February, 2010

EcoFacts — 6 Comments
26
Feb 10

Food waste and sinks

Food scraps make up about 13% of our total municipal solid waste, an amount similar to the yard waste we generate here in the U.S. (The two make up about a quarter of the total waste stream – what a lovely use of the word “stream”….) Most of it goes to landfills, where the anerobic (lacking oxygen) environment generates methane, one of the worst contributors to climate change. Also, food and yard waste must be carried by those gas guzzling garbage trucks to the landfills, many trucks, making many trips.

Close to half of all U.S. households have garbage disposals, which grind up food scraps and send them, through municipal sewage systems to wastewater treatment plants. If you have found yourself asking which is better, tossing the peelings, etc. in the garbage or using the garbage disposal in your sink, you may find your answer here. The best solution is neither, and certainly less convenient. It is composting.

Garbage disposals use power (not much) and water (est. at 700 gallons /year), and the resultant sludge must be handled by the wastewater treatment plants. Some handle it well, turning it into fertilizer or burning it for energy. Some do not handle it well. New York City banned the use of garbage disposal units from the 70’s to the 90’s for this reason. You can
call your local waste or water treatment facility to get a local answer.

Composting turns those food scraps into more food for living things, lessens the landfill load, lightens the carbon footprint. San Francisco has a city wide program to collect food waste from residences and businesses (with trucks run on alternative fuels)). Boulder and a few other places are beginning city-wide composting. For the rest of us, we can learn to do it for ourselves, clearly not easy for apartment dwellers, or try to encourage our local governments to help us.

http://sunsetscavenger.com/residentialServices.htm
www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/organics/food/fd-basic.htm

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Barbara Hirsch, recording engineer, eco-person

“Unless someone like you cares a whole lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

– The Lorax, Children’s book by Dr. Seuss

EcoFacts — 16 Comments
18
Feb 10

Bleach – fresh? clean?

Perhaps you have wondered (I certainly have), what the deal is with bleach – does it pose a danger to the environment, is it okay to use? We’re talking household bleach, usually with the name Clorox on the bottle, virtually always seen as a gallon jug, not a quart or pint. This stuff is used in large quantities because people like things to be disinfected and WHITE!

Household liquid bleach is water and about 5% sodium hypochlorite, the powdered stuff, like Comet, is calcium hypochlorite, the gas, produced for industrial uses or resulting from mixing bleach and other chemicals, is chlorine. Household bleach is dangerous when mixed with ammonia, acids, and many other ingredients in cleaning products, producing toxic chlorine gas or volatile organic compounds. It should also be highly diluted for cleaning and disinfecting, e.g. 1 part bleach to 50 parts water, and used in a well-ventilated area. Sodium hypochlorite mostly breaks down in the environment. It can be used for emergency water purification for drinking (a drop or a few per quart).

Industrial chlorine use is a whole other story. Much of it is used in the pvc (polyvinyl chloride) plastics industry, pesticides, paper and textiles and others. Organochlorines are the chemicals produced with chlorine and are bioaccumulative and not friendly to living creatures. DDT, outlawed in most countries, is one of them.

So, while bleach can be a useful thing to have in the home and used sparingly, it is not a very friendly substance, especially when compared to alternatives such as “oxygen” bleach (hydrogen peroxide, a stronger solution than the stuff in the brown bottles), which works well as a whitener and clothes will last longer. Others: lemon juice and peroxide mixed together, baking soda is a good powder bleach alternative for scrubbing, vinegar cleans and disinfects (kills most bacteria mold and germs) as does borax, and tea tree oil.
And anyway, why does everything have to be so WHITE!

http://www.epa.gov/chemfact/f_chlori.txt
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=517
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/bleach.asp
http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2009/07/22/eco-friendly-alternatives-to-bleach/

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Barbara Hirsch, recording engineer, eco-person

“Unless someone like you cares a whole lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

– The Lorax, Children’s book by Dr. Seuss

EcoFacts — 2 Comments
12
Feb 10

Not Fresh, Not clean, part 2

Last week two readers replied, questioning the suggestion of buying Simple Green. It turns out that there is a chemical, 2-butoxyethanol, in this product that is considered toxic by some agencies. Of course this information can not be found on the bottles or even at their website, thus raising the important, much bigger, question of what is actually in all of those things we buy, that do not have ingredients listed.

Ecofact V.1 n.2 from 4 years ago stated this: For a Bill Moyers report on PBS, his blood and urine were tested and analyzed. They found traces of 84 industrial chemicals, including DDT, nearly 30 years after its use was banned.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has measured 212 chemicals in people’s blood and urine, 75 of which have not been measured before in the U.S. population, including acrylamide, arsenic, environmental phenols, including bisphenol A and triclosan, and perchlorate.

And this, from the Environmental Protection Agency:
“Of the 3,000 chemicals that the US imports or produces at more than 1 million lbs/yr, a new EPA analysis finds that 43% of these high production volume chemicals have no testing data on basic toxicity and only seven percent have a full set of basic test data. This lack of test data compromises the public’s right to know about the chemicals that are found in their environment, their homes, their workplace, and the products that they buy. Industry must do more to ensure that basic information is available on every high-production chemical they
manufacture.”

Yes they do, and while they are working on that, they might begin to question the very nature of their products.

http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/
http://www.epa.gov/HPV/pubs/general/hazchem.htm
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/new-horizons-in-biomonitoring

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Barbara Hirsch, recording engineer, eco-person

“Unless someone like you cares a whole lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

– The Lorax, Children’s book by Dr. Seuss

EcoFacts — 1 Comment
5
Feb 10

Fresh and Clean, part 5

The cleaning aisle in the grocery store offers a mind boggling array of products, many of which have ingredients that are petroleum based, synthetic, full of faux-fresh fragrances, unhealthy for you and our environment. Fortunately, one can get healthier household cleaners now in grocery stores, even if you don’t go to alternative health oriented stores. Companies like Clorox are picking up on consumer preferences for natural, biodegradable products. They have their “Green Works” line (although they are still selling all of their other more toxic ones.) Simple Green makes biodegradable solutions for all kinds of uses, including industrial. Lots of eco friendly brands make citrus based spray cleaners and solvents which work well to lift off dirt and grease. These make up a tiny percentage of all that line those shelves, but growing.

Have one of these, and a few other simple ingredients in your arsenal against dirt and germs and you can be all set. White vinegar disinfects, deodorizes, cuts grease, mineral deposits and soap scum, can be used for wood floors, windows, drains, etc. Baking soda and Borax are both alkaline and have similar uses as deodorizers, water softening wash improvers, and as scouring agents, great for scuff marks and general cleaning. Use baking soda in the kitchen (since it is edible, and great for teeth cleaning too!) e.g. for oven or pot cleaning. Borax also keeps ants and insects away, and is a fungicide. New bleach alternatives are hydrogen peroxide based (stronger than the stuff in the brown bottles). Recipes for effective cleaning also contain lemon juice and salt.

For those who aren’t used to using these things, follow the links below for some detailed cheap and friendly cleaning solutions, fewer smells, a truly fresher and healthier home.

http://www.vinegartips.com/scripts/pageViewSec.asp?id=7
http://www.armhammer.com/myhome/
http://www.bellybytes.com/articles/bakingsoda.shtml
http://www.grist.org/article/possessions-cleaning/
http://greenlivingideas.com/topics/eco-home-living/housecleaning/natural-cleaning-recipes

^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~
Barbara Hirsch, recording engineer, eco-person

“Unless someone like you cares a whole lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

– The Lorax, Children’s book by Dr. Seuss