Cleanliness is next to--*hackhack* *coughcoughcough*

I like clean. Really I do. I like my house clean and my kitchen clean and my kid, my cat, my car... I just can't stand cleaners.

So I scrub the bathtub with baking soda and rinse it with hot, hot water and I use vinegar on stains and I basically try to get by without ever resorting to bleach or scrubbing bubbles (there's actually no bleach in my house and hasn't been for years).

"My God!" a good American parent would reply. "Don't you bleach your son's toys after he's had friends over? What if one of them had the sniffles? He could get a cold!?"

Um, yes. He could. And while I'm not advocating letting my child develop whooping cough or meningitis, a cold might be good for him.

There is a hypothesis called, aptly enough, "The Hygiene Hypothesis (HH)." (A good, though very medicalese, discussion of the theory is found in the first main section of this article) Basically, it posits that our immune systems create themselves bit by bit as we are exposed to and form antibodies to various bacteria, viruses--you know, "germs". Now, if your house is spit and polish, your baby's emerging immune system doesn't know quite what to make of it all. It knows it's supposed to create antibodies, but it's not sure to what it should create them because there's nothing like, say, rhinovirus around. You've done such a good job of protecting the child from "contagions" that his immune system says, in effect, "Well, I can't find any germs to make antibodies against. I know! How about this plant over here!?"

And thus, say the HH people, are created millions of children with asthma and allergies. Their immune systems are reacting to anything and everything because they have nothing concrete and dangerous to which to react.

Now, while I'm not entirely sure I quite buy all they have to say (a lot of the research done to prove the hypothesis is a little dicey and self-fulfilling for my taste), I do agree that children need to be exposed to a lot of things at a young age.

I believe in socializing a child and dealing with the blessed inevitability that he'll get rhinovirus or rotovirus or some other virus in his first couple of years. It will suck mightily to stay up with him while he labors through it, but it is a necessary thing.

I believe that children need dirt. No, I'm not saying you now have an excuse never to clean your house again, but I am saying that it's cool if, after a rainstorm, your son gets into a mud toss with his friends and ends up mucky from head to toe. Skin is there to keep the sodden gunk out of his peritoneal cavity. We're built to last, us humans.

Most of all, I believe that there is a much greater risk posed by many of our cleansers than by many of the germs for which we created them. Bleach is a poison. If you drink the cup of bleach you washed down the drain to "clean" it, you will die in all likelihood. If, however, you drink the pan of water you used to clean out the drain instead of the bleach, you're likely to be better hydrated and not much else (unless you didn't wait until the water cooled down before you drank it--shame on you).

I think it's not a bad idea to try to clean with only what you'd eat. Granted, I'm not interested in having a glass of vinegar with dinner, but I will use it on my salad, and therefore, I can use it on my floor.

A newborn really does need protection from pretty much everything, chemical or biological, but I'd rather not lock my three-year-old out of his room once a week because the rug cleaner I used in there was toxic. And really, unless he's dropping glasses of juice on that floor every five minutes, couldn't I shampoo the rug a little less often and vacuum it most of the time instead?

The old saying "God made dirt. Dirt don't hurt?" I'll buy that.

How Green Is Your President?

Barack Obama has been in office about a month now, so I thought it was time to see exactly how much damage he's done to the environment.

Let's leave the stimulus plan, which at 900 pages created a minimum of half a million pages of paper waste and attendant ink and electricity usage. That's not just his fault, it's the fault of the Congress, too. (Would they save money, do you think, if they worked electronically more often instead of printing out absolutely everything?) No, let's just look at the president's movements since he took office and do the math from there, yes?

Inauguration Day: Seriously, no way I can assess the environmental damage of the entire day. All I'm going to do here is calculate the miles he actually traveled. The answer there is: miles from White House to church to Capitol to White House and an average of miles to all of the parties. Times five, because that's the number of cars in his typical entourage on that day. This all works out to about 75 miles (remember, it's times five).

Week One: As I recall, he spent the first week pretty much in DC, so maybe we say another 35 for that, to cover going to and fro trying to get the stimulus and such off the ground.

Week Two: One trip to Williamsburg, VA via Air Force One. 500 airplane miles (AMs) round trip air, plus 100 car miles for the week.

Week Three: DC to Camp David to DC (200 miles via helicopter, roundtrip); DC to Elkhart, IN to DC (1000 AMs roundtrip); DC to Fort Myers, FL (900 AMs), to Springfield, IL (1050 AMs), to Peoria, IL (90 AMs), to Chicago, IL (135 AMs). Add at least 150 car miles for the whole week.

Week Four: Chicago, IL, to DC (590 AMs); DC to Denver, CO, to DC (3000 AMs roundtrip); DC to Ottawa, Canada, (projected back to DC) (1000 AMs roundtrip). Say 200 car miles for the week.

Miscellaneous: Because the president uses the White House Helicopter to go to and from the local airport and other places, I'm adding 100 helicopter miles to his entire time in office so far. Also, I'm assuming the gas mileage of an SUV for the car miles [~15 mpg]--which, granted, might be overstating the efficiency of his vehicles.

Let's do the math now (I love math!): (560 car miles [.5 tons CO2]) + (300 helicopter miles [.7 tons CO2]) + (8625 airplane miles [4.0 tons CO2]) = 5.2 tons of CO2 used.

By one person. In one month.

If we assume that this is an average month, by the time the president finishes his first (and hopefully not last) term, he will have burned 250 tons of CO2 on travel alone--I'd love to know the energy profile of the White House and its grounds, but I'm thinking that might be a state secret.

So? Ways he could reduce this impact? Some are simple yet complex (stop driving around DC with two cars ahead of you and two trailing behind--which would probably be perceived as too much of a security risk) and some are much more difficult (not meeting face to face with other world leaders is a problem as it paints you as elitist or worse). I do wish more worldwide discussions would be held via conference call. I wish there was some sort of international security flight service so that dignitaries from countries nearby each other could all be picked up in the same secure plane and flown to whatever conference they're heading for.

Heck, I'd like to wish our president flew a more fuel-efficient plane!

While none of that is ever likely to come to fruition, I do think it's interesting to think about the impact that the global village is having on... well, the globe. We want to see friends and family from across the world, we need to connect with our clients hundreds of miles away... It's all complicated.

So the next time you think about driving the five blocks to the sandwich store, remember that every mile you don't drive is one that a world leader can use to hobnob with other world leaders.

...

Doesn't sound like much of a trade-off, huh?

It Was Tuesday Yesterday--DO SOMETHING!

Sorry I didn't get a chance to post this yesterday--stuff going on here. In fact, I may be relatively erratic for the next few weeks, as changes at home are taking up an increasing amount of time.

Anyway, in following along with my Tuesday segment from last week and my rant on packaging from Monday, I give you three things you can do to reduce packaging.

• Write a letter to your favorite online or mail order company. Most of them have a support, complaint, or question address. Be very courteous, but let them know how you think they're doing on their use of packaging. I had a company send me something yesterday that was simply the piece of clothing I ordered--without a plastic bag or more than one small tag--stuffed in a mailing envelope. They're going to get the flipside of the "Why, Amazon!? Why!?" comment that will be sent out today as well.
• Let your broccoli roam free. Reusable grocery bags are all the rage, I know, and I'm sure many of you use them (if not, pick a few up, they're stronger than the paper or plastic disposable ones), but there's another use of plastic bags that a lot of people don't think about: most people bag their bulk vegetables in clear plastic bags in the produce section. If you're not comfortable with placing the vegetables and fruit in your cart without a bag because grocery carts are, you know, kind of gross, try putting them all in one of your handy-dandy reusable bags until you get to the checkout. You can wash them very, very well at home and still save an awful lot of plastic by not bagging them before you buy.
• Cook at home. Ah, the ultimate in package reduction. If you have time to cook one meal, you can probably cook two more at the same time by sharing heating time and veggie prep cutting time. Then you can dump them all in reusable containers, stick them in freezer and fridge, and eat away for a few days without making any more packaging waste. I once did an experiment and found that one meal at Subway for my family actually produced more non-recyclable waste than one home-cooked chicken and potatoes meal. Ouch.

So there you go, your DO SOMETHING for the week.

See you later!

Packaging and Logic: Irreconcilable Differences?

We're redesigning one of the spaces in our house to make some more room, and to save money, I'll admit we've been using other people's money (in the form of gift certificates) quite liberally. Which for us means web orders. Which means packaging and mailing and product miles galore.

And that gives me a very horrible feeling sometimes. I am convinced that there has to be a way to do this all with less packaging.

Case in point: We bought a net to protect some of our things from the predations of our precious (but nosy and destructive) cats. The box the net is sold in is about 3' x 1' x 2". The box Amazon shipped it in was 5' x 2' x 2'. Now luckily, it wasn't filled with packing peanuts, but still... it's an incredible waste of space, if nothing else.

What happened to the days when vendors simply wrapped things in brown paper and sent them off? Or better, why couldn't Amazon have sent us the net and the fourteen other things we bought that day all in the same box--there was definitely room in there!

Then there are the companies who individually wrap everything when they mail it. Yes, I realize that clothing companies and bedding companies and all are doing volume business and need to automate as much as possible, and that they need to protect their products from the elements and all. I get it. But here's an idea: Why not just line each shipping box with a plastic bag, dump the clothes or whatever into it, and seal that one plastic bag, seal the box, and send it all on its way.

I know the clothing isn't made in plastic bags. When boxes and boxes of it come into the clothing stores, the shirts and pants aren't individually wrapped (yes, I realize they are in certain stores, but not the ones of which I am speaking). So why waste such an incredible amount of plastic by individually wrapping every single freaking shirt in a twenty shirt order? It's madness!

I have a lot of beefs about the way things are packaged all over, in fact. Well, except at some stalls at the farmer's market. Some stalls do wrap things or give you plastic bags or whatever, but some offer you food and only food or crafts and only crafts. Bring your own bag and have at it.

Which, I suppose, is just another reason to buy and eat locally. The only problem with that is that we just can't afford the furniture that is handmade in my area. And there aren't enough local clothiers making what my family currently needs to help us out.

I think I'm going to go buy some shares in wind energy. Or something. Sometimes daily life and the fight to live it responsibly exhausts and saddens me.

Sorry all, hard weekend. I'll be cheerier tomorrow.

Because Really, What's Better than a Fuzzy Animal?

So, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and no doubt there will be a million stuffed animals given out in an attempt to make girlfriends and wives and even boyfriends and husbands feel loved and special. The cute factor can't be beat.

And, you know, yay for that. I'm all for cute! But there are real animals out there, too. So, in honor of our fuzzy friends (and enemies--and those who aren't fuzzy at all, in fact), I give you 5 things you can do to help an animal...

1. Adopt an animal from your local zoo.
No, I don't mean take one home, I mean donate money to help defray the costs of feeding and caring for the animal (mine this year is a meerkat!). This usually doesn't cost a huge amount, and you sometimes get a stuffed animal or something to remind you of your gift. Two things, though, from someone who, admittedly, has really mixed feelings about zoos:

• make sure the price of the adoption is considerably more than the probable price of the swag they send you, because there's nothing more annoying than realizing that, of the $100 you just donated, $50 of it went to the adorable stuffed animal and tote and framed portrait and everything else they sent you.
• check out the zoo and its history of animal care, animal death, and animal management. Animal management includes partnerships with other zoos for the purpose of preservation, building and enclosure design that helps improve the social and mental well-being of the animals, and psychological work that is done to make sure the animals don't develop zoocosis (think the penguin in Happy Feet).

2. Deliver some food to your local shelter.
One of my cats was extremely ill a couple of years ago, and was put on prescription food. When her health started to improve, she stopped eating the wet prescription food altogether, leaving me with half a case of the stuff. So I dropped by our local no-kill shelter and gave it to them. They couldn't have been more appreciative! Now, with my vet's blessing, I buy a case of that when I bring one of the cats in for medical work and drop the food by the shelter on my way home.

Animal shelters often work on shoestring budgets--and the burden on them is getting worse in this economy, since many people are losing their homes and are being forced to abandon their animals to find places that will rent to them. And animals come in with all kinds of medical conditions that the shelters treat the best way they know how. So maybe think about making it easier for them, if you can, by donating something concrete. Yes, they need money--God knows!--but sometimes what they need, right that moment, is a case of kidney food.

3. Give money to an animal rights group you believe in.
Okay. I admit it--this is a wildly controversial subject for a whole lot of people. Greenpeace, PETA, Sea Shepherd... there are a lot of groups out there who have their supporters and their detractors and I can't tell you who to donate to. I can tell you that places like World Wildlife Fund and the others mentioned are out there for the business of saving habitats and animals. And that's a very good thing. Just remember, the money isn't worth it if you don't agree with the group's philosophy.

4. Give time to your local animal groups.
This is a very inexpensive way of giving back. Often it's what I used to call muck work (yes, I occasionally mucked stalls at a stables). If you're not into cleaning out litter boxes and shoveling dog runs, find out if there's something else you can volunteer to do. Many places are happy to have people who have experience with smaller infants or have had kittens or puppies before--it takes very little to train these people up to take care of the newborn animals they sometimes acquire.

5. Go walk a dog!
If you happen to have a neighbor who's maybe not around as much as he could be or who has trouble getting around at all, offer to walk his dog once in a while. If you have a neighbor with mobility or agility problems who happens to have a cat, ask if he'd like some help with the more bendy-stretchy things involved in pet care. If you've got a car and your neighbor doesn't, think about offering to drive him and his pet to the vet for physicals. Having an animal has been shown to be very beneficial to the human spirit (and blood pressure), but it's sometimes hard on the knees. Granted, for us introverts, this might be asking too much, but if you're outgoing enough and willing, you might find a very good friend--and the owner might learn to like you, too!

So, that's all! Have a great weekend--a great three-day-weekend if you're one of those lucky buggers who has Monday off!

Not so crazy after all

When I was a young adult and CD burners were first becoming a fad (yes, I'm old), I was out with my father for dinner one night and I told him I'd had this great idea: What if there were "jukeboxes" in music stores. Each could have a computer screen where you could pick a bunch of songs--any song, any artist--and have the computer cut the disc for you right there? You'd buy a token at the checkout and would walk out with your very own mixdisc!

That will never happen, said my father. First off, how popular would that really be? Yes, kids like making mixtapes, but it'd take a whole lot of them to make that a going proposition. Then there's the problem of royalties. The music companies would demand enough royalties to pay their expenses, and that on top of the CD Jukebox company's expenses would make the final product too expensive for anyone to want to buy.

So I gave up the dream, but a few years later, the iTunes store made history doing just what I had planned.

Why tell you of my missed shot at billions? Because Kali pointed me to this post of hers about an idea for greener and more accessible healthcare--a post whose last paragraph started with "This idea may be implausible but that is not my point."

It's actually not implausible at all. Go read the post--the idea is completely solid and has a lot of the same talking points that Al Gore makes: don't put people out of business by making the world greener, put people to business at the job of making the world greener.

In the Philippines, mass transit consists, in part, of "Jeepneys"--hop-on-hop-off diesel-fueled, brightly colored buses. Jeepneys create an unbelievable amount of heavy-particle pollution. So someone thought that it would be cool if there was a jeepney that was electric--no smog! Better yet, the thought continued, what if the electricity used to power this E-Jeepney was generated by creating biofuel from organic waste?

That'll never happen, I'm sure some people said, and yet... the E-Jeepneys were made. But no one will ever use them, others probably said, and yet it took very little time for them to be approved and used.

The US Veteran's Affairs Administration has come to the startlingly logical conclusion that it's often difficult for rural veterans to travel the hundreds of miles it might take to get to the doctor. So why not bring the doctor to them. The National Health Care for the Homeless Council advocates mobile clinics to reach urbanites who wouldn't normally see doctors. Would an electric mobile medical van (let's call it an EMMV for now) in every county be something these groups might think of getting behind?

And wouldn't making these EMMVs be killing an awful lot of very troublesome birds with one very efficient stone? There are jobs to be had--retrofitting the factories that once made RVs or whatnot, hiring back the people who used to work there to build these new vehicles, providing training for community clinic workers in healthcare, and hiring those clinic workers to provide care. There are environmental benefits--even if the vehicles aren't alternatively powered, they will still cut down on the number of miles traveled. Assume ten people needing healthcare in a ten-mile radius. If they each have to drive a hundred miles to get it, then by driving one van a hundred miles into their area, you've shaved 900 miles off the trip. And of course, people who can get regular healthcare are diagnosed and treated faster, which costs less, which brings it all back to the economic side of things.

The simple ideas people have can span every facet of life and reach into every corner of the world. The Solar Electric Light Fund in California thought it would be great if African farms out in far rural areas had solar electricity to pump water to irrigate their crops. Now, they just thought it would make pumping the water easier, because diesel gennies are expensive and dirty and so is the fuel they use. But that one small idea is making the air healthier (no more diesel generators running the water pumps), the economy healthier (no more paying for that diesel), and the people healthier (no more smog and more food). One little idea is currently packing one heck of a punch and benefiting every aspect of life in that little corner of rural Africa.

So never say "it'll never happen," "it's not plausible," "it's not feasible..." Instead, research the possibilities and if you can, give a little monetary push to those who do things you think can make a difference (even if you don't believe they'll really sell). If you have a great idea, tell the president. Write a letter to a hospital in your area, suggesting that mobile, affordable, green, socially-conscious healthcare is a good, politically expedient idea. Go to your local homeless clinic and figure out what you can do to help. Figure out if your idea indeed is plausible. People everyday are designing and building their own ideas of the future--how do you think I got the Mac I'm typing on right now?

The more people with real, green, responsible, plausible ideas that are actually implemented, the more this world of ours changes for the better. So don't keep a "crazy idea" to yourself. You may not lose out on millions, like I did with my CD Jukebox, but you might not get your one chance to save the world, either.

Solar Power, Part I: "I'll call you from the sun"

Ah, solar power! Now, here in the northern climes of the midwest, we don't have a lot of sunny days this time of year. But we've had a few recently, and it has me thinking about the amount of power that is being wasted every time I plug into a wall instead of into the sun. But it doesn't have to continue that way.

While it's an initially pricey investment, buying a personal solar charger is a great way to lighten the load on your local electrical grid. You can charge your smart phone via the sun and save a bundle over the life of the charger. If you have a smart phone, this particular grid-evasion is fantastic, since you can check your email and the web without ever plugging in your computer. I find it a little cumbersome to do email on my phone, but after having to do it for much of last week, I'm actually used to it and have started leaving my computer off in the mornings and just checking my email this way. Another tip on smart phones? Set your preferences to check mail manually instead of every ten minutes or half an hour. This stops you from using too much of the battery checking for email too often.

Then there's your iPod. Oh, I loves my iPod! I use it to make the commute just a little less boring, and using a solar charger to juice it up, instead of plugging it in overnight or charging it through your computer, is a great way to feel green and sustainable while jamming to your tunes!

Now, I have to admit that, owing to a number of issues, I haven't actually purchased a solar charger yet. Yes, I know, BAD GREENIE! Seriously, though, there are a number of factors to think about before you buy one:

• Where do you live?
  If you live in, say, Wisconsin, where there are a lot of days in the winter that don't get sun, you may want to rethink this idea--or be prepared for the fact that you will probably not get to go solar for more than a few days from October to March. If, on the other hand, you live in areas of the southwest, where they get 300-320 days of sun a year, you may be able to go grid-free on your handheld devices year-round.
• How patient are you?
  Many of the lovely small, stick it in your backpack charging units suffer from the lack of available charging surface and can take up to a day of full on sun to charge. Say, for instance, you're hiking in wooded mountains. Don't expect to hook the deployed solar charger to your pack, climb through the forest, and emerge at the top of the mountain with a full battery. If, however, you're setting up a base camp in a nice sunny area and have the time to leave it out and turn it toward the sun occasionally, you could be charged for the week in an afternoon.
• How much do you use your electronics?
  I personally have to recharge my cellphone once every three or four days and my iPod once a week. With that load, a small charger should be sufficient if you get the good sun. If, however, you spend most of your time texting and bopping to Shiny Toy Guns, you're likely to run out of sun juice before you want to.
• How much are you willing to pay?
  Big, serious question. There are tiny little recharging units out there like the simple Solio charger that retail for about $100 dollars, all the way up to the Brunton Solaris 52, which offers 12 watt power capable of running laptops off the sun in realtime, but weighs in at an impressive $1250! In the solar climate here, I'll be going for a lower-cost alternative.

There are a lot of companies out there selling portable solar panels, and I urge you really read up on them if you're going to buy one. I personally think they're a seriously smart idea, given that, as power loads increase and power generation remains the same in the municipal grids, summer is generally a time of brown outs--at least in parts of the United States--so starting your research now will save you time in the long run. And then there's the whole issue of knowing you've got the power to play your tunes when you're out hiking or biking or just playing on the beach with your children!