It is time to check how I am doing with my goals to help reduce my impact on the environment. It has been about 5 weeks since making my 4 goals and my progress has been very slow. So it is time to reevaluate my goals and make adjustments. Here is where I am at right now:

Goal 1: Ride the bus to school 4 out of the 5 days if not everyday, or walk if it is a nice day since I do not live far from campus.  

I did not do this very well in the first couple weeks after making this goal. It has taken some time to get in a routine of not driving to campus and being lazy. If I want to take the bus I have to get up a little bit earlier than normal which was a struggle, but I can say that I rode the bus to school all 5 days last week which was a success. Already drove to campus once this week, so hopefully I can continue my success.  I was trying to limit the amount of driving I do, but this quarter it has been difficult to avoid with family being in town and having to drive south to go home and visit. I did make an improvement and instead of take a short flight home I carpooled with my roommates, dramatically decreasing the footprint for that trip. 

Goal 2: Replace my lunch sandwiches that consist of meat with strictly peanut butter sandwiches, this should be easy since peanut butter is one of my favorite food items. I will not but anymore lunch meat for the remainder of the quarter.  

This goal has been accomplished in a round about way. I have not purchased anymore lunch meat and have made a lot of peanut butter sandwiches, but I also do not make any sandwich some days and this causes me to purchase a lot of food. Most often at subway, which does not help me achieve this goal. Spending more time on campus requires more planning of meals so that I do not need to buy more processed foods. So this goal can use some improvement on my part by not being lazy and taking some time to plan. 

Goal 3: Visit a couple local farms to purchase my fruit and vegetables, Joe's Garden is a mile away from my house so it could be an easy adjustment. 

With this goal I have to be honest, I have failed miserably. I have only been to one local farm and that was for a date with my girlfriend to pick out pumpkins for Halloween and have a good time. But, I did pick 5 pounds of apples while I was there, so I did get some locally grown vegetables. I need to make major steps to achieve this goal. Joe's garden does not have all the vegetables and fruit available that were available earlier in the fall. I need to do some research to find other farms in the area that I could shop at. 

Goal 4: Also, my roommates and I used to recycle a lot but we have lost our commitment to that and I would like to restart our recycling process. We have done it before, so I know we can do it again. 

This goal has been achieved in moderation. It is difficult to get roommates to buy into recycling. Our trash can is constantly filled with recyclable items. I have to do more to encourage recycling in my house. I could make us more organized when it comes to recycling so that it is simpler for everyone. 

A new goal that I want to set for myself is to watch the amount of electricity my roommates and I use. Over the past few weeks I have noticed the amount of lights that are left on in my house and have decided that I am going to start making sure all unnecessary use of electricity comes to a stop. Hopefully I can stop coming home to an empty house fully lit up with lights. 

The Cost of Green

This week I was grocery shopping and decided to take a trip through the natural goods area of the grocery store. I was looking at all sorts of different items, from avocado oil to compostable laundry detergent cartons. One item that really stuck out to me was a roll of paper towels. This ONE roll costs $2.59. So that got me thinking about the paper towels I buy, I know that I am on a budget and when it comes to the necessities price always wins at this point in my life. I could not imagine spending this amount on only one roll of paper towels. So I took a trip back to the rest of the paper towels and looked for the roll I would buy if I was only buying one, the price was $1.09. This Seventh Generation roll of 100% recycled paper costs me 238% more than the average roll of toilet paper I would purchase. This discouraged me, but I am still interested in purchasing products that are actually looking out for the seventh generation when I am more financially secure. It would take a lot to begin purchasing products such as these paper towels now. But, at the same time if I were to limit myself to only purchasing these types of products, the price might force a change in my habits. It would lead me to really weigh the costs of using a paper towel over an actual towel in the house to clean a mess that can be reused.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on the expensive paper towels that are out there and why it is difficult for most people to adjust to buying greener products. I did look a little more into Seventh Generation, here is the link to find out more about them and what they are doing to help the world.

http://www.seventhgeneration.com/

Got2B Full of Toxins

After watching the Story of Cosmetics, I began to wonder what kinds of toxins I might be putting on my body every day. So I looked into this and began looking at the ingredients used in my personal care products. I decided to take a closer look at my hair gel that I have been using for years, Got2b Glued Styling Spiking Glue.

I started reading the small print on the label, and these are the ingredients that I found that are being used to make my hair gel: Water, Sorbitol, VP/VA Copolymer, PVP, Vinyl Caprlactam/vp/dimethylaminoethyl Methacrylate Copolymer (what?), Petrolatum, Tricontanyl PVP, Propylparaben, Cetearyl alcohol, Parfum (Fragrance), Hydroxyethylcellulose, DMD Hydantoin, and Methylparaben just to name a few.

I was shocked when I could not pronounce most of the ingredients or even have any idea of what it is. But then I researched this gel a little more on Environmental Working Group's website to see what these ingredients are and what they are doing when I put them in my hair most mornings. I found that this hair gel scored a 6 on their rating system with is the highest score you can get on the Moderate level, so this product is considered "moderately hazardous." The ingredient "Fragrance" is the most hazardous but it was hard to know what it actually is, and after researching a couple other products Fragrance is in almost every personal care product, so that was a little alarming. Another ingredient is Propylparaben, which scored a 7 on EWR's website putting it in the "High Hazard" category. So I decided to research what this ingredient is.

Propylparaben can be found naturally in some plants, but is manufactured synthetically for its use as a preservative, commonly found in water based cosmetics, like hair gel and other lotions and creams. Its main use is to kill and prevent the growth of fungi. It is said that it is safe with concentrations up to 25%.

The biggest concern is Endocrine disruption as it mimics estrogen, which has been found in recent studies showing strong evidence. There is also strong evidence of Propylparaben being a human immune toxicant or allergy. These are all dangerous outcomes from one ingredient, the main way this ingredient irritates people, is by skin irritation. It is easy for the gastrointestinal tract to rid the body of this. But there have been cases where Propylparaben was found in breast tumors, but they have not linked it to causing cancer.

Overall, I will continue to use this product because the amount of Propylparaben used is between 0.01 and 0.3% concentrations. After finding this information I am now aware of all natural products that are available and have begun to look into these. It is hard to switch after using the same product for about 5 years, but it could be in my best interest to replace this product with a less harmful competitor. So with that, I am going to look into non toxic products and see if any are comparable to this product I use now.


Websites used for information:

http://www.drugs.com/inactive/propylparaben-87.html

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-propylparaben.htm

http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/product/479610/Got2b_Glued_Styling_Spiking_Glue/