A while ago I bought my grandson, a toddler, a bright yellow wooden racing car, for just 99 cents. But then I happened to read that lead in paint makes colors (particularly yellow and red) brighter and last longer; because lead costs less than alternates, cheaper toys are more likely to contain it. I have no idea if the sparkling yellow paint on this toy car harbors lead or not-but now, months later, that sporty racer sits atop my desk. I never gave it to my grandson.
Every item we buy has a hidden price tag: a toll on the planet, on our health and on the people whose labor provides those goods. Each man-made thing has its own web of impacts left along the way from the extraction or concoction of its ingredients, during its manufacture and transport, through its use in our homes and workplaces, to the day we dispose of it. These unseen impacts are incredibly important. For instance, an ingredient in sunscreen primes the growth of a deadly virus in coral reef. Four thousand to 6,000 metric tons of sunscreen wash off swimmers each year worldwide. The dangers are greatest, of course, where the most swimmers are drawn to the beauty of coral reefs.
Our inability to instinctively recognize the connections between our actions and the problems that result from them leaves us wide open to creating the dangers we decry. Our brains are exquisitely attuned to pinpoint and instantly react to a fixed range of dangers, such as snarling animals. But our perceptual system misses the signals when the threat comes in the form of gradual rises in planetary temperature, or minuscule chemicals that build up in our body over time.
Fortunately, the past decade has witnessed the emergence of industrial ecology, a discipline that uses Life-Cycle Assessment (or LCA) to deconstruct any manufactured item into its subsidiary industrial processes and their myriad ecological impacts with great precision. An LCA tracks, say, a glass jar from the initial extraction of the silica from sand through the 48 hours of cooking at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit all the way through its final disposal. That LCA tells us that heating the furnace accounts for 16 percent of glassmaking's negative impacts; the chemicals released into the air from the glass factory run from relatively high levels of carbon dioxide to trace amounts of toxic metals like cadmium.
LCAs can provide the raw data that let us be ecologically intelligent about what we buy, whether what we care about is the impact on polar bears, or on that especially prized part of nature, our bodies. But LCAs are highly technical, the terrain of industrial engineers. Here's the good news: if I were shopping for kid-safe toys now, I could use GoodGuide, a neat piece of free software that I downloaded the other day on my iPhone. GoodGuide analyzes the results from about 200 technical databases, several of them industrial LCAs, and offers them in an easy-to-use summary.
GoodGuide rates toy cars not just on whether they contain lead, but also other toxic ingredients like mercury, PVC and a list of heavy metals. It also rates them on their environmental impact and the company's social performance, such as whether suppliers use sweatshops.
As shoppers, we finally have sound ways to gauge the hidden consequences of what we buy. By switching to brands that have better profiles, we can shift market share toward ecological benefits. As we tell our family, Twitter our friends and post on Facebook what we have learned, the power of our individual decision multiplies.
Virtually everything we make today was invented or designed in a more innocent time, one when shoppers and industrial engineers alike had the luxury of paying little attention to the adverse impacts of what was made. Instead they were understandably pleased by the benefits: cheap, malleable plastics made from a seemingly endless sea of petroleum; a treasure chest of synthetic chemical compounds; lead powder to add luster and life to paints.
They were oblivious to the costs to our planet and its people of these well-meaning choices. Now that those costs are clear, we need to reinvent just about everything. That vast innovative opportunity gets richer if each of us votes with our dollars. Then doing good becomes synonymous with doing well.
（Adapted from Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing The Hidden Impacts Of What We Buy Can Change Everything. Copyright © 2009 by . Published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.）
前一陣子我給還在蹣跚學步的孫子買了一輛色彩鮮艷的黃色木賽車，只花了九毛九。可后來我偶然學到了一點知識：涂料中所含的鉛有讓色彩更艷麗、使油漆更耐用的作用，特別是紅色及黃色涂料；而由于含鉛涂料要比其他代用涂料便宜，因此，便宜的玩具含鉛的可能性更高。我買的這輛玩具車看上去光彩奪目，我還不敢肯定所用的涂料是不是含鉛。但是，都過去幾個月了，那輛極具動感的玩具賽車還擺在我的辦公桌上，還沒送給我的乖孫子。
我們所購買的每一種物品背后，其實都貼著一張無形的價格標簽，上面一一記錄著我們的地球、我們的健康、還有那些為這些商品付出勞動的人所付出的代價。從各種配料的制備與調配，從生產到運輸，從其在日常生活與工作場所中的使用到最后的丟棄，任何人造物品在這整個過程中都會形成一個對環境有重大影響的無形網絡，這個無形網絡的嚴重性簡直令人難以置信。例如，防曬霜里面就含有一種成份，能大大促進一種生活在珊瑚礁中的致命病毒的生長。每年從全世界泳海者身上沖刷下來的防曬霜就多達4000～6000公噸。當然，凡是最能吸引大量潛水客的美麗珊瑚礁，其（受破壞的）危險性也越大。
對種種人為的危險因素，我們就知道口誅筆伐。殊不知，這些危險恰恰是因為我們在對待自身行為及其后果之間的關系方面存在天生的弱智和無能造成的，這種弱智和無能使我們對這些人為危險因素居然達到了放任自流的地步。人腦的調頻范圍似乎是固定不變的：對那些顯而易見的危險因素而言，它倒是相當精巧，極其靈敏，比如對那些會張牙舞爪的動物，人類都懂得高度戒備。可是，對一些只在不知不覺中逐漸積累起來的威脅，如全球氣溫的逐步升高過程，人腦卻接受不到任何信號。對那些能在相當長時間內在人體中逐漸累積起來的微量化合物，人腦同樣沒有任何反應。
幸好在過去的十年里，誕生了一門新的邊緣科學——工業生態學。工業生態學可用一種叫做產品使用壽命周期評估（Life-Cycle Assessment）即LCA的技術，將任何人造物品的生產過程進行分解復原，從而對這種物品的各級生產工藝及其對生態環境的影響能做到非常精確的評估。例如，運用LCA技術，可以對一只玻璃瓶的整個生產及使用過程進行追蹤，即從其在華氏2000度高溫下熔砂48小時提取硅，直至玻璃瓶被用過之后的最后丟棄的全部過程。LCA技術可以告訴我們：熔爐加熱環節對環境造成的負面影響比率為16%；而從玻璃制造廠排放到大氣中的化合物則從含量較高的二氧化碳到各種痕量金屬都有，如鎘等。
LCA技術可以為我們提供一些原始數據，使我們的生態學智慧得以提高，使我們在決定要購買什么東西的時候更加明智，而不管我們關心的是對北極熊的影響還是對大自然特別恩賜給我們的身體的影響。不過，LCA是有很高技術難度的，屬于工程技術人員的領地。如果要說點讓人高興的話，那就是：如果要我現在就去買一種有利于孩子安全的玩具，我一定會先用GoodGuide查一查。這是一個免費的實用軟件，我前不久就下載到iPhone里面了。GoodGuide可對來自近200個數據庫提供的結果進行分析，這些數據庫中有好幾個屬于工業LCA數據，可用簡摘形式為用戶提供指導。
GoodGuide對玩具車的評級并不局限于含鉛量，對其他有毒原料也有評估，如汞、PVC和其他各種重金屬等。這個軟件對各種用品對環境的影響程度也有評價，甚至包括制造商的社會責任表現，比如商品是否來自血汗工廠等。
作為消費者，我們終于有了對我們所購買的東西的潛在后果進行判斷的好辦法。如果我們能把目光轉向那些有更好聲譽的品牌，我們就會讓市場占有率更有利于保護我們的共同環境。如果我們能把這點認識告訴家人，Twitter給朋友，或者在Facebook上轉發本帖，那么我們一個人的決心就會倍增成眾人的力量。
說真的，現如今我們好像能夠發明一切，設計一切，可我們畢竟還處在一個無知的年代。處在這個年代的人，不管是消費者還是工程技術人員，對這種漠視工業品對環境的負面影響的行為，都表現得非常寬宏大量。我們很熱衷于種種眼前利益，這很好理解：我們大量制造廉價塑料制品，因為我們曾以為石油取之不盡用之不竭；我們購買百寶箱，因為那是合成材料做的，實惠；為了讓產品看起來更養眼更有生命力，我們也不惜添加鉛粉。
對這個星球和生活其中的我們來說，所有這一切都會讓我們付出代價。我們對上面所列舉的那些選擇，滿以為有充分的理由，可這樣的理由確實有些過時了，實在是老掉牙了。既然這一切的代價已經十分了然，我們需要的一切都得重新發明才行。如果大家能用手中的金錢來投票，那么發明創造的機會只能越來越多，越來越豐富。只有這樣，“做好事”和“好做事”才能變成同義詞。
（本文原文根據Random House國際出版集團下屬出版機構——百老匯圖書公司2009年出版的《我們能夠改變一切：只要我們知道要買的東西對環境的潛在影響》一書改編）
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