Feed: The Green Phone Booth - AggScore: 63.1

Eco-Laundry Detergent Favourites!

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EcoYogini continues the theme of being a 'clean' eco yogini...

Pre-yoga class on Monday, my friends C, H, and I were discussing how often we wash our yoga clothes. I use the 'wear+sweat twice' or 'wear+nosweat thrice' rule (I also use a similar rule of "wear pants/jeans twice if not dirty" rule- shh don't tell anyone!).

Reasoning:
- We don't have our own laundry (since we live in an apartment) and it piles up during our weekly wash.
- Lazyness
- It saves on water, energy and detergent use (woot environment!)

Laundry was one of those easy eco-changes that can have a nice impact with minimal effort. Since 90% of your washer's energy usage is to heat the water- cold water washes it is! It's been five years of cold water washing and I haven't even noticed the difference. Also we FILL the washer to the max- mostly because it costs money to wash our laundry, but wouldn't ya know that washer's MORE efficient with full loads! Bonus (Ecoholic Home 2009 p.38).

What we have experimented a bit with has been laundry detergent. We've tried soap nuts (terrible fail let me tell you) and a few other brands, until I gifted myself with the Ecoholic Home book: it has a handy dandy laundry detergent eco-awesome-effective guide.

Our two all-time favourites (and Adria Vasil's):
1. Bio-Vert (liquid). This rocks as it's a Canadian company, the products are made in Canada (Laval Québec)! The container, although plastic, is made from 33% recycled plastic content, the paper labels are made with 30% post-consumer fibres and are FSC certified... the list goes on. It has worked the best compared to all other 'chemical laden' brands... and it claims to biodegrade in 28 days (where do you think all the soap goes once it drains out of your washer?) with the EcoLogo certifying that it doesn't just biodegrade it smaller toxic components.

2. Seventh Generation Natural 4X (Liquid): Ok, although not Canadian, even before the new fab packaging, this stuff was amazing. The container is made with 66% LESS plastic than a regular container with the outside cardboard uber tree-hugger look from 100% postconsumer recycled fibre. Of course the actual ingredients are extremely environmentally friendly and will do up to 66 loads! (which is double the Bio-vert counterpart). Sadly it was twice the cost (although you could argue it would save money re: double the loads) and it's not made in Canada. Kinda a sticking point for me. However, because the packaging looked so cool I totally bought it and gave it a go. It works amazingly. Of course.

Wash your yoga clothes in cold water, avoid fabric softener, hang to dry and you've got yourself an eco-friendly washed yoga gear!

Making Less Laundry

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When I taught school a few years ago, I felt the need to immediately get out of my work clothes when I got back home each afternoon. After being snuffled and sneezed on, wheedled and wheezed on, I just needed to shed the germs and the stress before I could move on with my day. Unless we had somewhere to go late in the day, I usually just changed into pajamas at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, to avoid dirtying another entire outfit. Still, that created a lot of laundry. Add a cloth-diapered baby to the mix, a baby that we allowed to serve himself table food when he started asking for it around 6 months old, and we had quite a pile to wash every day or two.

I like doing laundry (even though I know that it uses up energy and clean water and expensive eco-detergents). I do NOT like folding and sorting and putting away laundry. So here are a few things my family does to reduce our laundry load, at least a little –

1. Rewear pants and pajamas and sweaters and the like more than once.

2. Use a moist washcloth to spot clean obvious problems areas in clothes that don’t need an all-over clean.

3. Air out anything that has a slight smell but isn’t really dirty.

4. Potty train early.

5. Keep a set of dirty playclothes by the back door, and only wash them once a week or so.

6. Encourage your child to wear washable bibs to keep outfits clean longer. (Mine refuses.)

7. Hang towels to dry after each use.

8. Wear loungewear that can be worn as daytime attire and pajamas.

Well, I totally failed today. I am still wearing the same outfit I put on this morning, but that is not the case with my son.

-Outfit 1 – covered in frosting and paint from preschool party

-Outfit 2 and shoes – just missed the potty

-Outfit 3 and sheets– Mama forgot to put on a diaper before naptime

-Outfit 4 – had an accident at the park while having fun with a friend

-Outfit 5 and shoes and coat and towel – splashed and bathed in mud puddles at the park

-Outfit 6 – caked with spaghetti sauce

-Outfit 7 – flecked with globs of homemade play dough

All of these are important little boy experiences that I wouldn’t want to take away for the sake of doing less laundry – especially the mud puddles. But this is an entire load of laundry from today that I can hear spinning in my front-loading washer. Well, maybe tomorrow the Kelly Green Giant will at least remember the diaper at naptime!

How do you lighten your laundry load?

Lead in Lipstick . . . Still

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I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t trust any company to care about my health. They only make changes when they are forced by regulations (and even then, change is slow or companies are noncompliant). So why can’t the FDA do the right thing and require that these companies keep lead out of their lipstick? According to the press release from The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, “The FDA said it is currently evaluating whether to recommend an upper limit for lead in lipstick. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is urging FDA to set a maximum limit for lead in lipstick based on the lowest lead levels cosmetic manufacturers can feasibly achieve.” As early as 2007, Senators Kerry, Boxer and Feinstein urged the FDA to begin regulating lead in lipsticks and other cosmetics. Seriously FDA? Stop evaluating and just do it. Why not do something to actually protect human health instead of listening to industry lobbyists?

Happy Valentine's Day

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Jenn the Greenmom gave us her rant about Valentine's Day earlier this month and touched on the issues around many popular gifts, I thought to follow up with that I would share this video, enjoy.


Hope everyone has a very happy, ethical, and eco-friendly Valentine's Day!

Feel the Burn (Greener fireplace logs?)

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A suburban greenmom lights a fire...

We have a fireplace in our "new" house (i.e. the one we've lived in for the past 3 years). Until a couple of nights ago, we had never actually lit a fire in it.

My husband went out and bought one of those "fireplace logs" to use. I winced; I figured these would have to be horribly un-green and artificial and toxic chemical laden, probably a terrible thing to use.  But then I started doing some research. Turns out a lot of these things, even from mainstream brand "Duraflame," are made of recycled sawdust (the stuff that would otherwise be disposed of) and vegetable waxes, mostly. That they burn more cleanly and with lower emissions--including carbon monoxide--than even ordinary cut wood.  And that they are generally recommended as a better choice than firewood for a fire in one's home fireplace.

This surprised me a lot! So I started looking around for what brands there are out there; please let me know if any readers have actually tried any of these, or know of any others...

Duraflame: The most well-known brand, they seem to be trying pretty hard to greenify their product...hard to tell how much is authentic and how much is greenwashing, but it's a start...

Green Heat: This is the one we used, and it's made from waxed cardboard rather than sawdust. It did a pretty good job, although I have to admit its presence was more about ambience than about actual warmth.

Energy Logs: This Canadian brand seems more geared for actual heat output than "pretty" fireplace fires...they suggest mixing "normal" wood with one of their logs if you want the higher flames.

Earthlog: made out of recycled paper. I like the idea of the zero-waste recycling process...

GreenLog: This one is apparently made out of grass.  (Talk about a renewable resource!) What I like here is that it does not require that the rest of our system continue its current mode of overconsumption so it can get its raw materials...on the other hand, the raw materials are there, so it's kind of a good thing other brands are out there to deal with it, you know?  I would love to try one of these--they saythey burn up to 6 hours, which is twice as long as most of the others out there, and they also mention that they come out with a zero balance carbon footprint--whatever carbon dioxide is created in the burning of the logs is taken in by their next crop of grass as it grows.  Food for thought!

Anyone else have any experience with artificial fire logs? What do you think about them?

Cutting chemicals: A review of Non-Toxic Avenger

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I always figured I lived a fairly green lifestyle given my resources. Reduce, reuse, recycle was ingrained in my practices. I ate locally and organic whenever my budget allowed. I grew my own produce. I eschewed plastic crap in my house whenever I could.

What scares me is it isn't enough.

There's that little bit inside you that tries to dismiss the worries that the things you use every day could kill you. And you try to tune it out.

The reality is chemicals are imbedded in our society, and it's going to take a heck of a lot of effort to get them out. Even if we don't know what the effects of these conveniences are.

A few years ago, I read the Body Toxic, and it scared the crap out of me. That book chronicled the history of hidden chemicals, almost as a government conspiracy. (Who knows? Perhaps it is.) There, I learned to fear PVC shower curtains and microwave popcorn. Fun stuff.

The problem is, while there's much you can do to educate yourself on chemicals imbedded in our everyday things and the possible effects, hunting down alternatives is tough business. That's why I looked forward to reading "The Non-toxic Avenger: What you don't know can hurt you" by Crunchy Chicken's Deanna Duke. If anyone could find an alternative, I figured, she could.

Duke's book focuses on her attempt to reduce chemicals and toxins in her body from everyday exposure. It's a scary thought - particularly since she too was leading a green lifestyle before this project began. The books chronicles her challenges in reconciling with her husband's cancer and son's autism, and in seeking alternatives to polluting her body - in everything from carpet to cleaning products, from mascara to margaritas. (Hey, you have to have fun.)

No, Duke doesn't find all the answers. She's still on the hunt for mold-cleaning products, for example. But I love the fact she's still looking and willing to share what's she's found as the best possible alternatives.
"It's still an uphill, daily battle trying to determine whether a product I pick up at the store will poison me," she writes.

At least we have a new, consolidated resources to help us in this battle. I came away, whether Duke intended or not, with a guide that could sit on my shelf - one that I could point to in order to help me more quickly find solutions to my quests.

Color me just black, please

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In which Truffula embraces color in her life, just not in things she or her family might ingest...

In my continuing self-education about supporting our health, activated charcoal kept popping up.  I added it to my mental list of things to get for my ever-evolving "home pharmacy."  After my sister suffered through 36 hours of, um, episodes following a meal with some now-suspect coleslaw, I decided I needed to have that charcoal on hand sooner rather than later, just in case a situation hit in my own household.

On Monday, I walked to the chain-store pharmacy near my office, wallet in hand.  I went to the counter, and explained for what I was looking.  The aide remembered that she'd seen some charcoal in an over-the-counter aisle, but that it might have had its formulation changed.  She strode expertly right over to the aisle location, plucked off a box, and... confirmed the change.  She then turned me over the pharmacist for further help.

I told the pharmacist my story: I was looking for activated charcoal.  My mom had some, but it had senna in it.  I wasn't sure that a laxative ingredient would be the bees' knees if I had to use the charcoal in a case of, shall we say, already acute bowel motility.  Therefore, I was on a quest for plain old charcoal.  The pharmacist nodded, saying he knew just what I wanted.  He reminisced about simple charcoal powder..  (Ah, perfect, I thought!)

He padded back to his computer, typed away, and came back to let me know that his supplier had charcoal tablets.  He could order them and have them for me the next afternoon.  Great, I said.

Tuesday afternoon, I walked expectantly back to the pharmacy.  The pharmacist remembered me, and had a little box waiting.  He handed it to me for my inspection.  I went right to the ingredient list.  Oh!  In fact, it WAS a list.  This wasn't just charcoal... it had some homeopathic remedies mixed in.  I tried to overlook that fact, and my finger continued tracing along the back of the carton... FD&C this, and FD&C that... (Why the heck would I want fake colors in a black product whose job was to go into the gut, do its thing, and then pass back out?)  I looked up at the pharmacist, who sensed that I wasn't liking where this was going.  He quickly assured me that I didn't have to buy it.  He would have no problem sending it back to the warehouse.

Especially since he had gone through the trouble of ordering this just for me, I really wanted to like this product and to buy it from him.  That nagging gut (pardon me!) feeling told me otherwise.  Stoically, I kept reading... propylene glycol... proplylene glycol?!  Are you kidding me?  Now, we had a deal-breaker.   What part of just-activated-charcoal-please was not getting through?  Was it really that hard to find a single-ingredient item?

With the confidence from my internal nagger, I looked back at the pharmacist, who kindly reassured me that sending the product back was no problem.  Very well, I told him.  Please do return it.  I then thanked him effusively for his help, and headed back to work.

My non-internet options are not exhausted -- there are two other stores which I'm quite certain will have a product for me.  It's a drive, not a walk, to get there, but I can chain the trip there with other things.

I'm enthusiastic about the power of such a simple remedy.  I'm far less enthused about the challenge of trying to find it in its pure form.

Signing off on another installment of "Less is More"...

To our health!

The Best Time to Try Cloth Diapers

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My 5-day-old baby in a fitted cloth diaper.

Eco-novice urges you to consider cloth.

Even if you use disposables for the remainder of your child's diapering months, I would encourage anyone who is even remotely interested in cloth diapering to consider using cloth for the first six months of your baby's life.

Here's why:

1. If you are a bit concerned about all the toxic chemicals in your child's world, then both the known ingredients and the undisclosed ingredients (such as the components of the fragrance) of disposable diapers will give you pause. If you are going to pay attention to the ingredients in any product, it might as well be the product that comes in contact with your baby's private parts all day long. During this newborn period, your baby is extremely vulnerable to endocrine disruptors and other harmful chemicals. In addition to being more sensitive, newborn skin is also more permeable than the skin of older children and adults. Chemicals in diaper wipes, disposable diapers, and personal products can easily pass through your infant's skin into her body, so this is the time to be super-conscientious about ingredients.

2. Cloth wipes are better at getting off that yellow runny poop than disposable wipes. Also, the ingredients in disposable wipes are weird.

3. Cloth diapers prevent pooplosions! And, as many parents know, newborns are prone to poopy explosions because of their runny poops. I am now cloth diapering my third child and I have never had cloth diaper leak poop.

4. You don't have to do a darn thing about the poop. Dealing with poop is one of the big reasons that folks steer clear of cloth diapers. But if you breastfeed, newborn poop is completely water soluble and washes right out in the wash. You toss the poopy diaper in the wash and you're done. The diapers will stain, but personally I don't care about that (line drying helps with that, if you do care).

5. Young babies stay put. There is a small learning curve to using cloth diapers, especially if you are accustomed to using disposables, and it's easier to become a whiz at using cloth diapers with a newborn than with a squirmy 9-month old or toddler.

6. Newborn babies go through a lot of diapers. I change my 2-month-old baby about 8 times during the day, I'd say. If you change your baby's disposable diaper in the middle of the night, you may go through even more diapers. Let's assume 6 diapers per day for the first six months (I'm trying to estimate conservatively here -- feel free to argue with my calculations in the comments). That's almost 200 diapers per month! Let's estimate that you spend $40 a month on diapers, night time diapers, and wipes. (If you choose to buy "greener" brands of disposables, you will spend significantly more.) As long as you spend less than $240 on cloth diapers for the 0-to-6-months period (and you can spend far less than that if you choose a less expensive system, buy used, or make your own) you will come out ahead financially. Plus you've kept hundreds of diapers out of the landfill.


I'm not going to argue about the environmental impact of cloth versus disposable diapers here, but there is no doubt that cloth diapering exposes your child to fewer potentially toxic chemicals during a very susceptible period. Add to that the fact that the first six months are in many ways the easiest and most economical time to cloth diaper, and I think we have a pretty good argument for cloth diapering your newborn.


How much do you spend on diapering supplies each month?
Have you considered using cloth diapers?

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Do you have any coupons?

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Remember back when the rest of the Boothers and I shared our Eco-resolutions for 2012?  It was my goal to actually get my act together and bring my reusable bags to the grocery store.  I don't go to many places when I grocery shop.  Kroger, the butcher and a local country market.  I always remember to take my insulated bags to the butcher shop.  Even now, when it's cold out, I like to have my own bag with me because I can really stuff it full and even just toss it into the fridge when I get home knowing everything is contained.  


I had realized that if I was going to make the other stores and the bags work, I might just have to do it without extensive lists for the sale flyers at Kroger and probably also not bring the kids along.  For the record, I've only been successful about half of the time.  What's been a bigger realization for me in the last month, however, is that the sale flyers and coupons aren't really working for me.  I used to watch the couponing show on TLC and even got to attend a how-to for coupons a few months ago.  I left feeling very inspired and had high hopes of saving all sorts of money.


But as I clipped the coupons faithfully every Sunday afternoon, I realized that I was throwing away 80% of them because they don't work with the Real Food guidelines.  I know how to make croissants for the weekend breakfasts, so I don't have a use for any of the Pillsbury coupons.  I make my own beef stock so the Swanson coupons are also pointless for me.  Little by little, I realized that I really don't benefit from the coupon clipping.  Sure, it's nice to save the money on things like garbage bags and toilet paper, but I'll never have a stockpile of products in my basement that weren't canned by me.


But really, it's ok.  I don't need to have a stock pile of salad dressings that have a shelf life of years waiting for me to rotate through them.  I can whip up a quick dressing in less time than it takes me change a diaper.  Switching to Real Food takes some effort, but it's not without reward.  I'm not spending hours clipping and scoping for deals.  Instead, I've found bread recipes I love.  I didn't waste the chicken bones and made stock.  It's amusing to me that a few short months ago, I was all set to save money by using brand name items until I realized that I can save money just by continuing what I've been doing for years.  Even though I have yet to find a coupon for farm-fresh lettuce or 50 pounds of flour, I do sometimes purchase naturally branded food products.  And when I'm looking for those specific products from the natural product lines, I always scope out Organic Deals.  If you are looking at a Gluten Free diet or want to buy specific organic products, this site is wonderful.  


These days, my coupon box has coupons for Traditional Medicinals teas and free day passes to take friends with me to the local children's museum.  I keep my eyes open for deals in the grocery and I'm wise about what I purchase at the grocery versus at the bulk food store, but I rarely use a manufacturer's coupon.  I guess I don't really need those 40 cents off on Rotel tomatoes... there are still 4 dozen pints of my own canned diced tomatoes waiting for me to use them before this year's tomato harvest!

EcoRico: Arroz con Pollo

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Today has been crazy and right now I'm trying to get dinner on the table so for my post today I'm going to share a video/recipe from EcoRico, an eco-friendly cooking show on YouTube. I have not made this recipe but I've made Arroz con Pollo before and it's quite good and this one looks even better.


If you enjoyed this episode be sure to check out more of EcoRico.

February 14 is approaching...again...

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Shadows and Light

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The Booth welcomes guest poter Kenna Lee.

Truth is, disconnected from mainstream media as I am, Groundhog Day doesn’t usually cross my radar. Most years, I don’t notice that January is over until Groundhog Day has come and gone. But this year, my son hand-drew a calendar as a school project and so I occasionally look at it. And this week I had one of those V-8 moments: staring at the February 2 square, hand slapping my own forehead, exclaiming, “I could have had a metaphor.”

As February begins, the days are finally noticeably longer, as evidenced by the fact that if I serve supper at five, no one wants to come inside to eat. The light approaches, and I start to stick my head out of my hole of doing indoor chores (mending, mostly) and pretending that the world doesn’t much extend beyond the safe warm burrow of my house. And like the groundhog, I might decide to stay inside for a while longer, and I might decide that it’s safe to come out, as long as I don’t have to see my shadow.

Thing is, like my rodent friend, I don’t much care for my shadow. I like to go along with my suburban homestead-lite life, getting ready for the next great shift in consciousness by teaching the kids how to save seeds, hopefully humming, and occasionally turning the compost. Mostly, if I keep my face to the light, I succeed. But if I slow down, turn around, and let the bright light behind me show me that my shadow side exists, I tend to retreat. Because the shadow side of my giddy green life is fear. Dark, nasty, scary nightmare-type fear. Fear of massive famines and societal breakdown and my kids and I holed up in our house protecting our saved seeds with a shotgun. Fear that climate change will bring about an unmanageable shift, and that humanity will not rise above but sink below our current level of function. Mankind has, after all, not such a great record of dealing fairly and peacefully with limited resources. I might just take my mending and hide under the covers for a few weeks yet.

Reconciling this real fear and my more hopeful self requires an act of will, one that the groundhog lacks. He simply reacts: sunlight = shadow = hide. I, on the other hand, apply the resources of my more developed frontal lobe to see the light and shadow, feel the fear, and move beyond it. Maybe the fear is well-founded, but hiding in my hole isn’t going to help any one or anything, least of all my kids, the ones around whose future my fears tend to churn.

So I’ll look at the shadow, and decide to turn the other way, and get the kids to fill some seed flats with soil so we can pull out the seeds we saved this year, and start to plant. And we’ll set those flats out in the bright sunlight, and be glad for it.


Full-time nurse, part-time environmentalist, and all-the-time mother, Kenna Lee lives in Sebastopol, California, with her three semi-feral children and several domesticated animals. Her book: A Million Tiny Things: a mother’s urgent search for hope in a changing climate (Moles Hill Press) will be out in April; sign up for updates at www.milliontinythings.com.

Why Bar Soap is Better

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 Whereas EcoYogini watches herself transform into a tree-thumping friend... over soap.

I have always prided myself in not being one of "those" tree-huggers. Ya know- the preachy kind. Oh I can pontificate all I want on my blog, but IRL I believe that my friends (and family) are intelligent people that will make decisions that work best for them.

Except. The other day a tree-thumping info-bite escaped my mouth before I could stop it. It went something like this:

C- "I need more handsoap refills- come help me choose something yummy smelling!"
EcoY "They smell pretty good considering..."
C- "Ah, considering they aren't very good for the environment?" (concerned face)
EcoY: "Well... it's just there's those little plastic-y bits in the soap. They're called nurdles".
C-"Wtf? Nurdles? But I thought they were just bits of soap... they're plastic?"
EcoY: "Yep, and they go down your drain, don't get disolved by our water systems and flow into the oceans for fish to swallow. The fish swallow the plastic bits. It's really terrible actually."
C- "But it's on sale...." (because she's an awesome friend, she forgave me- and bought the soap)

Nurdles are tiny bits of plastic that float around in the ocean. Sadly, our ocean is filled with these bits, from plastic that slowly breaks down into smaller parts (but does NOT decompose or disappear) or from things like the little balls present in handsoap or body wash. The "micro exfoliation beads".

These soap and body wash beads are made of plastic. Therefore, they don't dissolve in water. Instead they go down your drain, through your sceptic system (or municipal/city water treatment system) and spew forth into your rivers and ocean. To swim merrily on their plastic way until a fish eats them. According to research cited by Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us", all sea organisms able will swallow plastic nurdles (p.146). If they lodged in the intestines of the organism the result was terminal. Other times they passed through.

The point of concern was that plastic and how it bioaccumulates in living organisms hasn't been studied well enough as plastic hasn't been around long enough. One thing that was clear: soon we'll all be ingesting these plastic nurdles, from zooplankton all the way up to humans.

Surround those nurdles with synthetic chemical ingredients wrapped in more plastic and you've got bodywash and pump soap.

Sadly, I was addicted to both pump soap (because I thought men would NEVER use a bar to wash their hands... my brother and dad were always pump soap guys) and body wash (because it smelled so pretty).

Then I discovered Birch Bark Soap. (Actually, I just needed to discover yummy smelling, locally made soap). Sherrie at Birch Bark Soap, uses only natural essential oils, olive oil (no palm oil!) and her soap smells amazing, lathers beautifully and doesn't leave a residue. We order in bulk so that the soap is cheaper AND we place our soap in a jam jar with small ocean shore pebbles leftover from our wedding ceremony (long story). This way our soap lasts weeks per bar.

Soap ends that get tricky to lather or handle go in the kitchen and become our "kitchen soap". And wouldn't you know, Andrew's mother taught him to wash his hands with whatever soap was available. So no pump soap does not equal no washed hands. (Ok, my brother and dad aren't disgusting, but they seem to have their quirks).

If you're a pumpsoap/body wash kinda person, just know that making the switch to bar soap is totally doable, relatively inexpensive and can have equally yummy smelling results!

Going Green...Facebook Style!

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Depending on where you live, sometimes the best green community you can find will be online. Yes, it is all too easy to waste time reading tweets and status updates. But if you live in a green desert (such as *cough, cough* Mississippi), sometimes tools like Facebook are the most effective community to be found. On Facebook I can ask for advice or read statuses and messages to discover:

Wordless Wednesday - No Coat Required - With Linky!

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