Unclutter Earth » Smarter Green Choices

Is Your Dry Cleaner a “Green Cleaner”

Caylin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:50:35 +0000

Did you know that by drycleaning your clothes at a traditional drycleaner that you end up wearing the toxic cleaning chemical perchloroethylene? This chemical will most likely do little to your health but is a real hazard for the environment and the workers that are exposed to it. It can make workers sick and too often creeps into our water supply. Try finding “greencleaner” near you. the question to ask is if they are using a “carbon dioxide cleaning process”. The “Dry Cleaning Station” is one greencleaner in Pittsburgh and they have franchises all over the US http://www.drycleaningstation.com/.

Also always remeber to return your extra wire hangers and decline the plastic bag and try not to purchase dryclean only clothes – who wants to pay extra for the drycleaning anyway!

Share on Facebook

Greening Your Battery Usage

Caylin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:42:27 +0000

We use batteries often in our everyday lives. Think of how many batteries we have gone through in our life time. Hopefully you have been recycling yours to keep them our of landfills and heavy metals out of our water supplies. Communities are now required to have hazardous waste resources in place so check in with your local recyclers to see how to correctly dispose of them. To lessen the quantity of batteries you go through try using rechargeable batteries, they still don’t last forever but are a much better for your pocket and wallet. It is important to keep in mind that you may defeat the purpose if if you leave the charger plugged in 24/7. Plug them in to charge them and unplug the charger when it is not in use!
When they expire use Earth911’s recycling search to find a place near you: http://earth911.com/hazardous/single-use-batteries/ and also check out Battery Plus: http://www.batteriesplus.com/ which is a great resource for rechargeable batteries of all sorts.

Share on Facebook

How to Buy Milk

Caylin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:37:31 +0000

Are you trying to do your part by purchasing organic and local groceries? The best way to do both is to frequent your local farmers market. Even if a not all of the venders are certified organic they use better practices than industrial farmers just because they are smaller scale. They might even be organic but not certified because certifications are expensive. Some products are harder than others to find at your farmers market, milk for example.
Try drinking “raw milk” it is untreated which may seem scary but humans owned their own goats and cows, drinking their milk straight from the udder for centuries before industrial farming took over. Many people argue that skim milk, which has become the milk of choice by most American’s, has hardly any nutritional value because it has been so processed and watered down.
Many brands advertize themselves as organic and paint a pretty picture of free range cows that have “access” to acres of pasture but usually they are using sneaky wording to create a false image. Make sure that the extra money you’re spending to get the organic label is money well spent. The Cornucopia Institute created a rating of dairy producers: http://cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/FarmID_153.html and I was surprised to see that the top rated milk producer was in my own sate of Pennsylvania. Find out how the milk you’ve been drinking compares.
If you want to experiment with raw milk find a distributor near you: http://www.realmilk.com/where2.html and remember that it tastes great!

Share on Facebook