Green Tips

Green Tips
Have all those slips and receipts from various shopping trips? Don't throw them in the bin. Spare 5 minutes. Put them together -most are the same width, fold the really long ones in half. Then staple them neatly across the top.
You have a rough and ready pad for use as

• shopping lists
• to-do lists
• kitchen menu
• guest lists
• Short notes

It can serve as many purposes as you want it to.

NewYear Resolutions

Happy 2012 to all who may read my posts.
Hope we carers of our hearths can make the earth a better place for the next generations: a greener planet where all life has a place.

Not a world strewn with plastics, its soil barren or poisoned with our chemicals, its air too foul to breathe.

from imagegossips.com

As the Hindu and Buddhist Peace incantations say-

Let all beings be happy

Let all beings be peaceful

Let all beings be blissful

 photo SanathRoy

We destroy our only home in the Universe at our peril. If we cannot learn to reduce our need and our greed mankind will have nowhere to go.!

So here's my 2012 resolutions up for sharing. They are not new, they are not great but I hope to make a differrence.

• Less chemicals and less plastics in my home -pass the vinegar, please and the cloth-bags.
• Do I really need all those gadgets, all the time- a few mechanical devices for odd-jobs won't hurt
• Recycle as much as I can (and cycle ditto) -both will leave lighter footprints, carbon or biped.
• Get around understanding all that carbon footprint, offsets and setbacks!

I hope to share all this with you. 

Green Tips

Collect those bits and pieces of leftover soap. Heat water in a large pan and drop them in. Stir the mix till the pieces dissolve. Don’t put too many together as then they will not dissolve. Bottle the cooled mixture as a liquid hand soap. Vey useful in kitchens and bathrooms.
Alternatively put all the soap bits in a fine nylon mesh bag and tie it. You can now use it as a footscrub.

Chemical News on Chemical Use

This will be an ongoing list of websites and other resources on Chemicals of all types- use, misuse, pollution and other misscellaneous information you may like to find.

What you know, you cannot unknow and which of us will willingly poison our family and friends?
We can't deal with the chemical lobbies of the powerful governments. But we can stop using their products or atleast the most harmful of the substances.

This title will also contain several news about the effect of chemicals that scientists are just beginning to uncover.

pollutionissues.com  Especially see sections on Household pollutants, Indoor air pollution, Laws and regulations- Interantional, Carlson,Rachel Scientist and others

The A to Z of beauty baddies/George Blacksell in theecologist.org

reduce.org  see section Toxics at home -from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, provides some excellent information for all

Against Silencing Nature or Killing with Chemicals

They have been a part of our lives in many ways for the last century. They invade our homes, our bodies and now every part of the green planet. Much of the convenience of running our lives and our homes depend on chemical cleaning power. Crops depend on their killing power (of pests, etc.) But as we clean and kill our way through life, the Killer Chemicals are building up.

There is a lot of information out there on our use of chemicals and I will provide various links and cues for those who want ways to deal with this Frankenstein. Here, I give some excerpts from the introduction to the book.

She was one of the foremost environmentalist (yes, she was a woman)- Rachel Carlson. Few may be aware of her pioneering work back in the 1940s, USA. She launched a movement and was demonized by America’s chemical lobby. To put it in the words of Linda Lear who wrote the Introduction to the new edition of Carlson’s book, -

“In postwar America, science was God, science was male.

Carlson was an outsider who had never been part of the scientific establishment, first because she was a woman but also because of her chosen field, biology, was held in low esteem in the nuclear age….

In Carlson’s view, the postwar culture of science that arrogantly claimed dominion over nature was the philosophic root of the problem. (Isn’t it still!)

In 1962 however the multimillion dollar industrial chemical industry was not about to allow a former government editor, a female scientist without a PHD, or an industrial affiliation…..to undermine public confidence in its products or to question its integrity….She had overstepped the boundaries of her gender and her science. But just in case her claims did gain an audience, the industry spent a quarter of a million dollars (it was the 1940s, remember!) to discredit her research and malign her character….

Silent Spring compels each generation to re-evaluate its relationship to the natural world. In arguing that public health and the environment, human and natural, are inseparable, Rachel Carlson insisted that the role of the expert had to be limited by democratic access and must include public debate about the risks of hazardous technologies.”

Silent Spring has been published in its 40^th anniversary edition. Carlson’s other books include Under the Sea-wind, The Sea around us, The Edge of the Sea.

Her books do not provide dry facts but are a pleasure to read in their lyrical prose.

 Available from Flipkart and Amazon and various bookstores.

The Tailor’s Jacket - a recycling fable

A poor tailor was once given a bolt of cloth by a rich customer.
“You must use this for yourself,” said the customer. “You deserve a fine coat for the winter.”
The tailor was overjoyed. 

He set to work at once.
He measured and he cut.
He sewed and he sewed,
He sewed and he sewed…
And he made himself a fine new coat!
How the tailor loved that coat!
He wore that coat…
He wore that coat…
He wore that coat…
Until the coat was all worn out.

        

The tailor could see that, even though it was worn in places,
There was still enough material to …
Make a jacket!
So he measured and he cut.
He measured and he cut.
He sewed and he sewed.
He sewed and he sewed…
And he made a jacket!
The tailor was proud of his new jacket.
He wore that jacket everywhere.
He wore that jacket…
He wore that jacket…
He wore that jacket…
Until it was all worn out.
The tailor looked at the ragged jacket
He could see that, even though it was worn in place.
There was still enough material to..
Make a waistcoat!
So he measured and he cut
He measured ad he cut.
He sewed and he sewed …

And he made a waistcoat!

The tailor was proud of his new waistcoat.
He wore that waistcoat…
He wore that waistcoat…
He wore that waistcoat..
Until it was all worn out.

The tailor turned the waistcoat this was and that
He could see that, even though it was worn in places,
There was still enough material to …
Make a cap!

The tailor loved that cap!
He wore that cap everywhere
He wore that cap…
He wore that cap…
He wore that cap…
Until the cap was all worn out.

The tailor turned that cap around and around.
When he looked closely, he could see that, even though it was worn in places,
There was still just enough material left…
To make a button!

So he measured and he cut.
He measured and he cut.
He sewed and he sewed.
He sewed and he sewed…
And he made a button!

The tailor was proud of that button.
He wore that button everywhere.
He wore that button…
He wore that button …
He wore that button…
Until the button was all worn out.

The tailor was just about to throw the button away.
But he looked at it closely and saw…
There was just enough material there…

To make a STORY.

in Earthcare- world folktales to talk about by Margaret Read Macdonald

(image jewishpaintings.net)

World Environment Day

Convention says there must be an entry on this blog on World Environment Day. But is it really possible to make a change on something as all encompassing as the environment by devoting just a day to it?
Environ as the dictionary says is to encircle, surround. The environment surrounds and nurtures the earth. Without it there is no life and you don't need me to tell you about it. So devoting a day however well meant to spreading awareness is not enough.

Many are doing enough to reduce and recycle. But individual practices are swamped by commercial malpractices. Just think of any one super (and now you have hyper) markets. Do we really need that much of variety, that kind of choice between ten washing powders, thirty kind of soaps to name just a few? Is this reducing?

Reduce, reuse, recycle is the new mantra -of what use. We are not reducing anything -think of the number of clothes in our cupboards. Not that I am a saint, but I have learnt to give away stuff which I seldom use. And I do not replace it with others. There are favourites gracing the darkness of the cupboard for decades but they are now in single digits and not the double.

The same goes for our children's clothes. (Husbands and fathers normally have to be forced to buy their clothes on the eve of weddings and other crises). But children's clothes, including those of babies overflow; gifts, birthdays, outgrows all fight for space. No expense is spared when it comes to children's clothes.

My hearthcare and childcare consisted of buying my son just a minimum number of comfortable cotton clothes. Soon I stopped that too seeing that grandparents and aunts would forever supply necessary and unnecessary ones. So I started to tell them to buy only cotton and only filled in the gaps when he outgrew shorts and shirts.
With little girls the problem is multiplied a few times! Is this doing the environment much good when things still in wearable condition have to be thrown away? In India and other parts of Asia we give them away but the fact remains that there is a lot of clothes on this planet much of it not required. And urban children are being pampered to beyond anything that has happened before.
So if we all buy a little less we use a little less. Recycling can only work upto a point. The first part of the mantra is - REDUCE.
I call it Reductionist Hearthcare - you buy less, you waste less money; less clothes, less washing and laundry; less choice of what to wear, less bother.