So, at last, Celebrity gets into the ethical-food movement, in Britain at any rate, with such luminaries as Greta Scacchi and Richard E. Grant posing nude with large fish as part of the British publicity campaign for the documentary "End of the Line."  Which means that concerns about the food supply-chain are becoming rather zeitgeisty.  I just hope that the public's attention can be not just caught, as it was with the famous PETA anti-fur campaign of the 1980's, but that it can be held awhile, until, say, actual solutions are found.  Also that Stephen Fry, a passionate ethical-fish Twitterer, eschews baring his flesh for the cause.

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Fast-food chain Pret-A-Manger has declared an end to bluefin and yellowfin tuna in its sandwiches and salads.  Beginning in August, they'll switch to line-caught (as opposed to net-caught) skipjack tuna, which is more plentiful and also more expensive, because of its lower-intensity fishing method.  This decision comes in the wake of founder Julian Metcalfe's viewing of the new documentary expose of the fishing industry, End of the Line, which he said opened his eyes to the unsustainability of Pret's tuna policy.

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Tomorrow the phone maker will release two new phone models which boast a 15% reduction in carbon footprint.

According to the Guardian report, the phones' environmental credentials are achieved by "cutting packaging, using recycled plastics and reducing the use of solvents in the paints".

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It appears that major retailers such as the Gap have forced the Uzbek government to agree to stop forcing children out of school and into the cotton fields, says the Guardian.  A report to be released tomorrow by the Environmental Justice Foundation will lay out the current situation in Uzbekistan and what is being done about it. 

Cotton brings a billion dollars annually to the Uzbek government, one of the most brutal and repressive governments in the world.  It regularly "employs" child laborers to harvest the "white gold," if by "employ" we mean forcing them to work 12 hour days in blazing heat and then collapse from sunstroke. 

Global retailers are getting involved as new technology makes it possible to trace the blended cotton used in garment manufacturing back to its multiple sources.  Thus, retailers can say "no thanks" with confidence to garments made from Uzbek cotton, even though it's been blended with cotton from other sources. 

Environmental Justice Foundation has a good background on the problems with cotton here.

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Consumerist has a 4 part video interivew with White House economist Austen Goolsbee about the various credit card industry reforms that are taking shape.

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Congress has approved measures designed to protect credit card users from many of the industry's favorite predatory practices.  In the same bill, they approved the rights of licensed gun owners to carry loaded weapons into national parks and wilderness areas.  Ah, the intricacies of Washington politics.

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Via Eco Scraps: shiny "green" gadgets and technologies that don't necessarily deliver any eco benefit now have a name: eco-bling.

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A nice piece in the Times from Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence, about the relatively new discipline of Industry Ecology and the Life Cycle Assessment process used to analyse the myriad impacts of the products we buy.  As in, just because something's "organic" or "green" it doesn't mean it doesn't have many hidden, perhaps unacceptable, costs.

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Wal-Mart has reached a deal with the Nassau County, New York District Attorney to avoid criminal prosecution for the fatal trampling of a store security guard in the 2008 holiday sales. 

While the megastore admitted no wrongdoing, it agreed to review its security and crowd-control measures to ensure the horrific events are not repeated in future low, low priced frenzies. 

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The Consumerist launched its highly enjoyable Worst Company in America campaign several weeks ago.  The contest is structured like the US college basketball national championship playoffs.  Starting with 32 American corporations, the field has been whittled down to 4 in a series of head-to-head matchups. 

Here are the Final Four, in alphabetical order: AIG, Bank of America, Comcast, and Ticketmaster. 

No real surprises there.

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