Virescent

Here’s what I found at the thrift store this weekend, in my search for a dress to wear to a black-tie event. All these are from the Unique in Silver Spring, MD, which has a very large selection of clothing and house stuff. I’d like to note that all this was just laying around on a busy Saturday afternoon, several days after their last shipment of new things. The green bag was $2.50, the tank top was $4, and the sweater was $5. The coral dress was the best find at $7- and no, it won’t work for the event I had in mind. Though, after some dry cleaning (see previous post) and a few alterations- including in my diet and exercise regime- it could do for another event later in the year. And yes, from now on I’ll be posting the awesome things I find at second hand stores, for your inspiration.

From recently inside my head, two quick follow-ups, then a review of external bits:

First, still on the fence about buying into Valentine’s day? Reuter’s has a dampening article on the child labor and human trafficking that go into producing much of the world’s cocoa, harsh chemicals dumped on roses and inhaled by farm workers, and those crazy war diamonds. Get off the fence and try something else! If the dear heart’s heart is set on chocolate, check out fair trade chocolate options. (My head? It is now salivating.)

Second, Mike Bloomberg is chastising the US government for promoting corn ethanol as a viable fuel. Sure, it’s interesting because I talked about it yesterday (sensing a pattern in this post?), but Bloomberg has also been flirting with running for president this year. Fred Thompson has already shown us the pitfalls of merely flirting with the idea, though, and the rash (yes, rash) of interesting primary action will probably make late entries into the race less interesting by comparison. But the loud green mayor of NY seems to want to make his voice heard on the national stage, and if he’s got a message like this, let’s hear some more.

Finally, let us turn our heads to my shampoo (masculine types are dismissed, unless they’re looking for tips on how to smell not so, well, dude-like).

I’ve been trying out a few ecofriendly shampoos, and it’s been a rough process. Literally. Whole Foods brand grapefruit shampoo and conditioner left my hair feeling unwashed and unconditioned. Plus, they smell sickly-sweet. Avalon Organics has a Lavender shampoo and conditioner that smell good- like real lavender, not the fake lavender scent. Their shampoo takes a lot of work to lather (it’s not my water’s fault) and their conditioner, while promising to nourish, leaves my hair brittle even when I let it sit a while. If you like the smell, the lack of animal testing, and the “100% vegetarian ingredients”, give the shampoo a try and avoid the conditioner- though the latter might work better for you if your hair is short or oily.

Really, though, you can skip the other two brands altogether and check out Trader Joe’s store brand. Their conditioner actually conditions- and I’ve got long, curly, slightly dry hair, so that’s a tough proposition. It’s $2 a bottle, smells fantastic, wasn’t tested on animals, and it’s got mostly organic ingredients. It does contain a couple parabens, which haven’t been proven to cause breast cancer in anything. Natural health people add an ominous “yet” to that statement. Avalon Organics consciously avoids them, but hey: Avalon Organics hasn’t produced a working conditioner yet, so. I’ll keep testing. (If you can’t wait for me to come up with another suggestion, try the comments at Green as a Thistle’s similar post.)

It would appear that moving is going to keep me from posting as often as I’d like for a few weeks, but there’s a progress report due.

Reducing is going slowly, but it’s still going. Last weekend I took my gigantic pile of random stuff to the Salvation Army, and since then I’ve gathered another pile of stuff. Progress, but not enough, plus I’ve still got caches in 3 or 4 corners. Fortunately, moving is going to force me to finish this all in the next few months. Besides the Salvation Army, anybody have any advice on places to donate things?

While I was cleaning out, I found my (plastic) bag of useless plastics from the Nov. goal. It was apparently stuffed in a box in a fit of guilt, and not discarded.  I finally tossed it- I didn’t get to the pillow stuffing idea, and I’ve made my peace with that.  “Reducing plastic intake” was another goal that didn’t go well- but I have made progress on it since I last reported, actually.  I’ve stopped getting plastic grocery bags almost entirely (maybe 2 in the last month?), I try to buy food and objects with no plastic or the smallest amount of plastic wrappings, and I’ve also given up the thinner plastic vegetable and fruit bags from the supermarket- I just put food in my basket loose now, and wash them at home.  They need a washing anyway.  Reassuring to find myself working on goals after the month is up, but still a long way to go on that one.

Next goal for the month will be composting. I’ve already fired up my unit, with the dirt and the brussels sprout leaves and baking soda and such. Ok, it’s not actually going to be composting, so much as figuring out how to compost successfully with the Naturemill Plus. Twice I’ve had to unplug my unit and leave it on the porch, because the smell is too much to handle. This is either because a) the unit is not as smell-isolated as it claims to be, or b) because I’m doing it wrong. I have a horrible feeling it’s the former (seriously, how could I be doing “put the food scraps in the top part” wrong?), but I need to dig out the instructions again and do some experimentation.

I would have included a picture of what the stuff looks like now for you as a special treat, but I checked and it looked pretty gross, so I’ll wait for a less gross, more successful dirt batch. The last porching of the composter was this morning, since I had invited my future housemates over for brunch and bonding and didn’t want to start our relationship with a noseful. I did show it to them, though, and waft a bit their way- none of them seemed overly concerned. Let’s see how they do when it’s in their kitchen…or, more likely, on their porch.

Step 1: Empty the contents of my closets onto the floor.

Fortunately, I don’t have much storage space, so that didn’t go as badly as it sounds. I also cleaned out and repacked the containers under my bed, and stowed 95% of the Christmas stuff (last year it took until March, so this is pretty good for me). Left to do: dig out the corners where I’ve been storing more stuff, since as I said, I don’t have much storage space. It is projected that, in these corners, I will find over 30 yards of various fabrics and my college diploma.

I have a gigantic pile of stuff to donate in my hallway, precisely where I can stumble over it then remember to put other things in it. Contents: ping pong equipment (but no balls), 4 very similar rugs, clothing, 2 pillows I’ve never liked, a metal basket, sunglasses I’ve never worn (or seen before), cleats, and a night light. Among other bits. It’s all in good enough condition to be used, and I’m not going to use any of it.

Step 2: Banish the pile. There are a lot of ways for me to get rid of this: Craigslist (free or sale), Freecycle (like Craigslist, only everything’s free), the Salvation Army, and yard sales come to mind. I tend to take all my things to the Salvation Army- since they’re close by, and I know they’ll take it all at once and use as much as they can. Plus, I don’t have anything worth enough time or money to make reselling or listing it free online make sense.

I still have a lot of stuff left, but now it’s all stuff that I can and want to use. A very persuasive school of decluttering rids one of all unessentials- but that’s not for me. I’m not anti-materialistic at all- I’m not getting rid of things just to not have things. I found a surprising number of items that I don’t want and don’t need floating around in my apartment. There is plenty of stuff- my glass penguin, my shelves of books- that I don’t actually need, but I appreciate having in my space, so long as I have space (not like I take them camping with me or anything- just a few of the books). Plus, keeping random stuff around means I can save money by buying in advance and in bulk, and have all that I need for architectural and personal projects. So, the bits of foam board and cotton scraps stay. Though I do need a new place to store them. Ack! Acquisition! But only of the useful kind.

Fake Plastic Fish, a blog about consumption, waste, and plastic, wrote an interesting post last week on a similar idea of purposeful consumption. Her point was, people tend to over-consume items because they don’t respect, or like, or care anything about, the items that they use or have. Similarly, by clearing my place of the things I don’t want and putting them to good reuse, I have more time and space to respect my other things- and maybe even use them- I’ve been meaning to make a quilt from some of those scraps for years.

Happy New Year! Now’s apparently the time to look back on 2007 and reflect on how far I have, sustainably, come. Seeing as I do that about once a month anyway, and I’ve only had this deal going since September, I’ll spare you the complete recap for now. I hear tell that others also use this time to make resolutions. That’s not how I roll, but I’ll go ahead and at least make another monthly goal.

After a 3-state Christmas tour, this eco-tryer was done. Mostly. Done enough to write about it, but not done enough to stop playing that Christmas music yet. I’m hoping my loved ones will stage an intervention soon, because I’m getting sick of it.

There were some pretty sustainable aspects of my season. I purchased no wrapping paper or boxes, but I did use wrapping paper left from last year (it’s not metallic, so it can be recycled). Once all that stuff is gone, I’ll reconsider how I wrap gifts. I padded all my shipped gifts with my shredded papers. Bows and gift bags were saved for reuse. Most of my decorations were left over from last year- I only purchased two strands of LEDs. Since they were a funny color, I didn’t use them on my tree, but I did use them. I did use strands of inefficient lights, but I plugged them in infrequently (It helped to not be home very much for the holidays).

I worked hard to make the gifts I gave as low-impact and useful as possible, and it paid off. Talking with folks kept my list guess-free, and for far-flung relatives my mother was an invaluable source. Since the number of places selling eco-friendly/fair-trade things is still limited, the shopping was pretty simple for me, and I was done much more quickly than last year: that added sustainability of a non-environmental kind. I am especially proud of giving my very conservative grandfather Gingrich’s “Contract with the Earth” for his Dec 26th birthday- excellent compromise. As for my haul, well: my indoor composter will arrive any day now! Soon, I’ll be reducing “up to 120 lbs” of food scraps a month to useful garden crud! I also received a wonderful movie, The Day After Tomorrow (tagline: This year, a sweater won’t do), which is sort of a documentary of climate change occurring, only it’s entirely made up. I also got The Core (We killed the planet), which might not be about climate change, but certainly involves ridiculous weather. Everything else was pretty, useful, and appreciated, especially the abundance of soups.

At the same time, I did a lot of driving (three states worth!), and I threw away much more than usual (wrappings for new things, fast food containers, staying in a home without recycling access). The LED light experiment was disappointing, and I need to work on that more wisely next year. Also, my Christmas tree started to smell funny a few days ago, sort of like inappropriately aged cheese, but I dumped in some lemon juice in the tree water and then an large amount of vinegar, and either I’ve gotten used to it or the vinegar did the trick.

So, new goal for the month: I was going to do something with my composter and food waste, but since that’s not together yet, I’ll wait on it. I have a bunch of stuff, and I just got more stuff. I’m going to spend the new few weeks reducing the stuff I own- clean out my closets. Appropriate for the new year, and necessary if I’m going to be able to put any of my new stuff away.

I don’t dryclean clothes often, but after an entire winter’s worth of run-ins with mud and soup, my coat needed a bath. A few alternatives to the perc-full traditional dry cleaners now exist, and the two most discussed are the Greenearth franchise and “wet cleaners”.

Wet cleaning is a real thing, and if you want to know more about it, read the wikipedia article. I couldn’t find any locations in the area that do this kind of cleaning because there aren’t many places that do. It involves possibly deconstructing clothing, washing it carefully in biodegradable solvents, then maybe reconstructing it. Most “dry clean only” clothing actually can be cleaned in water and soaps, very very carefully. With computers. Still, hard to find a place that does it, and I don’t know any geishas (read the article), so I looked into the Greenearth people.

Greenearth cleaning uses a silicon based solvent that, in very very high concentrations, causes cancer in lab rats. The same chemical is also found in many personal care products, like shampoo, and has been very widely used for about 30 years, and no studies have definitively linked it with people cancer. NPR reported on the cancer findings, but several other reports dismissed the link with assertations and even some science. Whatever the health effects it’s generally agreed that the chemical is less harmfull than perc- making it easier to get approval to use it on location and cheaper to clean up for franchise owners- plus by all reports the Greenearth process is gentler on clothing and doesn’t have a telltale smell. More importantly, stores that do this actually exist in the greater DC area. It appears their franchises are springing up everywhere- they have a pickup service in Kingstowne, Springfield, a branch on North Quaker in Alexandria, presence in Arlington on Washington Blvd, and locations in Bowie MD and Silver Spring MD. The storefront on North Quaker is large and very professional- looking, with uniformed staff and lots of signs posted about safety processes and environmental credits. Prices range from fine to really good- less that 20$ for my long cashmere-blend coat. Shirts are $2.70, according to a sign. No other prices were posted. While they did swathe my clothing in plastic upon return, they didn’t give me all-new hangers, so that was a nice little conservationist “perk.” Har.

My clothes smell nice and look good- all the unscientific tests say that Greenearth treats your clothes much better than normal drycleaners- and the prices seemed ok to me. If you’re balking at paying more for shirts, consider that the shirts will probably last longer with the Greenearth people.