battery bedlam

I can’t even count the number of gadgets and gizmos around my house that use batteries. Remote controls, alarm clocks, smoke detectors, flashlights, mp3 players, toys… I don’t even want to think about it. My husband and I started buying batteries in bulk because  we were going through them so quickly, but nothing prepared me for the battery sucking speed of an electronic toy my older son received for his birthday.

He loves this thing, I won’t say what it is, but it takes 4 AA batteries. That seems like a lot to me, but then compared to the 6 d-sized batteries that went into our infant swing, I suppose it’s just a matter of scale. So, my problem isn’t really with the fact that this particular toy takes 4 batteries… but rather how fast it sucks through those 4 batteries. In two months, I have swapped out those batteries at least 3 times. My husband says he’s done it twice.  So in about 6 weeks, this toy has swallowed at least 20 batteries. That’s just a little scary.

To further add to this embarrassment, I have to say that I am pretty guilty of generally tossing batteries into the trash. I can’t toss them into the weekly recycle bin because our company won’t take them. I would actually have to put some work into finding a place where I can recycle spent batteries… like the once-a-year spring clean-out sponsored by our town. Well, since this battery-vampire of a toy came along, I have now started a little dead-battery box in the closet. It’s one thing to toss a random battery in the trash now and then. It’s quite another to consistently be throwing away a handful at a time!

Which leads me to the point of this post. I knew we had a AA battery charger somewhere, and upon pointing out to my husband that he needed to buy another new jumbo sleeve of batteries because we were out already, he decided to dig it out and plug it in. 4 AA rechargeable batteries now sit, tucked into their little electrical beds, connected to a socket on my kitchen wall. Is this any better? Am I just draining more power out of the world with yet another thing in my house plugged into my wall? Well, as it turns out, no. According to my Google searches, it makes both environmental and economical sense to use rechargeable batteries if you go through more than 12 a year. TWELVE? I find it incredible to think that this toy just blew through two years’ of allotted battery usage!

So for now, I think I am going to look into incorporating more rechargeable batteries into our house. For things that rely completely on battery power (music players, cameras, remotes, and clocks), there really is no reason to continue generating the amount of spent-battery waste we’re generating by buying conventional batteries. While they might be a lot cheaper, I have to think the the out-of-pocket expense is the same considering that the life of a rechargeable battery is considerably longer. -Not necessarily the charge part, but in terms of the battery itself. And if I’m going to be recycling a completely dead battery, I would definitely feel better knowing that at least I’d used it more than once before tossing it out into the world.

b.y.o.b.

“Paper or plastic?”

Paper seems like such the obviously superior choice given that it’s easy to either reuse or recycle, but does plastic have any merit at all? My husband uses our plastic grocery bags to bring his lunch to work, and they can also be recycled in a number of places. According to Allen Hershkowitz of the NRDC, your choice of paper or plastic really should come down to where you live. If you live along the coast where plastic bags are finding their way into our oceans, then choose paper. If you live in the heartland, choose plastic because of the enormous amount of energy that goes into both manufacturing and recycling paper bags. What constitutes “coastal living?” Do I need to be able to see the ocean from my house? My town?

Additionally, consider this:

• It takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper.
• Plastic bags are not biodegradable, but paper bags generate 70% more air pollutants than plastic and 50 times more water pollutants.
• It can take 1000 years for a plastic bag to completely break down in the environment, but paper bags take up a lot more landfill space in the short-term.

Ok, obviously, neither choice is better than bringing your own bag, which I do whenever I remember. I have four cloth bags that I like to use for grocery shopping, but at Target last week, it occurred to me that I should probably carry them everywhere; not just the grocery store.

In fact, while I’m on this subject, I think it should become a global initiative to do away with the paper or plastic conundrum completely. If disposable bags, whether they’re paper or plastic, are so obviously bad for the planet, why are they still available everywhere? Why not just eliminate them altogether and force consumers to bring their own bags? Or, given that people will often forget to carry their bag, why not charge for use of paper or plastic bags? Five dollars on top of a grocery bill would definitely be a nuisance. Or better yet – make it $50. I would opt to not buy the bag at all and I would load my groceries into my car directly from the shopping cart I used in the store. Yes, it would be a HUGE pain in the ass, but I dare say it would go a long way in helping me to remember my bag the next time I shopped!!

milk – does it really do a body good?

The debate over organic versus conventional milk is endless. If you can afford the hefty price tag, organic milk seems like the way to go if you want milk from cows that live under the four organic requirements set forth by the USDA (no BGH, no pesticides in their feed, no antibiotics, and access to pasture). Yet scientists are still out on whether or not there is any real benefit to organic milk over conventional milk. Considering that the acid in our intestinal tract easily breaks down BHG proteins, pesticide residues are well below tolerable standards, and milk isn’t sold if there are detectable amounts of antibiotics in it, there is no solid evidence at this point that organic milk is any healthier than it’s conventional counterpart. For people concerned about the welfare of a dairy cow, the final requirement of “access to pasture” is widely interpreted. You will have to visit a dairy farm yourself to discover whether or not the animals actually spend any time in a pasture as opposed to simply “having access” to it.

Whether you’ve made the choice to serve your child organic milk or conventional milk, chances are you’ve got your own reasons for making the decision. But in the midst of the endless “organic versus conventional” war, a seemingly new seed has sprouted; should we be feeding our kids milk at all?

For those of us who were raised with the idea that a balanced meal needs to include a glass of milk, and that milk has essential nutrients and calcium that are vital to our health, the idea that it might not be such a good thing after all is somewhat startling. I haven’t paid much attention to milk since I grew up and left my parents’ home, where it was expected that we would drink milk with every meal. Now I drink it on my cereal and with the occasional meal (especially if there are cookies), and I always feel guilty about not drinking it more often. So imagine my surprise to learn that the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine advised that parents be alerted to the potential health risks to children from cows’ milk, and that cows’ milk no longer be recommended in any government guidelines or programs (school lunches, WIC programs, etc). When did they make these recommendations? Back in 1998! In 2002, the PCRM published another report with eight reasons to eliminate dairy altogether from our diets. -Maybe I’m living under a rock, but this is news to me. I was under the impression that milk is not only good for me, it is essential to my overall health.

So how come I haven’t seen ads on TV telling me that milk might be potentially harmful? I think I might have seen or heard some noise from PETA over the years about avoiding dairy, but why would I listen to them? My health isn’t part of their vegan agenda, is it? I have, however, continued to see TV ads telling me that milk is good for me, milk makes strong bones, and even new ads recently telling me that milk in my diet could help me lose weight. Drinking milk will make me skinny? I definitely need to drink more! But wait… who issued this report anyway? Well, the study of dieting habits in this country was done by the NPD Group (a marketing research company) and commissioned by the Milk Processor Education Program (shocking). The results do say that people who drink milk tend to weigh less, but the missing piece to that statement is that people who regularly drink milk weigh less than people who drink soda, coffee, tea, and/or juice. The study also reports that “dieters who drank milk had better quality diets, richer in essential nutrients” (*2), but nowhere does it say that these rich, essential nutrients come from milk itself.

 

Milk, water, and the occasional cup of natural fruit juice are the only drinks my children are allowed to have. Naturally, I would never consider giving them coffee, tea, or soda, and now I’m wondering if I should stop serving milk beyond what is naturally consumed on their cereal or in an occasional bowl of ice cream? My older son doesn’t even like milk that much, and given a choice between a cup of water or cup of milk with dinner, he will choose water every time. Perhaps I should take my cue from him on this one?

 

This topic definitely needs more attention.

swiffer or something else?

I confess, I’m not a big fan of my Swiffer wet mop. I bought it when we lived in an apartment that had hardwood floors throughout, and I liked the idea of a quick clean, no buckets of water or disgusting mop sponge, and then the ease of throwing away a piece of paper with all the dirt in my house conveniently attached to it. I never really liked the “open window fresh” scent, but I did think my floors looked nice after a cleaning session.

Rumors about Swiffer being poisonous to household pets and children have been proven false. Well, sort of. P&G says the ingredients are safe, but I can’t seem to find out exactly what ingredients are in a Swiffer wet cloth. On close inspection of my box of “Swiffer wet” wipes, I found no list of ingredients, only information that it “doesn’t contain phosphates.” Okay, thanks. The “customer support” link on the Swiffer website doesn’t offer much more. Their answer to questions about Wet Jet and Wet Cloth ingredients is that the solutions are “made from perfume and water-soluble cleaning ingredients commonly found in cleaning products everywhere.” That’s really not too helpful either. Maybe some more digging around on their website, or perhaps a phone call to Procter & Gamble directly would provide me with some answers, but at the end of the day, I’m not sure I need to spread a chemical around my house that is either so scary or so simplistic that the company won’t list it directly on their product, or make it known on their website.

Either way, putting aside questions about chemical components for a moment, is Swiffer a more environmentally sound option than a conventional mop and bucket? Gianfranco Zaccai wants me to think so. In an article for Business Week Online, Zaccai said that a Swiffer mop triumphs over a conventional mop in environmental sustainability because it doesn’t require “gallons of hot water and great amounts of detergent every week in millions of homes around the world. The energy needed to heat that water and the environmental impact of dumping the detergent into the waste stream are terribly costly… Cleaning a floor with a Swiffer uses almost no water at all, and the only disposable waste is a sheet of paper and a few squirts of cleaning agent.”

Obviously, I can’t compare the “squirts of cleaning agent” with any floor detergent I might use to mop my floors because I don’t know what the cleaning agent IS exactly. However, does Zaccai have a point about the energy required to make hot water being worse for the environment than a “sheet of paper?”

I have no way of accurately comparing the environmental impact of those two things, but common sense tells me that if every household in this country used Swiffer, the disposal of those billions of sheets of paper (I used two every time I wanted to clean the floor in my not-that-big apartment) soaked with an unmentionable cleaning agent, the environmental damage would be far superior than if every household in this country used a reusable mop system. While I can’t compare the impact of washing a reusable mob head, or generating hot water, can it really be worse for the environment then the actual production, packaging, and shipping of all these sheets of paper all over the country? And if you consider their ride to a store near my house, the ride to my house, and then a ride to my local dump… they’re definitely taking their fair share of fossil fuel, no?

Of course, I have no doubt that Zaccai would probably like to see every household in America using a Swiffer. If you read the article closely, it doesn’t take much to see that he is president and CEO of the company that designed Swiffer for P&G. Hmm.

Well, I still have two boxes of wet-cloth refills left, and I guess in the interest of not letting things go to waste, I might as well use them up. Whatever the mystery chemical is in there, it hasn’t killed me (or the kids) yet. And, although I’ve been thinking for a while about buying a brand new, eco-friendly mop (if I could find one!), maybe I’ll consider rigging my own with my used Swiffer handle once I’m done with the wet wipes. Perhaps I could wrap an old t-shirt around it? If I mix up a simple baking soda and water solution, soak the t-shirt and wring out excess water so that it’s damp, wouldn’t that be somewhat equivalent to my own eco-friendly Swiffer? No more trucks shipping moist pads around the country, no more plastic containers to dispose of, no more sheets of detergent-soaked paper in the trash. Just a t-shirt that can be tossed in a regular laundry cycle along with some other household items that I’m going to be washing anyway.

I’ll give it a shot…

antibacterial or all-natural?

Okay, is a “green clean” really clean enough for my house? The arrival of my children has definitely ushered in a new age of vigilant label-reading on my part, and household cleansers are no exception. Watch any toddler put his mouth indiscriminately on a toy or toilet seat, and you’ll start to question whether or not it’s really clean enough too.

My dilemma, as a mom, is how to clean effectively both for the environment and for my family. This latest antibacterial movement has me on constant alert for evil germs that can only be removed with antibacterial soaps and cleansers. Numerous commercials would have me believe that simple scrubbing isn’t good enough if I’m not using antibacterial cleaner on every surface of my house (and body!). Forget any obvious hazard of licking the toilet bowl, my phone, doorknobs, counters, and remote controls are all carriers of viral plague. If I really want to keep my house clean and my kids safe from all the “bugs” lurking around here, antibacterial is the way to go, right?

Well, maybe not. While the jury is still be out on whether the use of antibacterial products in the home contributes to the drug-resistant bacteria phenomenon we’re seeing, there does seem to be a consensus among scientists and doctors that these products don’t offer any greater level of clean or germ protection than traditional cleaning methods. A 2004 study comparing families who used antibacterial products with families who used non-antibacterial products found no significant difference in the frequency of colds or other viral infectious diseases (*1). I don’t know about you, but somewhere over the past few years, I forgot something fairly simple that I learned in a high school science class: antibiotics (and antibacterial cleaners) have no effect against viruses.

So if there is no real asset to using antibacterial products (and their long-term effect and safety are still in question), and you can obtain a very respectable clean from natural products, why should I continue to spread unknown chemicals around my house? There is an ever-increasing supply of “organic” and “all natural” cleaning products on the market today, but to keep things easy and inexpensive, I’m currently going with just one book. It’s called, quite simply, “Clean,” by Michael de Jong. It’s small enough to fit discreetly on a little shelf in my kitchen, and it has become my bible for natural cleaning. The list of ingredients you need to clean, scour, scrub, disinfect, and deodorize your entire house contains only 5 items: borax, baking soda, lemon, salt, and white vinegar. The author has an index to simplify what can be cleaned by these various ingredients, as well as “recipes” in the book to show you how to mix your own natural cleaners to keep on hand. Inexpensive and all natural… it doesn’t get much easier than this.

The point of all this…

Parenting styles are as varied as the fish in the sea, but the one thing we can usually agree on is that we all want to do what’s best for our kids.

Of course, figuring out what’s best is the hard part, especially when we’ve somehow begun to believe that even small decisions we make right now can have huge consequences later in life. My older son will probably not be accepted to college because I allowed him to sleep in pink pajamas. -But that’s another story.

In my ongoing quest to not only be the kind of mom who makes good choices for my kids, but also the kind of mom who wants to make good choices for the world in which we live, I have discovered that there really isn’t one spot with all the right answers. Sadly, I don’t have many answers to how to operate fully as green-friendly CEO of a house, but I am doing what I can to learn as I go.