I finally changed my shower curtain liner, and finally for the better of the Earth. For the near-decade I have lived in apartments, I have used cheap vinyl liners behind my shower curtain. For the last nearly four years, we have done so for two bathrooms.
We change our shower curtains several times a year due to the speckly, ugly mildew and hard water stains that form. That means that we annually chuck our petroleum-derived phthalate-laced toxic vinyl plastic into the landfill. So do many of you, I have no doubt.
Have you thought about your shower curtain? What is it made from? What is the liner made from? Are you able to wash yours in the washing machine? Do you simply throw it out?
I have pondered this for a couple years and finally changed to a better, more sustainable, washable option.
What it is:
100% Polyester (I know, not perfect)
washable – Yay!
reusable for years – Yay!
a few dollars more than the plastic vinyl type, but a happy investment
What it is not:
vinyl / PVC
American-made
natural fiber
recycled material – they make these though
disposable – Yay!
smelly weirdness like new toxic vinyl curtains – Yay!
These are trade-offs I can happily take. Apparently, I just realized with some research, I am not the only one looking for a happy trade-off: Green LA Girl is going anti-vinyl curtain too and found a… nutty… one!
Actually, the most informed, best article and review I’ve found on shower curtain options, your personal health, and a healthy environment is from The Daily Green. Really, Deirdre Dolan did a fantastic job researching, trying, and sharing some great info.
What would it take for you to change your shower curtain? Do you have any other suggestions you would like to share?
Between leading a World Wide Photo Walk and eagerly waiting to find out if my Beginner Darkroom class starts Monday, I cannot help but ponder how environmentally-friendly photography is. I particularly wonder about my own love affair with 35mm photography.
I often have digital photography enthusiast jab at me for my seemingly hypocritical juxtaposition as a naturalist and environmentalist with my 35mm photography addiction. The petroleum and chemicals involved in film and developing, the waste of hundreds of photos taken for me to find the handful of prized images worthy of framing… blah blah, I know. I have not been heckled yet for being a vegetarian 35mm amateur (film also uses gelatin), but I am obviously aware, so do not bother with that argument.
I guess this is where I choose the “Grounded” side of (G)G. Photography is something I love, and the quality and experience of 35mm is not something I am willing to compromise. I may in time get a quality digital camera as a supplement to my photography experience, but not yet.
I would love any addition and elaboration on any side of this argument. The same could be done for another love of mine: letter writing. The waste and energy associated with writing letters and sending cards could make a strong argument for email and ecards being a sound environmental choice, but to me, that completely compromises the experience of personal communication.
Am I going about this all wrong? Do you have questions or answers of your own? I would love a well-rounded debate on the merits of each side.
At the beginning of next week, I should be posting a contest to win a $50 Earth Fare gift card! Yay! Who doesn’t adore Earth Fare’s delectable, healthy, conscientious grocer selection and body care?! I know I have been thrilled to familiarize myself with Earth Fare! So keep an eye out for that NEXT WEEK!
Until then, for today (Friday, 26 June 2009), you can print out this coupon to visit your local Earth Fare and receive a FREE PRE-MADE DELI SANDWICH! I personally am excited for the coupon, so feel free to bump into me at Earth Fare!
Also, I attended the third annual Mountain Green Conference at Warren Wilson College ~ and I have a true plethora of information to share. From sealing your thermal envelope of your house, reducing air leaks and drafts, greener automechanics, building science, owls, local foods, beekeeping, the groundbreaking historic measures of WWC, NASCAR, and some generally nifty (albeit common sense) knowledge, posts are coming!
Bonus: posts of my Pisgah National Forest retreat will be coming too!
Lastly, HUGELY, I will spend part of this weekend and next week doing a MASSIVE overhaul of this website layout. I have a lot of issues with the functionality and aesthetics of this theme, so I will be designing a CSS to make it better suited for (g)g and my purposes. So get excited about that ~ I am! This is LONG overdue change!
Shaving is another territory where our daily actions can have an immediate and huge impact on the environment. Such a small choice, you would think, but consider all the people using razors and shaving products daily. What if everyone used plastic disposable daisy razors and cheap, canned foam?
I’ll keep this easy… check out the Tiny Choices post. Check out Allie’s post. These two will be super comprehensive.
My vote? I am a HUGE fan of Recycline’s Preserve razors. My sister bought me a pack so we could get off our Gillette Sensor addiction. I relate to Tiny Choices and her Gillette:
I have a Gillette Sensor lady’s razor and I dare say I’ve had it since the early 1990s – it’s been with me through high school and college, for sure, and ever since then. It’s served me well, and more so because it isn’t a disposable (the USEPA estimates that 2 billion disposable razors end up in landfills every year).
But Preserve has a great product, made of recycled plastic. The double razor replacement heads can be a little rough, and you will notice the difference in quality if you had been using Gillette. Spring and get the triple blade replacement heads. You’ll totally dig them.
The list of companies claiming natural and green efforts grows every day, and often, unfortunately, these companies have little to offer. Two national companies, however, showing progress in their sustainability practices are Reynolds and Kerr Drug.
What do these two companies have to offer?
Reynolds finally caught on to recycled foil. For an Earth Day promotion, they gave away coupons for a free roll of their 100% recycled aluminum foil. I am partly excited by this because I do think Reynolds foil is often better quality than many off-brand foils. Plus, Aluminum, which can be recycled countless times, is a great way to practice your Rs. When you finish with using foil, you can recycle it or reuse it yourself. No matter what, make sure you clean off the foil. Any foil with residual grease and oil cannot be used by recycling facilities, and you certainly do not want to reuse sticky foil.
Kerr Drug, which I never thought I would be giving thumbs-up, sent a “Naturally Kerr” flier in the mail this week. Claiming to carry “over 3,000 natural and organic products for a healthy lifestyle”, I opened the paper and gave it a look.
Honestly, I was thrilled to see how many legit products they stock. From organic groceries such as sugar, Late July brand crackers, FEED granola, JASON and Avalon Organics toiletries, natracare tampons and organic cotton pads, Seventh Generation products, Amy’s Organics, gluten-free foods, vegan foods, and even Pirate’s Booty snacks (I wonder if they carry Tings), Naturally Kerr by Kerr Drug is setting a standard for what a chain pharmacy/store can provide for their communities. Who knows where this chain can go and where they are headed!
If you have not noticed, I rarely give chains a shout-out, so this post is a big deal for me. Naturally Kerr, which is located at Harvest Plaza, 9650 Strickland Road, Suite 105, Raleigh, and 1124 Patton Ave. in Asheville, even had an Earth Day celebration today. They gave away free reusable tote bags filled with natural and organic goodies. The store also had drawings for a free mountain bike, as well as gift certificates to my absolute favorite Raleigh restaurant Irregardless Cafe and Flying Biscuit (never been). I love the local aspect of this.
So, Kerr and Reynolds, cheers. Keep up the amazing progress and set even higher standards. Ready, set, go!
People who care for the natural environment tend to embrace or reject many labels. Greenies. Environmentalists. Conservationists. Conservatives. Liberals. Hunters. Vegetarians. Gas guzzler. Clean coal. Wasteful. Shop-a-holic. Hybrid. Republicans. Just kidding about that last one, by the way, and feeding on the stereotype of a Treehugger.
Environmentalists are blamed by some for hating. A lot.
Seriously, Google “Environmentalists hate”, which I did to see what kinds of words would pop up. ”Solar”, “Grass”, ”America”, “blacks”, “minorities”, “the poor”, and “humans” all make the list of who and what environmentalists seek to destroy.
Googling “anti-green” yielded interesting results, too. As it turns out, a slew of webpages devoted either to railing the environmental movement due to people feeling annoyed by “greenie” superiority complexes or to proving the environmental movement theories as we know it to be wrong. A couple were just humor blogs… and some, I frankly could not tell how serious they were. Just look here, here, here and here for a few examples of these sites.
My biggest issue, however, are those that are sustainability and conservation-minded basing each other. The ends do not justify the means for many, and the semantics over how to achieve a healthy ecosystem create confusion, misunderstandings, and blatant failure of communication.
After all, when is the last time you heard a “vegetarian” speak nicely of a “hunter”, or vice versa?
I attended the Dixie Deer Classic ~ a hunting type of convention at the N.C. State Fairgrounds in Raleigh a couple weekends ago. I brought a video camera because I wanted to ask some hunters to share their visions of conservation and environmentalism for my blog.
I realized, however, being approached by a vegetarian “greenie” with a video camera may be a little threatening and questionable. So instead, I simply opted for conversation.
As it turns out, I spoke at great length with the Wake County Wildlife Club, and learned a lot. I will be sharing, shortly, more regarding that conversation, some of the inspirations I gained from that weekend, and questions that arose for me.
Thus, I bring you a Green Grounded featurette ~ “Face of Sustainability”. Starting this week, I will occasionally chronicle one person, one every day normal person, who in lengths great, small, or controversial, are environmentalists.
I look forward to bringing you this segment, and if you are in the Asheville or Raleigh area and would like to share your views, feel free to contact me.
Granted, I assumed when The Real Yellow Pages publicized their going green campaign last year, they would have an incredibly difficult time abiding by their attempt to reduce waste.
Imagine my disappointment when Marc and I walked up our stairs this weekend to find a plastic bag with The Real Yellow Pages sitting on our doormat. So much for accuracy in the going green campaign.
I revisited the YellowPagesGoesGreen.org website to see what I could find out. As it turns out, this page isn’t sponsored, operated, managed, or even affiliated with The Real Yellow Pages at all. This site was created by a Missouri student, overwhelmed by his and his neighbors own piles of unsolicited phonebooks, who decided to create a site to educate the general public about the need to tell publishers to stop sending them.
Just above the fold of the page, the website says “OPT OUT and Stop the Delivery of Unsolicited Telephone Books” and below that, “We Will Notify the Publishers to Stop Sending Books”.
How exactly they “notify” the publishers, I cannot tell you. That, actually, is explained as that the website group will send a list of names of people who do not want to receive the phone books anymore.
Really, however, the telephone book companies rely on printing massive amounts in order to ask advertisers to spend what they do on a paper ad. ”Our telephone books reach X amount of households annually” sounds much better when pitching to get ad money than “well, we print a ton of books, most of which end up in dumpsters”.
So, if you go to YellowPagesGoesGreen.org, realize you are not ACTUALLY opting-out of anything, but think of it more as signing a petition that says you support an uncluttered, untrashed doorstep at your home.
Rethink what to do when you run out of toothpaste.
Better toothpaste habits, of course, start with which toothpaste you buy.
I have used Colgate Total for years because, frankly, it is the only toothpaste I had ever used that made my teeth feel beautifully clean. In seeking an animal-cruelty-free toothpaste over the years, I have dabbled with purchasing a major-label natural brand toothpaste, but felt my teeth were dirty after using it. At least Colgate made my smile feel pretty and clean! So I threw the natural brand away, and disgusted with that experience and the price of other more natural brands, stuck with my standby.
Years ago, however, I got a tiny free sample of JASON seasalt toothpaste. While I was running out of Colgate and fretting over replacing it, I remembered that sample tube and how much I liked it. The taste was refreshing without being artificial. My teeth felt dazzling. It was great, just more expensive than my Costco three-jumbo-sized-tubes-for-six-dollars Colgate.
As I have preached before, every dollar you spend of your hard-earned money sends a message of what is important to you. Consequently, I sucked it up, drove to my health store, which, during the move, turned from Wholefoods to Earthfare, and bought a substantial tube of the JASON sea salt toothpaste. Six dollars.
I feel great about the purchase though. My teeth are sparkling and smooth, the essential oils in the toothpaste leave my mouth minty-chilled, the product is cruelty-free, and I have fewer scary ingredients entering my body.
When I run out again, I am going to consider a new approach: making my own toothpaste. An Asheville friend, JuneAllison, tweeted me her recipe after I posted on twitter how much I liked my seasalt toothpaste.
Making your own toothpaste, simple and quick, not only allows you to know exactly what you are cleaning your teeth, tongue, and gums with, but it also ends your reliance on those pesky tubes that have no where to live except for in the ground for all eternity.
Here’s the recipe, so if you run out of toothpaste before I do, feel free to make it and let me know what you think.
2 parts baking soda to 1 part salt. we typically add a crushed vitamin C and a few drops of goldenseal tincture.
I follow up the first Tasty Tuesday post with a Wet Wednesday: a recap of Asheville’s Twestival and pledge to help more people have access to clean drinking water.
If you do not know what Twitter or Twestival is or how important Charity: Water is, check out my previous post here.
Also, however, I found a GREAT post today on The Good Human regarding the greenwash known as “Fiji” bottled water. All bottled water is, as far as I am concerned, evil. To present your bottled water company, however, in a masquerade of “every drop is green”, you better be able to deliver. As we find out, “Fiji” water may be the most atrocious of bottled-water companies. The Good Human says
So when they say that “Every drop is green”, nothing could be further from the truth. To their credit, they are doing several things to try to be more environmentally friendly, but marketing water sold in a plastic bottle as “green” is definitely not one of them. Add in the fact that a study by the Environmental Working Group found that bottled water had the same amount or more of chemical contaminants than tap water does, and you can really see the greenwashing in full effect. I wish bottled water companies would just come out and say
Get everything you can out of the toilettries you buy prepackaged.
Instead of always buying travel-sized toilettries for your convenience, just get a couple (preferrably ones you already have), and always refill them with the goods from your regular-sized shampoo, conditioner, lotion, face soap bottles. Reusing those is better than constantly throwing tiny bottles in the recycling bin (or worse – gasp! – trash!!). A big no-brainer that’s easy to overlook. Just remember to write what’s in each bottle with a sharpie so you don’t forget which is shampoo and which is facial soap!
And toothpaste, for instance. In fact, After seeing how long I fought with a flattened out tube of Colgate Total toothpaste last month, this article topic came to me. Despising that when I finish using a tube of toothpaste that a chunk of aluminum and plastic ends up in a landfill, I was able to continue covering my toothbrush head with minty-fresh paste for two solid weeks AFTER the tube seemed empty.
Just use a little ol’ fashioned “elbow-grease”, and a credit card, smoothing all of the remaining paste from the end of the tube to the tip. Then, clip the tube and be careful when filling your toothbrush not to distribute the paste back into the tube again. Voila!
Conserving my toothpaste saved me a morsel more of money, and in this economy, any money savers are welcomed. Further, I put off adding to the trash a bit longer.
If you want to go a step further, I have read that some people actually cut open the tube and use their brush to get every last smear of paste for use!
I also did this with a tube of chapstick I had. When I was so close to running out that the dial on the bottom couldn’t push the gloss high enough to actually apply to my lips, I would use my pinky to scoop out a little and apply it myself. I did this for over a week until I had scooped that little plastic cylinder clean.
