Easing My Window Pains

Your eco radar for all products new and earthworthy.

Home and Garden, Forest Stewardship Council,
Building and renovation, Recycling, reuse, reduction, Bamboo

2:19 pm - March 27, 2007

Those of you who read our January/February cover

story about decorating an eco-bedroom on the cheap

are well acquainted with my efforts to furnish a new

apartment using as few resources--natural and

monetary--as possible. Because of cost, I had to

make a few initial compromises, like purchasing a

conventional mattress. To make up for those, I've

obsessed over making all the other little purchases

as eco-guilt-free as possible.

I stumbled across this week's Fresh Find on a die-hard quest to find either Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood and/or bamboo drapery rods (bamboo is rapidly renewable, replenishing itself in as little as five years). And the Antique Drapery Rod Company did me one, nay two, better: they not only supply both of the above but also recycled wrought-iron rods, with a minimum recycled content of 65 percent, and recycled aluminum rods, with a minimum recycled content of 96 percent.

The company, based in balmy east Texas, has been around since 1992, and it seems that they've always held environmental standards as a high priority. Their plastic packaging contains the highest percentage of post-consumer waste they can get, and all paper packaging components are made of 100% recycled fibers. They also use low-VOC finishes on their hardware. Their bamboo rods require no chemical finishes whatsoever, just "a traditional technique using earth, fire and water," according to a company rep.

I opted for the recycled wrought iron to hang my linen curtains (linen is natural fiber that doesn't demand the heavy doses of pesticides that cotton needs), primarily because they're expandable, unlike the wood and the bamboo. Three rods with three sets of finials and brackets ran me about $250, so the costs are comparable with other rods I found, but given that I should be able to use them forever without needing to buy new rods every time I move (and that they'll help cut down on my a/c bill this summer), it was a worthy investment.

For more information and a full range of styles, see www.antiquedraperyrod.com or call 214-653-1733.

REVISITING THE DIAPER DEBATE

Disposables or cloth?

That was the burning question of the day, 17 years ago, for eco-minded parents like myself. The subject, of course, was diapers, and our family chose the cloth route because we didn't want to clutter landfills with poopy plastic that could take 500 years to decompose. We felt good about doing the right thing in our small way, and weren't particularly inconvenienced, as a diaper service took care of the wash.

Then came the news that our tiny sacrifice might be for naught. A much-ballyhooed study that same year (1990) found no significant difference in environmental impact between disposables and cloth when the water and energy used to launder the latter was factored in. But wait, that study was conducted by Procter & Gamble, the maker of Pampers. Might there have been a bias?

Sure enough, another study conducted shortly afterwards found that cloth was better after all. However, that one was sponsored by The National Association of Diaper Services, which also had a vested interest in the results.

The argument has raged ever since, with different parties weighing in on either side. Somewhere along the line, environmentalists from various organizations declared a draw, suggesting we all move on to issues where the costs and benefits were more clear-cut. Parents were advised to do whatever seemed best for them, which should have made the decision easy, but left -- and leaves -- many feeling at a loss. They want to do what is best for the earth and aren't comforted to hear that all choices are equally bad.

If you are one of those, you may be interested in a third alternative that is unquestionably better for the environment because it doesn't entail diaper use at all. Rather, it involves peeing and pooping into the toilet -- or something than can be emptied into one -- right from the start. I mean from birth. This is not a new-fangled idea. It is a traditional approach, used in many non-Western societies, including India and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, that has recently been discovered by adventurous parents in the United States.

The method goes by a variety of names: elimination communication, natural infant hygiene and infant potty training, though the last is spurned by many who say there is no training involved. Whatever it's called, it boils down to this: the parent looks for the signals (hand-clenching, grunting, squirming, a look of inner concentration, etc.) that the baby regularly shows in advance of having to go, then takes the infant to the pot, sink or potty, and makes a special "cuing" noise -- for instance, "sss" -- to signal back that it's ok to proceed. Soon the baby makes the association. The family now has a communication system that can be used to avoid messes most of the time.

If all goes well, the baby will be toilet-trained in a year and a half, give or take a few months. Meanwhile, the baby and parents will have much less contact with poop than either would if the baby did her stuff regularly in a diaper.

There are websites and books that explain the method in detail, with lots of good tips on how to make it work, but as far as I can see, the main requirement is that you are able to devote a certain amount of close attention to your child and get the other primary care-givers to do the same. Unfortunately, day-care centers are unlikely to go along, so if you use one full-time, you're probably stuck with diapers, regardless.

Another option to consider is a new flushable product called gDiapers, which consists of a colorful cloth pant and snap-in liner with inserts made primarily of fluffed wood pulp. The pants and liners are washed and reused and the inserts are flushed down the toilet. The ingredients are almost all natural, but do include super-absorbent polymers, or SAP -- which most disposable diapers use as well -- to increase the amount of liquid that the diaper can hold. SAP has been linked to toxic-shock syndrome from tampons, and some parents are concerned about its use in diapers, but studies have revealed no adverse health effects from exposure outside the body.

In any event, gDiapers seem to have the environmental edge over more conventional choices because they send no material to the landfill, use no elemental chlorine or plastics, and require much less washing (therefore, less water and energy usage) than regular cloth diapers.

If you prefer disposables anyway, you can still make a difference by buying a brand made without chlorine, such as Seventh Generation. You could also try a biodegradable brand, such as Nature Boy & Girl, though there is some question as to whether decomposition is possible in the oxygen-less conditions of a landfill. Cloth diaper users can lessen their impact as well by air-drying, washing bigger loads at lower temperatures and not pre-soaking.

Ultimately, only you know which choice you can comfortably live with. My advice is not to sweat it. Just make the best decision you can, then go enjoy your beautiful baby.

—Sheryl Eisenberg

Get Tough On Tissues

Older Posts Get Tough on Tissues Filed under: Recycled paper 9:20 pm - March 12, 2007 Here's a press release that shows the power of the green consumer: ASPEN SKI COMPANY KICKS KLEENEX OFF MOUNTAINS. And it's all true. The Aspen Skiing Company, host to the World Cup ski circuit, notified paper giant Kimberly-Clark that it has removed the company's tissue products from all Aspen ski mountains, hotels, and restaurants. The decision was made in response to the paper company's refusal to end pulp purchases from destructive logging operations in Canada's Boreal Forest. The skiing company's tough stance on tissues is nothing to sneeze at. According to the Seventh Generation web site, if every household in the U.S. replaced just one box of 85 sheet virgin fiber facial tissues with 100% recycled ones (meaning 20% min. post-consumer, 80% pre-consumer), we could save: * 87,700 trees * 226,500 cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 330 full garbage trucks * 31 million gallons of water, a year's supply for 240 families of four * and avoid 5,300 pounds of pollution! If you're shopping for tissues, or other bathroom or kitchen paper goods (paper towels, napkins, or toilet paper), the Green Guide suggests eschewing any virgin pulp in favor of home use paper products with the highest "post consumer waste" (PCW) content you can find. It's also good to look for products labeled "Processed Chlorine Free" (PCF) which means that no additional chlorine or chlorine derivatives have been used to bleach the final recycled product. For shopping suggestions, the Green Guide provides a list of products that are high in PCW content and PCF-bleached.

Oil and Plastic

One Word

On oil and plastic

14 Mar 2007

Got questions about the environment? Ask Umbra.

Dear Umbra,

How much oil is used to make a pound (or some other comparable measure) of typical plastics?

Melody Evans
Paris, Ill.


Dearest Melody,

Ah, Paris. Is it as lovely in the springtime as they say?

Yes, Ben, plastics ...

Photo: The Graduate (1967)/MGM

Your question is a good and tricky one. Let's start with a look at how plastic is made. Manufacturers take simple hydrocarbons from whatever source material they're using -- commonly crude oil, but also natural gas, corn, and other biomass -- and turn them into polymers, a fancy word for chains of molecules. In the case of crude oil, they do this by heating it to more than 750 degrees Fahrenheit, then separating its components. The polymers usually travel onward in life in the form of pellets, ending up at one plastic factory or another to be molded into familiar shapes. The pellet system has worked out well for recycling, because recycled plastic is shredded into flakes, which are easily melted and turned back into pellets.

You are probably familiar with the basic types of plastic, though you may not know their science-y names, which are often abbreviated on the bottom of your household products. Polyethylene (HDPE or LDPE) is the soft one you likely encounter most, in milk jugs, shampoo bottles, plastic bags, and so forth. Polystyrene (PS) is the hard plastic that makes casings for computers and other appliances, and also the basis of the foam product we fondly (but trademark infringingly) call Styrofoam. Polypropylene (PP) is used in dishwasher-safe containers and is also the magical fiber that rugged outdoorspeople favor. You'll often find polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in soda bottles, and it is sometimes recycled into fleece, upholstery fabrics, and other useful materials. And then of course there's polyvinyl chloride (PVC) -- no vinyl, and that's final.

How does plastic stack up in terms of oil use?

Photo: iStockphoto

So how much oil is consumed by this process? This is the tricky part. From what I can tell, plastic production is a bit like leather production: it's one part of a complicated harvest. When crude oil is refined, its various chemical bits are separated. Some become gasoline, some diesel fuel, some motor oil, and others the raw material for plastics. The best estimate I could find says that about 4 percent of the world's annual oil production of some 84.5 million barrels per day is used as feedstock for plastic, and another 4 percent or so provides the energy to transform the feedstock into handy plastic.

Let's say a foam cup is what you had in mind as a "typical" plastic. In a classic study that closely examined the inputs for a foam cup vs. a paper cup and found the paper cup wanting, the petroleum inputs to the foam cup were 3.2 grams. (I'll leave it to you to weigh a foam cup if you want to, because I do not have one on hand, and I want you to feel empowered and participatory.) I've also seen it described slightly differently, that it requires about 1.78 kilograms of petroleum feedstock to make a kilogram of polystyrene.

We could make and use fewer petroleum-based plastics, but I don't know how much that would cut into oil drilling. Recycling, however, does cut into energy use. According to the U.S. EPA, manufacturing new plastic from recycled plastic requires two-thirds of the energy used in virgin plastic manufacture. I have more numbers, too: one ton of recycled plastic saves 685 gallons of oil. You can find lots of these "x amount is saved when we recycle" numbers in recycling promotional literature.

Abruptly,
Umbra

"Climate: A Crisis Averted"

Could this really Happen?

Join thousands worldwide and take action to stop climate change.

THE MOVIE

"Climate: A Crisis Averted" looks back from 2056 and recounts how ordinary citizens in 2006 - realizing that global warming was a scientific fact and not a climatic theory -- take action to demand clean energy and other planet-friendly options. The movie describes how a movement called Climate Counts effected real change with an action plan, or 'call-to-arms' on global warming.

About PVC Plastic

Last week our allies at the Center for Environmental Health revealed the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) failed to publicize testing revealing potentially dangerous levels of lead in children's PVC lunch boxes. Remarkably, after finding elevated levels of lead in PVC lunchboxes, as much as 16 times higher than levels allowed for lead in paint, the agency changed its testing procedure in an apparent effort to minimize findings of lead in lunch boxes. The agency then went on to issue a press release stating the lunch boxes were perfectly safe.

Through the years, the CPSC has failed to thoroughly respond to unnecessary dangerous chemicals in PVC consumer products. While the agency did take action when they discovered dangerous levels of lead in vinyl mini-blinds were escaping, they have failed to adequately protect the public from lead and other toxic additives in PVC lunch boxes and toys. A Greenpeace expose that discovered hazardous levels of lead and cadmium in a variety of vinyl consumer products, including products specifically designed and marketed for children, was rejected by the CPSC in the late '90s. Similarly in 2003, the CPSC denied a petition from health and environmental groups to ban phthalates in PVC toys, meanwhile these same dangerous chemicals have been outlawed in Europe.

Last year, Attorney Generals from NY and CT took legal action to remove lead from children's lunchboxes. In July of 2006, the FDA ordered retailers and manufacturers to stop marketing vinyl lunchboxes containing lead, because of potential exposure concerns. The nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, went a step further than the FDA, and agreed to stop selling all PVC lunchboxes due to potential health and environmental concerns. Wal-Mart is also phasing out PVC private label packaging and recently unveiled a new precautionary chemicals policy.

This begs an important question - with Wal-Mart phasing out PVC lunchboxes and packaging, what is Target doing to protect our families from the poison plastic? Absolutely nothing. While Target has an opportunity to be a true leader on this critical health issue, their aisles are filled with products made from poisonous chemicals linked to cancer.

Take action today and urge Target to phase out PVC lunch boxes and other hazardous products made out of the poison plastic. After you take action, be sure to forward this on to your friends and family, and learn how you can test your child's lunchbox for lead.







Are your Family's Products Safe?

PVC (polyvinyl chloride) products are everywhere and are dangerous to our health and environment from start to finish - in the factory, at home, and in the trash - releasing poisonous chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects. The good news is that safe, cost-effective, alternatives to PVC are readily available and responsible companies are phasing it out. [Read More]

Step It Up On April 14th

This April 14th, tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country at meaningful, iconic places to call for action on climate change. We will hike, bike, climb, walk, swim, kayak, canoe, or simply sit or stand with banners of our call to action:

There are already 829 events planned in 49 states across the country!

Find an Action Near You

But we still need hundreds and hundreds more in every city, state, and county.

Light-bulb industry at a "tipping point"

By TOBY STERLING

The Associated Press

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — European light-bulb makers are close to an agreement in principle to work together on phasing out energy-wasting incandescent bulbs for the consumer market, the chief executive of Royal Philips Electronics' lighting division said Monday.

Philips is the largest lighting maker globally, followed by Siemens, known for the Osram-Sylvania brands. General Electric, whose founder Thomas Edison patented the incandescent bulb in 1880, is biggest in the United States.

In a telephone interview, Theo van Deursen said "the tipping point is very close, to be frank, for the [European] lighting industry" to agree on a phase-out of incandescent bulbs in the home. He said an announcement from a group of major producers could come as early as this week.

Energy-saving compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, were introduced decades ago, but their adoption has gathered momentum recently amid worries about human impact on global warming and rising energy costs.

Earlier this month, Australia's government announced plans to ban incandescent bulbs within three years, while a California lawmaker has introduced a bill seeking to do the same in the state by 2012. Last year, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, began actively promoting the bulbs.

CFLs on the market today are around three times as energy-efficient as incandescent bulbs, and last much longer. But even though they save money in the long run and are more environmentally friendly, consumers have been reluctant to adopt them for a variety of reasons, most importantly because they cost more per bulb.

Van Deursen said that the European Union was "very positive about a call to action in September," and has asked member states to report on plans for using energy-savings bulbs by governments.

But the European industry hasn't agreed on a parallel push for energy-saving bulbs in homes.

Van Deursen criticized General Electric for a statement it published last week saying it planned to introduce a new generation of energy-efficient incandescent bulbs by 2010.

"I don't think we should wait until 2010, because there are alternatives available now," he said, adding that he didn't know the details of General Electric's plans, but he didn't believe traditional incandescent lighting has a long-term future.

"We believe there are better technologies going forward," he said. He predicted that halogen lights and CFLs will continue to gain market share in the medium term, but in the long term, light-emitting diodes, or LEDs — the same that power many flat-panel computer displays — will dominate the market.

LED lamps, which are up to 12 times as efficient as incandescent bulbs, last even longer than CFLs and can produce light in any color, are only now being introduced to the market as a high-end product.

The GE statement said that the company has invested $200 million over the past four years in energy-saving bulbs. Van Deursen said Philips' investment level has been "at least twice that."

Philips lighting reported operating earnings of $834 million on sales of $7.18 billion in 2006.

Van Deursen said consumer lighting isn't a large enough component of the company's earnings for wide-scale adoption of energy-saving bulbs to dramatically affect the company's bottom line, though he said it could make a major contribution to reducing global energy usage.

The life cycle of computers is becoming more circular

By TERENCE CHEA

The Associated Press

PREV of NEXT STEVE YEATER / AP Raj Winder-Kaur dismantles computer and electronic components at Hewlett-Packard's recycling plant in Roseville, Calif.

ROSEVILLE, Calif. — This is where computers go to die a green death.

Inside Hewlett-Packard's cavernous recycling plant in the Sacramento suburbs, truckloads of obsolete PCs, servers and printers collected from consumers and businesses nationwide are cracked open by goggled workers who pull out batteries, circuit boards and other potentially hazardous components.

The electronic carcasses are fed into a massive machine that noisily shreds them into tiny pieces and mechanically sorts the fragments into piles of steel, aluminum, plastic and precious metals. Those scraps are sent to smelting plants, mostly in the Sacramento area, where they are melted down for reuse.

The computer industry is ramping up its campaign against electronic waste, a dangerous byproduct of technology's relentless expansion. HP and Dell, which together sell more than half the country's PCs, are earning praise from environmentalists for using more eco-friendly components and recycling their products when consumers discard them.

"The computer companies are definitely embracing the idea that they need to deal with their products at the end of their useful life," said Barbara Kyle, who coordinates the San Francisco-based nonprofit Computer TakeBack Campaign. "There's been a complete turnaround."

But activists say far too much of the nation's electronic garbage — not only PCs but also TVs, radios, batteries and other materials — still ends up in landfills or gets shipped overseas to poor countries, where it pollutes the environment and exposes workers to dangerous chemicals.

"The United States is not responsibly managing this waste stream," said Sarah Westervelt of the Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based group that seeks to stop the spread of hazardous waste. "We're allowing it to go offshore and poison developing countries."

The push to recycle reflects a broader greening of the tech industry.

In addition to recycling and eliminating toxic chemicals, more companies are making their products energy-efficient, using eco-friendly packaging and offsetting their carbon emissions to curb global warming.

"This focus is good for business," said Carl Claunch, a computer-industry analyst at the technology research company Gartner Inc. "There's a growing pool of customers who value environmentally friendly products."

Growing concern

Still, e-waste is a growing environmental and public-health concern as the world becomes more wired and companies introduce new products at a faster pace.

Discarded computers, televisions, radios, batteries, cellphones, cameras and other gadgets contain a stew of toxic metals and chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, brominated flame retardants and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says American consumers generated nearly 2 million tons of electronic waste in 2005. Gartner estimates that 133,000 PCs are discarded by U.S. homes and businesses each day.

Only 10 to 15 percent of electronics are recycled, industry analysts say. The rest collects dust in people's homes or gets dumped into municipal landfills, where environmentalists worry toxic chemicals can leak out.

Among the e-waste that is recycled, activists say, up to 80 percent is exported overseas to dismantling shops where poor workers are exposed to hazardous fumes and chemicals while trying to extract valuable metals and components.

Researchers for Greenpeace International have detected high levels of toxic metals in soil and water samples collected around electronics-dismantling workshops in China and India.

Company responsibility

A growing number of countries and states are requiring electronics companies to take responsibility for recycling their products.

Japan, South Korea and most European countries now require electronics manufacturers to pay for and manage recycling programs for their products.

There is no such federal law in the United States, but Washington, Maine and Maryland recently passed "take-back" laws and about a dozen other states are considering such legislation.

California made it illegal to throw away nearly all electronic products last year, but the state doesn't require manufacturers to take back their products. Instead, when consumers buy electronics, they pay fees to cover the cost of recycling those products later.

E-waste backers are pushing "producer responsibility" because it gives companies an incentive to make devices more environmentally friendly.

"It's essential that manufacturers think through the end of life of their products," said Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace's toxics campaign. "No matter how they recycle, it doesn't matter if there are still toxic materials in their computers."

Dell's effort

Among computer manufacturers, Dell has emerged as a leader in electronics recycling. The Round Rock, Texas-based company has pledged to phase out certain toxic chemicals and began offering free recycling for all its products in December.

Chairman and CEO Michael Dell challenged the industry to follow his company's lead in his keynote address in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, saying, "It's the right thing to do for our customers. It's the right thing to do for our Earth."

The company recovered 80 million pounds of equipment in 2005. Some computers are refurbished and resold — possibly overseas — while parts or materials are recycled within the U.S. if equipment can't be fixed, said Dell spokesman Bryant Hilton.

"Our goal is to make it as easy to recycle a computer as it is to buy one," said Hilton, adding that the company's electronic waste isn't shipped overseas.

HP's collection

Hewlett-Packard recycled 164 million pounds of hardware and print cartridges globally last year, 16 percent more than the previous year.

In the U.S., the company recycles about 50 million pounds at its plants in Roseville and Nashville, Tenn., and doesn't send any of that waste stream to landfills or overseas.

Since it began recycling 20 years ago, HP has set out to design products that last longer and are easy to recycle, said John Frey, who manages the company's environmental strategies.

HP still charges for recycling, but consumers get a coupon that goes toward the purchase of new products. It also organizes collection drives at retail stores where consumers can drop off old gear for free.

"Being environmentally responsible makes sense for our business — it affects brand loyalty and how customers view us," Frey said.

But the problem is far wider than just computers.

Activists are focusing more attention on televisions, which make up an increasingly large share of the world's electronic waste. As more Americans switch to flat-panel TVs, they are throwing out clunky cathode-ray tube sets that contain large amounts of lead.