Organic Cleaning Products are Toxin Free

Have you noticed that many stores are now carrying organic cleaning products? Before you purchase, it is best to go to a sight like  EWG for great advice.

A popular movement towards green cleaning has been underway for the past few years. Here are a few basic points to remember when shopping in the store or  on your favorite green online store.

What is Green Cleaning?

• This is cleaning that is done with organic cleaning products; these are toxin free products that do not present the harmful chemicals of common commercial products. Green cleaning companies are supposed to be held to much higher standards than are required by either federal or state regulations.

• What is the Purpose of Going Green?
  The purpose is to finally address the large variety of illnesses that have sprung from exposure to commercially branded cleaning products. Not only have people suffered from the use of such products; our environment has taken quite a toll from them as well.

• What is the Benefit of Green Cleaning?
  The benefit of green cleaning is that we discover and use healthful and safe ways to maintain our clean environment. We protect our health when we live green because we minimize if not eliminate toxins in our environment. Often by living green we can avoid illnesses that toxins can present, and allow our bodies to heal if we’ve already gotten sick from toxin exposure.

Dangers of Toxic Chemical Cleaning Agents

When we are exposed to chemical cleaning products, it increases our risk of developing allergies, contributes to the development of cancer, and reduces our immunity. With all of these potential health risks facing us, it’s no wonder that we are all searching for healthier alternatives.

What, do you suppose, drives the push for more research? Suits, probably. These toxic chemicals are making people sick. They go to the doctor as a result of falling ill only for the doctor to determine that these toxins are the cause. Research has shown that benzene, formalin, and other solvents are all harmful to our health. This has caused our legislators to enact regulations to limit our exposure to them.

Still, it’s surprising, however, that many of these chemicals have not been banned at this point since their dangers are known. For this reason, we see the movement toward organic cleaning materials.

Organic cleaning products are a safe, natural alternative to the harmful chemicals found in traditional cleansers. For the most part, they are relatively easy to find. Though you might have a bit of difficulty in locating organic cleaning agents at one of your favorite retailers, you should not have any trouble finding them at health food stores or online. In fact, many people prefer shopping for organic cleaning products online because the internet offers a greater number of products from which to choose.

Shop for Organic Cleaning Agents

As you search for organic cleaning products, keep in mind that you still need to carefully read product labels. Some products might say they are “natural” or “organic”, but in reality, they might not actually meet this claim. Become familiar with the ingredients that are most commonly used in both traditional and organic cleaning products so that you can become an informed consumer, and learn how to choose the safest products for your home.

In the United States, one way that you can be more confident that you are purchasing truly organic cleaning products is by looking for the National Organic Program on products before buying them. Organic cleaning products, on the other hand, might still have a stamp of approval from an accrediting agency indicating that they have gone through a standard regulatory process in order to certify that they only sell true organic items.

When you take the time to become better informed about the choices that are available to you, you’ll learn that organic cleaning products are easy to find, and will probably fit nicely into your budget. The overall benefit to you and your family will make you wonder why you didn’t make the switch sooner.

Guest Video/Blog from The Hour Interview with Ed

The actor and environmental activist talks about 40 years of living green.

The Moment it All Changed:

“I started in 1970 with the first Earth Day… I was 20 years old — I’d lived two decades in that horrible choking smog… I’d had enough, I said, ‘Earth Day, sign me up! I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.’ I started recycling, composting, I rode my bike around, I took public transportation.”

On Riding His Bike to an Oscars Party:

“I was thought of as more odd than I am today, if that’s possible.”

On how his Eco-Friendly House fit into the Hollywood Lifestyle:

“There was a time when people thought it was really weird, and people said, ‘Ed, have you fallen on hard economic times?’ They literally thought there was something wrong, that I’d had a bankruptcy filing or something.”

Thank you to The Hour for this story.

Ed Begley walks his talk and even has his own natural cleaning product, Begley’s Best.

Concerns About Farm Raised Fish

(Green Living Zone is pro wild fish over farm raised in favor of maintaining sustainability.)

| Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss |

Farm-raised fish can still absorb mercury, since most fish farms are located in the ocean, close to or abutting the shoreline. They can also absorb PCBs and dioxins, as the near-shore waters they occupy are the first stop for run-off from land-based sources of pollution.

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Dear EarthTalk: I thought “farm raised” was the way to go when buying fish, to avoid mercury contamination. But are there other concerns about farm raised that make some fish a poor choice for good health? What are the safest fish to buy and which should be avoided? And what about those frozen blocks of fish I get at Trader Joe’s? Are they safe to eat?

—Tim Jeffries, Springfield, MA

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Mercury is a neurotoxin that settles into the ocean in large concentrations after we spew it out of industrial smokestacks when burning fossil fuels like coal and oil. It is then taken up by smaller sea life such as plankton and then spread up through the food chain as larger fish eat smaller ones. We humans then eat the mercury-laced seafood—wild salmon, tuna, swordfish and other fish—and breathe it in our air. Repeated exposure to mercury pollution can cause brain, kidney and developmental problems for people.

Farm-raised fish may have somewhat less exposure to mercury than their wild free-foraging cousins because they are usually fed a controlled diet, often consisting of more grains and soy, a cheaper and more abundant source of calories, than fishmeal. But they can still absorb mercury, since most fish farms are themselves located in the ocean, just close to or abutting the shoreline.

Farmed fish can also absorb PCBs and dioxins, as the near-shore waters they occupy are the first stop for run-off from land-based sources of pollution. And the fact that their primary feed source comes from conventionally grown terrestrial crops means that their diets can include trace amounts of pesticides and herbicides as well. Also, most farmed fish are exposed to dose after dose of antibiotics to keep diseases and pests at bay in their crowded underwater pens, much in the way “factory farmed” land animals are drugged to help them cope with cramped, unsanitary conditions. In fact, studies have shown that farm-raised fish have more toxins overall than their wild-caught cousins, though exceptions of course do exist.

The best way to know which fish are safe and which are not is to download a region-specific seafood buying guide from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program.

These guides aid the decision-making process when shopping for seafood in a store or ordering it at a restaurant by dividing the fish available in that part of the country into three categories: Best Choices, Good Alternatives and Avoid.

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And bring your Seafood Watch guide to Trader Joe’s as well—at least for now. In 2010, after months of lobbying by Greenpeace and a growing number of concerned shoppers, Trader Joe’s agreed to offer only “sustainable” seafood in its stores by the end of 2012. To its credit, they already removed endangered Chilean Sea Bass from shelves in 2005, followed by Orange Roughy in 2009 and Red Snapper in 2010.

In the spirit of its recent pledge, however, Trader Joe’s is now working with third-party, science-based organizations to establish definitions and parameters for addressing customer concerns about overfishing, destructive catch or production methods, and the importance of marine reserves. Until 2013 at Trader Joe’s—and indefinitely at other stores that haven’t made specific commitments regarding the sustainability of their seafood—make sure to check that labels disclose the type of fish for sale and its source in regard to wild or farm-raised, and then check that info against the Seafood Watch list.

CONTACTS: Seafood Watch; Trader Joe’s “Note to Our Customers about Trader Joe’s Seafood”.

Green Living Zone’s TAKE ON THIS CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT: It is best to be informed on all sides. Even though this article references a lot of scietific studies and details, it seems to be  most about the policies of  Trader Joe’s.

Here is an article that favors wild salmon over farm raised salmon that will give you more food for thought!

Wild Salmon vs. Farmed Salmon

Which is better for Salmon Sustainability: Farmed vs Wild Salmon?

Natural Weed Control

One of my Favorite recycled Earth Talk Question and Answer Columns
as seen in E Environmental magazine, reprinted with Permission from E.

You could pull those dandelions out and have them in a salad or here are a few natural weed control techniques from the Earth Talk experts! – Karen

Dear EarthTalk: I pruned back an overgrown bush in my back yard last fall and now the soil around it is covered in dandelions and other weeds. Is there any way to get rid of these weeds without resorting to RoundUp and other chemical herbicides?

– Max S., Seattle, WA

Weeds are nothing if not opportunistic. While you may not have bargained for getting one form of eyesore (weeds) by clearing another (an overgrown bush), dandelions and other fast-growing, quickly spreading plants know no bounds when some new territory opens up. They will colonize and spread out given the slightest opening—after all, that‘s what defines them as weeds.

Of course, conventional herbicides such as Monsanto‘s RoundUp will take down the weeds in a jiffy, but the negative effects on people, animals and the environment may be both profound and long-lasting. Independent studies of RoundUp have implicated its primary ingredient, glyphosphate, as well as some of its “inert” ingredients, in liver damage, reproductive disorders and Non-Hodgkin‘s Lymphoma, as well as in cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, nerve and respiratory damage.

California‘s Department of Pesticide Regulation reports that, year after year, RoundUp is the number one cause of pesticide/herbicide-induced illness and injury around that state. RoundUp is also blamed for poisoning groundwater across the U.S. and beyond, as well as for contributing to a 70 percent decrease in amphibian biodiversity and a 90 percent decrease in tadpole numbers in regions where it is used heavily.

No doubt, the most eco-friendly way to get rid of weeds is to yank them out without the aid of poisons.

Yank them out of the ground!

Given that you‘ll have to manually remove dead weeds from your yard after applying RoundUp (or any other “post-emergent” herbicide), why not just pull them up by hand in the first place? No doubt, the most eco-friendly way to get rid of weeds is to yank them out without the aid of poisons. Unfortunately, many weeds have long deep roots which need to be pulled completely if you don’t want them to grow back; if need be, use a metal weed puller with a hooked end or a mechanical grabber—available at any local garden supply or hardware store—if you don’t want to have to pull those very same weeds next year.

Garden expert Dean Novosat of the Garden Doctor website suggests giving the weed beds a good watering the night before you pull weeds. “…the soil will be softened and will yield the entire weed plant, root and all,” he says. Another way to kill weeds, he says, is by pouring boiling hot water over them.

Of course, once you’ve killed or pulled up all those weeds—and make sure you‘re thorough or else it‘s waste of time—you‘ll want to make sure new ones don‘t start showing up in their place. Planting some regionally appropriate and ideally native plants in place of the removed weeds would be a good first step—check with a local nursery about what some good choices might be for your neck of the woods.

Once the area is cleared (and replanted), cover it with three to six inches of mulch. Mulch forms a barrier between the soil and the sun, depriving any new germinating weeds of the sunlight they need to photosynthesize. Mulch is composed of large chunky material such as wood chips and bark nuggets, and works well for weed control also because it is low in nutrients and thus won‘t fertilize plant starts below.

CONTACTS: California Department of Pesticide Regulation; The Garden Doctor.

Photo: © Lastonien, courtesy Flickr

Have an opinion or weed  control technique you would like to share?

Earth Day

By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day

Courtesy of:

http://earthday.wilderness.org/

Get a List of the Local Earth Day Events in Your Area Here:

http://earthday.envirolink.org/

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political “limelight” once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation’s political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

In Our Hands

After President Kennedy’s tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called “teach-ins,” had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me – why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air – and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….”

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Green Living

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

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Particpate in your community’s local Earth Day events this year and bring the kids. You’ll enjoy the great outdoors  and your kids will have fun too!

Get a List of the Local Earth Day Events in Your Area Here:

http://earthday.envirolink.org/

Want more like this? Follow GreenLivingZone on Twitter!

By: Twitter Buttons

Each person’s effort to live sustainably, peacefully, simply on this planet earth will be expressed in a unique manner. We are interdependent of each other and I believe to survive on this planet and to survive as a race that the majority of us need to make a different choice. Saving Gaia, our sumptuous green planet Earth is the biggest benefit of going green,stepping lightly and living simply. It is time to scale the consumption back.

Get out of the rat race and become a human being. You can read articles about how our individual actions effect the earth. But now it’s time for each of us to take action and in our own unique ways, be kinder to ourselves, live healthier and go green. I invite you to comment on my posts as I review books, products, services and resources and  as I share a few of my own insights to help us all create a greener, simpler path.

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Keeping it green and simple,

Karen Ann Teeters

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