Right now, the website is focused on issues involving high fructose corn syrup, products that call themselves “Blueberry” but contain no blueberries and misleading labels involving tomato products. The primary focus is on the efforts of the Corn Refiners to change the name of High Fructose Corn Syrup to corn sugar to make it sound better, but the website promises to address other deceptive food labeling issues. I found the blog posts the most interesting, particularly the blog post entitled Fresh isn’t alway what you think it is . . .

Circle of Moms is looking for the top 25 eco-friendly mom bloggers. And I would love to be included. But right now, I’m way behind. So, please, go vote for me – TheSmartMama – just click on the circle below. It will take you to the list of sites up for the listing, and you need to scroll down to me – TheSmartMama.

You can vote one time per day through April 17, 2011. Thanks so much!

Okay, so getting organized is always a hot topic. How does a busy family do it? Don’t you envy those families that never seem to forget anything? I do. But every time I try to get organized, I feel overwhelmed. And I feel frustrated because all of the organizing storage bins and similar items are made of plastic.

But, ecomom.com does have some options, such as the Way Basics Storage Cube. Or check out the Way Basics Tribeca Bookcase. It is made of zboard, which is made from 99% post consumer recycled paper and is lighter to ship than particle board so reduced energy consumption in the shipping. And no formaldehyde like particle board.

Plus, organizing isn’t just getting all of our stuff put away. I also need to organize the communications with my kids’ school, their sport teams, etc. And that is where one of our guest experts comes in. Guest expert Aparna Vasshisht-Rota is the founder of Parentella.com, a private parent-teacher social network. It is designed to improve communications between teachers, parents, and room parents. It is a lot better (and more greener) than send home notes!

We will also be joined by guest expert Molly Gold, present and founder of GO MOM! Inc. Molly Gold is a lifestyle media expert, spokesperson, communications consultant, consumer productsd specialist and online media mom.

So let’s talk tips and strategies for organization. Join us at the #ecowed Twitter party, 4/13, from 7 to 8 pm Pacific. Don’t forget to follow @thesmartmama, our sponsor @ecomom and @ecomomkimberly, and our guest experts, @parentella and @myGOMOM.

And we’ve got prizes. This week, we will be picking prizes only from those that participate in the #ecowed Twitter party using the #ecowed hashtag. It will be random draws from the participants and perhaps those answering questions. We’ve got three (3) $25 gift certificates to ecomom.com and a grand prize of a $100 gift certificate to ecomom.com. So join us for #ecowed, 4/13, from 7 to 8 pm Pacific.

Plus, don’t forget to enter ecomom’s absolutely fabulous Healthy Home Makeover contest. You could win a $75,000 Healthy Home Makeover! Plus ecomom has daily giveaways – just check out the ecomom blog for today’s contest.

First, to join a Twitter party, you need a Twitter account. So, if you don’t have one, go sign up for one.

 Then, during the Twitter party time, just join in the conversation. You don’t need an invitation to join a Twitter party – Twitter is an open, public forum. However, some Twitter parties require you to RSVP in order to be eligible to win prizes. Usually, that information will be tweeted.

Also, make sure to use the specified hashtag to mark  your conversation as part of the Twitter party. The hashtag is a word or saying with the pound symbol “#” in front of it – so the EcoWed Twitter parties use the hashtag #ecowed.

Now, if the Twitter party is hosted, be sure to follow your host or hostess. To see what everybody is talking about, you can use Twitter’s search feature with the hashtag (that is one of the reasons to use the hashtag). You can also use a program specifically designed for Twitter – like TweetChat, Tweetdeck or Tweetgrid.

For some Twitter party etiquette, keep in mind that it is a conversation. Just like at a cocktail party, you don’t want to be the party-goer that only talks about herself. Or only promotes herself. Also, if the party is sponsored – which usually means that a company or organization has paid the host or hostess or given him or her some consideration – then really don’t spend all your timepromoting your products or services.

That’s it. Hope to tweet with you at an #ecowed Twitter party.

Disclosure – The views expressed in the article below are Jack Lee’s views. I did not receive any consideration for posting this guest article.

So, here it is, from guest expert Jack Lee, Executive Chairman and Founder of 4Refuel:

CBS-TV’s program “60 Minutes” has been a reliable and informative show for decades giving in-depth reports on a variety of topics.  In a segment aired January 11/09 CBS correspondent Steve Kroft showed that commodity traders – and not oil supply or market demand – were responsible for sharp climbs in fuel prices. The broadcast was revealing and surprising.

Over a one year period the price of oil went from $69 per barrel to nearly $150 and then in just three months collapsed with the stock market.  Kroft reports, “Many people believe it was a speculative bubble, not unlike the one that caused the housing crisis, and that it had more to do with traders and speculators on Wall Street than with oil company executives or sheiks in Saudi Arabia.”

Kroft explains, “To understand what happened to the price of oil, you first have to understand the way it’s traded. For years it has been bought and sold on something called the commodities futures market. At the New York Mercantile Exchange, it’s traded alongside cotton and coffee, copper and steel by brokers who buy and sell contracts to deliver those goods at a certain price at some date in the future.”

Dan Gilligan is the president of the Petroleum Marketers Association who represents more than 8,000 retail and wholesale suppliers, everyone from home heating oil companies to gas station owners.

When 60 Minutes talked to him last summer, Mr. Gilligan said his members were getting blamed for gouging the public, even though their costs had also gone through the roof. He told Kroft the problem was in the commodities markets, which had been invaded by a new breed of investor.

Gilligan said these investors don’t actually take delivery of the oil. “All they do is buy the paper, and hope that they can sell it for more than they paid for it. The volatility is being driven by the huge amounts of money and the huge amounts of leverage that is going into these markets.”

About the same time, hedge fund manager Michael Masters reached the same conclusion. Masters’ expertise is in tracking the flow of investments into and out of financial markets and he noticed huge amounts of money leaving stocks for commodities and oil futures, most of it going into index funds, betting the price of oil was going to go up.

60 Minutes asked who was buying this “paper oil,” Masters told Kroft, “The California pension fund. Harvard Endowment. Lots of large institutional investors. And, by the way, other investors, hedge funds, Wall Street trading desks were following right behind them, putting money – sovereign wealth funds were putting money in the futures markets as well. So you had all these investors putting money in the futures markets. And that was driving the price up.”

27 barrels of crude were being traded for every 1 barrel of oil consumed…

In a five-year period, Masters said the amount of money institutional investors, hedge funds, and the big Wall Street banks had placed in the commodities markets went from $13 billion to $300 billion. Last year, 27 barrels of crude were being traded every day on the New York Mercantile Exchange for every one barrel of oil that was actually being consumed in the United States.

CBS News points out, “A recent report out of MIT, analyzing world oil production and consumption, also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year’s run-up in oil prices. And Michael Masters says the U.S. Department of Energy’s own statistics show that if the markets had been working properly, the price of oil should have been going down, not up.

As an example, the price of oil jumped $25 in a single day. That day was Sept. 22. Michael Greenberger, a former director of trading for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that oversees oil futures, says there were no supply disruptions that could have justified such a big increase.

“Everybody agrees supply-demand could not drive the price up $25, which was a record increase in the price of oil. The price of oil went from somewhere in the 60s to $147 in less than a year. And we were being told, on that run-up, ‘It’s supply-demand, supply-demand, supply-demand,’” Greenberger said.

“From quarter four of ’07 until the second quarter of ’08 the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up. And worldwide demand went down. So you have supply going up and demand going down, which generally means the price is going down,” Masters told Kroft.  “So you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during the same period. However, the only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand.”

Is there price manipulation by these huge investors? The Petroleum Marketers Association President  Dan Gilligan told Kroft, “I can’t say. And the reason I can’t say it, is because nobody knows. Our federal regulators don’t have access to the data. They don’t know who holds what positions…federal law doesn’t give them the jurisdiction to find out.”

Kroft adds, “Most of the trading is now conducted in secret, with no public scrutiny or government oversight. Over time, the big Wall Street banks were allowed to buy and sell as many oil contracts as they wanted for their clients, circumventing regulations intended to limit speculation. And in 2000, Congress effectively deregulated the futures market, granting exemptions for complicated derivative investments called oil swaps, as well as electronic trading on private exchanges.”

There is more to this story and for a complete transcript of the 60 Minutes Program, go to our website. (www.askthefuelexpert.com)

As consumers, we can’t control the price of fuel, but we can control how we use and manage our fuel consumption.  Many companies invest thousands of dollars each month using fuel – in fact it’s the highest cost of doing business after labour. Fuel Management gives you the tools necessary to control the cost of getting fuel and using fuel.

Will there be new regulations to protect consumers from price gouging?  Who can say?  But whether the price of oil is it at $50 per barrel or $150 per barrel it’s essential to minimize consumption and maximize your efficiency wherever possible. Fortunately, automated Fuel Management is available now to deliver on both.

Jack Lee, President/CEO, 4Refuel Inc.

Jack Lee is the President and CEO of 4Refuel Inc, The Leader in Fuel Management.  If you have any questions or comments about this article Jack can be reached at AskthefuelExpert@4refuel.com

We all have different definitions of what green is, but ask most people, and they will say they are for protecting the earth. For limiting trash. For saving water and energy. For stopping pollution.

And becauase we are for those things, we will spend money on products that claim to be eco friendly or planet friendly or earth friendly. We might not actually spend more money than we otherwise would, but given the choice between a product with a green claim and one without, for the same price, most of us will choose the green product (assuming, of course, that we believe the product works the same as the conventional product).

But still. We have a niggling suspicion that those vague claims of planet friendly, eco friendly and earth friendly might not mean exactly what we think. But we still buy products with those claims, believing that we are doing some good.

The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) proposed revised Green Guides may well end those vague, unqualified green claims.

The FTC released its latest revised Green Guides on October 6, 2010. If you aren’t familiar with the FTC’s Green Guides, they are the FTC’s guidance to industry that helps marketers avoid misleading environmental claims in advertising.

The Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) requires that advertising:

• Be truthful and not deceptive;
• Be supported by evidence to support the claims; and
• Not be unfair.

Under the FTC’ Policy Statement on Deception, an advertisement is deceptive if it contains a statement or omits information that is likely to mislead consumers acting reasonably under the circumstances and is material (or important to a consumer’s decision to buy a product).

What is important that the FTC looks at an advertisment from the perspective of the reasonable consumer, and considers the advertisment in context. It isn’t just the words, but also the pictures and everything else. And, and this is critical, the FTC evaluates both express  and implied claims made in the advertising.

So, back to the proposed revised Green Guides. To update the Guides, the FTC conducted its own survey of consumers and green advertising. And the findings are of critical importance to the proposed revisions to the Green Guides with respect to unqualified green claims.

So, the FTC’s Consumer Perception Study found that consumers, reading an unqualified green green, believed that the product had a number of specific attributes implied by that unqualified green claim. Specifically, 61% believed that the product was made from recycled materials, 59% believed that the product was recyclable, 54% believed that the product was made with renewable materials, 53% believed that the product was biodegradable, 48% believed that the product was made with renewable energy, 45% believed that the product was non-toxic and 40% believed that the product was compostable. And, 27% of respondents interpreted the unqualified green and eco friendly claims as suggesting that the product had NO negative environmental impact.

Remember, a marketer must have evidence to support both express and implied claims. Therefore, because the FTC found that a reasonable consumer implied all of this attributes from an unqualified green claim, the FTC notes that making an unqualified green claim “remain[s] very difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate.”

As a result, Section 260.4(a) of the revised Green Guides, if adopted as proposed, state that “[i]t is deceptive to misrepresent, directly or by implication, that a product, package, or service offers a general environmental benefit.”

Further, Section 260.4(b) states:

Unqualified general environmental benefit claims are difficult to interpret and likely to convey a wide range of meanings. In many cases, such claims likely convey that the product, package, or service has specific and far-reaching environmental benefits and may convey that the item or service has no negative environmental impact. Because it is highly unlikely that marketers can substantiate all reasonable interpretations of these claims, marketers should not make unqualified general environmetnal benefit claims.

From this, it appears that any general claims of eco friendly, planet friendly or earth friendly, or similar unqualified general environmental benefit claims, will be a thing of the past if the Green Guides are adopted as proposed. The examples given make this even more clear.

Example 2 is as follows:

A product wrapper bears the claim “Environmentally Friendly.” Text on the wrapper explains that it is environmentally friendly because it was “not chlorine bleached, a process that has beens hown to create harmful substances.” Although the wrapper was not bleached with chlorine, its production releases into the environment other  harmful sustances. Since reasonable consumers likely would interpret the “Environmentally Friendly” claim, in combination with the explanation, to mean that no significant harmful substances are released into the environment, the “Environmentally Friendly” claim is deceptive.

So, it will be interesting to see what will develop. Other claims addressed by the proposed revised Green Guides include certifications and seals of approval, degradable, compostable, ozone-safe/ozone-friendly, recyclable, free-of/non toxic, made with renewable materials, made with renewable energy and carbon offsets.

If you haven’t met me, I’m Jennifer Taggart. I blog as TheSmartMama. I’m a mom of 2, an attorney specializing in environmental and consumer product law, author of Smart Mama’s Green Guide: Simple Steps to Reduce Your Child’s Toxic Chemical Exposure, former environmental engineer, co-founder of 3 Green Angels, XRF wielding fierce non toxic green mama.

My blog grew out of my story that begin when my mom handed me Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring more than 25 years ago. The chapter that started with the silenced frogs because of DDT moved me to take action to be green. I took small steps – annoying my parents with reminders to turn off the lights and conserve water. I went to college and studied to become an environmental engineer. I worked as an environmental engineer - first as an intern at East Bay Municipal Utility District working on the toxic air emission program and then for Rocketdyne. I went to law school at night while working full time to practice environmental law.

I wanted to save the polar bears and the whales. But my efforts weren’t focused on me personally – it was all for a greater good.

I got married.

I tried to have kids. I had two miscarriages. Unexplained miscarriages.

I started questioning what I was eating, what I was slathering on my skin, what I was using to store my food. Were any of these things contributing to the miscarriages?

And then I got pregnant and stayed pregnant. The very global idea of being green became extremely personal. I did not want to expose my baby-to-be to mercury (in contaminated seafood), bisphenol a (in certain plastics and canned food linings), phthalates (in virtually all synthetic scents, including cleaning products and beauty products), and more. I started using my experience and education to read labels and to question the products I was using and to figure out how I could reduce my toxic chemical exposure and our children’s toxic chemical exposure.

When I was in a car accident with my son to be at 29 weeks, and I faced the risk of having him prematurely, I realized I would do just about anything to protect him.

And when he was born, I realized I would do anything to protect him.

And if I was willing to do that, then why would I expose him to toxic chemicals when alternatives exist? Why would I expose him to the 1,4 dioxane in Johnson & Johnson’s Head to Toe Baby Wash when I could use a product without 1,4 dioxane? Why would I use plastics that leach bisphenol A when I could use alternatives without BPA?

I’m not a helicopter mom by any stretch of the imagination. Anybody who knows me knows I’m not. But when it comes to toxic chemicals in our products when they are ready available alternates, why would I choose to expose my children?

At my new mom breastfeeding class at The Pump Station, I found out that the information I had gathered was of interest to other moms. So I started talking about, and then teaching classes on reducing toxic chemical exposures, and then I wrote the book and started the blog to share what I knew. And how you can reduce or eliminate toxic chemical exposures with simple steps. You don’t have to spend lots of money. Something as simple as taking off your shoes can reduce your toxic chemical exposure.

My journey continues as I call out companies and products for greenwashing. As I work with other moms to unite our voices for real change – such as eliminating environmental causes of cancer.

I’ve also launched a business related to my blog, and I use a Niton XRF analyzer to test consumer products for lead, cadmium and more. My XRF testing was part of the CPSC’s consideration to initiate a recall of 12 million McDonald’s Shrek glasses.

I use my blog and twitter (@thesmartmama) to promote my brand and my book as well as to inform and educate about toxic chemical exposures and the very easy simple steps anybody can do to reduce or eliminate those exposures.

I’m trying to change the world we live in. To reduce or eliminate toxic chemical exposures. To have parents have enough information to make informed choices. My goal is to eliminate lead as the top preventable environmental childhood poison – there is no reason our children should continue to suffer the effects of lead exposure – and to reduce or elimate childhood toxic chemical exposure from household cleaners, pesticides, beauty products and more. 

So, that’s me. I think my journey would be amazing as part of Project Mom Casting. I’ve definitely got  opinions, which of course, makes for exciting reality tv. So, pick me!

But I’ve got some more energy now so I’ll be posting again. Thanks for your patience.

I see parallels with how the green industry dismisses green moms and even green women. Home based greening is not viewed as very significant by the more traditional green tech group. 

But I don’t really want to talk about that either. What I do want to do is to tell a story.  A story about Bette Nesmith Graham. Ms. Graham wanted to be an artist, but her life took a different path. She dropped out of high school to get married before her fiancee and then husband left for World War II. But, after World War II, Ms. Graham found herself divorced in 1946 with a son to support. She worked as a secretary to support herself and her son.

In those days, Ms. Graham was one of those women – women who worked outside of the home contrary to the stereotype of what women were supposed to do (and, which, we are still apparently supposed to do at least if you read the NY Times article).

But Ms. Graham was frustrated at her job. She was frustrated with the electric typewriters in widespread use after World War II. It was impossible to correct mistakes because of the carbon-film ribbons. Think about it – I can’t imagine having to prepare legal documents without being able to correct mistakes – a typographical error on page 10 of a 20 page document would, well, suck. More than suck.

The story goes that Ms. Graham wanted a way to correct mistakes (as I can well imagine). Just picture it – some jerk of a boss screaming at you because of an unfortunate typo in a document that you can’t correct and just need to start over? Ms. Graham knew that artists painted over their mistakes so she thought that the same could be done with typing. She put some tempera waterbased paint, colored to match the stationery she used, in a bottle and took her watercolor brush to the office. She used this to correct her typing mistakes. Along the next 5 years as she used the correcting fluid (often without her boss noticing), other secretaries saw the new invention and asked for some of the correcting fluid. After the first secretary asked, Ms. Graham found a green bottle at home, wrote “Mistake Out” on a label, and gave it to her friend. She continued to whip up batches in her kitchen for other secretaries.

Ms. Graham was a smart cookie. She got a trademark, got a patent and started the Mistake Out Company (later renamed Liquid Paper) in 1956 from her home. She turned her kitchen into a laboratory, mixing up an improved product with her electric mixer with help from her son’s high school chemistry teacher. Graham’s son, Michael Nesmith (later of The Monkees fame), and his friends filled bottles for her customers.

By 1967, it had grown into a million dollar business. In 1968, she moved into her own plant and corporate headquarters, automated operations, and had 19 employees. That year, she sold one million bottles. Ms. Graham eventually sold the business to Gillette Corp. for $47.5 million.

How is this relevant to the snarky mommy blog article in the NY Times?

Ms. Graham was just a mom. Ms. Graham was even worse than that in those days – she was a divorced working mom. And I’m going to guess she was mocked and dismissed.

Nonetheless. Ms. Graham invented (necessity is the mother of invention) one of the most widely used office products. In her kitchen.

The NY Times may dismiss mommy bloggers. Heck, mainstream media may dismiss mommy bloggers.

By doing so, they ignore a diverse group of very powerful, very passionate, very invested, very active women. We are moms, wives, partners, lovers, sisters, daughters. We are teachers, attorneys, scientists, activists, biologists, secretaries, consultants, flight attendants, police officers, and more. We are passionate about parenting, politics, cooking, the environment, education, music, books, shopping, beauty and more. Women just like Bette Nesmith Graham.

Mock us at your peril. Dismiss us.

But make no mistake about it. There is power in that connection and the conversations. Why else would countless brands want in?

And why would so many of us join in? We blog to share, to connect, to educate, to inform, to rant.

We blog to change the world.

We blog and the world will change. 

So, NY Times, you may not think much of my mommy blog. But, well, that’s your problem.

So, I’ve been meaning to do a post because I do think it is important, particularly when it comes to recognizing the amazing contribution of women in science, engineering and math. And then on March 2, 2010 I participated in a Twitter party as part of #gno on getting kids involved in science and math. During the party, we end up talking about how to get girls more involved, and one of the ways I think to get them involved is to our kids about the amazing achievements of women.

So, I thought I would share some of the perhaps not so well known women that have inspired me.

One is Alice Hamilton (1869 – 1970). If you don’t know about her, she was the first woman appointed to the faculty at Harvard University. She was a true pioneer in the field of toxicology. She was a leader in the field of occupational disease. She focused on the plight of workers, linking exposures in the workplace to the diseases they suffered, before occupational health and safety was recognized. Her work lead to reforms, protecting the health of thousands of workers. She is considered the founder of occupational medicine and was the first woman to receive the Lasker Award for public health.

Another is of course Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964). She doesn’t qualify as lesser known, but she is a role model for me. A scientist and ecologist, and she is probably most famous for writing Silent Spring. Silent Spring warned us of the dangers of misusing pesticide, and spurred significant changes in pesticide regulation and a ban on DDT inthe US. It also spurred a grassroot movement for environmental reform.

Another is Gertrude B. Elion (1918 – 1999), an American biochemist and pharmacologist. She developed many new drugs, including one that lead to the development of AZT.

Those are just a few of the women that have inspired me. What about you?