A Better Way To Clean

Did you know that in the U.S. regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before its use can be restricted or banned from the market? Well, new laws from the European Union put the onus on companies to prove that a chemical is safe before it enters the EU marketplace. As Lyndsey Layton of The Washington Post reports “The European Union’s tough stance on chemical regulation is the latest area in which the Europeans are reshaping business practices with demands that American companies either comply or lose access to a market of 27 countries and nearly 500 million people.”.

While these laws only affect sales of products sold within European borders U.S. companies will need to make considerable changes to participate there.

But we’re not powerless in the U.S. We can help bring these safe products here through our influence as consumers. We’ve already seen consumer concern forcing change. Take the example of Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in plastics. An outcry over its use in baby bottles resulted in major U.S. retailers pulling products containing the chemical from their shelves and replacing them with BPA-free baby bottles.

Safe chemicals coming to humans everywhere soon. We hope.

Good Magazine – Their tag line is “Media for people who give a damn” – need I say more??

gDiapers – I met the founder, Jason, at the 2005 Green Business conference. gDiapers were the first consumer product to receive the McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) cradle-to-cradle certification for their hybrid cloth and flushable/compostable diaper. It’s fashionable, it’s easy to use and it’s smart!

Recycline – Their Preserve brand brings us everything from a toothbrush to a colander made from 100% recycled materials. Through a unique relationship with Stonyfield Farms they ensure that the plastic container we eat our yogurt from has another life.

Terracycle – Worm poop packaged in waste (discarded bottles)? How could you NOT want to learn more…

Small companies, inspired (and inspiring) people – that’s innovation for the greater good!

Kirsten Brashares decided it was time to bring positive changes to NY city public schools and founded www.wellnessintheschools.org. I hope you find her experience inspiring and helpful in making changes in your community.

Q: Many of us have things we’re passionate about changing and improving but we don’t necessarily take action. I’m so impressed by what you have done and I am wondering what the catalyst was that got you to take action and build www.wellnessintheschools.org?

A: We were three New York public school moms (two of whom were educators themselves) who were concerned about the health of our kids and kids in the schools. We were frustrated with the lack of protection offered by the federal government and decided to “act locally”. Although there are a lot of non-profit organizations involved with children’s health in the NYC schools we couldn’t find any which were parent-run. What sets us apart from other NPO’s is that as parents with kids in the schools we have ready access to schools and also parents tend to trust that we have their kids best interests in mind. Our work has been met with overwhelming enthusiasm. We get a lot of parents and teachers saying “it is about time”.

Q: What’s the area you’ve found easiest to affect in the schools?

A: It has been easiest to bring bio-based green cleaners into the classroom. The parents and teachers are almost always looking for this change. When parents are the decision makers, change happens swiftly. We have gotten support from the New York City Teacher’s Union. We are partnering with them on our clean, green classroom program. We hope to introduce green cleaners to all 700 elementary classrooms this fall.

Q: What pointers or advice would you give to parents, nurses, teachers who would like to get their communities doing the kinds of things you’re doing through your organization?

A: I would start by forming a wellness council in your school. You can find a lot of information online about local wellness policies and councils. Educate yourself on the key issues: things like the effect of toxic exposure and obesity as well as what other school systems have done. Some groups combine their health and safety committees with their green committees because so many environmental issues overlap with health issues. Once you have ideas you can take them to your school administration or school board. Most school systems are easier to navigate than the NY public schools so change should be easier than it has been for us. Persistence is key. If you go to the decision makers well informed and with practical suggestions for change your ideas should be well received.

How do you get people – lots of people – to recycle? Recyclebank has figured out that the good ‘ol carrot works quite well and they’ve created a system that pays people to recycle.

You see, much of what winds up in landfills could be recycled, reused or composted, which would save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recyclebank’s mission is to preserve our environment one home at a time. And they are doing just that in places like Wilmington, Delaware where they took the recycling rate from zero to 40%!

At CleanWell we put our products in bottles made of PET #1 plastic, the plastic with the greatest recycling program acceptance in municipalities across the country. We have recently teamed up with Recyclebank to provide CleanWell rewards to households that recycle. Learn more about this partnership at http://www.recyclebank.com/my_rewards/reward_partner/971.

Look for Recyclebank coming soon to your recycling bin! You can also learn more by watching a Sundance Channel special on You Tube here.

In the New York Times Magazine article Why Bother?  http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=92 Michael Pollan is “looking for a few good reasons to go green”. He posits that while doing anything on a personal level to “go green” seems a bit like a drop in an ocean, we should do it anyway because a few people moving in the same direction can start a revolution. He arrives at the conclusion that “Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great”.

Finding proof of the payoff helps inspire us to take action and provides another “good reason to go green”. So, here’s a little proof!   

Take the five Swedish authorities who in 2000 encouraged retailers and consumers to avoid the routine use of triclosan http://abetterwaytoclean.com/?p=39 . A 2007 Australian study found that triclosan concentrations were two times higher in Australians’ blood serum than in Swedish subjects’ blood plasma.  This study indicates that reducing the use of triclosan in consumer products has a dramatic effect on the presence of the chemical in the blood of the people who live in the region where use was diminished.

Ready to start a revolution? Let’s bother…

I sat down with Mandy Aftel, a pioneer who is reintroducing modern culture to natural perfuming, and got a glimpse of the world through her eyes.  Well, perhaps more accurately her nose.

Question:  What are the benefits of essential oils?

Mandy: Essential oils have been used in most civilizations from the beginning of time, with the exception of the last 100 years. Experiencing essential oils is the same as walking in a garden or eating a good meal - great for body, mind & spirit; pure and natural. They are a connection to the essence of the natural world. And the aesthetic (of natural scents) are drop dead gorgeous – nothing synthetic approximates naturals. They’re amazing, just beautiful.

Question: What is your approach when you scent CleanWell Products?

Mandy: To walk the line of both the familiar and the more beautiful.  Striving to create the most gorgeous versions of things.  Creating a beautiful daily experience – beauty in the commonplace, in the daily ritual of cleaning our hands.

Question: How would you describe the custom scents you created for CleanWell foaming hand washes?

Mandy:

Orange Vanilla: Happy quality, bright, fresh. Creamy orange, bright vanilla. Creamsicle-like.

Lavender: Fresh, soft herbal richness. Deep calming, rich, round and voluptuous. More like the floral part of lavender, less like the leaves. Softer, richer, deeper.

Ginger Bergamot: Freshness of ginger, a tiny bit sweet, soft, citrus. Like when you use fresh ginger root in cooking – delicate.

Now, awaken your nose.  Go smell some soap with synthetic fragrance; these are easy to find, the ingredients will list a very nondescript “fragrance”. And then try some of Mandy’s handiwork. I’d love to hear if you’re ready to go back 100 years to the future.

It’s Earth Day and I’ve got water on my mind.

The reason I’m thinking about water is we seem to continue to abuse it. Whether it’s the discovery of pharmaceuticals in our drinking water or toxic chemicals like Triclosan or just running the tap for too long.

This precious natural resource that covers 70% of the planet should be top of mind on Earth Day.

Check out 100 ways to save water where you live.

When you’ve got a message that you feel is important to share, one that can have a very positive net impact, then it is worth the challenge to figure out how to get that message out with as minimal a footprint as possible. There is much innovation and improvement needed in this area but there are some great solutions that offer measurable benefits over the status quo.

Shifting as much communication as possible to digital means is a good way to go but there are those times when printed materials are needed. We work with a jewel of a company based in Berkeley California - Greener Printer. Going beyond the step of simply selecting any recycled stock, they only use high post-consumer recycled content, unbleached, non-chlorine papers from New Leaf Papers. Additionally, Greener Printer is 100% wind powered via Renewable Energy Credits (REC’s). You can read more about this progressive company in articles written by Joel Makower for Grist.org, Warren McClaren for treehugger.com, and me (Holly Bornstein) “Green Printing 101” for green@work magazine.

There are other green printers noted in these articles such as Quad/Graphics – if anyone out there wants to make the switch, simply reference the points provided in “Green Printing 101” to help in your printer evaluation process. And as consumers we should all start expecting and requesting the same production standards in the papers, cards, etc. that we buy from our local stores!

We get to meet a lot of amazing people through the work we’re doing at CleanWell. One of those individuals is Patti Wood http://www.grassrootsinfo.org/ourstory.html , a tireless dynamo who founded Grass Roots Environmental Education http://www.grassrootsinfo.org/ and the ChildSafe School program . Her core message resonated with me immediately, that children are the most vulnerable to environmental toxins. She effectively drove this idea home visually by having children dress in adult business suits at one of her press events.

Appropriate hand hygiene with safe, non toxic products is a current focus for Patti’s organization. There’s a variety of information provided on their site including how to become a ChildSafe Advocate http://www.grassrootsinfo.org/advocate.html to improve the schools in your area.

Antibiotic resistance is the normal and inevitable result of antibiotic use. The question is not if it will occur but when it will appear and how fast it will spread.

Although there is still much that remains unknown about MRSA and other superbugs, there is general consensus among microbiologists that the emergence of MRSA and other antibiotic resistant bacteria is the normal and inevitable outcome of the use and overuse of antibiotics.  Everything in nature wears out with use and antibiotics are no different – it is only a matter of time. Stated simply; the likelihood of resistance to any antibiotic increases with time and widespread use.    Once resistant bacteria emerge, continued antibiotic use actually clears the field of competition and accelerates the spread into the community.  This brings us all one step closer to the very real possibility that patients with previously treatable infections will die for lack of effective antibiotics. 

It would be a mistake to think of antibiotic resistance as someone else’s problem.   Resistance is a global problem and we all have an interest in protecting the antibiotics that are still effective.  We have just witnessed how swiftly MRSA emerged from hospitals to the community and spread rapidly across borders and oceans.  The important lesson here it is that antibiotics are lifesaving, absolutely necessary, very expensive to develop, and under the best of circumstances will have a limited useful lifetime.    It is reckless and short-sighted to carelessly overuse and squander any of these potentially lifesaving medications especially when we have precious few replacements in the pipeline.   

The prudent course of action would be to regard the news about MRSA as Mother Nature giving us fair warning.    (We are getting quite a few of these recently.) It would be a good time to step back and look critically at our current use of antibiotics and rethink the ways that we use these valuable and limited medical resources in the future.  To start with, we can probably all agree that the highest priority should be the treatment of serious or life threatening infections.  After this it gets murky since most uses of antibiotics are driven by economic forces, short-sighted self interest, and the practical limitations of local healthcare.  Antibiotics are often over prescribed by physicians, inappropriately used to treat misdiagnosed viral illnesses, and are also misused by patients in countries where powerful antibiotics are sold without a prescription.  Then there is the massive use of antibiotics as “growth supplements” in animal feed as part of our industrialized food supply.  Just to name a few.

Despite the fact that we all share a common interest in forestalling the emergence of resistant superbugs and maintaining an arsenal of safe and effective antibiotics to fight life threatening infections, the economics and high cost of developing and marketing antibiotics are at odds with achieving these goals.   Nevertheless, reaching a consensus on the appropriate uses of antibiotics and then implementing a global antibiotic policy promises to be one of the most challenging and important public health issues.   Most of the population alive today has no memory of life in the pre-antibiotic era and take the availability of antibiotics for granted. As the media spreads fear and concern about MRSA and other antibiotic resistant superbugs, we are being reminded how much we have to lose and that we all have been given another chance to learn from past mistakes.   

Next post - Lessons Learned from the Resistance