After the Swiffer Mop and Before the Vinegar

After the vinegar!

So I’m cleaning my apartment for the in-laws’ holiday visit and my kitchen’s tile grout looks filthy.  I use my Swiffer mop and then scrub with Clorox (the new Green Works version available in stores) to no avail.  In desperation, I seek google’s sound advice.  The solution (literally)?  One part vinegar one part water or a little baking soda paste.  It sounds homey and environmentally friendly and inexpensive, but does it really work?  Just look at the before and after pictures above!

When picking out cleaning products I try to moderate between price and environmental efficacy, so I have an assortment of ‘green’ cleaning products in my apartment.  Some work, some don’t.  But what seems to be most puzzling as peruse my way through all of the cleaning products I own is why have cleaning products in the first place?  Nearly everything I clean, as I think about it, could be easily cleaned with three fully biodegradable, non-toxic household items: lemon juice, vinegar, and baking soda.  The Do-it-yourself website, has a new Going Green topic on its side menu, has a great article called How to Clean Green which lists several recipes for green cleaners. Here are two easy and useful examples:

Carpet Spot Remover
•Cornstarch or baking soda
•Club soda
Blot the spot and apply baking soda or cornstarch immediately. When dry, blot with club soda and vacuum.

Glass Cleaner
•1 cup rubbing alcohol (optional)
•1 cup water
•1 tablespoon vinegar
Combine in a spray bottle and wipe clean with a newspaper. Alcohol hastens evaporation to prevent streaking.

And now, what about everything else.  Hand, dish and laundry soap, for example, isn’t as easy to make from scratch.  I personally suggest buying these products, unless you’re exceptionally handy, crafty an organized. Here are a few of my personal favorites and professional suggestions:

•Method brand soaps, as cliche as they sound, are easy to buy anywhere, use biodegradable ingredients, do not test on animals, use recycled and recyclable packaging materials and make use of government issued carbon-credits for their employee’s transportation and manufacturing process.  Plus, they’re smell great and come in cool-looking bottles!
•I use Green Works dishwashing liquid (water lily scent). It carries the Design for the Environment (DfE) certification, meaning the EPA screens all the ingredients put into the product and markets with the Sierra Club to endorse the ideas of preserving and protecting the planet. You want to hear the kicker? Green Works was created by Clorox! Proof that you don’t have to be anti-institution in order to be an environmentalist.
•For my wood flooring, I use Murphy’s soap; its biodegradable, kosher, cheap, and the bottles are recyclable.

•And finally, I suggested ECOS All Natural Laundry Detergent.  Its HE compatible, smells great, has a soy-based built-in fabric softener, and is grey-water safe (meaning you could use the left over water for your vegetable garden).  All this and it was on sale at Kroger’s!

As for my kitchen cleaning, my in-laws arrive tomorrow and I’m feeling pleased with my greening and cleaning! Word to the wise, you may want to use these cleaning solutions barefoot – its more comfortable and the grime from your shoes won’t be washed onto your newly cleaned tile!  Happy green cleaning!

When you buy the product, you are buying the package, too.  So says my friend Gina who comes half-day on Mondays and a full day on Friday to help me clean up after myself and my family.  I finally realized that I am not a slacker mom if I enlist some help around here.  And Gina makes it nice.

When I came home today in the middle of the cleaning job, my kitchen looked so great AND she organized inside a problem cabinet, that I literally had tears of joy in my eyes and I hugged her.  I feel like a person again!

Another cool thing about Gina is her witty life-lessons that aren’t didactic- they are simply practical.  Case in point, see the uploaded image at the top of this post.  The “bucket” is used in this case for cleaning solution but she says she uses them at home for organizers in the bedroom, bath or kitchen.  In the spring she has used other similar containers as a planter for seedlings or houseplants.   Finally, she tried to tell me how you can jazz up the cutting of the container to make it look like a plastic duck that could be fun for kids to put their little toys in, but I didn’t quite see the procedure in my mind’s eye.  Maybe sometime I will ask her more on that.

It is perfect timing because about a month ago I purchased an empty plastic bucket for $4.50 and just yesterday the bottom corner got smashed up and broken open somehow and I had to throw it away!! Maddening!

So it seems clear that while recycling is ok and clearly better than tossing refuse into a landfill, it’s not exactly an environmental panacea and may in fact promote the very behavior it’s intended to eliminate – egregious wastefulness.  A far superior alternative is Reuse. Why not take something in its present form and reuse it? This concept seems like common sense, but every year billions of pounds of perfectly good stuff ends up in landfills.  [from Project Enterprise]

So if you are wary about re-using plastic containers for your food and potables,  if you want to reduce the volume of plastic that becomes garbage, or if you are like me and really really want to avoid buying empty buckets that break anyway, take this tip from Health Patio via my friend Gina.  Thanks, Gina!

Joel’s words: Whether or not you believe carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming or not, it is harmful to the environment and reducing your carbon footprint is a great idea.

I evaluated myself at one of the several sites mentioned [Carbon Footprint], one that is based out of the UK but has data to compare me to my peers here in central U.S.A. The calculations for the primary emissions are based on a combination of metrics from the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the UK’s Department for Transport, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). P.s. it was fun.

I gave US dollar figures for various types of fuel (electricity, coal, natural gas, LP, others) use at home and the results:

Total for your home = 7.437 tonnes of CO2
Total for your cars = 3.124 tonnes of CO2
Total secondary footprint = 4.813 tonnes of CO2
Total = 15.374 tonnes of CO2

* The average footprint for people in United States is 20.4 tonnes.
* The average for the industrial nations is about 11 tonnes.
* The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 tonnes.
* To combat climate change the worldwide average needs to reduce to 2 tonnes.

The final stage of the evaluation reveals several options to donate to offset one’s personal carbon footprint!

April 4th was National Walk to Work Day.  We might have missed it, but there’s no reason we can’t extend it to today and to places other than work.   As someone walks, he or she is saving money put into their vehicles (including costly repairs and gasoline) and spending a lot of their own energy instead - with each mile a person burns approximatly 100 calories.
According to the The Walking Site, burning  3500 calories is equal to one pound. Further, think of the amount of money and gasoline I’m saving!  I live about 1 mile driving distance from my school and lets say I go to school about 200 days of the year and that I live in a dorm.

200 days x 1 mile x 60 students in my school = 12,000 miles driven less this year!  That also means that collectively all the students have lost about 343 pounds!!!

Do you want to start walking?  Do it in steps!  If your school or place of work is less than five miles, you might consider walking.  Be sure to dress for the occasion and invest in some quality walking shoes.  You may also want to bring along an MP3 player to motivate yourself and keep you entertained.  Probably the best way to enhance your walking experience is to bring a buddy!  Not only will you be building a relationship, but you could be saving your friend’s life!  According to Harvard University’s Women’s Hospital, if eveyone in the United States walk 30 minutes a day at a brisk pace, they would decrease the risk of chronic disease by 30% to 40%.

P.S. And don’t forget about biking – you go further and faster without using a drop of gasoline!

…simply turn off my computer.”

I subscribed to The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, where I saw this poignant phrase appear on a post titled Digitally Green. The whole article is worth a look! And the book by the same title is also available for your simple reading pleasure.

Is it noblesse oblige or something more that is driving Google to a leading role toward a greener tomorrow? I’d love to see Google’s name on this list – there’s some impressive names already there. Like Shaklee, climate neutral since 2000.

Joshua S Hill brought to my attention today at Green Options that the world need not wait for government to do the work of the hungry consumer. To me, this means entrepreneurs and corporates alike will no longer have to make do with the energy sources that brought us the horseless carriage and the steam engine. Using oil and coal to run today’s technology is what’s called transitional technology. It’s time for a new normal and I’m buyin’.