Green SAHM

For a holiday that is celebrated mostly outdoors by most Americans, the Fourth of July is far from a green holiday. Thinking about what fireworks put into the air can put a bit of a damper on enjoying their beauty. And of course most barbecues aren’t so good in that area either.

That doesn’t mean you have to give up for the day. It just means you have to think a little.

We’ll start with the food. Lots of fun stuff here, and yes, my husband plans on barbecuing. Some things he has no interest in giving up. But if we can cut back on the meat, it will be a healthier meal. You can also pick more sustainable types of charcoal for your barbecue or use propane.

I’m hoping that some of the produce in our garden will be ready; I haven’t checked yet. But our tomatoes have been producing and a friend gave us some zucchini and yellow squash. Garden produce, when available, makes a great addition anytime. We’ll also have plenty of fruit, as we got plums from my inlaws’ tree and a neighbor gave us apricots. Lots of local and in season produce, mmm!

It’s hard to avoid soda cans, juice boxes and bottled drinks if you’re having company over. But you can make good choices with these. Think about which can be recycled most easily. Juice boxes as a rule are very challenging to recycle, although some do get made into bags, such as the Basura bag at ReusableBags.com. But if you’re not recycling, reusing them or finding out out to give them to someone who will make bags, they’re going in the landfill. And very few places recycle juice boxes.

Speaking of which, do you have your reusable dishes yet for having people over? Paper or plastic plates may be easy to get, but they’re wasteful. Not wanting to take breakable dishes outside is reasonable, especially if you’ll be away from home, but that doesn’t have to mean disposable.

If you’re going to a fireworks show, try for one near to where you’re doing the rest of your celebration, and carpool where possible. Carpooling can also make parking a lot easier… fewer spaces to seek out to keep your party together. Plan ahead so that you sit as little as possible in traffic; pretty much any fireworks celebration is going to generate a traffic jam.

This is one of the few times I don’t know that I’d suggest riding a bike there. Lots of traffic, after dark, and people who have been drinking all day. This time a car makes more sense to me.

What else can you think of?

Goodness I do a lot of laundry. That’s how it goes with small children, especially with one still wetting the bed despite diapers.

We’ve been washing our clothes in cold water for years. That’s almost always sufficient, and I’ve never even tried a “cold water detergent.” The regular stuff works just fine.

You can get some great laundry tips on the U.S. Department of Energy’s site. I’m not surprised to see that they neglect to mention line drying clothes at this point, but the rest of the advice is good.

Almost everything I wash comes out fine, as I said, with a cold water wash. Those things that don’t I try a couple things.

Dawn Dish Soap

Great for removing grease related stains. It may take an hour or two, but for tough stains I’ve left it on overnight. Clothes that otherwise appeared ruined come clean.

Baking Soda and White Vinegar

Rub baking soda into the stain. Spray or pour white vinegar. It will bubble up and work on the stain. This works well on carpet stains too.

Not every stain is going to come out. I think that’s one of the big lessons of motherhood. Kids are really good at ruining the appearance of their clothes, sometimes in a single wearing. To me that just means you maintain a playtime wardrobe. Children really don’t care, as a rule, if their clothes are stained or torn if they’re comfortable and allowed to have fun.

Despite the weather in my area today, it’s time to think about sunscreen. Summer is very close and many places already have hot weather.

On the other hand, we’ve gone from over 100 degrees F in my area on Monday to thunderstorms and flood watches starting yesterday.

I’ve been working on remembering to sunscreen my daughter each day before school. She tans beautifully, but I don’t want her getting too comfortable with that. In the long run it’s better that she wear sunscreen.

Many sunscreens, however, really aren’t that good for you. There are the usual concerns about endocrine disruptors. Whether or not you think they’re a problem, if you can avoid the whole issue by making the right purchase, why not? All that really matters in that case is that the product works well.

At least an SPF 15 should be worn if you’re going to be spending significant time outside. Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide are good ingredient choices. You can check a lot of sunscreens out at Skin Deep.

Here are some good brands:

Total Block
Some varieties of Alba (see Skin Deep for details)
California Baby
Aubrey Organics
Burts Bees

Not all of these can be found in the Skin Deep database, but most are made from all natural products. All natural does not guarantee safe, of course.

Another alternative is to wear clothing that helps to protect your skin from the sun. Regular clothing will do this, but if you need some extra protection you can shop for clothing that offers more than the usual UV protection.

Sunscreen is a habit you should build into your morning routine if you know you’re going to be in the sun more than a little. You don’t have to spend the day at the beach to damage your skin.

I’ll admit it. I can be a bit of a paper towel junkie.

Not too bad. I don’t dry my hands with them (I use a cloth towel for that), but I still use paper towel probably more than I should, given the waste.

It’s 99.9% the convenience of it all. Kids are messy and paper towels are fast. When you’re cleaning up several spills a day most days, you get very fond of convenience.

At the same time I do think about the overall impact. Overusing paper towels generates quite a bit of waste. Using cloth over and over can be better.

There are some things which I do like paper towels better for. I use cast iron frying pans, and oiling them for storage I find paper towels are simpler. Otherwise I’d get a single use out of a clean towel and have to get oil out of it. I’d pretty much need a dedicated set that I didn’t mind the oil on.

If you can, I recommend switching to primarily cloth towels. If you have a nice supply in the hand towel or washcloth size range you can cope well with most jobs you would have used a paper towel for.

One of the tricks is to know that they often can be reused. If it’s a stinky or germy job you may only get one use before you need to wash, but just drying off your hands won’t require that you immediately send the towel to the wash. Keep that balance.

Different kinds of cloths can do some jobs better. There are some things I prefer the old style cloth diapers for. Not the new kind that work so nicely as diapers, but the old ones you can still see at the baby stores that you’d probably have to fold up a couple together to really soak up what babies can generate. The ones I have are pretty thin, but they do the job quite nicely in the place of paper towels a lot of the time, even if they aren’t pretty.

Other jobs do well with the standard terrycloth kind of towels. You’ll develop your own preferences as you go. The nice thing is that a cloth towel can do the job of several paper ones, as a rule, so you may be saving more than you think if you just count by the job.

Will I be giving up paper towels entirely anytime soon? Probably not. But I am working to steadily decrease my usage of them. It’s a challenging thing to give up with young children in the house.

I often write about the little stuff you can do to live a greener life. But when it comes down to it, how much does all that matter? Doesn’t what the big companies do far outweigh what we individuals control?

Sure. But that doesn’t mean the small stuff isn’t important.

The small things do add up. A single compact fluorescent lightbulb isn’t going to make much of a difference in the carbon output of the world. But all of us together changing over to CFLs where possible will make a difference. Still a smaller difference than many industries could make, but a difference nonetheless.

And then there are all the little things you can do that will matter to your family. Buying organic, local or growing your own garden gives your family the chance to eat better foods. It’s something that can matter to you as an individual as well as be kinder to the environment.

I pack my daughter’s school lunch every day in reusable containers. Do I really think it’s going to make a big difference? No, but it makes some difference. Less plastic wasted. Fewer paper bags thrown out. Better control over the kinds of foods my daughter eats.

And then there’s trying to avoid BPA. This can be a tough one, since some argue whether or not it’s even an issue. The FDA doesn’t have a problem with it after all. But there’s still that potential for it to work as an endocrine disruptor. Canada banned it for that possibility. Should we do less for our families just because it’s a small effect, possibly even not an effect at all?

If it’s a choice between a big thing and a little thing, of course, take care of the big things. Fortunately many of the little things really don’t take much time, and can even just be a part of your regular lifestyle.