Archive for April, 2009

Green Washing Machines

The way you wash your clothes could have a big effect on the environment.  There's a lot of power and water used in doing the laundry, but the amount you absolutely have to use can be reduced.  You don't have to go back to a washboard and bucket, either.  There are green washing machines out there that use less water, get clothes cleaner, do less damage, and use less power to do it, too.  Which kind of washing machine is the greenest?  Let's take a look at the options. Wringer machines and twin tub machines tend to be pretty inefficient, plus they're hard to find.  That means that top loaders and front loaders are the big contenders.  The biggest factor in whether or not a machine is truly green is how much water is used and how much energy is required.  Front loaders tend to win out in both cases, using about ten gallons of water in a full load versus a top loader's forty gallons. Most of the energy used by the machine is used heating the water.  More water needs more power to heat it.  ...

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Sunscreen, The Real Effects on Your Body - Protection or Poison?

Recent raised awareness of the dangers of skin cancer has also seen an equally rapid rise in the use of sunscreen. We’re warned of the dangers of exposure to the sun without adequate layers of sunscreen on exposed skin. Melanoma is a serious skin cancer and it affects tens of thousands of people each year. To protect us against the risk of skin cancer, we’re taught to use lots of sunscreen to help block out damaging rays from the sun. So while we’re all using more and more sunscreen, the incidence of skin cancer is still rising. When you’ve spent an entire day covered in sunscreen, your first impulse is to wash it off at the end of the day. It’s spent all day being absorbed into your skin and it finishes being flushed down the drain and sent out into our water system. Unfortunately, the very product we use to protect us might also be poisoning our environment and ourselves at the same time. The list of ingredients in many sunscreen products is a little scary when you consider the chemical compounds we’re smearing onto our skins in an attempt to avoid skin ...

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Natural Cleaning Products

The majorities of the cleaning products we use are heavy on caustic and toxic chemicals, aren't great for our health, and do some serious damage to the environment.  It's time to say no to these unnecessarily harsh products, and to wearing gloves and worrying about ventilation while we clean.  Until you've tried an ecologically friendly equivalent product, don't buy another conventional type of cleaner.  You'll be surprised at what green cleaners can do, and how well they work. If more of us are willing to do this, we'll have cleaner water.  Almost seventy percent of US waterways contain high concentrations of detergents, and those detergents come from our household cleaning.  These products are also responsible for a tenth of children's toxic exposures.  If you don't have them in the house, there's a lot less reason to be worried about little ones getting into places where they shouldn't be. You can smell the difference when you use natural cleaning products, too.  There are no eye watering smells to make you light headed.  Most of these cleaners are based on essential oils, which can be strong, but won't give ...

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Stopping Junk Mail

One way to have a positive effect on your environment is to stop your junk mail.  The average adult in the US gets about forty pounds of junk mail every year, and about half of it ends up in the landfill before it's ever opened.  Over a lifetime, you'll get about a thousand pounds of mail you never wanted - a lot more paper than could be produced from a single tree. Plus, the production of that paper has a large environmental impact from water waste, pollution, and heavy metals in the inks.  Even using recycled paper requires a lot of resources to be used to send us mail that we don't want!  Some companies have pledged not to send catalogs to customers who don't want them, but most don't, leaving it up to the consumer to do something about the junk mail flood.  Here are some options to get rid of your junk mail. The people at 41pounds.org say they can stop up to ninety-five percent of junk mail and unwanted catalogs.  They ...

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Green Up Your Morning Routine

Forget about your common daily routine when it comes to getting up in the morning. Forget about your technological ways, and try something new. Consider preparing yourself a bath with botanicals harvested. Consider the amount of water you waste when taking long showers. Try cutting down on your water usage, or switch to baths. Another option is to shower with a spouse. Turn off your shower when shaving, or washing. Only use the water when necessary. A five minute shower uses a third the amount of waster compared to a full bath. Check your faucets and shower heads for leaks. Stopping such leaks is a great way to make a greener home. Invest in an aerator for all your faucets is a great way to reduce unnecessary water usage. Low-flow shower heads and efficient water heaters are likely to make a great difference on your water consumption. The next time you need new shower curtains, stay away from vinyl. This material is extremely harmful to the environment, releasing powerful dioxins during it's use, as well as the manufacturing and disposing process. Dioxins make you more prone to developing serious diseases such as cancer. Stop ...

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