Filed under: eco-friendly, green, organic, parenting, sustainable | Tags: bottle, california, eco, ecostiletto, environmental, green, klean kanteen, landfill, los angeles, organic, plastic, recycling, sarnoff, sigg, stainless, sustainable, trash, water
Are you still sending your kids to school with plastic water bottles in their backpacks? Not to get all heavy on you or anything, but consider this:
• Bottled water costs more than gas and can ring up at $50 a month.
• It’s not required to be tested for safety.
• Not to mention the environmental costs of the bottle manufacturing.
• Or the fact that when they get warm, those plastic bottles can leach chemicals into your children’s water—and bodies.
Contrary to what many people believe, water from the tap can actually be safer than what’s in the bottle. The EPA tests our water daily for bacteria and posts the results to the general public, while the FDA only requires weekly testing of bottled water and doesn’t make its results public.
If you don’t like the way your tap water tastes, try it filtered. Most filters use carbon to filter out lead, copper, chlorine and mercury.
Faucet-mounted filters work the same way, but they can also remove things like giardia, lead and pesticides, all of which can be present in tap water. You can get a similar set up for your fridge.
But bottled water is just bad all around. First of all, as I mentioned, you don’t know what’s in it. I don’t know about you, but giardia is one thing I want to avoid.
And then there’s the plastic factor: Americans throw away eight out of 10 bottles, sending about 38 billion water bottles a year to landfills. That’s a billion dollars worth of plastic.
It takes 24 million gallons of oil to make just a billion of those bottles. That’s enough oil to fuel 30,000 cars for a year. Now multiply that 24 million gallons by the 38 billion bottles. Does anyone have a calculator?
Plus, there’s the energy factor in getting it to you: In contrast to tap water, which is distributed through an energy-efficient infrastructure, transporting bottled water long distances involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels.
Still not convinced? Studies have shown that Bisephenol A (BPA), which mimics estrogen and messes with your hormones, can leach from plastic bottles into their containers.
Finally, there’s the cost factor. As a public utility, tap water is virtually free. Here’s how the budget breaks down:
• A water filter pitcher costs between $10 and $40; replacement filters run about $9 each and last about 40 gallons (approximately two months worth of water). Your average water filter pitcher cost at 20 gallons per month: $17 per month initially; $4.50 thereafter.
• A faucet-mounted filter will cost you about $20 to $50, with replacement filters averaging at about $20 each and lasting about 100 gallons (approximately five months worth of water). Your average faucet-mounted filter cost at 20 gallons per month:$39 per month initially; $4 thereafter.
• Are you ready for this? Bottle water costs an average of between $1 and $4 per gallon. Your average bottled water cost at 20 gallons per month: $50
Bottles are out and the tap is iffy: Go with the pitcher or faucet filter at $4 per month and encourage your kids to take their water on the go in recyclable, reusable stainless-steel water bottles that costs about $20 and last forever!
If they wouldn’t keep losing the darned tops.
Are you banning the plastic bottle? Is it challenging or easy? Tell me about it!
Filed under: eco-friendly, green, organic, parenting, sustainable, travel | Tags: babies, baby, children, chocolate, easter, eco, fair trade, family, father, green, holiday, home, in-laws, kids, mother, organic, parenting, sustainable
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had to fly from Los Angeles to New York for an event on Monday, with meetings booked solid for the following three days. I planned to fly out on Sunday, missing the chocolate-fueled, massive egg hunt excess of Easter morning. My in-laws have it down to a science: They color code the eggs to avoid arguments between the kids and fill them with more socks and trinkets than candy to avoid arguments with us, then stash them all around the garden and house for a few sugar-fueled hours of perfect photo-ops.
Secretly, I was happy to miss it. By now Easter seems as artificial as Valentine’s Day to me—a manufacturer’s holiday awkwardly slapped onto a day of religious significance. Why not just have Chocolate Day or Day to Support the Flower Industry? Plus, the excess always makes me cringe: The Easter Bunny commercials seem to start the day they bring the cupids down. It’s the same flow of chocolate, just cut from a different mold.
And what about all that chocolate? The billion-dollar chocolate industry is supported by workers—some of them children—who exist at subsistence levels, unable to send their children to school. The irony of this chocolate fueling the sugar lust of children like mine is heartbreaking. Fair trade, organic, sustainable—does it come bunny shaped?
Surprisingly, I found all the traditional Easter shapes crafted in fair trade, organic and sustainable chocolate at Taraluna.com, with vegan options to boot. Cadbury’s iconic Dairy Milk bar will be the first mass-manufactured bar to go fair trade this year. And according to Global Exchange, even the Easter Bunny’s choosing fair-trade chocolate, and encouraging like-minded buyers to sign a petition asking the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers to do the same.
And the eggs? We may not think of going organic for eggs that are simply destined to be dyed, but buying conventionally raised eggs supports farms that may feed their chickens pesticides, insecticides, genetically engineered food and sewage—all of which ends up in the eco-system, regardless of whether you eat them hard-boiled or not.
Regardless of the season, eggs at my house are certified organic, grass-fed and free range, meaning they can walk and peck—rather than being confined to a tiny cage. Next year I’m excited to try dyeing them from natural colors derived from four cups of a chopped fruit or vegetable, mixed in a pot with four cups water and two tablespoons white vinegar and boiled for a minimum of 15 minutes. It may not be as simple as dissolving a tablet of artificial color—linked to hyperactivity in children in a recent study, although probably not from the minimal exposure they’d get from dyeing eggs—but the colors we’ll develop from beets, yellow onion skins, spinach and blueberries will be far more exciting. We might even throw in some t-shirts, for fun!
But now, sitting in the airport lounge waiting for my flight to take off, I’m sad. I’ve always celebrated Easter with my family. When I was growing up, there would be a flowering plant or a little clutch of chocolate eggs that my father had placed near my pillow while I slept, so that I’d see it the minute I woke up as evidence of the Easter Bunny having left its mark. I was 13 when we moved to Italy, and I remember that year wandering the shops, amazed at the elaborate scenes inside the sugar eggs. I have pictures from the last 10 years of Easter in my in-law’s garden, first with my little boy toddling in suspenders, then of him with his arms around baby sister; last year they both held the hands of our littlest girl as she stumbled around with her basket full of sock-filled eggs.
Easter is, after all, a celebration of Spring, in all its sweetness. And sweetness, for me, is family—chocolate and eggs are secondary.
But next year, Easter’s at my house.
Filed under: eco-friendly, fashion, green, sustainable | Tags: california, cotton, denim, eco, ecostiletto, fashion, green, jeans, los angeles, organic, sarnoff, sustainable
I’ve always been a bit insecure in the butt department. Not that my posterior is particularly gigantic, but in the words of the fashion magazines that I devoured as a teenager, this was my “problem area.” I’ve long outgrown those mind-warping glossies and accepted that not all of us are long, lanky and lean—no matter how many hours we spend on the treadmill. But when I find a pair of jeans that lengthens my legs and minimizes my rear in the miraculous way that only good denim can, I wear them. And wear them. And wear them, until the thighs are threadbare and the hems tattered. And then I start looking for a new pair to replace them, because by this time the manufacturer has certainly stopped making the style I love, and any remnant pairs have probably been chopped up and made into eco-friendly home insulation.
Which brings us to today. The thighs of my favorite Levi’s are so thin, I’m afraid they’ll split when I bend down to pick up the Barnacle (read: Baby). So I’m on the hunt for a new pair. And given what I now know about denim…
• Most denim is made of cotton, which is one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the world and accounts for 25% of all pesticides used in the U.S., according to the Sustainable Cotton Project.
• It takes about two-thirds of a pound of pesticides to make enough cotton for one pair of jeans. (Put a pound of flour in a bowl for a scary visual on that one.)
• Pesticides like diuron and acephate used in cotton production are considered carcinogenic by the Environmental Protection Agency (not the most alarmist of organizations).
• Cotton production introduces these chemicals into the water table and food chain.
• 67 million birds die each year from pesticide poisoning; the chemicals have also been linked to mutant frogs found with extra legs and eyes.
…the denim I’m searching for must be made of organic cotton, hemp or bamboo, all of which are grown without pesticides or insecticides. In fact, bamboo absorbs five times as many green house gases and produces 35% more oxygen than the equivalent amount of trees!
But all the oxygen in the world won’t make me squeeze into pants that make my butt look big. I tried on a pair of Linda Loudermilk’s ridiculously soft bamboo denim jeans last week, but they made my thighs look like sausages and gapped at the waist. Obviously destined for the long-and-lean category.
I’ve always been a Levi’s girl, but their organic cotton “green tab” line is so difficult to find. They seem to have phased them out online, and even at the Levi’s store, only a few styles are available at a time.
Green from the get-go organic cotton Del Fortes are super cute, but difficult to locate offline. And although I know I can send them back, I’m afraid I’d have to buy eight online to actually find a pair that fits.
I’m heartened by the fact that oh-so-popular J Brand has introduced their eco-friendly Green Label and am heading off to the nearest haute boutique to try on a pair. After all, if I’m only buying one pair of $200 jeans every three years, that breaks down to just about twenty-two cents a day!
And as for my all-time favorite jeans, the fits-so-good AG Angel by Adriano Goldschmeid? (Pictured above and no that’s not my butt.) Although their marketing department assures me that organic denim is in the works, it’s not in stores yet. I’ll just have to wait.
And be really, really careful when I bend down.
P.S. When I do replace my old jeans, no way am I throwing them in the trash. The average American throws out 68 pounds of clothes and textiles every year, only to have 2.5 billion pounds of the stuff diverted by the American textile industry for repurposing. Me? I’m recycling my denim into shorts, a skirt or, at the very least, patches. Because my new jeans are sure to wear thin someday. And I’ll definitely need something to shore them up while I search for a new pair.
Do you have a favorite pair of green jeans? I so need to know about them!
