The importance of building green

For those out there that may (not sure how you could though) doubt the importance of building green, check out this post on ecogeek. Not sure exactly where they get the figures on the amount of carbon from cars, but an interesting bit of info anyway. Basically, they are saying that if all building were to turn "green" for the year, then we would save as much greenhouse gasses, etc. as are used by every car and plane used in North America for the year.

Again, I have no idea about the accuracy of those numbers, but either way it is CLEAR that building green will have a huge impact. Now all we have to do is make every builder and developer to build everything green.. Then renovate every existing building using green principles. Seems like a rather daunting task, but things seem to be moving in the right direction at least. Maybe someday we will all be living in sustainable, comfortable homes. We can only hope...

Stumbled upon this earlier

Great conservation tips here. A lot of them are kind of common sense, but it's nice to see all these tips in one place like this.

If my couch is healthy, I'm healthy

By my estimation, the average American probably spends somewhere between 700 and 1000 hours a year on his or her couch.  Watching TV, napping, reading, relaxing after a long day; some of us (Jake and I are guilty!) even have meals there.  Most of us don't give much thought to the close relationships we've developed with our furniture, but it is a fact that we are intimately involved.  So it only seems natural that we'd expect an object we're in such close contact with every day to be made of materials that won't harm us.  Unfortunately, Green Daily just mentioned a new report that links an ingredient in more than 2/3 of California furniture to birth defects and cancer.  The chemical, called PBDE (a type of bromide) seeps into the bloodstreams of pregnant women, affecting the fetus or baby via the umbilical cord or breast milk.  This toxin has even been affecting the cats who snuggle with us.

So that begs the observation: if California is noticing this problem in household furniture (and still hasn't resolved it via legislature), imagine what that says about my couch here in North Carolina, one of the largest furniture-producing states around.  My solution?  The next couch we buy (which will be very soon) will be a green one! 

Clorox going green?

Most if not all of you have probably seen these products advertised by Clorox, the new GreenWorks line. They are touting it as a "natural" cleaner, safer for the environment and the user, etc. etc. etc. Most of you may also know that my background is in chemistry, and today I had a few minutes to take a look into the ingredients of these "natural" cleaners. I add the quotes, because the word natural as it is used by corporations is a completely unregulated and VERY loosely used term. OK, so what's the verdict, is it natural or not. Well we will get to that shortly, first let me just list to you the ingredients per their labels:
water, alkyl polyglucoside, ethanol SDA-3C, glycerine, lemon essential oil, preservative (Kathon) and colorant (Milliken Liquitint Blue HP dye and Bright Yellow dye X) and also some of them contain sodium lauryl sulfate and lauramine oxide.

Now a good general rule of thumb with these sorts of things is, if you can't tell right away where something comes from, then it probably isn't natural. Alkyl polyglucoside??? Turns out is pretty readily available from chemical manufacturers such as Dow. Clorox says that it is derived from Coconuts. OK then. The use for this surfactant (which basically means a wetting agent that lowers the surface tension of a liquid) is to help form nice soapy bubbles and act as the main detergent ingredient. This is basically the meat and potatoes of the cleaning product. The other stuff is added for smell, color and preservation. So what exactly is it? well it is a synthetically produced chemical. It does appear to degrade pretty quickly (28 days) I do not know the path to degredation though, so I have no idea why it doesn't just break down in the bottle, most likely what the preservatives are preventing, as well as the prevention of bacterial growth. Dow says they are quite stable in a caustic environment, meaning pH higher than 8 or so, which is common for soaps and cleaning products.

The other eyebrow raisers; Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Lauramine Oxide (an emulsifier, meaning it allows oil and water to be mixed). could both definitely be construed as very un-natural and SLS sounds downright scary. The others, preservatives and dyes.. eh.. Then you have corn based ethanol, which I don't have a problem with using in a cleaner personally, but there is the little problem of the creation of that ethanol taking up huge amounts of energy both in production and in the transport of corn, etc.

Anyway, about the only thing truly natural in this bottle would probably be the water, the rest are synthetically extracted or produced wholly in a lab. I think I'll just use some vinegar and water...

Six Degrees Could Change the World

I watched this last night, and I just have to say that it is a MUST watch for really anyone. Not just the people like me that are obsessed with the planet, but even the sceptics among us. I really encourage anyone to check it out and the webpage if they get a chance. It is far superior to the horribly dumbed down special that CNN put together a couple months ago. This one gets a bit spectacular with the visuals, but by most accounts they are being pretty conservative with the predictions.

It is pretty scary stuff. We all know the troubles we could be in if nothing is done, but unless something really big happens soon, we might as well all invest in the future breadbasket of the world in north-central Canada.

Wind and Solar Potential

I found this fun little toy earlier today. Basically a quick breakdown of wind and solar potnential for the entire nation, but detailed enough that you can find your own town. A lot of fun to look at.

Air Quality

Ready to be completely depressed. Check out the Air Quality maps I found on creativemethods.com. I have no real idea where they get their data from, but it was appear to me to make sense based on the areas with F grades. There sure seems to be a lot of F's and D's out there, and as of yet I have not found a single speck of A quality other than the Aleutian Islands. That is a truly sad state of things.

Water Shortages

For those of you out there that may not know, the southeast is currently suffering from a SEVERE drought. Many places are down to as little as a month of drinking water remaining. Plans are being put into place to truck water in and begin rationing it if things persist, other plans include taking water from other sources (quarries, lake bed sediment, etc). I was just poking around a bit yesterday to try and find some articles out there on there, as well as some of the truly unbelievable pictures of lakes and river, etc. in the area. In the process of that search I found these 2 articles; the first from USA today from 2003, the other is from a blog called whyfiles from 2001. Both of these articles predict extreme water shortages in the coming years, going as far as to predict "water wars" and other such horrors. I point out just how old they are for the simple reason that there are still people that do not believe global warming is taking place. Scientists can release information and articles all day and they will always be labelled as Doom and Gloomers. The fact is, the water shortage issues talked about in these articles from years ago are happening NOW. Some people would way that it is just a normal trend when it comes to weather, there are dry times, and there are wet times.. This is true, and may be so, but the fact is that all these people drinking SO much water and using water for frivolous things is a HUGE factor. The perfect illustration is Falls Lake near Raleigh, where basically all of Wake County draws drinking water, The lake has turned practically into a stream... Meanwhile Jordan lake nearby (while quite low) still resembles a lake.

The truly frustrating thing is that all of this can be helped, aided, whatever you want to call it with responsible uses. Stop watering your lawns for something as useless as green grass for one thing. Then there are many conservation steps we can all take, as well as systems that can be built into our houses to reuse graywater. I highly recommend the book The Natural House, which is also a GREAT source of info on the basics of many different natural building techniques, but also includes a great chapter on Graywater systems. Just one of the many types of things that I feel will need to be integrated into ALL homes for things to continue to be as prosperous as they currently are.. I personally do not want to ever have to worry about whether there will be enough water in which to bathe, but far too many people are more concerned with whether or not their yard is pretty. A lot of things will need to chance dramatically in this country and a lot of people's priorities are going to need to shift, but lets just all hope for some rain soon, and then we can maybe start to change some people's habits.

Back From the Holidays

Sorry for the long gap in posts. Been very busy around here with the holidays, but it's time to get back to work. Hopefully, there will be some more posts and updates coming soon.

Freecycle

This site randomly popped up earlier today while I was searching for other things, but it looks like a really cool site. Join up with your local group and see what sort of treasures you can find, or if there are any people that can find treasures of their own with your old stuff.