At the top of any list of how to reduce pollution you will always find something about reducing your vehicle usage. Take the bus, carpool, combine errands, walk or bike there when you can, etc. - and they are all great suggestions that can save you in fuel and maintenance on your vehicle and reduce greenhouse gasses, but they are also inconvenient and time consuming. It can take over an hour to use public transportation to get somewhere that would take 15 minutes by car. Carpooling is great if everyone lives the same direction, but more often than not people live all over the place, not to mention carpooling can make you late to work and restricts your ability to stay late or leave early from work. Combining errands is actually more efficient, but forget that one thing and it's over. If you're looking for a long-term, convenient, time and cost saving and easy to stick to solution, why not order online and get the things you need take public transportation to you.
The US Postal Service is going to take the same route every day whether you order your products online or not, and the FexEx and UPS trucks will be out there regardless. It may be true that the additional packaging your products come in can be harmful, but the local store will receive and dispose of packaging anyway, and this way you get to ensure it is recycled. You can fill the extra boxes you get with other paper products and set them out on recycling day or carry them to the recycling center if you don't have curbside. There will always be a few things you need to get at the store, but these days you can get just about anything shipped to you online, and why not? When you shop online, you go right for what you need without having to walk through aisles of what you don't need that are set up to make you impulse buy. This kind of impulse buying leads to over shopping, leaving you with items you don't need, won't use and will probably end up being thrown away. Even if you don't impulse buy and the store is easy walking distance, who wants to waste their day off work pushing through crowded aisles just to find the product you came for is sold out and standing in a checkout line? You could be spending time doing whatever leisure activity your family enjoys and relaxing for the upcoming week of work?
I've mentioned Amazon's Subscribe and Save program before in passing, but the overview is you pick what you like, choose when to have it delivered, and pay no shipping plus get 15% off the Amazon price which is almost always lower than the store price to begin with. The program is very flexible, and operates with minimal management. You can send new deliveries whenever you want and cancel deliveries whenever you want. I've gotten everything from household products to over the counter medications to non-perishable grocery products through Subscribe and Save and my total savings over my local grocery store have been more than 50%. For clothing, electronics and larger items you can do a search to find the best deals or use one of the many website comparison search engines. You can review product features from every manufacturer and decide what will work best for you, then find the best price available. Most sellers of clothing or larger, more expensive products have lenient, user-friendly return policies because they understand sometimes when you hold a product or try it on you just don't like it. Shopping green is very easy online as well because you can search out eco-friendly options for just about everything you use including sustainable hemp, organic cotton, wool or bamboo clothing, plant based plastics, energy star appliances, recycled paper and plastic products, natural cleaning products and personal care products and much more.
Product selection is more important than it sounds. Often people are willing to buy a product at the store that does not have the features or ease of use they are looking for because it is "all the have left" or "what's on sale." For example, say I want an inexpensive coffee maker with a timer on it so I can grab my coffee on the way to work rather than stopping at the expensive coffee shop next door to the office. I get to the store, and the only ones they have on the shelves in my price range do not have timers, so I figure I'll live without it and just get up a few minutes earlier because I don't want to drive around and can't afford the very expensive one with the timer. I get home and the first week I hop out of bed 10 minutes earlier to use the coffeemaker, but after the newness of it wears off I start hitting the snooze button. I don't get up earlier and never have the time to brew my coffee, so the coffeemaker sits on the counter unused until one day I decide it's taking up too much space and put it in the basement and now I either keep buying the expensive coffee at the coffee shop or go shopping for a coffeemaker again. Or maybe I do actually get up and use the coffeemaker, but 9 months later it breaks. The store certainly wasn't going to tell me that that model breaks all the time because they want the sale, but other annoyed product owners would have told me online in their negative reviews. Either way, I've wasted my money and wasted the natural resources that went into making, marketing and picking up that product. If I'd shopped online, I would have found a coffeemaker with the features I wanted that I would have used all the time and I would have made sure it had a high rating so I could be relatively certain that it would not break in a short time. Underhanded marketing strategies like creeping featurism and planned obsolescence require customer participation. When people fail to research a product and end up with something poorly manufactured, or settle for something that doesn't really meet their needs and figure they'll upgrade later before the product reaches the end of it's usable life they are making a decision to waste the resources that go into the manufacture and shipping of that product.
Perishable grocery items can be a bit harder to come by online, but not impossible in many areas of the country. While I don't advocate personal shoppers since this just means someone else will be generating pollution and doesn't really help conserve fuel or reduce emissions, services like Giant's Peapod and Safeway's home delivery use delivery trucks that drive a route and bring a large number of groceries at once. There are a number of local services in different areas that do the same, so if they do not operate in your area, check out grocery stores that deliver around you and make sure they are not personal shopper type services where one run per order is done. Unlike other online services this service may cost a bit more and you need to make sure they service accepts coupons if you use them. Often you can save a few dollars and allow the driver to pick the most fuel efficient route by allowing for delivery within a larger block of time, and if you distribute enough of your purchases to discount services on websites like Amazon, though, you should be able to end up with savings overall, not to mention extra time for yourself. You can spend days working on your list and save your staple products on your account, and you can still get the store specials. Since grocery stores are physically laid out to make you walk through all the products you don't need in order to increase impulse buying. It can also be hard to find the natural, organic and eco-friendly products in the store, while it is searchable online and easy to compare the different price, unit price, and manufacturer information online. For example, in the store I was unaware of the Nature's Promise cage, hormone, antibiotic and pesticide cage free eggs from vegetarian fed hens because reading the package of each and every product in the store is time prohibitive. Online I was able to look up natural and organic eggs, then see the clear cage free label, letting me know that for $0.30 more I could purchase a cruelty free product. I also found chicken and milk from the same company (treated the same way) and bison in place of beef (it is illegal to factory farm bison). By shopping online, I improved my health by purchasing food with no added toxins and the quality of life for the animals that produce my food by ensuring every company I purchase from is cruelty free and still was done in less time that going to the store. In addition, making your purchases online will allow you to stick to the list of things you actually need, so in spite of the slightly higher prices, you may even find yourself in the black if you are prone to knocking those extra things you swear you'll use (someday) into the cart.
In every way, shopping online allows you to make a better informed, better thought out decision. There is no more impulse buying, no more getting to the register and realizing you've spent too much but being embarrassed to remove items from your purchase, and plenty of deals you might not otherwise find. Not to mention you will really come to appreciate the convenience and extra time for yourself all while saving energy and reducing emissions.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Beyond Cloth Diapers - Green Toileting For Adults
For people out there that have never used cloth diapers this may come as a real shock, but for those that have, you probably have either seen or used cloth baby wipes. You use them, toss them in your diaper pail or wet bag and then run them through the wash. Wallypop takes it to the next logical step. In addition to selling reasonable priced cloth napkins, hankies, menstrual pads, cloth shopping bags, breast pads, diapers and baby slings, the staple products of many home operated natural living sites, Wallypop offers cloth family wipes (toilet paper) and asks the question if it's good enough for your baby, isn't it good enough for you? I'd think any user of cloth infant products would feel the same way. For those of us with no children, I admit it can be a bit of a leap, especially for #2, but the average toilet visit is not a #2 visit, and most of the toilet paper women use is for urine, which is sterile and generally does not have much of an odor. Not to mention if you "let it mellow" which is an excellent water saving practice, you know that the biggest problem is the collection of toilet paper you get in the bowl. Once you eliminate the toilet paper flushes you will find you save a lot more water, especially if there are a number of women in your household.
I took a look at some of my feminine products - cloth pads, sea sponges - all much grosser than a cloth with a little pee on it. I thought about how many recycled paper towels I have thrown away because one of my dogs had an accident or my female was in heat. I wipe that up with a cloth, so I finally got up the guts to order some of the soft flannel wipes (they are also available in hemp and sherpa). They are very thick and similar in size and weight to a pot holder. They are much softer than many brands of toilet paper and I never have to worry about soaking through or tearing. Granted, there are brands of regular toilet paper that are very thick and absorbant, but they use a lot of paper to get that thickness, don't have as much to a roll and are therefore not very eco-friendly. All right - I still haven't gotten there for a #2 visit and my husband doesn't use them at all due to the obvious biological differences. For now, I set the wipe bag along with the Seventh Generation toilet paper and Natracare organic wipes and everyone is happy.
So where do you store a soiled cloth wipe? I like the wet bags people use for diapers, also available at a reasonable price from Wallypop for the upstairs bathroom, and I toss the ones from the downstairs bathroom right in the soaking container I keep for my menstrual pads. Since I pre-clean them with Bio-Kleen oxygen bleach and Bac-Out, I can launder them in a mesh bag like pantyhose or menstrual pads. If you still can't stand the thought of washing them with other clothes, use a hand washer or a low cycle with just the wipes and any pads you may need to clean. Ultimately, you will save a lot of money on yet another product that you flush away (and if you use toilet paper to wipe your nose, you can always buy some soft cloth hankies to take its place).
Another unique product Wallypop sells is their cloth sandwich baggies and wraps. Since there is no way to make plastic bags and wrap eco-friendly, these products are really important and I'm shocked that I haven't seen them elsewhere. There are alternate products like this natural waxed paper or these PVC and plasticizer free plastic bags that are better for you by eliminating harmful chemicals, but at the end of the day you still have plastic or paper being consumed and discarded. Even these compostable food storage products consume resources and create manufacturing waste. I'm not saying reusable cloth products will ever replace plastic bags completely - for long term storage you still have to have something airtight, but if you pack a sandwich for work or school or want to carry some cookies or crackers along in the car (and don't want to waste money and resources and generate waste by purchasing single serve packets), washable and reusable bags and wrappers that last for years and don't generate waste are the way to go.
Finally, for those reading this thinking how strange it is that I use and recommend so many cloth products, how gross it is to deal with food scraps, snot, pee and blood and/or how much time it must take in maintenance, remember that the concept of disposable items, unnecessary packaging, and single use items is largely a mid 1800's to present concept, and one that has done our species, our planet and the other species forced to share the planet with us nothing but harm. For the millions of years that humans have existed before the 1900's people tried to conserve and reuse products because most everything was made by hand until the mid 1800's and later. Check out this history of trash to see how little a problem trash was in the past, and how as we urbanized and began buying packaged and single use products rather than using natural, reusable products the problem with trash disposal became a global crisis.
An interesting point is that the invention of synthetic plastic in 1868 seemed to begin a new age of trash dumping. What initially was a fairly stable trash problem consisting largley of organic matter like sewage, food and dead animals began to increase rapidly as people began to produce more household waste consisting of manufactured items. This lead to new "solutions" like incinerators (1874) and the development of recycling centers (1897), but failed to address the increasing amounts of refuse. In 1900 the average person produced up to 1400 lb of trash per year, by 1916 that increased to up to 1750 lb per year and it remains close to that figure to this day. That is 10 times the body weight of the average person in trash every year times everyone in the country and the population is increasing - way grosser than handling your own bodily fluids.
Next time you carry your trash to the curb, look at how much is in the can for the week. Is it one bag? Two? Are you one of the families that has two or more cans full over the brim with trash? For my family, my goal is to put at most one full bag of trash out per week. I'm not counting recycling here, just the trash. If it is more than that, I try to figure out what is in there and what can be replaced with reusable products or eliminated because I don't want to see the day where we have generated so much waste that even burning and burying it doesn't work anymore.
I took a look at some of my feminine products - cloth pads, sea sponges - all much grosser than a cloth with a little pee on it. I thought about how many recycled paper towels I have thrown away because one of my dogs had an accident or my female was in heat. I wipe that up with a cloth, so I finally got up the guts to order some of the soft flannel wipes (they are also available in hemp and sherpa). They are very thick and similar in size and weight to a pot holder. They are much softer than many brands of toilet paper and I never have to worry about soaking through or tearing. Granted, there are brands of regular toilet paper that are very thick and absorbant, but they use a lot of paper to get that thickness, don't have as much to a roll and are therefore not very eco-friendly. All right - I still haven't gotten there for a #2 visit and my husband doesn't use them at all due to the obvious biological differences. For now, I set the wipe bag along with the Seventh Generation toilet paper and Natracare organic wipes and everyone is happy.
So where do you store a soiled cloth wipe? I like the wet bags people use for diapers, also available at a reasonable price from Wallypop for the upstairs bathroom, and I toss the ones from the downstairs bathroom right in the soaking container I keep for my menstrual pads. Since I pre-clean them with Bio-Kleen oxygen bleach and Bac-Out, I can launder them in a mesh bag like pantyhose or menstrual pads. If you still can't stand the thought of washing them with other clothes, use a hand washer or a low cycle with just the wipes and any pads you may need to clean. Ultimately, you will save a lot of money on yet another product that you flush away (and if you use toilet paper to wipe your nose, you can always buy some soft cloth hankies to take its place).
Another unique product Wallypop sells is their cloth sandwich baggies and wraps. Since there is no way to make plastic bags and wrap eco-friendly, these products are really important and I'm shocked that I haven't seen them elsewhere. There are alternate products like this natural waxed paper or these PVC and plasticizer free plastic bags that are better for you by eliminating harmful chemicals, but at the end of the day you still have plastic or paper being consumed and discarded. Even these compostable food storage products consume resources and create manufacturing waste. I'm not saying reusable cloth products will ever replace plastic bags completely - for long term storage you still have to have something airtight, but if you pack a sandwich for work or school or want to carry some cookies or crackers along in the car (and don't want to waste money and resources and generate waste by purchasing single serve packets), washable and reusable bags and wrappers that last for years and don't generate waste are the way to go.
Finally, for those reading this thinking how strange it is that I use and recommend so many cloth products, how gross it is to deal with food scraps, snot, pee and blood and/or how much time it must take in maintenance, remember that the concept of disposable items, unnecessary packaging, and single use items is largely a mid 1800's to present concept, and one that has done our species, our planet and the other species forced to share the planet with us nothing but harm. For the millions of years that humans have existed before the 1900's people tried to conserve and reuse products because most everything was made by hand until the mid 1800's and later. Check out this history of trash to see how little a problem trash was in the past, and how as we urbanized and began buying packaged and single use products rather than using natural, reusable products the problem with trash disposal became a global crisis.
An interesting point is that the invention of synthetic plastic in 1868 seemed to begin a new age of trash dumping. What initially was a fairly stable trash problem consisting largley of organic matter like sewage, food and dead animals began to increase rapidly as people began to produce more household waste consisting of manufactured items. This lead to new "solutions" like incinerators (1874) and the development of recycling centers (1897), but failed to address the increasing amounts of refuse. In 1900 the average person produced up to 1400 lb of trash per year, by 1916 that increased to up to 1750 lb per year and it remains close to that figure to this day. That is 10 times the body weight of the average person in trash every year times everyone in the country and the population is increasing - way grosser than handling your own bodily fluids.
Next time you carry your trash to the curb, look at how much is in the can for the week. Is it one bag? Two? Are you one of the families that has two or more cans full over the brim with trash? For my family, my goal is to put at most one full bag of trash out per week. I'm not counting recycling here, just the trash. If it is more than that, I try to figure out what is in there and what can be replaced with reusable products or eliminated because I don't want to see the day where we have generated so much waste that even burning and burying it doesn't work anymore.
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