Optimum Health

You Grow Girl had this to to say about camping-   Camping is a reminder of how easy we have it, a demonstration in the excesses in our modern lives that we can probably do without. I learned that baking soda really is the miracle powder. You can use it to scrub dishes, wash hair, brush teeth, and remedy bee stings. It really doesn’t taste that bad when used as toothpaste. Check out here gardening blog, it is delightful.

I grew up using baking soda to brush my teeth with.  I have been using it to clean with now for 30 years.  She’s right, it is great for lots of things!  My favorite use for it is an exfoliatant; it is a fruit acid.  I use it in my skin cleanser that I make myself using honey, baking soda, almond oil, rose oil, a few drops of Dr. Bonners, and lavender oil. Mixed with fresh lemon juice it will fade brown spots on your face (hydroquinone is soo toxic!).  I have had fifty dollar facials that did not work as well as these simple, non-toxic recipes!  I quit using Retin-a and glycolic about 6 years ago, and do not miss them at all.  And my skin still looks amazing for 55! 

I grew up camping in central Florida 3 months out of the year, every year from age 5 until I was 20.  We started out camping at Juniper State Parks for a few weeks at a time.  Then after that we camped on the banks of the Okeechobee from the time school got out until it started again in early September.  We used no running water, no electric, no TV, no radios.  Primitive camping in a tent. 

I have always been an environmentalist, but last year I was finally able to begin growing veggies and fruit, begin using  greywater for all my flowers, built the rain barrels, work in the yard more.  My youngest child turned 18, as I nudged him out on his own, I began having way more time to do all this. But as I get more radical (doesn’t feel radical to me, but I guess it is by the raised eyebrows I see!) about conserving it strikes me that growing up the way I did prepared me to see these changes as, not inconvenient, but deeply satisfying. 

Us kids learned how to cook bread over coals, how to dinner, how to brush your teeth with just 8 ounces of water, how quickly to yank the oars in when alligator scraped the bottom of the boat, how to take off all day alone in a john boat and always find our way back, how to avoid snakes.  For years our toilet was a shovel and a roll of toilet paper. A bath was plunging into the creek no matter what the temperature, and watching the red eyes of the gators on the other side of the creek, about 50 feet away.  We learned how to never be bored, same as at home. We had no TV at home either, so we didn’t miss it a bit.  I fact, even at home we lived in the woods.  Our homes, at my grandparents and our parents, were in subdivisions, but were surrounded by miles of woods (this was southern Florida in the fifties and early sixties), huge Norfolk pines to play under and build forts, oak trees to climb and swing in, a citrus grove to play in.  We would eat oranges all day and not even go home til dinner..

I love living more primitively.  We all need to be acutely aware where our resources come from, how fragile it all is, what damage we are causing with our greed. 

Next time, hang the clothes on the line. Consider a sawdust toilet, Install a bidet, stop using all that toilet paper. Brush your teeth with one cup of water. Use the dish water that has nontoxic soap in it on the flower beds. Xeroscape.  Dust off that bicycle.  Get a Kleen Kanteen.  Route your shower water outside to the trees or non-edible shrubs.  Better yet, yank those azaleas and put in berries!

Consider going camping just for the weekend, it will open your eyes to how wasteful we can be when we have all the amenities.

I had a long debate yesterday about plastics.  He is selling biodegradable car litter bags.  He says they break down in 3 or 4 years in the landfill.  I fell like we should avoid using plastics at all.  My stance is that I buy nothing new that is plastic if I can help it.  I have plastic items, like the shower curtain, but it is 16 years old, is no longer bleeding off toxins.  When or if I need to replace it I will buy a hemp one.  I do not use plastic to store food in, I do not cook in the microwave except in glass, I do not have carpet (polyester is plastic!), I use, at the most, one trash bag a week, sometimes not even that; I compost all paper, food scraps, any food containers.  I take bags I made from used clothing to shop with.  I have muslin bags for produce or bulk items.  I use no polyester clothing, only hemp, cotton, silk.

I think the answer is not to use recycled bags for a litter bags. I purchased a car litter container 16 years ago and still use it.  Buying biodegradable plastic is better than buying the other choices, but not buying any is better!!  The only reason that I use a trash can liner is that I am required to have it for the trash service to pick it up.  But there is very little I have to throw away.  Many times I have NO TRASH to take to the curb for the whole week!  And I use recyclable bags-  Bio-Bags.  They are available online or in most health food stores.

My friend says that most people are not going to use or buy a cloth litter bag for the car. I would rather do everything I possibly can to show and educate people on how to do without disposable anything, as much as possible.  The above post about the ice shelf melting should motivate you!

Some other products that will help you avoid disposables;

Wrap-N-Mat®

Kleen Kanteen

Another great post from No Impact Man

On Monday, the Associated Press released a report on the discovery of trace amounts of various types of pharmaceuticals in drinking water around the country.

I got invited to discuss the subject on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show (go here if you’d like to listen). The conversation quickly turned to bottled water as a possible solution, which it is not.

Here’s why bottled water doesn’t help, according to Food and Water Watch:

• 40% of the bottled water sold in the United States is tap water anyway.
• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires hundreds of tests each month on municipal water supplies, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates bottled water, requires only one test a week on bottled water.
• Only 40% of bottled water–that which is sold across state lines–is regulated by the FDA in the first place.
• Plastic bottles in the United States require some 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture each year–enough to power 100,000 cars.
• 86% of plastic bottles in the United States never get recycled.
• Tap water costs about a penny a gallon and bottled waters costs up to $10 a gallon.
• Chemicals that leach from plastic water bottles may affect our health.
• If people abandon the use of municipal drinking water, then there will be no political will to ensure that we invest the necessary resources in the water infrastructure.
• The United States has some of the best drinking water in the world and we must keep it that way.

The real answer, at least for me, is to:

• Continue drinking tap water. You can contact your local water utility to ask for a copy of your area’s Annual Water Quality Report (the EPA keeps many of them here).
• Choose a filter, if necessary, with the help of these Food and Water Watch guidelines.
• Most importantly, ask Congress to provide the funds to keep our water safe.
• Support Food and Water Watch’s campaign to create a national Clean Water Trust Fund (similar to the trust fund used to pay for our highways) by clicking here.

Read Food and Water Watch’s new report on bottled water here.

Read their argument for a Clean Water Trust Fund here.

Image courtesy of Food and Water Watch.

42 ways to not make trash

In the last, for a while, of the LV GRN posts about how to bring No Impact measures to your own life, I’ve decided to list 42 ways we adopted to avoid making trash. If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll have seen these before. But I thought the newer readers might like to take a look. The list is in no particular order:

1. No soda in cans (which means we’re probably less likely to get cancer from aspartame).
2. No water in plastic bottles (which means we get to keep our endocrines undisrupted).
3. No coffee in disposable cups (which means we don’t suffer from the morning sluggishness that comes from overnight caffeine withdrawal).
4. No throwaway plastic razors and blade cartridges (I’m staging the straightedge razor comeback).
5. Using non-disposable feminine-hygiene products that aren’t bad for women and are good for the planet.
6. No Indian food in throwaway takeout tubs.
7. No Italian food in plastic throwaway tubs.
8. No Chinese food in plastic throwaway tubs.
9. Taking our own reusable containers to takeout joints (except that now we’re eating local so this tip is out for us).
10. Admitting that we sometimes miss Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.
11. Hopping on the scale and celebrating the loss of my 20-pound spare tire since I stopped eating bucketsful of Indian, Italian and Chinese takeout.
12. Buying milk in returnable, reusable glass bottles.
13. Shopping for honey and pickled veggies and other goods in jars only from merchants who will take back the jars and reuse them.
14. Returning egg and berry cartons to the vendors at the farmers’ market for reuse.
15. Using neither paper nor plastic bags and bringing our own reusable bags when grocery shopping.
16. Canceling our magazine and newspaper subscriptions and reading online.
17. Putting an end to the junk mail tree killing.
18. Carrying my ultra-cool reusable cup and water bottle (which is a glass jar I diverted from the landfill and got for free).
19. Carrying reusable cloths for everything from blowing my nose to drying my hands to wrapping up a purchased bagel.
20. Wiping my hands on my pants instead of using a paper towel when I forget my cloth.
21. Politely asking restaurant servers to take away paper and plastic napkins, placemats, straws, cups and single-serving containers.
22. Explaining to servers with a big smile that I am on a make-no-garbage kick.
23. Leaving servers a big tip for dealing with my obsessive-compulsive, make-no-garbage nonsense, since they can’t take the big smile to the bank.
24. Pretending McDonalds and Burger King and all their paper and plastic wrappers just don’t exist.
25. Buying no candy bars, gum, lollypops or ice cream (not even Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter cup) that is individually packaged.
26. Making my own household cleaners to avoid all the throwaway plastic bottles.
27. Using baking soda from a recyclable container to brush my teeth.
28. Using baking soda for a deodorant to avoid the plastic containers that deodorant typically comes in (cheap and works well).
29. Using baking soda for shampoo to avoid plastic shampoo bottles.
30. Using the plastic bags that other people’s newspapers are delivered in to pick up Frankie the dog’s poop.
31. Keeping a worm bin to compost our food scraps into nourishment that can be returned to the earth instead of toxins that seep from the landfills.
32. Switching to real—meaning cloth—diapers which Isabella, before she was potty-trained, liked much better.
33. Not buying anything disposable.
34. Not buying anything in packaging (and count the money we save because that means pretty much buy nothing unless it’s second hand).
35. Shopping for food only from the bulk bins and from the local farmer’s market where food is unpackaged and fresh.
36. Forgetting about prepackaged, processed food of any description.
37. Being happy that the result is that we get to eat food instead of chemicals.
38. Giving our second-hand clothes away to Housing Works or other charities.
39. Offering products we no longer need on Freecycle instead of throwing them away.
40. Collecting used paper from other people’s trash and using the other side.
41. Using old clothes for rags around the apartment instead of paper towels.
42. Talking with humor about what we’re doing because making a little less trash is a concrete first step everyone can take that leads to more and more environmental consciousness.

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Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man at 03:00 AM in Green living, Living Green, Waste not, want not | Permalink | Comments (43) | TrackBack (0)

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