It's Not Easy Being Green

It seems that more and more, products are claiming to be "green," but what does that really mean?  A truly "green" product would be durable, repairable, energy efficient, made with recycled materials and eventually recyclable.  It wouldn't create unnecessary waste, either with too much packaging or by a short useful life.  The manufacture, use, disposal, and packaging would have minimal impact on the environment.  If you really want to know how "green" a product is, read the label; but do we really know what "environmentally safe," recyclable" or "non-toxic" mean?

The U.S. FTC & EPA  have given manufacturers guidelines for marketing their green products which can help you make choices that are friendly to the environment.  Firts, you need to determine whether the claims refer to the product, the packaging, or both.  If a label says "recycled," check to see how much of the product is recycled, which should be given as a percentage.

For a product to claim to be "non-toxic," the manufacturer must have reason to believe that no significant risk to the environment or people exists.  Packaging claiming that the product is "earth friendly" or "eco-safe" doesn't really tell the entire story.  All products and packaging have some environmental impact.  These slogans don't give the consumer specific information needed to compare products.  It's easy to look at two products and see which one contains more recycled material, but how do you measure "earth friendliness"?

You must decide for yourself what shade of "green" you are comfortable with.  Do you want to focus your efforts on buying products that are manufactured locally, thus limiting your impact on transportation?  Perhaps you care most about removing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from your life.  If so, plan to do without hair spray and windshield wiper fluid.  Maybe all of the packaging that ends up in landfills drives you crazy and you want to buy products that are minimally packaged.

Each of us has to make our own decisions about how to go "green," but there are many resources to help educate ourselves.  Check out a website called The Rotten Truth to learn some facts about reducing your garbage.  Also, the U.S. Green Building Council has information about environmentally responsible building practices.  Lastly, the FTC has issued Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims "Green Guides".

What Color is Your Car?

Recently my family has been complaining about car sickness due to my lousy driving.  Now that it's been brought to my attention, I realize that I do not accelerate smoothly and I'm hitting the gas pedal way too often.  I thought, perhaps, that I should use cruise control more, but that doesn't really help me in the day-to-day local driving.

Knowing my driving is an issue, I decided to do a bit of research on driving habits in general.  As long as I'm going to make changes, I want to be sure I'm doing all I can to drive green.  Here are some things that we all can do to clean up our driving:

--accelerate gradually, using cruise control where possible

--obey the speed limit

--combine errands into one trip

--don't top off your gas tank

--conversely, don't drive on empty

--don't idle; it's bad for your car and the air around it

--keep your car maintain and inspected on time, paying particular attention to tire pressure

The kind of car you drive does make a difference.  Hybrid technology is continually improving but there are many new models that get fantastic gas mileage now.  It's important to know that the newer your car, the fewer emissions you are emitting, so try to drive your newest auto on poor air quality day.  Because of our proximity to NYC and major highways, and the high population in our area, Morris County's air quality suffers. If you are interested in learning more about NJ air, the State DEP has up-to-date information.

Driving less should be part of our efforts.  Consider carpooling, walking or riding a bike, shopping by phone or on-line, using public transportation and telecommuting. 

REDUCE your WASTE line

I read something the other day that really struck a chord with me, "When you throw something away, it never really goes away, it just leaves your house."  The very best way to slow the landfill crisis is to reduce the amount of stuff we get rid of (called source reduction).  This practice includes purchasing durable, long-lasting goods and seeking products and packaging that are as free of toxins as possible.  Source reduction actually prevents the generation of waste and is the most preferable method of waste management.  It avoids the cost of recycling, municipal composting, landfilling and combustion.  It immeasurably conserves resources and reduces pollution.

But what does that mean to us?  Well, believe it or not, collectively, the tiny efforts we make do have a big impact.  We've already suggested tips on reducing junk mail and using reusable water bottles and by doing just these two things, my recycling bin has gone from heaping to manageable.  It made me wonder how I could further reduce my recycling and garbage amount as well.  I still have a lot of print material to recycle; I have to admit that I'm a magazine junkie.  I've decided to really put myself on a gloss-free diet for the time being.... no more grocery store moments of weakness!  I'm also planning to reduce the number of subscriptions I have and share the issues I do get with friends.  We get two daily newspapers and I'm going to talk my husband into making one of them weekend only.  Gee, maybe I'll finally have time to clean out those closets I've been meaning to get to!  Another item I've been able to reduce from our household is the plastic grocery bag now that, once I empty my reusable bags after a shopping trip, I fold them and put them on top of my purse.  That way I'm sure to take them to the car the next trip out.  Bringing my own bags often generates "green chat" in the grocery line, I like to think I'm being a good influence on other shoppers.  I have been trying different kinds of concentrated, eco-friendly cleaners which really helps in reducing plastic too.  We'll be doing a separate blog entry on that soon.

I also took a hard look at what I was throwing away:  lots of food, napkins, paper towels and tons of plastic packaging.  I was talking to Bonnie who lived overseas.  She said a third of the food bought in the UK ends up being thrown away.  This wasted food is a waste of money and a major contributor to climate change.  To help throw less food away, I'm rethinking the way I cook.  My plan is to cook more AND cook less!  I'll cook more by batch cooking--some meals like chili and soups lend themselves to be frozen and saved for those days when I just don't have the time to make something (and I'd be heading to the take-out section of the grocery, loading up on plastic boxes of prepared items).  Other times, I'll cook less; making just enough so there won't be that extra pork chop or chicken breast that gets shoved back in the fridge and forgotten.  For more ways to reduce your food waste, visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.

Reducing the paper napkins and paper towels was easy.  I already had a pretty nice collection of cloth napkins which I decided to not save for company-only meals.  I've found that if I dry them on a line or rack, I really don't have to iron them!  Microfiber cloths have replaced paper towels for all but the messiest cleanups (like cat hair balls!)  Plastic packaging is the toughest problem.  I'm still trying to find out if newspaper bags can be recycled with the grocery bags.  I'm trying to buy in bulk so I don't have as many shrink wrapped items.

The last suggestion I have for reducing your waste is a concept called "Product Service Systems".  It's a new (at least to me) label for an idea that we're already familiar with where a centrally located product is shared (for free or fee) by many people.  Libraries, public transportation, theaters, zoos and video stores are just some examples of PSS that we use, enabling us to buy fewer things.  In the near future we'll be seeing more and more such as:  Book Mooch (a book swap) and PeerFlix (a movie swap). 

Enable REUSE

When you think about the issue of reuse, most of us already feel comfortable with the concept as it applies to large scale items:  we trade in our cars (and it's common to buy a used car) and we buy used homes.   However, many of the things we throw away also could be used by someone else; especially unwanted clothes, furniture, household appliances & decorative items.  Just some of the possible outlets for such items are Craigslist, freecycle, Habitat for Humanity, as well as resale, consignment and antique shops.  A friend of mine, after moving, didn't want to bother recycling all the moving boxes so she placed a "free moving boxes" ad on Craigslist and a most appreciative, single mom came and picked them up.  Another friend found a gorgeous china cabinet at our local Habitat for Humanity Re-store (102 Iron Mountain Rd., Mine Hill, NJ).

Many of the disposable products do have reusable alternatives.

One way to reuse old sneakers is a great program I just learned about called Reuse-a-Shoe, started by Nike in 1993, where worn-out athletic shoes of any brand are collected, processed and recycled into material used in sports surfaces.  Patagonia is another company that is big on collecting and reusing resources.  Since 1993, they adopted fleece into their produce line made from post consumer recycled plastic soda bottles and now collect their Capilene, Patagonia fleece, Polartec fleece clothing (from any maker) and Patagonia organic cotton t-shirts for recycling.  Sony, Apple, Dell, and HP  also have take-back programs.    Sylvania has a $15 recycling kit that you can order; you can fill it with up to 15 CFLs and drop it off, at no additional charge, at FedEx Kinkos or the post office.  Similarly, Office Depot offers a $5, $10, or $15 box to fill with old electronics that you can return to the store for recycling.

It doesn't stop there!  Most carpeting is a petroleum-based product and carpet recycling can save 700,000 barrels of oil a year and 4.4 TRILLION BTUs.  FLOR is a company that offers really cool carpet squares, some of which have recycled content.  CarpetCycle is a company that will take your old carpet for recycling.  You can drop off your carpet to them (it's in Elizabeth, just past the airport), or for folks within 1 hour of Newark (like us), they offer a removal service.

You probably already know that eyeglasses can be collected and reused for the Give the Gift of Sight organization.  Collection boxes are available at LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Target Optical, BJ's Optical, Sears Optical and Sunglass Hut stores or participating doctor's offices.  Cell Phones can also be reused for charity.  There was a collection box right at the store when I got my new phone.

There is so much more....I could go on and on.  I'm finding that, when I don't know how to dispose of something, I simply do a web search and find all kinds of alternatives.  We can do this!

Don't RECYCLE

Ha!  Got your attention, didn't I?  I think many of us started recycling in earnest in the late '80s after this infamous barge, the Mobro 4000, sailed around the Atlantic with no place to dump New York City's trash.  There was an outcry for curbside recycling and, once established in our community, most of us have dutifully separated out what we could, feeling noble that we are helping save the planet.  

And so we are, if we recycle correctly.  Culling junk mail, newspapers & magazines, gray and brown chipboard, corrugated cardboard and and brown paper bags is a no-brainer.  It's even easier to rinse out the glass food & beverage containers and steel/tin cans to recycle.  But then we have the plastic dilemma.  I can't tell you how many times I've stood over my recycling bin trying to figure out if a #1 or #2 plastic container should be included and then tossed it in anyway.  What's the harm, right?

Wrong, and here's why.  Those #1 & #2 designations are actually inaccurate.  For instance, those #1 berry containers and egg cartons are made of plastic that does not have the same properties as the #1 bottles.  They don't have the same melting point so they can't be used in the molds to make recycled products.  Sure, many of them get sorted out by the machines at the processing plant but if even one sneaks by the entire batch is contaminated and dumped.  If too many of us get lax and dump ineligible items into the recycling bin, our entire town's recycling can get rejected at the next stop.

The more we do at the source (our homes) the better--rinse containers out, peel off the labels, remove and discard all caps and flatten everything (except the glass, of course).  Recycle plastic bottles with pourable mouths only.  Don't recycle berry or egg containers, take-out, store-bought or ready-made containers and no yogurt containers.  "When in doubt, throw it out".

image source:  "Garbage:  Queen's Trashy Tale", The Queens Tribune

Happy New Year!

The holidays were crazy at our house.  I had two weeks of out-of-town company and at one point we had seven extra folks sleeping here!  It was great to see everyone, but I sure am glad to turn the calendar page and start the new year.  If you're like me, you've been thinking about resolutions for 2008.  If you are really like me, your #1 resolution will be to get out and exercise more to counteract December's food excesses!

I guess I don't have to tell you that my real resolution is too try much harder to up my awareness of how I can live a greener lifestyle.  On my walk today, I was appreciating our lovely lakes which add so much to our community even in the dead of winter.  Water conservation and stewardship really should be foremost in our minds.  I was talking to Mara about ways to save water.  She found out that showering accounts for nearly 25% of the total water used in most households.  Using a standard shower head, about 1-2 gallons of water literally go down the drain each minute.  If you reduce your shower time from 10 minutes to 5, you can save more than 4200 gallons of water a year.  You'd also reduce your utility bills because you won't have to heat as much water.  I know that a hot shower is a great way to warm up on these frosty mornings, but a shorter shower would allow you to stay under those cozy blankets longer!  Installing low-flow shower heads and toilets is another way to save.  To make sure you're getting the best product, look for plumbing fixtures with the EPA's water sense label.

Sinks and dishwashers account for another 15% of water use in the average household.  Don't let the water run while brushing your teeth.  Soak your dishes or cookware instead of washing under running water.  I replaced my ancient dishwasher this fall with one that rated high on the Energy Star listing.  It only uses 6 gallons of water per use and doesn't have a heated dry cycle.  It's much more space efficient too so there's extra room for the pots and pans that I used to wash by hand.  The best part is that I hardly have to pre-rinse my dishes at all; just gooey stuff like melted cheese.

Later this year I plan to research outdoor water use and pollution but this is all I can wrap my head around right now!