Product Review--Cleaners

I was at the store needing to buy some more cleaners. I had heard Target's Method brand was supposed to be more environmentally safe. In looking over the shelves I ran across Clorox's version called Green Works. The back of both bottles say: "Our product is made using fine natural ingredients such as essential oils and coconut-based cleaners." "Contains no phosphorus. Contains no bleach." It is recognized for safer chemistry. I didn't dig into it any more than what the back of the bottle says.

As for cleaning ability, I actually find that these work better than what I had been using. I was using a windex product for the mirrors and was having a streaking problem (you know what I mean : ) but not with this clorox. The toilet bowl cleaner also does better than the name brand stuff with bleach I was using. So far I am pleased with both products.

Product Review--Lotion

I always have a very difficult time in winter with dry skin. Dry skin that really itches. The problem is compounded by the fact that once I start itching and then scratching, putting lotion on after that does not help.

I have used Bath and Body works heavy creams for a few years buying 3 or 4 at a time because that was the best deal. Then I found out they start breaking down as they get older and lose their smell. Well, they actually have a sort of plastic smell.

I have tried a number of different products from vaseline to eucerin. Recently I was putting on the Olay quench in the morning and by evening I was scratching again. So just on a whim, I decided to switch and put my Trader Joe's moisturizing lotion on right after my shower and see if that lasted. To my amazement, I have stopped itching at night. Now granted winter is just beginning, so I'll have to report back to let you know how the lotion holds up during the rest of the winter.

A Way of Life

I was just thinking that being environmentally conscious becomes a way of life. For me it seems the more I do, the more I think I should be doing. Recycling wasn't enough. I figured I needed to start bringing my own bags to the grocery store. Then I decided that even though composting was foreign to me, it was simple enough that I should be doing it. That stuff wasn't going to do anything but sit in a land fill anyway. Might as well have it break down into fertilizer for my gardens.

Then the issue with water has been bugging me. I felt really good about putting the water from the dehumidifier into the washing machine, but what about all of that wasted water while waiting for the water to warm up? What was I going to do about that?

Part of this nagging for me has been in watching the movie "User's Guide to Planet Earth: The American Environment Test" that I show to each of my environmental classes. The show, made in the 80's, features Tom Selleck narrating along with numerous stars from that time period. It is in a wonderful format for the classroom. It is a 25 question test with multiple choice answers and reasons behind the answers. I would love to have students redo the movie with current statistics and updated hair styles (lol).

Their suggestion--use a "starter" bucket that catches shower water before it is warm and use it to water flowers or something. One of my collegues found a water bottle in the school and asked one of the students to not just pour it out, but go water some flowers with it : ) I was inspired!

Just How Big A Savings is Recycling?

Alex Hutchinson--Popular Mechanics has one more article with some good information. How much CO2 emissions are we preventing; how much energy are we saving and how much are we recycling certain items?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/how_your_house_works/4291576.html

"Recycling By the Numbers: The Truth About Recycling

Americans haul 82 million tons of trash to recycling centers each year—but that’s still just 32.5 percent of what we throw out. Here’s how much energy recycling saves and how much that’s worth."

Statistics on aluminum, glass, newsprint, plastic #1 & #6 are given. Looking at this information, why wouldn't you want to recycle?

Recycling Myths

Alex Hutchinson, popular mechanics, had another interesting article about recycling. This one, "Recycling Myths: PM Debunks 5 Half Truths about Recycling" discusses land fill availability, energy use/pollution created by recycling trucks, cities getting rich selling recyclables, sorting recyclables, and the fate of plastic recyclables.
(http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4290631.html?page=1)

To Recycle or Not--That is the Question

The article "Recycling By Mail" and the comments given by readers brought my attention to an article written By Alex Hutchinson for Popular Mechanics online. (http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/how_your_house_works/4291566.html?page=1) Titled "Is Recycling Worth It? PM Investigates its Economic and Environmental Impact", his article seemed quite relevant. He looks at the history of recycling and critics who said recycling was a waste of time and too costly. He moves on to the current environmental and economic status of recycling. I just want to quote a couple of his paragraphs/conclusions.

"To resolve the environmental debate once and for all, experts have begun to conduct detailed life-cycle analyses on recycled goods, calculating the energy consumed from the moment they’re picked up by recycling trucks until they are processed into brand-new products. When compared with the amount of energy required to send the same goods to landfills or incinerators and make new products from scratch, the results vary dramatically, depending on the material.
Aluminum, for example, requires 96 percent less energy to make from recycled cans than it does to process from bauxite. At the other end of the spectrum, recycled glass uses only about 21 percent less energy—but it still comes out ahead, according to a study by Washington-based environmental consultant Jeffrey Morris. Recycled plastic bottles use 76 percent less energy and newsprint about 45 percent less, he found. Across the board, the key factor is the energy intensity of extracting virgin materials, which is an order of magnitude higher than that of recovering the same material through recycling. “Even if you doubled the emissions from collecting recyclables, it wouldn’t come close,” Morris says. Overall, he found, it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. And all of the collecting, hauling and processing of those recyclables adds just 0.9 million Btu."

He goes on to say that not all recycling is efficient and some products are broken down into less usable materials. So it is a system that has its faults.

On the economic side, the demand for recyclables is rising and that is helping to outweigh the cost of gathering it but most curbside recycling programs still cost money. Some cities put major effort into their recycling like San Francisco who has a goal of 75%. For most cities, "recycling is generally desirable, but it’s not automatically good and efficient and cheap. It takes significant up-front capital investment to implement a state-of-the-art single-stream recycling program. For that reason, the newfound stability of the recycling market is just as important as the high prices, because it allows cities to plan investments around future revenue streams." In places like Chicago, the city was able to go from a system that cost them money to a system that pays them money.

I think as the recycling market grows, whether we should recycle or not will no longer be a question.

Recycling: What Do The Numbers Mean?

http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/187/1/Recycling-by-the-numbers.html Green living has a nice article about what the numbers on plastics mean. This information is taken from their web site but can be found on many other web sites.

1 - PETE - Polyethylene Terephthalate: The easiest of plastics to recycle. Often used for soda
bottles, water bottles and many common food packages. Is recycled into bottles and
polyester fibers.
2 - HDPE - High density Polyethylene: Also readily recyclable - Mostly used for packaging
detergents, bleach, milk containers, hair care products and motor oil. Is recycled into more
bottles or bags.
3 - PVC - Polyvinyl Chloride: This stuff is everywhere - pipes, toys, furniture, packaging - you
name it. Difficult to recycle and PVC is a major environmental and health threat.
4 - LDPE Low-density Polyethylene: Used for many different kinds of wrapping, grocery bags
and sandwich bags and can be recycled into more of the same.
5 - PP - Polypropylene: Clothing, bottles, tubs. Can be recycled into fibers.
6 - PS - Polystyrene: Cups, foam food trays, packing peanuts. Polysterene is a real problem as
it's bulky yet very lightweight and isn't really worth recycling.
7 - Other--Could be a mixture of any and all of the above. Or plastics not readily recyclable such
as polyurethane. Avoid it if you can - recyclers generally speaking don't want it. Although
you could send it back to the company and let them deal with it.

Recycling by Mail

When I logged on to my home page just now, the yahoo article listed was "Recycling By Mail". I thought, awesome! An excellent resource for my blog.
Here is the link: http://green.yahoo.com/blog/the_conscious_consumer/19/recycling-by-mail.html The article is written by Lori Bongiorno.

Apparently there are many nontraditionally recyclable items that you can put in the mail and that particular company will recycle those items. For instance Nike makes athletic fields from athletic shoes. Patagonia recycles clothes. "Recycline's Preserve Gimme 5 program collects clean plastic containers that have a #5 stamped on the bottom (yogurt cups, ketchup bottles, sour cream containers, and more). Recycled plastic is transformed into razors, bowls, and many other cool products (that you can also send back when you're done with them)."

I was amazed there were these options but then I got down to the comments. Most people felt they would be taken advantage of to have to pay to send these items to be recycled. Most posters felt it was much cheaper to just throw the old, unwanted stuff away. I think only one or two people even suggested donating to Goodwill or similar. With a short sighted mentality such as that, it makes it challenging for those of us who don't want the world to turn into the environment from the movie "Wall-e". But it also brings up the question, how can we make recycling (producing less garbage) a feasible thing for everyone?

The People Have Spoken

What topics are you interested in that you feel should be included on this web site? Post your ideas here and we'll see where we go from there.

Less Miles, Smaller Carbon Footprint

As I write this, gasoline is down to $1.98 a gallon in my town. It wasn't that long ago that gas was closer to $4 a gallon. The higher gas prices really made people think about what they could do to save money. We still have to keep in mind that whenever we drive, we are using up a natural resource as well as polluting the air. But it is amazing how dependent we've become on our vehicles.

There was some debate on how to get the best gas mileage. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/drive.shtml has listed 4 categories on their web site.
1. Drive more efficiently. "Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration and braking) wastes
gas. It can lower your gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent around
town."
2. Keep your car in shape. "Fixing a serious maintenance problem, such as a faulty oxygen
sensor, can improve your mileage by as much as 40 percent." Check and replace air filters.
"You can improve your gas mileage by around 3.3 percent by keeping your tires inflated to
the proper pressure." "You can improve your gas mileage by 1-2 percent by using the
manufacturer's recommended grade of motor oil."
3. Plan and combine trips. My aunt was telling me that during the rationing of WWII, they
would always ask themselves if the trip was really necessary. I think that still holds true
today.
4. Choose a more efficient vehicle.

Water Saving Tips

1. In the summer when I run my dehumidifier, I dump the water collected into my washing machine. This cuts down on the amount of water I have to get from the city to fill my machine. (thanks Paul for that tidbit)

2. I have begun using a "starter" bucket for my shower. I catch the water in a bucket until it is warm enough to shower in. I was going to use the water to flush the toilet, however I have a brand new 1.2 adjustable to 1.6 gallon tank and it takes more water than that to flush by pouring the water from the bucket. So I may use it as washing machine water for now.

3. I've googled "rain barrels" and there seems to be a range of sizes and materials therefore prices. Has anyone looked into getting one or already have one? If so post some information on what you like/don't like about your barrel. And if you have a rain barrel, do you do anything to keep mosquitoes from laying eggs in it?

Composting

This past summer I found a compost container at Mill's Fleet Farm and installed it on the side of my garage. As you can see, it is not extremely rigid. When we had the big wind storm here, the wind took the black plastic ring off of the plastic green poles and broke them all. The ones I bought to replace them are much longer. But in order to turn my pile, I need to take the ring off. It is not the best set up.



I am thinking about using railroad ties and building a shorter compost enclosure. Since I live on a small city lot, it is important that my yard looks nice. A friend of mine has an acre of land and is able to make a compost pile behind his garage and its not a big deal. Has anyone bought or built a compost structure that is economical and some what attractive? Please share your ideas!

Commitment in Shopping

Can anyone tell me what the name of this program is? I saw on the news, maybe a year ago, a program that people were commiting to, in which they were not going to buy anything that was packaged. Clothes and many other items were to be bought second hand. It may have been a program to eliminate or almost eliminate people producing any garbage? I don't remember exactly. At the time I had wanted to look up what the guidelines were but I don't think I had enough information to find out more about it.

Bag Review

As hard as I try, it seems that I can't get away from collecting shopping bags. I don't mind the paper ones because I need to put my recycling into those. Those plastic grocery bags are the culprits.

I have gotten pretty good at bringing my own bags to the grocery store, it is all of the other stores I have problems with. I keep my bags in the car and just bring them in with me grocery shopping. It seems that many places are getting used to people bringing in their own and even giving you money back for bringing in your own. Yay! (I recently heard of grocery stores--I think in CA--charging shoppers if they didn't bring their own bags)

One problem I have found is that not all of the bags hold up and the cashiers have a more difficult time with some bags versus others. I used to have cloth and net bags. Cashiers didn't like those at all. They didn't stand rigid and it made it difficult to put things in. I bought a few of the green bags pictured from the local grocery store. They were nice at first but then, as you can see, they lost their shape. The white Trader Joe's bag is made from plastic bottles. The other two Trader Joe bags are heavier. All three of these Trader Joe bags have been holding up for me. I've been very happy with them.

Write and tell us what kind of bag you use that you like. Also, do you bring your bag with you to all stores or do you too end up with a gazillion plastic bags?

Two-Wheeled Transportation

One way that I have been trying to reduce my carbon footprint is to bike more often. I have a collegue who rides his bike to work most days. He doesn't know it but he has inspired a personal challenge for me. I have finally gotten into the habit of riding my bike to the gym in the morning. I bought a second hand bright pink winter jacket, ski cap, and warm gloves to be comfortable now that the weather has gotten colder. I try to ride my bike to work too but that is not going as well. I end up scheduling appointments and such after work so I need to take my car. But every week I try to take the bike instead of the car a few times.

The bad weather makes it less enticing to ride. The other day I asked my collegue if he rode his bike because of the bad weather. He said no that he walked! Ugh! I have to walk now too? LOL

What is a Carbon Footprint?

I have been thinking about ways I can reduce my carbon footprint. You may be wondering what exactly is a carbon footprint? Here is an explanation from http://w.plant-a-tree-today.org/newcarbonfree.asp

"Your carbon footprint is the direct effect your actions and lifestyle have on the environment in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. Probably the biggest contributors to your footprint are your travel needs, and your electricity demands at home. However, all your actions have a direct or indirect impact, including your diet, and the clothes you wear. We know cars, buses and aeroplanes burn gasoline, public transport may use gasoline and electricity and your home uses a significant portion of your personal electricity needs that generally comes from fossil fuel burning power plants. All these actions contribute to accelerating global warming and climate change."

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx offers a calculator for you to determine what your carbon footprint is. In order to calculate the footprint for your house, you will need to know how much you spent (US$) or used (kWh) over the past year. My total house footprint, according to this web site, is 4.55 tonnes of CO2. My car footprint (Dodge Durango) is 5.13 tonnes of CO2. And my secondary footprint (you should do this one for yourself--it is most interesting) is 4.47 tonnes of CO2.

And the results are: My footprint is 14.15 tonnes per year
The average footprint for people in United States is 20.40 tonnes
The average for the industrial nations is about 11 tonnes
The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 tonnes
The worldwide target to combat climate change is 2 tonnes

Take the calculator to your own life and post your results!