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This is a new section of the website with actions we can take to improve the
balance of the planet.
Action 1: Understand your body care products.
Action 1: Most body, facial scrubs, and toothpastes use small
plastic bits for the scrubbing action. These plastic bits stay suspended
in water. They end up in streams, lakes and the ocean, clogging the
gills and intestines of our water friends. Check the product labels in
your house. Palmolive Thermal Spa, Colgate Ice Blast toothpaste,
Neutrogena, and Clearasil are some of the culprits. I checked my
products. St. Ives Apricot Scrub's label reads, 100% natural exfoliants.
The granules are actually chunks of ground up jojoba seeds and walnut shells.
For further action, you can ask your favorite drug store to stop carrying
products with "polyethylene micro-spheres", or "polyethylene
beads, or just "polyethylene". Twenty percent of the sand on our
beaches are plastic bits. Think about that!
Source: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (to
be released July 10, 2007 and, of course, we will have the book in our store.)
Action 2: The button batteries in our watches and pedometers contain
lithium. This is a heavy metal that is illegal to put in landfills (your
garbage). All Boeing sites collect button batteries. Ikea collects
button batteries. Encourage all the places who sell button
batteries to collect them for recycling. When I was at Bartell's last
week buying a button battery, I asked the clerk if they recycled the
batteries. She said, "I can take that, I just throw
them in the garbage". Of course, I didn't let her do that. I
contacted the corporate office by phone and email and asked Bartell's to
retrain their staff to not throw them away and to become a recycling center.
Stay tuned. I'll tell you their response. If it is against the law
to throw button batteries away, due to the battery law of passed by the U.S.
Congress, Battery Management Act in 1996, why isn't every place
that sells the button batteries also recycling them?
Action 3: Watch your water habits. Do you run the
water when you brush your teeth? Fresh water is such a precious
resource. Turn off the shower between soaping and rinsing.
Wash full loads of dishes and laundry. Let your really dirty clothes
soak by leaving the washing machine lid open for an hour instead of
washing your clothes twice. Use a low flush toilet or
put a full quart size beverage bottle in the toilet tank. Check for
leaks by turning off all the water in your house and checking the water meter
to check for water flow. Let your lawn go brown in the summer.
Water your plants with a hose by hand instead of a sprinkler, if you can.
A water drip system saves water. If your shower takes a long time
to warm up, get a water cycling device (Costco online) or talk to a
plumber about saving all that cold water. Water is our life-giving
source.
Action 4: A new hygiene regimen can
help reduce the spread of HPV (human Papillomavirus) that currently infects
25% of American women. Viruses can live on any surfaces for up to
three days. There of 40 sexually transmitted strains of HPV, four of
which can lead to cervical cancer. (A vaccine is available for
these four strains if you are under 26 years old.)
Now let's talk about the new hygiene. A simple action that can
increase a woman's health. If men want to keep their wives and
partners healthy, they must keep their private parts, that is, their penis,
clean. Their hands touch money, doorknobs, counters, foods and
everything else in their environment. Men must wash their hands
thoroughly before urinating, before touching their penis. And of
course, after they urinate, as well. Otherwise, they should consider
themselves dirty and wash their private parts before engaging in sexual
intercourse. Their underwear must also be kept clean. Dr.
Dengelegi Den Tiberius examined the bacterial content of the surface of the
penis in 100 men. Every penis harbored one or more colonies of
bacteria and many different types of fungi. These everyday bacterium are the cause of most infections of the female GU tract, most cases of
postoperative GU complications, infertility, premature births, and cervical
dysplasia. We've already talked about the viruses and what damage they
can do. Perhaps we should teach our young boys the new
hygiene now.
Very young children without any previous sexual experience have
contracted HPV. So parents, wash your hands before spreading diaper
rash creams or changing your baby's diapers.
Action 5: Reduce your carbon footprint.
Just how big is your carbon footprint? The typical American
contributes 50,000 lb. of carbon emissions annually. That's about 140
lb per person per day. Indirectly, Americans are responsible for
another 23 tons of carbon annually because of the consumer goods they buy.
To calculate you carbon contribution, go to stopglobalwarming.org.
Simple actions to reduce your carbon footprint, clean your air filters in
you home monthly. A clean filter can save 175 lb. of
carbon per year. Switch conventional light bulbs for compact
fluorescents (CF). Changing just one 75-watt bulb to a CF bulb
cuts roughly 1,300 lb. of carbon. Reduce the size of your lawn
so you can handle it with a push mower. Using a power lawn mower for
an hour produces as much pollution as 20 late-model cars driving for the
same amount of time. Keeping your tires inflated properly saves $840
in gas and 250 lbs. of carbon. Paint your house
a light color if you live in a warm climate or a dark color in a cold
climate. This can save up to 5,000 lb. of carbon a year. Each
tree you plant absorbs about 25 lb. of carbon from the air
annually. Check out more ideas at www.stopglobalwarming.org
Source:
Better Nutrition, July issue
Action 6: Replace your lawn with an eco-friendly lawn
with dwarf grass, herbs, and clover. The secret is sparse distribution
as the clover and herbs take longer to sprout than the dwarf grass.
Don't mow it at all or one to two times a year. This is a soft full
lawn with no insecticides and fertilizer. You can really reduce your
carbon footprint.
This is a new section of the newsletter with actions we can take to
improve the balance of the planet.
I went to the recycling container last week and saw all the water bottles
our family generates. Now is a great time to change the habit of
bottled water. Permanent water containers are available at New
Balance Running Store, REI and other sports outlets. It is a simple
action with huge consequences. Buy three bottles, one for the car,
one for work, one for exercising. Or if you are more organized than
I am, one bottle will work. I have found I can fill up my
bottle at businesses, fast food restaurants and at home. Our
personal water bottle is how we got started in the eighties. Let's
do it. Kid's need stickers or decals on their bottles to make it
theirs. You can get stickers at the Children's book shop.
Reuse scrap paper before recycling it. Cut it into quarters
and staple the top of the stack for a notepad. You can also use a
paper clamp or a clip board to keep the scrap paper in order. When
you are creating flyers for advertising or events, use the back page for
a co-sponsor or contributor advertisement. This action does not
create notepads, but it can create partnership thinking.
Use the reply envelopes you receive in unsolicited mailings for your own
mailing needs. Ink over any barcodes and put a mailing label over the
preprinted addresses.
From It's Easy Being Green by Crissy Trask
The bees are disappearing in the United States. It was on 60
minutes, it's been in the media for a year. The bee hives on
organic farms are healthy and thriving. When the bees are gone,
the food will be gone. Buy organic every time; no exceptions.
Save the bees, save your future on the planet. Not so
simple, write to congress to ban the insecticides destroying the bees.
Action 11: Plant organic gardens in your
backyard. The average backyard garden pollutes the environment ten
times more than one acre of commercial agriculture. We over fertilize
and use too much insecticide in our home gardens.
Go organic at home.
Action 12: Wear clothes more than once.
Remember in college when you wore your favorite jeans until they could
walk on their own? Spot clean your clothes. Wear them
again and again.
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