Finding Product Origins and Environmental Impacts Online?

Ed Matthews asks: "In an attempt to become an ever more informed consumer, I'm looking for a web site where you can enter a product or product type and find out where the raw materials for it come from, where processing and assembly occur, environmental impact etc. Ideally, it would list each step of production, country where it occurs, and as much other information as possible. Lumber is a particularly sensitive product. When I purchase exotic woods at my local home improvement super store, where can I find out which Latin or South American country produced that wood, and what the environmental costs are? Computer chips? Monitors? Coffee? If it just started with houses and automobiles, that would be pretty substantial.Anyone know of a site or sites like this?" While I doubt that there is one site which encompasses all of this functionality, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few sites that did this for specific products.

We need a site for it.

[Ho-Lee-Cow!]

First Post!

And an excellent question. It might be worth a info gathering site to collect this kind of thing, database it, and make it searchable.

I been trying to find a use for Slashcode :)

Try OSHA

[dattaway]

The US Department of Labor's OSHA [osha.gov] has quite a library that includes Material Safety Data Sheets (all those chemicals in that soap and what they do,) stastics and inspection data of companies and products, and information how to keep a workplace friendly to the worker and environment.

Most HR people should find this site a valuable resource to make a workplace safer through education; however, there are bosses who hate the hell out of this government organization. They inspect companies to follow up on complaints and they do have some big teeth. Some employers, such as ones refered to as "sweatshops" hate OSHA. I'm glad I work for a company that recognizes the value of a safe workplace when it comes to health insurance and community relations.

If you really want to get into evironmental concerns, there is Greepeace [greenpeace.org] and and I would also strongly recommend checking out the National Audubon Society [audubon.org]. These are organizations that help promote environmental awareness through activities involving recreation at national parks (read as camping at places very few venture) and activism (voting, writing letters, civil disobediance.) They are worth joining if you have kids as they sponsor many fun outings.

As an example of the interesting things they do, the Greenpeace homepage has information about ecologically friendly mousepads made out of 100% natural Amazon rubber.