eventually landed a fellowship at an NGO, where she had her first close contact with young girls living in urban slums. Part of her work involved conducting advocacy campaigns to try to mobilize support from parents and teachers to send local girls to school. Even though there are government welfare programs that fully subsidize school for these girls, there is still a significant gap between policy and reality. By the time her fellowship ended, she had helped 20 girls from that community go to school and felt empowered to continue her work in the women’s rights field.

Maya does similar work at the NGO where we work now and says that she has become a role model for the youth with whom she is organizing. Maya recently told me over coffee that, “We tell the girls that change begins with you. I don’t know how much they will change, but they will start to change.” Maya, who is the exception rather than the rule, is now training others to be the exception, too.

Maya’s story is an inspirational example of the kind of success Indian women can achieve. However, for every case in which women are afforded a quality education and a good career, there are far more women excluded from these possibilities. I admire Maya for her commitment to help women who have not been afforded the right promised to them under law. Emphasizing one success story, though, should not distract us from the broader conditions of inequality, discrimination and abuse common to the lives of many Indian women. It should only inspire us to work harder.

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Here are some of the latest news stories about water and the environment:

Salamanders Learn to Live With Pollution: “Salamanders whose forebears had to live with roadside pollution are more capable of surviving in that hostile environment, a study shows.”

How Dry Weather in Argentina Could Affect Chicken Prices in Chicago: A South American drought keeps global grain reserves tight, but it could mean good things for North American corn producers.

Indian Villagers Create Artifical Glaciers to Conserve Water: A remote Indian village is responding to global warming-induced water shortages by creating large masses of ice, or “artificial glaciers,” to get through the dry spring months.

Environmental Pollutant Level During Pregnancy Linked With Grown Daughters Who Are Overweight: It is suspected that diet and exercise alone cannot explain the recent large weight increase of children and adults worldwide. In a new study, Norwegian researchers suggest that increasing levels of certain chemicals that pregnant women are exposed to may contribute to obesity in their grown children.

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The story of how up to 99% of some vulture species in India disappeared proves how one seemingly unimportant link in a complex environmental chain can cause huge problems down the line. For thousands of years, vultures have played a vital role in India’s natural and human ecosystem (there’s even a vulture god in Hinduism), so when vultures in India underwent the most rapid population collapse of any animal in recorded history just in the last ten years, scientists were scrambling to find answers. It wasn’t until one microbiologist from the University of Washington stumbled upon the reason in 2004 did the case crack open.

J. Lindsay Oaks, a scientist working on the case, happened to be interested in Middle Eastern falconry and had heard of fatal cases of diclofenac poisoning. On a hunch, he decided to test the vultures for diclofenac, a pain killer and an anti-inflammatory drug commonly given to livestock. Sure enough, the vultures were dying after consuming this drug via the dead cattle they consumed. Linking diclofenac to the vulture deaths shed light on a perfect storm of circumstances. Brandon Keim of Wired Science explains:

“Until the early 1990s, diclofenac was the intellectual property of pharmaceutical giant Novartis. When its patent expired, India’s sophisticated generic drug industry ramped up production, flooding the country with cheap, highly-potent diclofenac. Farmers bought millions of doses. Cattle are sacred in many parts of South Asia, and diclofenac helped ease the pains of elderly beasts of burden. Because they are sacred, however, the bodies of dead cattle were not eaten or rendered. Instead they were left in fields to be eaten by vultures.”

credit: Ami Vitale

When vultures were no longer consuming the rotting meat, dogs–the feral, yowling, mangy ones who growl at me in front of my gate– took their place in the ecosystem. These dogs have caused the rabies problem in India to dangerously spike. Over a third of the world’s rabies deaths occur in India and a majority of the victims are children under 15. In New Delhi, a city formerly swarming with vultures, there is just one hospital that treats rabies patients.

Also, Parsis, who traditionally dispose of their dead by setting corpses on top of a tower where vultures consume the body in minutes, have had to make adjustments in light of the vulture disappearance. Some Parsi communities now use solar panels to accelerate decomposition even though it’s not as sanitary as the other more natural method.

If I ever thought about vultures before, the ones with Liverpool accents from the Jungle Book usually came to mind. Now their disappearance is personal, but more importantly, it is proof that everything we do and all the chemicals we use have direct effects on the ecosystem in ways some of us never thought possible.

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