National Granola Bar Day; Help Will Harlan Support the Tarahumara; Random Shots of Beauty

It’s one of those wonderfully lazy days around Running and Rambling headquarters, so I’ll keep the posting brief in order to get back to doing nothing – because those opportunities seem fewer and farther inbetween all the time. So here we go …

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First, the winner of Ashish Mukharji’s barefoot running book: Jen Small, e-mail me your address – you’ve won! Thanks very much to all the ladies who entered, and remember that the book is currently available - to both men and women! – for $14 at Amazon.com.

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Were you aware that today is National Granola Bar Day? It’s true. Honestly, I wasn’t aware of it until just recently, but I’m hosting a belated celebration next week with not one, but two granola-bar related contests. And yes, the page I just linked to will be involved.

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In case you’re wondering why I’m in such a lazy mood, allow me to present this weekend’s Random Shot of Beauty:

The view across Carmel Valley from my deck after a morning rainfall, a harbinger of the first winter storms of the season in our area, bringing some long overdue precipitation to Monterey County. Sure, running in the rain is fun, but sleeping in and spending the day watching storms outside your window while doing puzzles, reading books, and taking catnaps is equally enticing. In fact, it’s probably the thing I like the best (from an admittedly short list) about winter.

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Finally, there’s this: Probably the coolest item I came across this week was a video from Chris McDougall’s website featuring Will Harlan and his experience with the Tarahumara, the indigenous people of Mexico’s Copper Canyons made famous by McDougall’s landmark Born to Run.

Upon watching the piece, I had had two immediate thoughts; 1) Will looks kind of odd when he runs, but 2) He is doing something absolutely inspiring.

Will clearly has a strong connection to the Tarahumara, and he has made it something of a mission to help support their way of life. In addition to being an immensely talented runner, he and his wife are certified organic farmers, and operate a nonprofit farm that provides fresh organic produce to low-income families in need. The farm also assists migrant workers in their home state of North Carolina as well as more remote areas like the Copper Canyons.

Barefoot Farm (great name, right?) is Will’s 501c3 which directly assists Tarahumara farmers by providing them with native maize seeds, basic tools, and assistance with water resources and land protection. He has spent many years with the Tarahumara, building relationships, learning their methods of farming, and assisting them with the necessities to continue their traditional subsistence.

Will is currently in Mexico dealing with what’s reportedly a significant drought situation, which is what triggered McDougall’s blog post. So watch the following video for your own dose of inspiration, then check out this link to assist Will in his remarkable humanitarian efforts.

"Copper Canyons Ultramarathon" from Being The Diablo (click to play):





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Brooks Green Silence Running Shoe Review

Since I probably won’t be able to avoid them later on, let’s just go ahead and get all of the wise cracks about the Green Silence out of the way first:

* Part of the name is “Green”, even though the color scheme is red and yellow.

* The other part of the name is “Silence”, even though the bright colors kind of scream at you like an ambulance siren.

* It’s an eco-friendly shoe that looks like it rolled off the assembly line at McDonalds.

* It rewards your social responsibility by making you look like a circus clown.

Brooks Green Silence

There are more out there, I’m sure … but I’ll leave any further smarty-pants comments alone, because I’m really a big fan of the Green Silence. Brooks has produced something truly ground-breaking and admirable: an outstanding performance shoe constructed with one of the smallest carbon footprints possible. Its design will appeal to a wide spectrum of runners, and its production sets new standards in environmental stewardship.

Some of the eco-friendly features here aren’t exactly new – for example, Brooks has been using biodegradable midsoles for a few years now – but others are truly innovative, and the finished product represents a huge leap forward for major shoe manufacturers who strive to reconcile mass production with environmental responsibility. Fully 75% of this shoe is made from post-consumer recycled materials, and the 25% that isn’t already recycled is almost entirely biodegradable. Best of all, it holds up to the high quality standards of all Brooks footwear, giving you the perfect opportunity to run hard while treading lightly.

High post-consumer content upper

A good deal of the Green Silence’s upper contains post-consumer material in the form of polyethylene terephthalate, better known as PET, better known as all those plastic drink bottles you’re not supposed to be using anymore. The shoelaces, “gillies” (eyelets), and tongue webbing are made of 100% recycled PET, while the ankle collar reinforcement is 80% recycled PET. This post-consumer material also makes up 30% of the sockliner and bright mesh uppers.

Mirror-image color schemes

Other details on the upper display Brooks’s commitment to eco-friendly construction. Those bright yellow and red hues – which, incidentally, display opposite color schemes on each shoe – are created with non-toxic inks and dyes, and all adhesives used on the shoe are water-based. The logos and other decorative accents are embroidered into the upper instead of being welded with glue. Overall, the Green Silence uses almost 40% less adhesive material than standard running shoes.

Mesh upper with embroidered logo

Another way to decrease reliance on adhesives is to have fewer interconnecting pieces, and that strategy is evident with the Green Silence, which Brooks claims has half as many components as a normal running shoe. For example, the shoe’s tongue isn’t a separate piece, but is a continuous extension of one side of the upper. I found the tongue a bit short for my liking, as the crossed laces tend to slip over the top of them if you are pulling at an angle – but with a small adjustment, that never became a comfort problem.

Finally, one more cool aspect of the upper is the heel counter, which is made from 50% recycled compact discs. If I had known what Brooks was up to with this, I could have unloaded a lot of my old Night Ranger and Twisted Sister CDs from the 1980s to a worthy cause instead of just throwing them in an unmarked dumpster a few years ago. Kind of a missed opportunity there.

The Green Silence’s midsole features the same BioMoGo material that Brooks uses in nearly all its performance shoes, which decomposes in landfills 50 times faster than traditional EVA material. (Click here for a cool little video that explains how BioMoGo works.) It also has a very low, flat platform, which will delight those who like to be closer to the ground or who use a midfoot strike pattern. Midsole heights are 18mm in the heel and 10mm in the forefoot, which gives a delta (heel to toe drop) of a mere 8mm, compared to most trainers that drop 12mm or more.

Such a flat platform, combined with very low overall weight, make the Green Silence a great choice for racing or fast training days. Each shoe weighs a mere 6.9oz, so you’re treading lightly in every sense of the word. This is definitely the lightest “traditional” or non-minimalist shoe I’ve worn, and I’ve found it ideal for tempo runs on the road or mile interval workouts at the track. I’ve also used them on fire roads and gentle trails, although the outsole (see below) technically puts it in the category of a dedicated road runner.


The outsole of the Green Silence is made of 30% recycled rubber, and features some familiar Brooks technologies such as HPR Green - a sand-based compound that provides excellent wet/dry traction - and a flexible Hyper-Pod configuration of midsole and outsole components engineered to keep the foot in a balanced, maximally efficient position from heel strike to toe-off. However, despite the HPR material (which is the same stuff used in Brooks’s wildly popular Cascadia trail runners), the outsole tread is fairly smooth and shallow, so I’d have some reservations about using these on technical trails.

There’s enough cushioning in the shoe to appeal to those who want a nice, smooth ride, and the upper feels very comfortable whether jogging leisurely or while hammering a 6-minute pace. After about 150 miles, the Green Silence seems just as durable as any other everyday trainer I’ve tried, and I could even see it used as a lightweight marathon shoe. It’s clear that Brooks hasn’t sacrificed any quality or performance aspects while redefining the limits of sustainable manufacturing.

So yeah, the shoes are a little bit funny looking … but maybe that’s not such a bad thing in this case. Maybe it’s a great idea for other companies to notice what Brooks has done with this model, and use it as a revised blueprint for balancing high sustainability with high performance. In that regard, the Green Silence is a shoe with bright colors and a noisy design that is justifiably screaming to get noticed.


The Green Silence retails for $100 from the Brooks website, or is available with free overnight shipping from Endless.com, as well as other online vendors.


*Product provided by Brooks
*See other product reviews on sidebar at right. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at info@runningandrambling.com

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The Mensch of Malden Mills

This weekend’s video post is only tangentially related to material that came before it - but as you should know by now, that’s never stopped me before.

I’ve been fortunate to review several products supplied by Polartec recently – such as this Cloudveil vest and this Marmot shirt, and an amazing Patagonia jacket I reviewed on FeedTheHabit. In researching the company a bit, I came across this little tidbit on the "About Us” page:

The company acquired the assets of Malden Mills Industries, Inc, providing employment to its workforce and continuing the tradition of fabric innovation for performance apparel and accessories.

It was the former company’s name that rang a particular bell in my mind: Malden Mills … Malden Mills … of course – the Mensch!

Several years ago, 60 Minutes documented the incredible generosity of Aaron Feuerstein, former President and Chairman of Malden Mills, the company that invented Polartec fabric. After a devastating fire leveled his factory in 1995, Feuerstein financially sustained his entire workforce – more than 3,000 employees – with full salary and benefits for the six months that it took to rebuild the factory.

Although it was amazingly uplifting, the story of Malden Mills didn't have a fairy tale ending: Feuerstein’s out of pocket losses, combined with the huge debt incurred to rebuild the factory and the predictable cash flow problems in the wake of essentially starting the business from scratch again, eventually resulted in bankruptcy in 2001. One of the first orders of business by the new creditors was to force Feuerstein to step down. However, this saga took place during roughly the same time frame as the Enron collapse and other shocking examples of Corporate American greed, so Feuerstein became something of a folk hero among blue collar workers for placing his workers' welfare over personal gain.

From time to time in the midst of our country’s current economic meltdown, I’ve wondered if any modern-day captains of industry would have the same kind of integrity and courage under fire (a bad choice of words, perhaps … but sort of fitting as well) that Feuerstein demonstrated. I've also wondered if the long-term prosperity of those employees was preserved by his gesture, or if he merely spent $25 million of his own money to briefly postpone the inevitable tragedy of layoffs for most of his workers.

Since all of this took place nearly 15 years ago, it’s uncertain how many former Malden Mills employees persevered to its modern reincarnation as Polartec, which has emerged as one of the most dominant players in the athletic apparel industry. For their sake - and because I like to cheer for happy endings - I hope that a lot of them made it to better days.


"The Mensch of Malden Mills", from 60 Minutes, revised by ARTzeinu (click to play):




And finally, a glimpse of the modern-day company that rose from the ashes of Malden Mills ...

"We Make It Possible" by Polartec (click to play):

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Simple CARport Shoe Review

One of the nicest coincidences of my recent barefoot shoe series was discovering just how closely natural footwear companies and eco-friendliness go hand in hand (or, um … foot in shoe. Something like that.)

I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me; as a general rule, most barefoot practitioners - either runners, or just everyday shoephobes - tend to have a dominant “love your Mother Earth” gene, which is manifest in environmental protection and social responsibility. It’s not much of a stretch to think that corporations founded by like-minded souls would translate those philosophies to product manufacturing.

Unfortunately, the shoe business is treacherous territory for companies attempting sustainable production methods or striving to minimize their global impact; chemicals, adhesives, plastics, animal products and excess waste are all part of the game. If a company can somehow navigate those stormy waters and still manage to make products that actually look great and perform well, they deserve to be recognized.

That’s why I’m glad I got to know the Simple Shoe company a lot better over the past several months. They’re not perfect, but they’re striving to do all the right things, with a stated goal of having 100% sustainable production. Or as they describe themselves on their website, Simple is a nice little shoe company getting in touch with its inner hippie.

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the GUMshoe, a lightweight loafer/sandal made from hemp and recycled carpet padding, among other things. This week features the CARport, a casual sneaker with similar eco-friendly credentials.


The upper of the CARport is made with breathable suede from certified eco-friendly tanneries (those with an ISO 14001 certification, if you’re really interested), as well as certified organic cotton flannel linings and laces. All of the cotton used in Simple footwear is cultivated and harvested without the use of pesticides or other toxic chemicals – it also makes for a very comfortable sock-like feel on the inside of the shoe.


More recycled products are used underneath; the “pedbed” midsole is made from post-consumer polyurethane as well as recycled car tire rubber. The entire outsole is also made from recycled tires; Simple estimates that a single used car tire provides outsoles for six pairs of shoes. Given the monumental piles of tires all over the world, the company will never have to manufacture outsoles from any other material.

Aside from stylistic differences, there’s one element of the CARport that I really like compared to the other Simple shoes I tested. When I reviewed the GUMshoe, I complained that the arch support was sewn into the insole, and the insoles were not removable – so in fairness, I’m happy to say that the CARport insoles are completely removable. However, since the midsole is thicker, you don’t have the same ground feel as the lightweight GUMshoe; it’s like you’re on a flat platform that’s elevated an inch or so off the ground. If the company could someday combine these two elements – a removable insole with a minimalist midsole – I’d be in Simple heaven.

The other thing I like about these shoes is that they’re just plain nice-looking. The styling is versatile enough for office or casual wear, and the suede colors (black olive or coffee liqueur) complement a wide variety of wardrobe options. They’re also comfortable enough that you can wear them all day long, so going from work to a relaxed evening out doesn’t automatically require a change of shoes.

The Simple Carport retails for $70 from Endless.com (with free overnight shipping) as well as on the company website. It’s an easy way to look respectable while still indulging your inner hippie.


*Product provided by Simple Shoes
**See other product reviews on sidebar at right. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at info@runningandrambling.com.

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What Comes Next?

Today’s entry is a weekend update of sorts, following up on some topics I’ve introduced here in recent weeks - and if it’s OK with you, I’ll get the awkward one out of the way first.

1) On more than one occasion, I’ve mentioned the intriguing story of Tellman Knudsen, who is attempting to run across the country barefoot, ostensibly to raise money for homeless youth. Since I promoted him earlier, I feel obligated now to point out that Tellman’s philanthropy may not be as sincere as advertised.

The article linked above certainly paints a shady portrait, and I’d hate for anyone to contribute to him without knowing the potential downside. I honestly don’t know where the truth in this whole saga lies, or exactly what to make of the guy; on one hand, I’m kind of cheering for him to pull off the barefoot odyssey – on the other, his eccentricity and apparent hucksterism just leave me shaking my head.


2) The next item is the polar opposite in terms of respectability: it’s the next installment of Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles video series.

Part 2 of the series is called “What Comes Next?” and it’s something of a global roundtable on ecologically responsible manufacturing. The clip is a good 12 minutes long, so I won’t bore you with a detailed recap – rather, I’ll just throw out a few bullet points as a teaser:

* Among the featured interviewees are Patagonia’s Director of Environmental Analysis and VP of Environmental Initiatives, as well as Starbucks’ VP of Global Responsibility. How many corporations even have those positions? The fact that titles like that even exist in some global companies has to be a good sign, I would hope.

* While a rapidly-increasing number of companies eagerly promote their “sustainable” manufacturing processes and green initiatives, a question worth asking is whether or not a truly sustainable business is even possible. Can any company actually contribute more to the planet than it takes away? Do societal contributions like jobs and livelihood offset the negative environmental impact – and if so, does that even matter?

* Finally, the video addresses the elephant in the room with any discussion of green enterprise: what exactly is the role the individual consumer? We live in the most consumptive era of the most consumptive culture in the history of mankind - and our collective demand for so much “stuff” is the unifying factor at the heart at every environmental problem faced by every company today. Since the essence of capitalism is for businesses to meet every imaginable consumer demand, relying on them to promote decreased consumption is something like asking the tobacco industry to sponsor anti-smoking initiatives.

So are companies really the entities most accountable for ecological stewardship? At what point do we assess our personal responsibility? And why do we value all of our stuff so much anyway? There aren’t any simple answers, but these are interesting topics of consideration in the video that follows.

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The Footprint Chronicles, Part 2: What Comes Next? (click to play):

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Bridging the Gap

My original intent for this post was to embed Part 2 of Patagonia’s current Footprint Chronicles series, called What Comes Next?, which speaks primarily to the notion of whether any manufacturer can truly call itself “sustainable”, and briefly discusses what an overwhelmingly consumptive culture we have become all over the world – especially in the United States.

Sadly, the episode isn’t embeddable yet, so I’m going to postpone that particular video until a later day (although you can watch it on the Patagonia site linked above if you really can’t wait). In the meantime, since I’ve propped myself up onto something of a social responsibility soapbox this week, I’m posting a few other videos in a similar vein, which speak to some issues I’ve mentioned before in previous posts. Each one is only a few minutes long, so they shouldn’t take too much time out of your weekend.

The clips all come from Patagonia’s previous Footprint Chronicles offerings, which began in 2007 for the purpose of examining various aspects of responsible manufacturing and consumerism. There are literally dozens of videos to choose from on the website (and on YouTube), and it’s this series more than anything else that gives me a ton of respect and appreciation for the company.

Remember how I said that you can find positive information about a company from its website, but were pretty much out of luck trying to learn about their shortcomings? Patagonia stands out as the exception: they’re not only willing to put themselves under the microscope, but they then take the additional – and unthinkable, to most companies – step of discussing their problems in public, on the Internet, for all the world to see.

This first clip is a perfect example: Patagonia’s Footwear General Manager, Craig Throne, appraises the positives and negatives of the company’s manufacturing process – things they are doing well, as well as things they aim to improve. It was filmed at the beginning of the Footprint Chronicles project, as a sort of “where we are now” in preparation for the revelations that would come in future installments:




The next clip is in response to the question of how a company can utilize Chinese labor forces in a humane and respectful manner. Stella Footwear is a partner company that employs over 50,000 people at its Dongguan City facility to make several brands of shoes, including Patagonia. Business Director Buddy Huang is an American-born Chinese who speaks to the importance the company places on providing a healthy work environment and a middle-class standard of living for all of its workers:




And what if a company claims to take care of its workers, but really doesn’t? That’s where something called social audits come into play. Patagonia’s partner companies are routinely visited and inspected by independent organizations to ensure they are adhering to Patagonia’s standards of conduct. Nicole Bassett, Patagonia's Social Responsibility Manager (how many corporations even have a position like that?), describes the importance of the social audits, and Alex Kaufman from Global Solutions, the third-party auditing group, describes how these audits are conducted in the apparel industry:




These videos certainly aren’t incontrovertible proof that every facet of Patagonia’s manufacturing process is 100% ethically sound, but it certainly shows a willingness to put itself out there for public scrutiny. In light of the difficulties I described yesterday regarding the knowledge gap between corporate business practices and consumer awareness, it’s nice to know that at least one company out there is working to bridge that gap as much as possible.

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Responsible Dysfunction

Admin note: reading over this post afterward, I feel like I somehow channeled my inner Abe Simpson: I don't understand what's going on, I can't figure out this confounded technology, and I just wish someone would sit me down and explain things in a nice, simple manner. I'm not usually prone to ranting, but that's kind of what this post seems like in retrospect: a long, rambling airing of grievances that may serve no purpose other than to demonstrate how mentally discombobulated I can become. When exactly did I become a cantankerous old man?

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One of the saddest paradoxes of socially conscious consumerism is this: more people would probably make thoughtful purchase decisions if it weren’t so darn-near impossible to stay properly informed.

Put another way: if you ever want to fall down an Internet rabbit hole, try Googling something like “socially responsible shoe companies”, or “eco-friendly corporations”, and start clicking your way through the mind-bogglingly vast, infuriatingly disjointed world of corporate watchdog agencies.

When I posted my plea for good sources of information on responsible businesses, I had no idea the quest would get so complex – or that so many promising avenues would lead me to dead ends. This isn’t a knock against everyone who gave me websites; I’m very grateful for all of your assistance. Rather, it’s an indictment of just how confusing and fruitless the queries of a conscientious shopper can become.

It becomes obvious that the term “responsible” is far too broad, requiring an immediate narrowing of your search into very specific categories. Are you interested in which companies treat their workers fairly, or those who prevent animal mistreatment? How about those who contribute to worthy social causes, or who work for change with repressive governments? And what about preserving our natural resources, eliminating toxic by-products, and minimizing our carbon footprint? Every one of these considerations introduces a whole new squadron of players.

From Patagonia website

There are dozens of “corporate accountability” websites, and literally hundreds of “eco-awareness” sites that try to hold companies accountable to certain manufacturing guidelines or business practices. The trouble is that there aren’t any uniform criteria for what qualifies as “responsible” – and nearly all of these agencies seem to be working independently of one another. Even worse is that many of the larger, more recognizable agencies aren’t overly forthcoming with information geared towards the general public.

For example, the Fair Labor Association is one of the major players dedicated to (among other things) eliminating sweat shop practices by major manufacturers. They write annual reports and investigate complaints of substandard workplaces – but I dare you to find out from their website which companies currently do well, and which act poorly. The most recent annual report online is from 2007, and their tracking charts are incomprehensible. Even typing a specific company’s name into the search engine doesn’t pull out any tangible information.

From FLA website

Here’s another: let’s say you wanted to support responsible businesses by investing in stocks or a mutual fund comprised entirely of socially responsible companies. One of the most popular indexes is the Domini 400, created by a New England-based group called KLD. It consists of publicly traded American companies that have met certain standards of social and environmental excellence … so wouldn’t it be great to see which companies are included in the 400?

Well, you can’t – at least, not without ponying up some cash. You have to buy a paid subscription to KLD in order to receive their index lists – and if you just want a simple yes/no about one particular company, you have to e-mail a general “info” mailbox and sit around waiting for a reply. Even if you buy today’s list, you won’t be notified of future additions or removals from the index – for that, you have to pay an additional fee to subscribe to a daily constituents list.

What’s worse is that KLD’s criteria for including companies on the “responsible” list is influenced more by reputation and Internet buzz than by doing actual inspections or any other investigative legwork. Some companies have an enormous target on their backs – like Nike, who has been dismissed from and later reinstated to the index - even as they use the exact same factories and labor force as companies like Timberland, who is widely recognized as one of the most socially conscious companies around. Under these circumstances, a company may benefit more from hiring a sharp PR agency than to whole-heartedly commit to social responsibility.

From Patagonia website

(Tangent #1: I don’t mean to pick on KLD specifically – they’re probably no better or worse than most other agencies. They just happened to be the subject of a very insightful New York Times piece I found, which you can read here for a more detailed account.)

(Tangent #2: The story of Nike’s relationship with social watchdog groups could be a whole series of posts, if not an entire book. They’ve actually made tremendous changes since their much-publicized failings of the mid-1990s, and now they’re often listed among the most eco- and socially-conscious companies in the world by some agencies. Other groups still consider them the corporate devil for various reasons, some of which are probably legitimate. And that’s about as far as I’m going to wade into that particular quagmire.)

I mean … this shouldn’t be so difficult, should it? Let’s say you’re thinking about plunking down $100 for a pair of shoes, and want to know if Company X has a solid sense of corporate responsibility: I’m no closer to having a good resource to give you than I was when I first started digging into this stuff a few weeks ago. All we’re really left with is to Google something like “Company X corporate responsibility”, which 98% of the time will direct you to Company X’s own website.

From Patagonia website

To their credit, most companies do a great job highlighting their commitment to the environment, their charitable giving, and their various global partnerships. What you won’t see, of course, are any complaints or reports of irresponsible business practices leveled against them – so it’s hard not to feel like you’re only getting half of the story.

That’s why it’s especially impressive when a company not only does an honest assessment of itself, but openly discusses its shortcomings and limitations in a particular area. That was also supposed to be the introduction to some new videos from the Patagonia company – who, suffice it to say, are continually impressing me as I learn more about them - but for now, we’ll call this a stopping point and feature The Footprint Chronicles separately. The new segment has enough talking points to be the subject of its own discussion, which is what we’ll do in an upcoming post.

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