Dear Distinguished Board Members,

There are few organizations we still expect to be guided by principle, but the Girl Scouts is one of them, and the mandate is both simple and profound: To empower girls to make the world a better place. I am writing today to ask you to do this, even when it costs you. Yep, I'm talking about Girl Scout cookies.

The meaning of Girl Scouting

I spent several years in Girl Scouts as a child, back when Girl Scouts started out as Brownies, spent more time outdoors than in, and sang campfire songs I wouldn't dare teach my troop today. That's right -- I'm now the leader of Troop #9045, a first-year group of twelve Daisies and Brownies who meet in a first-grade classroom from 5:30 to 6:30 every other Tuesday night. Next year we'll have Daisies, Brownies, and Juniors, ages five to ten, and will cap our troop size at around twenty girls.

The Girl Scouts-produced curriculum, It's Your World--Change It! is a great launchpad for our troop activities, though I follow it loosely, in part because we're blending Brownies and Daisies and find ways to design activities that engage all of the girls together. As far as I can see -- and the materials seem pretty straightforward -- the goal of this curriculum is to help our young girls use their natural curiosity and empathy to find opportunities to have a positive impact in the world. I've been looking ahead to the materials you offer for Juniors and Cadets as well, and I'm excited -- they take on environmental and social issues that our children will inherit soon enough, unflinchingly but with sensitivity as well. Overall, it's the modern Girl Scouts' emphasis on service, outreach, and engagement with issues that matter to kids -- approached from a child's perspective but harnessing the wisdom of elders -- that makes me a passionate advocate for the role of Girl Scouts in a world now full of sports-oriented, special-interest, and keep-em-off-the-streets after-school programs that simply didn't exist when the Girl Scouts were founded a century ago this year. Girls believe in Girl Scouting, and through Girl Scouting they learn to believe in themselves and in their voices.

A failure of leadership... in a leadership organization

But the way the Girl Scouts USA leadership - you, the board - have handled our girls' concerns about the environmental impact of Girl Scout Cookies under the tenure of board president Connie Lindsey and CEO Kathy Cloninger - is starting to make me feel like a hypocrite. And given the choice between my girls and the organization that purports to support them, I'll choose the girls every time.

In case the details of this case have faded from memory, in 2008 Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen started working on a project to earn their Girl Scout Bronze Award. They researched endangered orangutans in Indonesia and discovered that palm oil production is destroying the world's last remnants of orangutan habitat. To be more specific, palm oil producers pay laborers to burn the forests and slaughter every orangutan found along the way, paying a bounty on each one. Any infants that survive this purging are sold as pets, the land is converted to palm oil production, and the orangutan populations continue their nosedive toward extinction.

Noting that palm oil is an ingredient in Girl Scout cookies, Madison and Rhiannon did what any good Girl Scout would do -- they sought the nearest and most effective target for their change-making activities. They started an education campaign, circulated petitions and even met Jane Goodall and got her to sign their petition. Unfortunately, the Girl Scouts administration (you) told the girls that while the bakers that supply cookies to Girl Scouts are a part of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which "researches" and "develops" sustainable sources of palm oil, these bakers are unable to remove the palm oil from their cookies.

We'll set aside, for this discussion, what exactly the RSPO is and whether there will be any suitable forest left for orangutans to live in by the time they achieve their goals. Specifically, it's unclear how the activities of the RSPO will do anything to stop or even slow the destruction of the forests on which the orangutan depend; based on their certification criteria, it seems entirely possible that a new plantation established through the burning of forests and the slaughter of orangutans could then apply for a "sustainable producer" certification without a blemish to their name. Add to that the fact that Girl Scouts (you) won't even demand that cookie bakers buy palm oil from producers currently certified under this scheme, and, well, the cookies are tasting a little less sweet.

What's worse -- what's unconscionable, in fact -- is that an organization whose stated mission is to make girls believe they can make a difference would fail to respond to the call to leadership of the very girls in whom it helped foster the confidence to speak up for what's right. And why? Because it was not in the organization's immediate, secure, financial, and public relations interest. Meanwhile, other groups are taking the lead you've abandoned. The UK's Girl Guides [Readers: Girl Scouts, throughout most of the world, are called Girl Guides] have now eliminated palm oil from the cookies they sell, substituted with olive and rapeseed oil, but all we hear in the U.S. is that, as the forests and their inhabitants are being wiped (are almost wiped) from this earth, the issue is complicated and the solution lies somewhere in the fog of the future.

(We refuse to) get the message

To me, Girl Scouts of the USA's stance sends a frightening message to girls, and that message is the one they already receive on every corporate-sponsored kids' cartoon and in free teaching materials provided by fast food chains: That "making a difference" is all about thinking small, and keeping it that way, and making the easy choices while putting off the hard ones until it's too late. Picking up litter and encouraging recycling but never asking where all this waste is coming from and what can be done about it. Getting fresh air and exercise but never examining the food we eat or where it comes from. Running "Save the Rainforests" educational campaigns while selling cookies that contribute to their destruction. You -- we -- were supposed to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

This year -- our first year as a troop -- we took a "soft sell" approach to getting our girls on board with cookie sales. Our six-year-old daughter, who took a keen interest in the issue of orangutans being killed by the scores in the jungles of Indonesia, and the fact that they might not even exist outside of zoos by the time she is old enough to vote, chose to sell homemade cookies instead of the official Girl Scout cookies. She also split the cost with her parents to "adopt" an orangutan through Orangutan Outreach ( Luna, pictured at left), which cost her $40 of her own savings. She also made a homemade "I don't eat palm oil" T-shirt.

That six-year-old girl then sold 48 dozen cookies at $5 a dozen, studiously working within the rules established by Girl Scouts for off-script fundraising (your policies on that front are another story entirely), and although we haven't done the math yet, we think the net will be around $3 per dozen cookies sold. We'll split that profit down the middle, donating about $70 to Orangutan Outreach and $70 to our troop for next year's supply fund.

The rest of our troop sold about a thousand boxes of Girl Scout cookies. (I believe the troop nets about forty cents a box on those, or $400 in total, for an average of about $40 per participating Girl Scout.) See, as their troop leader, it didn't feel fair to bring five-year-olds into the world of tough choices that your board is forcing the rest of us -- parents, consumers, troop leaders -- to make. I couldn't see a way to help them recognize and confront this issue without deflating their interest, or their parents', in the organization I believe in so passionately.

But I won't do it again. Next year's curriculum is It's Your Planet -- Love It! and I'm not making excuses for you any longer. Those voices you heard over the past few months telling people not to buy Girl Scout cookies are going to be louder next year, and you're going to have fewer allies ready to argue against them. Those who took the bait this year and let themselves believe that your RSPO membership represented a meaningful change in direction will experience nagging doubts. And as for my girls -- Troop 9045 -- we are going to hold ourselves responsible for what we say and do, and we are going to practice what you preach. We're going to discuss, evaluate, and decide as a troop how to address the issue of Girl Scout cookies' role in the deforestation of Indonesia and the likely extinction of one of the most amazing species on our planet. And we're going to do it whether you're on board or not.

Sincerely,
Jennifer McNichols
Leader, Girl Scout Troop #9045
Girl Scouts of Central Texas

me: i'll pick z up
see you around 6
oh, wait, one more thing
have a sec?
Jennifer: oh, ok
sure
me: i had what may be an interesting idea
Jennifer: ok
me: we could do a "trial period" for z
could be unlimited candy
(free choice)
could be free choice (unlimited) tv
or she could chose which
or she could choose to have free choice for one and NONE of the other (for that period)
i'd be curious to see which she'd pick and what the outcome would be
could be 1 week
could be 1 month
Jennifer: ok
me: we could have a standard that needed to be met to consider it functional
for candy, for example, it could be eating meals, brushing teeth after candy, going to bed without a fuss, whatever else we considered relevant to the consumption of candy
for tv, it could be anything we felt related to healthy tv consumption - but quantity could not be a factor
idk what those criteria might be
maybe, getting other responsibilities done (responsibilities we outline)
being prepared to leave at routine times
etc
Jennifer: that sounds good
me: it could even relate to completing homeschooling activity...
to ensure a balance to her days
though i'd hate to make that feel like the "not fun" version she had to do to get tv
Jennifer: yes. i'm discourage re: her lack of desire to read because "it's hard"
yes, that's true too
me: honestly... i don't worry about the reading
she is a pretty brilliant reader
she read me a paragraph from Abel's Island last night without much trouble
all I had to do for her was pronounce the four-syllable words
that book is for ages 9 and up
i think what we are dealing with are the ebb and flow of unschooling
which we were warned about
but we can structure expectations for her that show how much freedom she can have if she uses it responsibly
and follow up on how she's doing
i think she'll take well to that, and we can track it however we need to so she knows it isn't arbitrary
Jennifer: ok
me: great
do you want us to pick tv or candy, or let her choose, or do both?
Jennifer: might as well just do both, i guess
me: the only reasons not to would be (a) would be very interesting to see what she chose (we could go with old rules for the other, or make it a "all-or-nothing" bargain)
(b) we might see effects and not know which change they stemmed from
Jennifer: hmm. that's true
me: want to think about it a bit?
Jennifer: sure

What do you think? And which would your child pick?

We've received some great questions on yesterday's PlanetBox review.

Jennifer writes:

I was wondering how this would work with keeping food cold. My daughter has a nut allergy. So we send lunches everyday to school. Most days, she likes to take some kind of meat that would need to be kept cold.

Thanks in advance for your feedback on this.

Jennifer, we aren't experts on safe meat temperatures, but I can tell you two things: The PlanetBox case is insulated, and also has enough room in it that we were able to slide a 1/2" thick plastic ice pack inside to go under the lunch box. If you were particularly concerned about having the cold pack directly on one of the areas, you could affix it to the inside of the insulated case, and all the cooling mojo would be going straight to the section you had the meat in.

From My Boaz's Ruth:

I’ve looked at Planetboxes before but so far, I can’t justify $35 for it.

The magnets concern me. If it is in their backpack along with a CD or a DVD, etc, will the magnet affect the information on the other?

Nope. DVDs and CD are optical media, and aren't affected by magnets. I do remember that issue, though, from the days of cassettes and videotape! (Insert nostalgia for radio-recorded mix tape here.) The one thing that would be sketchy would be having this in a bag where it came in close contact with a computer, but hey, we wouldn't recommend doing that with a lunch box anyway.

Mariah wrote:

Looks great… I just wish there was an option for hot food. We regularly send leftovers in a Thermos - soups, pasta, etc. Those wouldn’t work well in this box. Maybe we could also make a fabric envelope that includes a pocket for an add-on thermos (I don’t think it would fit in the pocket of the PlanetBox carrier that’s designed for a water bottle.)

That would be cool. If you do make one, send us a photo. We'd love to see it.

And finally, from Julie:

For our son's lunch "main course" we usually send him to school with dinner leftovers, which typically consist of a green veggie, meat, and rice or quinoa. He very rarely gets a sandwhich. I'm concerned that the rice or other side with small pieces won’t stay in the appropriate compartment. Have you tried it with something like rice or a small grain? Thanks!

Here's a video I shot this morning to show how the PlanetBox contains larger food in its four sections:



But that didn't address your question directly, so I also pulled a jar of grain out of the fridge (rye was on hand) and filled up a compartment to check.



Looks like a win!

We love well-designed, environmentally-conscious lunch boxes that use reusable containers to encourage parents to offer kids a variety of foods in reasonable portions. We've added more than a dozen options, many of them very good, to the ZRecs Guide since its launch in late 2008, but the products that got us really, really excited in the ten years since Laptop Lunches set the standard have been few and far between. Today we get to talk about one of them.

The PlanetBox is a molded stainless steel lunch tray with a hinged lid, with top and bottom halves meeting to form tall open compartments. Its otherwise institutional look and solid build are offset by magnet sets used to decorate the box. PlanetBox sells a variety of combinations of products at different price points (all of them high, so get ready) but, wisely, they do not sell PlanetBoxes without decorative magnets. For our daughter, the magnets are a crucial element.

Let's go on a tour.


You can buy a PlanetBox with or without a carrying case and a set of two (only one pictured here) "wet containers." More about those in a minute. First, let's look at the main event: the lunch tray.


This magnet set is the least exciting of the seven themes they currently offer; we'll show you a more exciting one in a minute.


This clasp works really well, at least when the PlanetBox is contained in the optional storage sleeve. I'm not sure we'd trust it to stay closed in a backpack without a case of some kind.


These indentations are what give the clasp its grip.


Here's what Z took to summer science camp today. Note the size of the "main" compartment - it's a bit small, and although it could accommodate a standard square piece of bread (the smallest loaf shape you'll find these days)




The cherry tomatoes are homegrown - and so are the pickles! We grew the cukes in our garden and made four quarts of refrigerator pickles this year.




This nice little spot in the PlanetBox is designed for something sweet - a square of chocolate, small cookie, or other treat. We love the suggested portion - we regularly offer Z desserts this small, and she loves them. In this case, we went a bit savory with a few newly-dried cherry tomatoes from our garden - a luxury item she's sure to appreciate, as they taste like candy!


A kids' Clif bar and string cheese.


Here's the second set of magnets we promised to show off. One thing we like about this and several other magnet sets PlanetBox offers is that the shapes form a larger whole, sort of like a puzzle with big gaps in it. It makes a nice design and kids (Z at least) think it's pretty fun to put together and show off.




The lunch tray in its optional (but recommended) case.


The two "sidecar" containers you can buy with your PlanetBox (or separately) looked like an afterthought but proved invaluable. Like most other divided tray lunchbox designs, the PlanetBox is not designed for seriously wet foods. Wet fruit and pickles caused no problems for Z's lunch, but we wouldn't put yogurt, soup, or anything else very wet in there; the sections simply don't seal perfectly from each other or from the outside world. The separate containers are a different story, and fit in a pouch in the carrying case or can be used inside the PlanetBox itself, where the closed tray will hold the containers shut.


This container (and a smaller one we failed to get in this picture) have silicone rings in their lids that help them seal nicely (a rubber band is recommended to hold it shut) and are removable for cleaning.

So... the price. We have a lot of difficult conversations here in cases where quality comes at a price, but aren't afraid to call out overpriced products that don't deliver on value. In the case of PlanetBox, we're firm supporters despite a relatively high cost of entry.

A basic set - PlanetBox and magnets alone - will set you back $35. Add the two additional containers and you're up to $50 - an awkward surge upward, as the two containers don't feel like $15 more in product. Add a carrying bag and you're looking at $60. Yep. Sixty dollars for a lunch kit. Parents cross thresholds of price every day as they move towards safer and more durable products and away from stuff designed to be lost, disrespected, or thrown away when the next new product marches by. But are parents ready to cross a $60 threshold for a kids' lunch box kit?

For us, the answer is not (just) academic. One of the nice side effects of our no-swag policy is that unlike many product reviewers, we don't have to approach the question of "is it worth the money" on a theoretical basis; if we want to keep a product that has been sent to us for review, we force ourselves to buy it, donating a comparable amount to charity. And although more than 9 out of 10 products we evaluate for review pass through our home in a month or two and never look back, we really can't let this lunch kit slip through our fingers, so we'll be paying up.

That said, I'm pretty sure we don't have $60 in our budget for a lunch box. We will probably forgo the separate storage containers, buying the PlanetBox a la carte for $35. You could add a carry bag for $15, and it wouldn't be a bad buy - it fits the PlanetBox well and includes an extra pocket on the outside for a small drink container. I think I'll vote for us to skip the carry bag and have Jenni make Z her own awesome fabric sleeve for it. Then we'll use a small Lock & Lock container or other small-form plastic container instead of PlanetBox's stainless steel ones, and save ourselves that $15 as well. We'd recommend a sleeve or container of some kind to ensure it stays closed and protect it from dings. But it isn't that hard to sew a fabric envelope... Jenni made herself a pretty awesome Kindle holder we've been meaning to show you, and I'm sure she could do something nice for Z's new PlanetBox.

We're naming the PlanetBox a ZRecs Top Pick for its use of sustainable and safer materials, its overall design, and its incorporation of fun into what could otherwise have been a very institutional-feeling product.

You can buy the PlanetBox and its accessories at the PlanetBox website.

Today's agenda is simple. Announcements, then candy.

1. It's unfortunate that the term "biweekly" is so confusing

Anyway, we are starting up three new columns on ZRecs blogs, each appearing at least every two weeks, confusing terminology be damned. They are:

ZRecs Family: Licensed marriage and family therapist Terry McNichols will discuss family relationships and answer reader questions in ZRecs Family, our new advice and relationships column at The Tranquil Parent. Terry will cover the dynamics of relationships with your spouse or partner, children, in-laws, and parents, and she's opening the floor to reader questions for possible discussion and response in Q&A-style posts. You can submit your questions as anonymously as you'd like using our handy submission form, or read her first topical post tomorrow while she waits to hear from you about challenges you face in your family relationships.

Mini Media Mogul: Author and blogger Jenna Glatzer rounds up books and music for kids twice a month on Punnybop. So far she's been doing four reviews per column, ranking them from best to worst. We likey. Today's post (her second in the series, here's the first) takes a listen to (and shares video/music clips from four kids' CDs. Even her daughter gets in on the action...

Ask ZRecs: We're going to start publishing this once-occasional column on a weekly basis, because we get a lot of questions from readers about kids' products and how they work. We may play with the format and scheduling of this a bit, but we'd like to be responding to your questions in a more formal and regular way, so we're renewing our commitment to getting this going. Watch as we feel our way through it.

2. Lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here

We got a few requests for information about HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) free treats in the survey responses from this month's ZRecs Network newsletter, which went out yesterday (if you haven't opened it, take a peek in your inbox - you have until midnight tonight to enter to win a free superhero outfit for your child from Little Capers!). We have some interesting recommendations we'll collect for a future Tranquil Parent post, but we saw this deal on Amazon today and, what with Halloween right around the corner, we knew someone would be interested in it.

If you know you need some kind of candy on hand for Halloween but hate buying the junk you'll see when you run to the store in the days before Halloween, or if you are the habit of keeping a drawer in your kitchen perpetually stuffed with sweets, you should take a look at YummyEarth's organic lollipops, which are on sale for about 50% off ($15 for about 350 pops).

I have never eaten a YummyEarth lollipop, and would even posit that the brand name itself is kind of an oxymoron unless you suffer from pica. But the fact that Z has never seen a lollipop she didn't like, and that these particular lollipops are free of so many things it isn't even funny, and have some pretty amazing flavor names, and are really cheap at the moment (they may be a Deal of the Day) conspired to make me mention them. They are vegan (no gelatin), declared to be wholly free of all kinds of allergens, they are organic, and they do not contain high-fructose corn syrup. And the four-cents-apiece price tag for organic candy makes my heart sing. Check them out on Amazon.com. And if you're the nothing-beats-chocolate type, we encourage you to buy Fair Trade. Children just like yours will be better off for it.

We love the company and the concept behind the Goodbyn lunch box, a molded plastic lunch container that comes with 275 stickers kids can use to personalize and decorate it. The lunch box solves some persistent problems in kids' lunch transport, but in doing so, it creates some new ones.

Here's a quick video demo to start us off. The kit comes with a drink container we forgot to include in the shoot, which fits in the middle compartment. But the perspective makes up for that minor oversight, doesn't it?


The key design innovation of the Goodbyn is its multiple storage areas unified under a single molded lid. These storage compartments are all truly leakproof, as the lid indentations snap fully into each of them, which means you can plop some hummous in one section and some cheddar bunnies in another and your child can wait until lunchtime to bury them alive. Other lunch systems we love rely on multiple storage containers, which are a little less hassle to clean (Goodbyn's compartments are fairly deep) but the challenge of keeping track of a bunch of lids and containers to assemble a lunch kit can be onerous or, depending on the day, downright insurmountable. Goodbyn eliminates that problem in favor of simplicity, and for many that will be reason enough to love it.

The drawback to this design is that although the lid is fairly easy to remove - just firmly peel back an ear and the sections start popping open - it may be difficult for children to close, or to remember to close firmly, as each compartment must be deliberately sealed with firm pressure and the give of the plastic makes it sometimes uncertain whether you've adequately sealed up the compartments. This means that although the container may be leak-proof when it leaves your home, it may not be after lunch. This means that, at best, juices from that fruit salad may drip into the cake your kiddo was saving for an after-school snack, and at worst, young or less committed children may fail to carefully seal the outer rim itself, which could lead to a more spectacular product failure.

The other limitation of the Goodbyn compared with some other lunch systems is that it offers no way to keep lunches cool. Some lunch bags and boxes offer room for easy insertion of an ice pack to keep perishable foodstuffs cool until it's time to eat them; others offer insulated carriers. Goodbyn's compartment system doesn't make the former easy. Some have suggested (I can't remember if it was the company or a Goodbyn user) that a cold drink in the middle section could help keep adjacent compartments cool, but the design really doesn't work that way - every compartment has separate molded walls and plenty of space between them, which makes the Goodbyn quite efficient at isolating each section's temperature from that of other areas of the container, while exposing it to outside temperatures with a lot of surface area. Depending on the kind of lunches you like to pack for your child or that your child likes to eat, this may or may not be a big deal.

The stickers, combined with the vaguely animal-like shape of the Goodbyn, are one of its best features and biggest draws for kids. The stickers are kooky, random and varied enough for any kid to find things that speak to them, and comes with a full set of letters for writing names or phrases to go along with the pictures. This is one of the key features that makes the Goodbyn as kid-friendly a product as it is, despite some of the limitations described above.

All in all, this is a company it's hard not to love - not only are they members of 1% For the Planet, but they manufacture in the U.S. through a company that has a strong record of environmental stewardship, have designed a product made entirely out of #5 polypropylene and thus recyclable in many communities, and use environmentally conscious packaging, including vegetable-based inks and recycled materials. The company had a problem with one of the components of their design - a "treasure compartment" that was supposed to go over the top oval area you can see in the photos at the top of this post - and were very frank about their decision to eliminate it. Our only challenge to the company would be to update product photos on Amazon.com and on their own website to ensure consumers know exactly what they're ordering, and to link the note about this change not only to the product description on their website but to their order page, where photographs of Goodbyns featuring the compartment lid are still prominently displayed.

The Goodbyn retails for $30 and is available in red, green, pink, and blue. You can purchase it on Amazon.com or directly from the Goodbyn website.

In accordance with our Keep No Stuff reviewing policy, the sample Goodbyn we received for review will be de-stickered and donated to another family who can use it.