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Written by Suzanne Heibel   
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Monday, 27 October 2008

Bathroom Greening

With the green movement taking over the production world, selling everything from toxin-free lamp shades to organic jeans, morphing your bathroom into an environmentally friendly zone is relatively simple. Greening your bathroom is not only good for the environment, but it is also great for your and your family’s health!

Biodegradable Soaps

The bathroom is the space in your house to freshen up, but there is no need to use soaps that clean your body while dirtying the environment at the same time. Unless noted on the package, shampoos, conditioners, and soaps all contain chemicals that are unable to naturally breakdown, decay, and go back into the environment without being toxic. As a result they remain harmful to ecosystems. Biodegradable soap, shampoo, and other similar products are able to be broken down into organic compounds, which occurs IN THE SOIL by microorganisms, eliminating the threat of toxicity release into the environment. People who travel often use these products to reduce their footprint in other places or countries they visit, but it makes just as much sense to reduce your footprint in your community as well.

“Biodegradable” usually implies that within six months of usage the soap will have decayed to 90% water, carbon dioxide, and biomass WHEN IN SOIL, not if just dumped into a water source. Some make take years to fully breakdown, so as a consumer it is important to differentiate between “biodegradable” and “environmentally-friendly,” because the two may always not be synonymous.1 Look for ingredients that you recognize, such as vegetable-based soaps, which tend to be more organically crafted, and look for “phosphate-free” on the label as well. A good company that is not very well known is “Further Soaps,” which uses waste from biofuels and turn it into soaps. They can be found at www.furthersoap.com. You can now find biodegradable soaps, shampoos, etc. at major retailers like Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and online, in addition to your local retailers!

Toothbrushes

I know we love to recycle, but don't worry, there is no need to share a toothbrush with Great Uncle Ned, you can have your own and still be reducing waste. Recycled toothbrushes, like the Preserve® toothbrush, are not only made from recycled plastics but are also recyclable themselves.2 Plus, they are made in the United States, so for U.S.-based consumers, they are more environmentally-friendly than products from overseas because they heavily cut down on excessive transportation and petroleum use.

Natural toothpaste

Lately it seems like there has been a lot of talk about the chemical Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), which is an ingredient commonly found in toothpastes and shampoos.3 SLS acts as a foaming agent but has a bad rap attached to it because it is also a chemical known to cause skin irritation. Because of this, some organizations have claimed that this chemical is responsible for causing canker sores, and even cancer, yet there is no clear evidence for these claims.4 It is also not listed on the Pesticide Action Network “Bad Actor” list, which identifies California's most toxic chemicals.5 Tom's of Maine toothpaste, a toothpaste brand known for its natural ingredients, says that SLS is naturally-occurring in coconut and palm oils (4) and they feel that it is just fine to use.6 If you are worried about the effects of SLS, Tom's also offers SLS-free products. You can visit their website at http://www.tomsofmaine.com/ for more information.

Toilet Paper

Toilet paper is a touchy subject because everyone needs it and everyone uses it for the same thing. For this subject, you only have two methods to reduce your use:

1. Buy toilet paper made from recycled paper. Most of the time it is cheaper than regular toilet paper, so for your wallet that's a plus; and the Natural Resource Defense Council reports that if every household in the U.S. replaced just a single roll of their regular toilet paper with a green brand, over 400,000 trees would be spared annually from being cut down.7 Imagine the impact if all rolls were replaced with recycled ones! Literally, entire forests would be saved.

2. The other way to make toilet paper more eco-friendly is to not use the entire roll every time you pee. This may seem like an exaggeration, but I know people who take three arm's lengths of squares for one pee. This is overkill. It only takes a few squares to stay clean and if you are worried about your hands, that is the reason your mom taught you to wash ‘em after you use the toilet. This concept has even become ingrained in pop-culture: singer Sheryl Crow's 2007 tour promoted single-square usage of toilet paper. Now that's an effective advertisement!

Water Usage

Cutting down water usage in the restroom is the most effective way to conserve water. That's why there is a whole article dedicated to it! To learn how to save, see the Greeniacs Article "How to Conserve Water in the Bathroom" for information on this subject.

Towels, Curtains, Mats

Lets face it, shower curtains and bathroom floor mats get down right disgusting. They stay constantly moist, meaning they are prone to bacteria growth and they tend to smell bad after some time. Because of this, most people throw them away after a year or so and just replace them with another plastic curtain fated to be discarded in another year's time. They are also plastic, meaning they are derived from petroleum.

The solution is to purchase a curtains and mats that are made of fabric so they can be washed and used for longer than just a single year. Find one that is made from organic cotton because organically-grown items mean less pollution from agricultural runoff to adjacent ecosystems.

Another company called “bamboo and organic linens” (www.bambooandorganiclinens.com) incorporates bamboo into their products because the plant is actually a weed that needs very little resources to flourish, and it absorbs odors much better than cotton alone9. Hemp rugs and mats are also a popular environmental choice. Hemp is often too closely associated with Marijuna, yet hemp is a weed grown to be harvested for commercial use in fabrics or paper, not for drug use.Hemp is naturally pest-resistant so it can be grown without the use of chemical additives. Because it is a weed it can grow in very harsh conditions so only minimal water use is required for its growth10. A good place to find hemp bathroom products is at http://www.rawganique.com/.

Towels fit into this same material usage. Organic cotton and hemp are great choices, especially if you can find a local supplier, which cuts down on the shipping materials and costs.

Now you know what to do!

Although replacing plastic products made from chemicals and oil with organic products may sound cliché, it is ultimately the best decision when making your bathroom a little greener. These are the products you use daily and often so it makes sense to have your bathroom be the greenest room in the house.

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Sources:

1http://backcountryattitude.com/
2 http://www.recycline.com
3http://www.natural-health-information-centre.com/sodium-lauryl-sulfate.html
4http://www.tomsofmaine.com/toms/ifs/sls.asp
5http://www.nrdc.org/land/forests/gtissue.asp#toilet
6http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6583067.stm
7http://pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC35205#Toxicity
8http://pesticideinfo.org/Docs/ref_toxicity7.html#BadActor
9http://www.bambooandorganiclinens.com/shower-curtains
10http://naihc.org/hemp_information/hemp_facts.html#ecology




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Green Facts

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.