What Can You Recycle?
To my beloved children, Despite the fact that you have lived in my house for most/all of your lives, during which time I have consistently demonstrated effective recycling behavior, there seems to be some residual confusion about what you can can and cannot recycle. It’s complicated, I get it. From the time you were small, the a profusion of different materials has exploded exponentially and therefore you were required to continuously improve on your knowledge. This is a problem for all of us — that’s why we have that giant plastic trash slick in the middle of the ocean and microplastics in our fish. And it’s why so many people…
Is Your Toilet Paper Dirty?
What’s in your bathroom cupboard? If you’re buying toilet paper made by Procter & Gamble, that purchase contributes to the destruction of rainforests in Canada and Indonesia — one million acres of which are razed every year to make what you’re flushing. Every day ONE MILLION TREES are cut down to make TP!
Treehugger Newspaper Conundrum
During childhood visits to my grandmother’s house, she’d put me to sleep on the fold-out couch in the den. At some point early in the morning—it was always dark outside—I’d half-awaken to the sound of her puttering around in the kitchen and the smell of the mud she called coffee percolating on the counter. By the time I actually got out of bed a few hours later, the coffee would be gone and my grandmother would be happily working on whatever task she’d set for herself that day. Note my use of the word “happily.” Consider, if you will, the contrast in my house.
Goodbye BPA, Hello BPS
I thought we’d seen the last of endocrine disruptors like Bisphenol A. In 2012, the FDA announced a nation-wide ban on BPA in bottles and sippy cups, because of links to obesity, reproductive problems, cancer and more. But the chemical industry had already started looking for options. A 2012 study found bisphenol S, a BPA alternative, on 100% of cash register paper in the United States, as well as on 87% of paper currency and 52% of recycled paper. According to the study, people may now be absorbing 19 times more of the powdery film through their skin than when BPA was used to coat receipts!
