Tampaximize Your Profit

Tampax' new slogan? "Use Your Period For Good."

Their Protecting the Futures campaign is the most offensive piece of advertising I've ever seen, on so many levels I'm not even sure where to start!

And they all seem to want to get in on the charity act. Appealing to the compunctious good hearts of Westerners to save those poor souls in less developed nations - whether they want to be "saved" or not - seems to be the P.R. du jour. For a while there, Pampers in the UK partnered with Unicef to give vaccinations to third-world children - for every pack of diapers sold. Buy our product - "save" a child. The implication, of course, if you don't buy their product... I'll leave you to take that to its guilt-inducing logical conclusion. And of course, it begs the question, which is more harmful, the diaper or the vaccination?

Let's start with the health impact on the world of these two offerings from Proctor and Gamble. Diapers and sanitary products have been found in several independent studies to contain dioxins, which suppress the immune system and put the women and children who use products containing them at risk for infertility. Dioxins also interfere with fetal and child development. Isn't that nice? They also contain such yummy things like chlorine, absorbancy enhancers, synthetic fibers, deodorant and fragrance, which amplify toxin production.*

Yes, let's send all those wonderful things to the girls in Africa!

But wait, there's more!

The environmental impact on the U.S. due to the use of these products has been enormous. In 1999, seventy-three million woman used tampons. ONE woman might use as many as 16,800 in her lifetime. Think about the amount of waste this creates. In 2006, the Ocean Conservancy found 20,000 tampon applicators underwater and along shorelines - an improvement from a 1999 study that found 170,000 applicators.* But still.

Africa doesn't have enough problems... let's give them this one, too.

And this isn't the first time the U.S has rushed in to capitalize "help." We've given them formula - and discouraged breastfeeding. We've given them poison-filled diapers to put on their babies and litter their landscape. Now we're going to give them Tampax. Hallelujah! The Western world once again leads the way in progress and benevolent imperialism acts.

Not.

Does anyone really believe that African girls are missing school because they lack disposable sanitary products? Really? Even if it's true - that it's actually embarrassment and lack of protection and not an archaic and mysogynistic religious idea (introduced by Westerners, I might add... ahhhh the irony!) that's keeping girls out of school during their time of the month - isn't it still unbelievably condescending to assume that the entire continent has been just waiting for the U.S. to come in and rescue them? It's a little patronizing to believe that they don't know how to deal with such a basic, biological function - don't you think? (You mean they might be using something as primitive as a cloth pad!? *gasp*)

Remember what happened when Nestle introduced formula to African mothers? No? Nestle introduced formula to the continent, assuring mothers it was "better" for their babies - and they consequently became dependent on it - African mothers' milk dried up - and then, when mothers couldn't afford the formula anymore, they began to water it down, and their babies became undernourished.

What a charitable triumph for a Western corporation just looking to help...

If we really want to help girls in Africa with this issue, perhaps we should send them Diva Cups. Or sea sponges. Both of which are much better for the environment and their bodies. And if Tampax really wanted to help to accomplish the following, as their web site claims:

Your purchase of Tampax or Always helps us donate $1.4 million through 2008 to the United Nations Association's HERO campaign to help provide feminine protection and education to girls in Southern Africa. That money will be used to provide health, hygiene and puberty education. It's also going into building classrooms, toilets, wash stations and dorms. And it's being used to provide the students with meals and clean water. In addition, we'll be providing pads to these girls to help them not miss school when they get their period.

Perhaps they should donate that 1.4 million dollar budget (and their astronomical ad budget to boot!) to truly altruistic organizations that are already doing these things without all the capitalist strings attached. There's a thought.

But it seems to me they're more interesting in getting the recognition for some perceived act of charity, while all they really want is to create a new market for their product and instill their brand.

*

Green Christmas

I guess I HAVE to start thinking about Christmas, now that it's almost December and we've actually got snow on the ground and everything.

Sigh.

Okay, so here's the plan...

I'm going to pretend that not putting lights up on the house this year is an effort to be more environmentally conscious. That goes for the easy, re-usable gift bags instead of wrapping paper, too. And the baking of pumpkin bread instead of buying gifts for extended family members. I'm also going to pretend that it's that pesky "evil lead in plastic toys from China" thing that's fueling my boycott on plastic &/or noisy toys this year. Oh, and it's all about saving gas money - that's why we're not going to try to make it to both families on the same day this year. And my live tree instead of a plastic one this year? It's all about the environment.

Riiiiiiggggght.

See, I'm not lazy... or cheap... I'm just... green! :D

Renewable Energy Coming to Michigan!

I was so excited to read that there may be a mandate requiring 10% of Michigan's electric power to come from renewable energy by 2015, and 30% by 2030. Yay us! There are twenty-three other states who have already set renewable energy standards (yay them!)

Michael and I have talked about buying land and building a solar home, something off the grid. Ultimately, I believe we will, at some point. But it's always so frustrating to have the willingness, but not the means, to accomplish something that I know will be so beneficial for us, our children, and our children's children.

It's heartening to know our state is catching up and jumping on the green bandwagon. There's some opposition, I guess, about wind power. Windmills and turbines might "blight" the Michigan landscape. Feh!



I think they're rather beautiful. Certainly no worse than fences or telephone poles. And what they signify--renewable energy--is definitely worth whatever aesthetic minuses there might be!

Could it Bee Any Worse?

There are a lot of folks out here in the country who keep bees. They jar and sell the honey and also have the added benefit of local bees to pollinate their gardens. I've actually thought about doing it myself. As insects go, I think bees are one of the coolest.

But now the bees are disappearing. Not just a few bees, but hundreds of thousands of them. A woman I was talking to last week mentioned that half her hive was gone. The bees just mysteriously left their hive and never came back.

The PBS wildlife-documentary series Nature premiered Sunday with Silence of the Bees. They emphasize this isn't just a local or isolated problem. It's happened in thirty-five states in the U.S. and has been documented in France, England, Spain, China and Australia as well.

While they're (hopefully) on their way to finding out the reason (possibly some sort of bee virus) and (cross your fingers!) a cure, the reality is, if they don't, the disappearance of the bees will affect three-quarters of the entire world's food crops. If that isn't environmental news to pay attention to, I don't know what is!

Yet there was more media and frenzy around bird flu (whatever happened to that?) and West Nile than I've heard about the disappearing bees--but this will have much more, far-reaching effects than those.

So where is the concern, where's the media attention? I hear it in environmental circles, but not so much in the mainstream media. In fact, I've actually heard it denied in the mainstream, downplayed and explained as a "cycle," a similar argument made about global warming as well.

Should we believe nothing is connected? That melting polar ice caps, California wildfires, and dying bees have nothing in common? Are we really so blind? How can we look around at the mounting evidence and keep denying our human part in it?

If nothing else, we need to pay attention to the message the bees are sending.

The natural balance of the world is out of whack.

Everything is connected, and even the smallest things matter.

Wouldn't it be strangely ironic if the demise of civilization came down to something as simple as the dying out of the honeybee?

It makes me wonder when the mainstream media will start paying this some real attention. When people start starving?

Maybe if we point out to them that Jessica Seinfeld's possible plagiarism is going to be proven completely irrelevent because, without bees to pollinate them, there won't be any vegetables or fruits for her or any other mother to puree and sneak into their kids' food--that is, if her husband's new Bee Movie and the message of the dying honeybees isn't finally taken to heart...

Think that might get their attention?

Perhaps we should point out to them that cartoon bees can't, in fact, pollinate flowers. We can't manufacture CGI bees to do the job, folks.

Or should we just start with this?

"Soylent Green is people!"

Blog Action Day: One More Way To Be Green

An ode to BLOG ACTION DAY:

(Sung to the tune of the "Green Acres" television theme)

Blog Action Day's the place for me!
Green living is the life for me!
Landfills - we have to stem the tide!
Let's make conservation acts worldwide!

Denial is where I'd rather stay!
I'm allergic to Blog Action Day!
I just adore not having a clue.
Earth, I love ya, but I want my Starbucks brew!

Al Gore!
No more!
Fresh Air!
I don't care!

This is our earth!
How much is it worth?

Green living we are there!

*****

Michael and I have always been environmentally conscious and conscienscious. We're Aquarians--apparently, its in our blood. Or, rather, our stars. We lay awake at night and dream together about living off-the-grid in a completely sustainable community somewhere in a very postmodern hippie-like existence. Of course, I want to have running water and electricity, still. I'm a spoiled sort of environmental activist that way.

And come to think of it... why can't we eat our cake and have it, too? Listen, humans aren't stupid, for the most part. There are ways to make it happen. Green building is possible. Green cars. Green EVERYTHING. I long for the day when I reach for a product and I don't have to wonder whether it was created with slave labor or may contain lead.

I'm know rather Al-Gore-ish when it comes to this: I want to live in a completely Green World, and this should be our number one priority above any other concern. Education, taxes, immigration, health care, sure, all important political issues--that completely disappear if we have no planet to live on in the first place!

Alarmist? Crazy? Noah building an ark perhaps?

Maybe.

I know there are folks out there with their heads stuck in the sand. Or, to be generous, they don't "believe" there's such a thing as, say, global warming. Welcome to the Flat Earth Society, would you like a cookie?

I don't understand how, as a nation, we can be so self-involved that we want to maintain the outrageous levels of denial we've managed to cultivate over the years. I don't know about you, but when someone says, "The sky is falling!" I look up. Perhaps the sky isn't falling. That's certainly a possibility. But maybe... just maybe... the sky is falling.

Wouldn't it be better to be safe, than sorry, as my grandmother always used to say?

Speaking of grandmothers, we can take a lesson from the indigineous peoples that lived here long before Columbus "discovered" this land and proved (yes, he did, Flat Earth folks... it really happened...) that the earth was, indeed, rather roundish. They had a custom they called "seven generations." Any time a decision was made that would impact the environment (and what decision do we ever make that doesn't impact our environment, I would argue!?) they would take into consideration the impact it would have for seven generations--both forward and behind. In other worlds, they asked themselves, how will this effect my grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren? And... What Would the Ancestors Do? (WWAD?)

It's not a bad policy. Think we can make it global?

Since we moved from the suburbs, I've been even more aware of our environment. Everything is so much more in-your-face when it comes to daily existence. You have to plan and think about rubbish pickup, for example, and have a limit on the amount of garbage they're willing to pick up. You actually count your bags of garbage. We take our recycled items to a center.

Whether you "believe" in global warming or not, conservation in and of itself is really a "better safe than sorry" proposition. It just makes common sense. Tell me, why wouldn't you conserve? I'd love to hear a really good reason.

Because you're lazy? Because it's too hard? *whine* Because you're too apathetic and what difference does it really make, anyway?

The reality is that we don't know what kind of impact we're going to have on future generations. But what it comes down to is this: do you care about what will happen on this planet after you're gone? If you do, then you can't do anything but try to be as much a conservationist as you can manage.

And (I'm so weird like this!) I'm always so excited when I find one more way I may possibly be able to impact the future--one more way to be green.

So when I ask: what are you doing to make your life more "green?" I really do want to know! The more ideas we share, the better. Because every little bit counts. Yes, it really does.

Here's a list of what we do:

**We consume as much local and organic food as possible

**We recycle and avoid buying things in non-recyclable packaging

**We don't use incandescent lightbulbs (and we recycle the energy saving ones we do use!)

**We conserve water

**We use rechargeable batteries

**We donate our old glasses and cell phones, recycle car batteries, etc.

**I use cloth menstrual pads

**We use cloth napkins

**We use cloth grocery bags

**I don't use toxic cleaners or herbicides (vinegar is a great cleaner, and it makes the house smell like Easter eggs!)

**We compost

**We're planning on installing solar panels next year

**We live as unplugged as we can

**We plant trees with the kids every year

**We refill printer cartridges

**We use energy efficient appliances

**We replace our heating/cooling filters every year

**We take community showers :)

**We hardly ever fly

**We freecycle and cheapcycle and hardly ever buy anything new, from cars to clothes

**We BookMooch

**We're working on the eating less meat thing :x (Michael isn't thrilled about that part.)

**Before we moved, Michael was carpooling, but now it's only six miles to work. Maybe some day he'll ride his bike ;) I'm pulling for telecommuting!

We've also signed hundreds of petitions, written lots of letters to Congress, belong to several conservation groups, etc...

So tell me... what do YOU do? I really want to know!

* * * * *

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Let There Be Light!

I just replaced every single one of these in my new house:

With one of these:

Why?

Because I'm a mizer, that's why. These bulbs last much, much longer than regular, incandescent bulbs. They don't break when you drop them, either, Ms. Klutz discovered (bonus!) and they are supposedly environmentally friendly.

According to Wikipedia (the lazy woman's research guide *grin*)": a CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) can save over $30 in electricity costs over the lamp’s lifetime compared to an incandescent lamp and save 2000 times their own weight in greenhouse gasses.

But can it cut an aluminum can in half, that's what I want to know!

I buy them at Sam's Club, so my savings is pretty significant. Still not as cheap as incandescent bulbs, but when you consider they last 8-15 times as long!? I've had one in the lamp next to my bed for two years, and it's never burned out. Two YEARS! Woot!

As for the environmentally friendly part, well... there is a concern about mercury, I guess. (Can't have everything--where would you put it, right?) They use 1 mg of mercury in them when they make the bulbs. Of course, 1 mg of mercury isn't all that much... there's 1 mg of mercury per cubic meter of sea water, right? So they say... but still, put a million of them in a landfill, and you've got a math meets mercury disaster leaking into our water supply, right? Of course, burning coal to make the electricity that goes into incandescent lightbulbs actually produces mercury, too. Can't win for losing...

So I guess I have to do the right thing and recycle the new bulbs when they finally burn out! I did find some place local from this site: Earth911.

Now I'm just waiting for them to come out with affordable LED bulbs. Right now they're cost prohibitive (like $50 a bulb! Eek!) but I have a feeling they'll replace the CFL. Kind of like cassette and video tapes getting replaced by CDs and DVDs.

Why?

A 1.4 Watt LED bulb replaces the standard 60 Watt incandescent. The CFL bulb uses 13 Watts. You do the math!

I can't wait!

Propane Pain

How many of you knew that you have to buy propane in bulk? Go ahead, don't be shy, raise your hand if you knew.

Uh-huh.

To those of you who have your hands raised...

WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME!?!?!?

*sigh*

Like I have a spare $400 in my budget to purchase propane all at once?? Which, by the way, only fills half that torpedo at the side of my house. HALF.

What brainiac came up with this whole fossil fuels as energy idea in the first place, thinking, "Hey, here's a good idea, let's take this non-renewable energy source and sell it, and we'll make a mint--until it all runs out at some unforseeable point in the future that we don't care about because we'll be dead..."

Feh!

Makes me crazy to know that there ARE renewable energy sources out there (solar, wind, etc) and ways to build houses that would maximize those to make them viable options... but are they available to the general public? Nope.

So I'm stuck robbing Peter to pay Paul in order to heat my water and, when it gets cold enough, the house. (Which is, technically, still heating water--it's steam heat.) I do find it kind of interesting to have an actual gauge outside, though, telling how much energy we've used. It certainly makes you more conscious, and I like that part. We now have 5% left. When we called to ask how long the propane company thought that might last, they replied, "For some people, it could be a month, for others, about three days."

Of course, we had to err on the side of caution and order propane now--just in case we're propane hogs and don't know it. But it will be interesting to see how much energy we use, and how much we can conserve. A rather fun experiment.

If I'd only known we had to pay it all at once, I would have planned for it, ya know? *sigh* I guess we'll know for next year, and start planning accordingly.

I just wish we didn't have to use non-renewable energy sources at all. But it really is interesting, how living out here forces you to think about things you take for granted in the suburbs or the city. Out here, rubbish pickup is direct. Propane tanks sit at the side of houses like huge torpedos. Your personal consumption and waste is definitely more in-your-face, which makes it much, much more conscious. Not necessarily a bad thing.

People out here still try to disguise it, though. As if that big thing shaped like a bomb at the side of your house doesn't actually contain enough explosive material to blow up half the county. I've seen people plant lots of flowers around their tank to hide it, or even paint it:

I'm tempted to paint mine too, believe me.

But I definitely wouldn't be painting flowers on the side. Oh, no. Mine would be more... graphic...

Well, I'll just leave it to your imagination...