LILL's LIST

I’ve just been looking at the second annual Climate Counts Report. You can get the short version here or the complete report here. It’s certainly an eye-opener. There’s also a pdf version that you can print out and take along with you when you shop, which I’ve done, because the older I get, the shorter my memory gets.

It’s encouraging to see that so many companies improved their scores, but why in the world are the food service industry big-names, like Darden (Olive Garden and Red Lobster) so far behind the green curve? They rake in billions and can’t clean up their act? Well, the local Red Lobster closed years ago, but there’s still a nearby Olive Garden where people stand in line every day to get a table.  They can count me out until they’re a lot greener.

Also on the Climate Count list in the Internet/Software category, I was happy to see that Google is more than halfway to a perfect score, but what’s up with e-bay and Amazon.com, both with scores of 5 out of 100? That’s just not acceptable for those two giants. Shame on them and they can show some eco-action before I’ll be using them again. Of course, seeing as how I’m one of billions who use them, they’re probably not going to lose any sleep over my defection, but it’s the principle of the thing.

In the Household Products category, Proctor and Gamble got a 69 for their efforts to clean up the planet with their cleaning products and L’Oreal managed to snag a 58 as did Kimberly-Clark. That’s good news. In the Media category, I was surprised to see that General Electric got a 71. I’ll have to look into that further and see why they got such a high rating.

It’s important that we keep up on reports like these that measure the progress – or lack of progress – that companies make toward a sustainable and socially responsible future. I urge you to read the report and check out the Climate Counts blog where the latest climate news is always arriving on the ticker. And don’t forget the Pocket Shopping Guide on the homepage. Don’t leave home without it.

Everyday, it seems that some big company or other announces “the biggest solar/wind power project yet” and everyone oohs and aahs. “We can power the United States with solar panels in the southwestern deserts”, they say, and everyone applauds. And why not? Wouldn’t it be nice to be out from under our dependence on foreign oil and dirty power plants? Well, yes, and no.

While I’m all for using the sun and the wind to produce energy, I’d prefer that it be a little smaller and closer to home, rather than from some huge, major grid project that has my Maine home’s electricity coming from solar panels in Nevada or windmills in the mountains of Vermont. And instead of covering acres of wilderness and mountaintops with solar panels and wind turbines, why can’t we use the rooftops of structures that already exist for solar panels and reclaim the mountaintops Big Coal scraped and scarred for wind turbines?

My idea of a better system for generating power includes more individual control. Allowing big corporations to control the oil supply for decades led to the mess that we’re in now in the Mid East and in the United States. Having a huge grid system to deliver power to each region of the country leaves us vulnerable to equipment failure and weather-related outages. No one owns the sun or the wind and everyone can use solar and wind power, as long as their location will support it.

So, am I saying we should all go out and buy solar panels, climb up on the roof and install them ourselves? Well, it’d be nice if we all could do that, but not all of us are spry enough or good at building things. Some of us can, if we’re able to afford the materials and handy enough with tools to follow directions like these at Your Green Dream, where there are several plans for DIY home solar and wind projects.

For those of us who are hammer and nail challenged, it would be very helpful if there were low-interest loans available for home solar and windpower – and hydro and geothermal also. There are new heat pumps that work even in cold climates and small hydropower generators that are suitable for homes or clusters of homes. How about a planned community – maybe Section 8 or for elderly people – with its own solar power, small wind turbines or hydro-generator?

Thin-film solar panels are competitive in price with metal roofing and there are new, more compact, quieter wind turbines that can be installed on the roof of apartment buildings, schools and factories. Because they’re vertical axis, they don’t pose a hazard to birds or ruin the aesthetics of a building’s roofline. I would think that wind power could be shared by several homes, also. What if developers included the renewable energy source from the beginning of the planning stage and included the cost in the price of the homes? If buyers realized that they’d be saving a bundle on energy costs in future, it could be a strong selling point.

More tax breaks to encourage consumers to use renewable energy, drive more fuel-efficient cars, use public transportation and conserve resources should be part of the next president’s plan to both free us from our dependence on oil and also address global warming and environmental degradation of our soil, water and air. Instead of giving millions to big companies, why don’t we invest money in many smaller projects on rooftops in every city and town? After all, freeing consumers from high energy bills would give them more money to spend and save, which would be good for the economy.

If this post has inspired you or if you already have solar in your home or life, here’s a link to a company that will give you a free t-shirt just for sending them a photo of your solar-ness. They even say that they’ll send you something if you draw them a picture of “an avenging sun god doing battle with an army of winged zebras.” I wonder if they allow stick-figure zebras?

Most of us are feeling the economic pinch of higher prices these days. Rising fuel and heating costs are contributing to higher prices for just about everything. So how can the average family combine cutting back on luxuries with going greener? True, many organic, natural and eco-mindful products cost more than the cheapest alternatives, but that just doesn’t mean that we have to give up and buy generic detergent at the dollar store. It means that we have to be ever more creative, innovative and clever. It also means that we might have to trade time and/or convenience for cost.

For instance, I love 7th Generation products. I’ve used them for years and I know that they work as well or better than their polluting, less ecologically sound counterparts. At my supermarket, they’re usually priced higher than the generic brands, but sometimes only a few cents higher than the big national brands like that detergent that comes in the orange package, for instance. What really helps is their newsletter and the coupons they almost always have on their site.

I signed up for their newsletter a while ago and have enjoyed several of their coupons since then. Here’s the link if you’d like to sign up to get the Seventh Generation newsletter. And here’s the link for their coupon page. Last time I looked, they had coupons for cleaning products, diapers and detergent. I really like their new 2X concentrated detergents.

Here are some other sources for green coupons: Pristine Planet always has a good selection. My favorite coupon site for everything RetailMeNot has a long list of coupons for green goods. However, be sure that you check the expiration date on the coupon you want to use. Some of them are out of date. OrganicCoupon.org also has a very good selection of online, offline and printable coupons.

If you can’t find a coupon, maybe you can use something else. A couple of pieces of aluminum foil for dryer sheets. White vinegar in the fabric softener ball instead of that blue softener that has formaldehyde in it. Hey, you want to soften your clothes, not embalm them, right? Ditch the paper towels and say what we do when we dust. Holey socks, Batman! (Since my only method of darning socks involves dropping them into a trash can while muttering, “Darn these socks!”, dusting with them works better than darning them.)

Use your ingenuity and figure out how to do things without all the gadgets and plastic junk they sell at Wally World. You can do it. You might even find that it’s fun to think outside the box. (And after you’re done, give the box to your kid to play with instead of buying them a lead paint covered cute little toy from the discount store. Kids love boxes.)

If you think of anything that can help save money and the earth at the same time, share it in a comment. I’m always up for new green info – and saving green too.

My 17 yr old son is trying to eliminate artificial flavors and colors from his diet. He’s noticed that they aggravate his asthma and make it harder for him to focus. We’ve always read labels, but lately we’ve been poring over them like government lawyers looking for loopholes in fine print. After squinting at hundreds of bags, packages, boxes and jars, we’ve come to the following conclusion. The best way to get food that doesn’t have (as my son would say) that toxic crap in it is to get food in as close to its natural state as possible.

Granted, it would be best if we raised our own chickens and vegetables, kept our own milk cows, and ground our own grain and coffee. However, not all of us have the room, the time or the inclination for farming. So, short of cooking a chicken that was walking around in the henyard this morning, how do we get food in its natural state, not to mention not packaged in plastic?

One thing I’ve done is request freezer paper for my meat, rather than plastic film. Most supermarket meat departments have it. And if you ask them to, they’ll wrap your chicken legs or beef roast in it. If they don’t have it, ask them to stock it. You’d be surprised what supermarkets will do to retain a customer. They could even advertise that they have it for other eco-mindful customers.

Of course, the best way to be sure that your food is as pure as possible is buying organic. But what if, like us, you can’t afford the higher prices? Well, we compromise by buying our meat, milk and fruit organic whenever possible. My kids have grown up on organic milk and hate the taste of non-organic. I do too. It tastes flat, maybe because the cows have been eating grain, not grass. The milk we buy comes from cows who spend most of their time out to pasture and get silage in the winter, not corn. Actually, lately, organic milk isn’t much more expensive than non-organic.

For meat, we buy organic chicken, beef and pork, usually when it’s marked down on Sunday. Most supermarkets have a day when they mark down meat and will gladly tell you when that is. Just ask. If you’re lucky enough to have a natural foods supermarket nearby, they also mark things down, especially when they near their sell-by date. We don’t buy ham, bacon or hot dogs, except when the unprocessed ones are marked down. All of these meats are high in nitrates and salt.

Neither do we buy frozen dinners, chicken products like nuggets or patties or anything else covered in breading and fried. Have you ever looked at the list of ingredients in most processed frozen foods?  The picture on the cover shows a piece of chicken, some mashed potatoes and some green beans. Yet, the list of ingredients is ten inches long and you can’t even pronounce some of the words. Is it worth it for convenience, not to mention is it worth paying the high price of frozen dinners? I don’t think so.

Instead, we just overcook. When we make a meal, we make more than we need. The excess goes into our version of frozen dinners. Only, ours are more flexible, because we freeze the items separately in glass containers. So, one container will have four chicken thighs that have been cooked in BBQ sauce. Another container will have oven-browned sweet potatoes, onions and white potatoes drizzled with olive oil. Other containers hold rice pilaf, pasta with sauce or veggies, so that we can mix and match to our hearts’ content. Let’s see Marie Callendar do that!

It would be nice if we could buy local produce year-round, but in Maine, except for cold-weather greens, that’s not possible unless you have your own greenhouse. (Eliot Coleman, the author of several good gardening books, has one about growing your own veggies year-round, but so far we haven’t gotten motivated enough to do it. You might like to try.) So we try to buy veggies that have the least amount of pesticides used on them. Here’s a link to the Environmental Working Group’s list of veggies with the least and most amount of pesticide residue. You can even order a pdf file of it to take with you when you shop.

My shopping cart looks a lot different now. It has far fewer processed items in it and more fresh produce. Even with the many organic and natural items we buy, my costs haven’t gone up nearly as much as I thought they would. Actually, some weeks, we spend less, because we find bargains and mark-downs. What’s in your shopping cart?

We all know the importance of staying hydrated. The method of choice for most people these days is to carry around a trendy, colorful plastic sports bottle filled with water. You know, the tough, hard plastic ones that everyone from bikers and hikers to active business folks to on-the-go moms tote around – not to mention students ranging from elementary to college. They’re perfect for an active lifestyle – light, durable and available in a rainbow of colors. However, new research has shown that these plastic sports bottles may pose serious health hazards.

The irony is that the hazard may actually come from the material that makes these bottles so attractive. Lexan polycarbonate resin, a plastic polymer accidentally developed by General Electric in 1953, was and still is a revolutionary material. It’s been used in a variety of products over the last four decades including compact discs and DVDs, bulletproof windows, mobile phones, computers, baby bottles and water bottles. Lexan is a perfect choice for water and baby bottles as it’s durable, doesn’t hold flavors or odors nor delivers any taste from the bottle material itself to the fluids it holds.

The Problem:

This is where the confusion begins.
Many folks assume that because it doesn’t impart flavor to the liquid it holds that it’s safer than other types of plastic bottles. Research findings published in 2003 by the journal Current Biology, show otherwise. These findings were the result of a study by Dr. Patricia Hunt of Case Western University in Ohio that questioned the use of polycarbonate plastics such as Lexan.

In1998, Hunt discovered that plastics made from polycarbonate resin can leach bisphenol-A (BPA), a potent hormone disruptor. BPA, a chemical found in epoxy resin and polycarbonate plastics, may impair the reproductive organs and have adverse effects on tumors, breast tissue development and prostate development by reducing sperm count.

BPA can be leached into the water bottles contents through normal wear and tear, exposure to heat and cleaning agents. This includes leaving your plastic water bottle in your car during errands, in your back pack during hikes and running it through your dishwasher and using harsh detergents. And, a 2003 study conducted by the University of Missouri published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives confirmed Dr. Hunts’ study conclusions but also found that detectable levels of BPA leached into liquids at room temperature. This means just having your plastic water bottle sitting on your desk can be potentially harmful. In this author’s humble opinion, the best thing to do is to avoid plastic altogether. (Side note: baby bottles made from polycarbonate plastics have quietly disappeared from the market despite industry assurances that polycarbonate plastics are safe)

The Solution:

There are two approaches to take to avoid exposure to BPA. First, if you are active and take water with you, switch to a stainless steel water bottle. But, be careful. Many products on the market are lined with an epoxy finish. This defeats the purpose. Make sure that the bottle is stainless steel both inside and out. Stainless steel water bottles are light, durable and hold both hot and cold liquids well. There’s a wonderful stainless steel water bottle called the Klean Kanteen. It’s available in a 27oz and a 40oz size and is available at www.greenfeet.com.

The second approach is to reuse glass containers such as quart sized juice bottles. Yes, they are a bit heavier but are good solutions if you’re in an office environment where mobility isn’t an issue.

Either way, to avoid bacteria build up, wash out your containers with warm water and biodegradable dish soap. Be sure to wipe the mouth of the container and the lids. And most importantly, let the container completely dry before refilling. Keeping any container continually filled with liquid can lead to bacteria developing and potential illness.

Keeping hydrated is extremely important year round – but especially during the summer. It keeps our systems functioning properly and is important in sustaining good health. Here’s a tip on how much water you should be consuming daily based on a formula provided by the Mayo Clinic: Simply take your body weight and divide in half. For example, if you weighed 150 pounds, you need 75 oz (9-10 8oz glasses) daily. Caffeinated and alcoholic beverages are dehydrating so for every glass of these beverages you drink, add an extra glass of water.

So, while you take care to only fuel your body with plenty of pure, filtered water, take the next step and ensure the container holding your water is safe.

Bottom’s up!