Toilet paper
Sunrise 100% Premium
It might not be a popular topic, but we're flushing a lot of paper down the toilet. I'm not suggesting we recycle that paper, just that we use recycled paper in the bathroom.
Sunrise, made by Marcal, is hypoallergenic and made without chlorine bleach. It's every bit as soft and fuzzy (and white) as any nonrecycled paper roll. And we don't get a lint-covered toilet-paper holder.
Marcal says their production of 100% recycle products saves every day:

1. 6,000 trees


2. 2 million gallons of water


3. 22,000 pounds of air pollution


4. 140,000 gallons of oil


5. 30,000 cubic feet of landfill space

Has anyone out there had their air ducts professionally cleaned? I'm thinking of having it done, but I'd like to know what your experiences were so I can anticipate any pitfalls.

It's been an exceptionally wet year. Farmers have been putting crops in late, according to business reporter Cindy Cain.
My garden was no exception.
It was wet, we were busy, the seedlings didn't look strong enough to be on their own. (My maternal instinct needs to dial it back a few notches.)
My mother had told me that my great grandfather, who was the final word in gardening and a lot of other things, said as long as you had it planted by the end of May, you were OK.
We cut it close, but it's mostly in. Now, I find myself worrying about the seedlings being out their alone with only chicken wire to protect them.
But I have to remind myself: Next stop, pesticide-free veggies. All aboard!

JJC is sponsoring a hazardous waste disposal event, run by Will County's waste services division, from 8 a.m. (too early for me!) to 3 p.m. (that's more like it) Saturday. It'll be in Parking lot S-1 of JJC's main campus at 1215 Houbolt Road in Joliet.

On Memorial Day, my dad came over to give us some sage advice.
My dad can identify just about any plant, bug or animal. If it grows, he can ID it.
We bought our house in October, too late to do much about the greenery, so he came Monday.
I hoped for good news.
I was wrong.
Turns out a good chunk for our landscaping is buckthorn, an invasive plant that kills all the stuff you actually want to grow. What used to be a long line of lilacs had one surviving bush. There are a ton of mulberry trees but none of them seem to be growing in places that are conducive to trees. (If I have to choose between the garage and a mulberry tree, the garage wins, even if that's not an eco-friendly choice.)
We have a MASSIVE pine tree behind our house. I'm terrible at heights, but it's probably the equivalent of a three-story building.
"See that," my dad said pointing to the top of the tree.
"What?" I said, squinting.
"That green stuff," he said. I stared at him. It was all green. It's a pine tree, for goodness sake. I wisely shut up and looked.
Yep, he was right. Something the wrong green was poking out near the top.
"Grape vine. Kill it before it kills the tree. Just cut it off at the base," my dad said.
Grape vine? What's grape vine doing there? Growing happily is what. At the base of the pine tree, the grape's vine is wrist-sized. But now it's got to die or else the tree will suffer. In the rock-paper-scissors world of botany, tree beats grape vine when it comes to my love. And everything beats buckthorn.
How bad is buckthorn? In 2004, Illinois made it illegal to buy, sell or plant buckthorn in the state. This is Illinois, known for corruption. If they say it's bad, it's really, really bad.
The buckthorn bush-tree-things are massive. They look like regular shrub-bush-things, but they grow everywhere. They cover all of the good bushes, taking up the sunlight and the water and ... well, everything good.
So we spent a few hours sawing out massive buckthorns, creating a pile that makes it look like the tornado struck again. The job is far from over. We're going to be on buckthorn duty for a long time. With luck, some of the lilacs will return. With luck, the honeysuckle will recover from being beat down. With luck, some grass will grow in the dirt long kept covered by buckthorn.
Are you battling plants in your yard? Do you know what plants can strangle the good ones and leave you with undesirables? I confess I don't have that knowledge. If you don't either, borrow someone's brain and let us know what the situation is like in your yard.

Not that kind of change.
The press release for National Geographic's new Green Guide magazine got me thinking. (And, by the way, it's an e-mailed press release. No trees were harmed in the making of this blog.) The lead of the release reads: "As the nation's green wave shifts from environmental advocacy to responsible consumerism ..."
Simple, right? Actually, it made me say, "Whoa," Keanu Reeves-style.
That's exactly what's happening.
Like you, my husband and I have noticed that green is gold right now. Green TV, green companies, green everything. Put "green" in the title of your new book and it'll be a bestseller.
We're worried, frankly, that it's a trend. Maybe "green" is the Macarena of 2008. Maybe next year, it'll be the next hip thing.
But maybe this isn't about trend. Maybe this is about the wave of the movement.
Feminism had what sociologists refer to as waves. First wave involved fighting the laws the kept women as, at best, second class citizens. It was a war against the government, to put it simply. The second wave was still fighting for equality, but fighting the injustices that weren't about laws. These feminists fought for jobs they were blocked from, fought to go to schools that weren't really open to them. The third wave, started in the '90s, was more about gender roles and sexuality and ... well, a lot of theories.
Were they all feminism? Yes. They just had different routes to the same goal.
Maybe environmentalism is the same thing.
In the '70s, it seems like people who were environmentalists were chaining themselves to trees when lumberjacks showed up or waving signs in front of factories. It was "environmental advocacy," like the release says. It had very little to do with you or me. It was about factories and big business.
But now, green is personal. It's about consumers and what we consume, not producers and what they produce. Ultimately, they'll produce what we consume. That's how we vote with our dollars. If we consume wisely, we'll help our health, help our wallets, help the planet and help business see that green production will earn them more green.
Not a bad revelation for the first sentence of a press release.

Today's Plainfield Herald News (an edition of The Herald News) includes a story about a Plainfield girl who started a recycling program at her school last year, when she was in fourth grade. Kelsey Kumrow's efforts even prompted the district to start with her school when they started recycling at the schools.
"A self-confessed 'sucker for the environment,'" the story reads, "Kelsey said she loves
animals and nature too much to see pollutants from non-recyclables harm the earth. 'My family is passionate about teaching others about recycling and doing it at home,' Kelsey said."
My first thought was that this story sounded pretty familiar (more on that in a minute), but my second thought was, "Ohmigod, you're telling me Plainfield School District is only doing district-wide recycling in the fall of THIS year?!?"
Schools generate tons of paper and other recyclables. Please tell me this wasn't going into landfills with only one lone fourth-grader to stop the flow.
End of rant.
That said, the story was pretty darn familiar. In sixth-grade, lo so many years ago, my friends and I started a club to recycle our school's waste.

Last week, I had quite the tale of woe. It's not environmental, so I won't recount it here, but I do want to re-thank a good Samaritan named Tracy for saving my hide. Since my story involves something lost, and found, I'll redirect you to Rose Panieri's Lost and Found column about the incident. (No, I'm not the one that lost part of a swimsuit. Keep reading.)

Ever get seduced by a magazine at the supermarket? It's beautiful, you get sucked in, you pay the price, only to be unfulfilled two hours later. I hope you at least put it in the recycling bin.
If a gorgeous cover catches your eye, don't rush away. It might be the Green Guide.
Launched March 4 by National Geographic, Green Guide is a quarterly publication (thats four time a year for those of you who used to beat up the math team) and is "devoted to helping consumers develop smarter, greener behavior to support a healthier planet."
Don't leave just yet. This magazine is different.
Most of these magazines are either written for idiots who didn't realize there was any problem with out wastefulness or for hardcore environmentalists.
The ones for idiots inevitaby have teasers that say, "Amazing ways to save money and help the planet!" The amazing ways? Turn off the lights when you're not in the room and turn off the water when you brush. Gee, thanks oh so much. I've never heard that before.
The ones for the granola pushers have extreme ideas that aren't that doable. These magazines tell you to get rid of your car altogether and to take public transportation. Let me just hop on that train the runs from my house to The Herald News.
Green Guide is different. This is actual useable information.
In an article about improving your air quality indoors, you don't just get the standard "change your furnace filter." Did you know heat-producing electronics (yes, your DVD player is warm) have a fire-retardant chemical in the dust on them. It's not just the dust that's bothering you; it's also the polybrominated diphenyl ethers. And it's not just scare tactics. Each "indoor air quality" issue includes what you can do to lessen the contaminant -- and no one is telling you to throw out your big screen TV.
My favorite part is the smart shopper's card, a wallet-sized tear out that lists all the types of plastics and whether they are safe for us and can be recycled. (A quick check assured me the new plastic pitchers I bought before Memorial Day are perfectly safe.)
The best summary comes from a press release I requested after being delighted by the magazine I bought at a local grocery store.

"Written for general consumers, not for enviromaniacs, National Geographic Green Guide is chock-full of simple, useful ideas, broken down into achievable steps that make 'going green' a gradual and affordable process rather than an all-or-nothing plunge," said Seth Bauer, editorial director of National Geographic Green Guide.

Our business reporter Cindy Cain is soliciting stories from readers. With the scary gas prices, she wants to know what people are doing differently. Since some of these stories are likely going to involve people upet that their Hummers only get 7 miles per gallon (seriously), we need to have our green readers represented, too. With luck, you're feeling the pinch less because you already drive responsibly. Or you're filling up your tank with used grease from McDonald's and asking, "Wait, gas prices are up? Really?" Tell Cindy your stories and tips. Send comments to ccain@scn1.com or call (815) 729-6044. Include your name, a daytime telephone number (not for publication) and the town you live in.

Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database, put together by the environmental working group, is a breath of fresh air and reason to make you gasp.
Type in a cosmetics product, company or ingredient and it'll give you the scoop on the potential dangers of the things you put on your body every day.
I grabbed a nearby container, Clinique's Superdefense triple action moisturizer SPF 25, and typed in the first active ingredient: octinoxate.
A yellow dot lets me know it's a moderate hazard and details the potential problems (from developmental/reproductive toxicity to allergic reactions) citing the scientific studies that support the hazard rating for each concern.
It displays the products uses, other products its used in and other names for the chemical.
In this case, the product is a sunscreen so I even got a chart of how effective it is against various rays.
Overall, Clinique as a company uses ingredients ranging from a 2 (low hazard) to a 7 (high hazard). By contrast, the soap we've been actively switching to, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, ranks a 1-2 (low hazard).
I suspected Dr. Bronner' was offering the real thing: an actual natural, safe soap. The proof is in the database.

Remember years ago when air fresheners didn't rate an entire aisle in the grocery store and they certainly couldn't keep a store open, even when paired with scented candles?
We've gone "fresh scent" crazy trying to bring nature's smells inside by spraying chemicals throughout our homes.
The ads on TV make you think you have to spray "refreshers" everywhere or your guests will be horrified and your teenage boy's sweat will infuse the entire house.
And you like your teenage boy, but you don't want to smell like him.
Well, if you like him that much, put down the air freshener because it probably contains phthalates. If it smells good, the kind of good created by chemicals, it's likely got phtalates. The FDA says, "It's not clear what effect, if any, phthalates have on health," But some scientists' studies are finding that those chemicals may negatively affect boys' fertility and genitalia.

Our front lawn is full of dandelions.
I imagine the neighbors get together, huddled in a circle in someone's basement, curtains pulled to keep the meeting secret, just to discuss what to do about us.
It's not that we love the dandelions.

Why limit food miles to corn and oranges?
Try it on liquor and you might be surprised
My husband, who is really into the food miles concept, is a beer snob. So it was sort of bothering him that much of the beer he really enjoys is from the east coast or, worse, overseas. He's been trying more local brews and found out he really likes Two Brothers Brewing Company's beer. It's made in a small brewery in Warrenville, about 15 miles from our home.
If he's a beer snob, he's downright arrogant about absinthe. Up until recently most absinthe was manufactured in Europe -- an expensive and carbon-chugging option. But the food miles concept made him explore, and now he's enjoyg North Shore Distillery's Sirene Absinthe Verte. That's from a Chicago suburb 63 miles from our home in Plainfield.

People have really started talking about food miles, the distance your food has to travel to get to you.
How does it work?
If you buy corn when the corn is being harvested here, you're doing good. Chances are good that your store has a relatively nearby source for the corn. They just wouldn't pay to ship it in from Chile or something if it's already available in Illinois. It's not cost effective.
The benefits to you? You usually pay less (there is a good supply that didn't take a lot of gas to get here), and there are fewer carbon emissions out there from transporting it. That latter part is the food miles aspect.
On the other hand, if you're buying oranges in December, take a look at the sticker for hints on where they were grown. If it's Central America or Southeast Asia, or another distant grower, you're paying the price and so is Mama Earth.
The more local your food, the fewer food miles and the better for the earth. This is another case where being green saves green. Local food is frequently fairly abundant in the heartland, bringing costs down. Saving gas on transportation saves the store money; they may pass the savings on to you.
Green living expert Sara Snow suggests trying the 100-mile diet: Only eating things grown/produced within 100 miles. Great idea for summer here or year-round in California. Not so feasible in the dead of winter in Plainfield.
Let's not go crazy here.
Buy locally when you can. Combine trips so you're not adding extra miles to your food by driving out of your way to a specialty food store. (If you drive an extra 50 miles to get it, you should have to add that 50 to the product's food miles.)
But if you're driving past a local farmers market, farm stand or store that carries local products, do the right thing. Choose something as local as you can get it. You're helping the earth by reducing carbon, helping your pocketbook, helping local vendors and farmers, creating local jobs and voting with your dollars.
And this good idea isn't limited to food. But more on that later ...

The saga of the centipedes continues.
My husband bought Ortho Home Defense Max last night. It's not green. Not even vaguely.
I feel terrible about adding pollutants to my home and the earth, but I also feel terrible in the basement now.
I imagine this is how people justify 7-miles-per-gallon Hummers. "I feel terrible using all of the gas, but I also feel terrible in a compact." Somehow, I can't forgive them, but I can forgive myself for poisoning the planet.
Think household poisons are harmless? Info on the poison (yes, poison) even says, "If partly filled, call your local solid waste agency for disposal instructions. Never place unused product in any indoor or outdoor drain." A good reminder not to use poisons frequently and to NEVER pour out anything iffy. It doesn't just go away. It stays in our water.
My husband, who is more anti-insecticide than I am, has made me a promise: "The only thing they'll be down there tomorrow are centideads."
My comfort comes at what cost to everyone's water?

The centipedes are winning.
The whole "Let's not use poison in our house; it hurts us and the environment"?
I've broken down. See, every night that I go to do laundry in the basement, I have to whack several centipedes into nothingness using a hanger.
Wednesday night was the last straw. I beat up on an especially gross one and pieces went flying. My husband found legs, still twitching, on my unmentionables (it's the laundry area) and the rest of the disgusting body in a pile of socks.
No good.
The borax is just keeping them off the floor. Sealing the bathroom has just restricted the buggers to the basement. Cutting off their water supply hasn't been enough.
It's warfare time.

Think home toxins don't matter?
A doctor at the Children's Institute in Pittsburgh thinks your wrong.
According to an article by Timothy McNulty of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dr. Scott Faber is going to try to cure autism by putting kids in "clean rooms," a room free from pollutants.
Some people theorize that it's all those modern pollutants, from paint fumes to food-borne chemicals, that have created the massive number of autism cases we're seeing now.
In the rooms, McNulty writes, "furniture, paints, toys and floor coverings would be designed to be toxin-free, and food, clothing and water organic and clean. Doctors
would seek to rid patients' bodies of chemicals and boost their immune systems through natural means such as nutritional supplements and dietary changes. Basically, it would be pushing a "reset'' button on the child's body, with the hope of wiping autistic symptoms away."
Pick up the nearest food item to you and check out the list of ingredients. I bet it's pretty chemical full. And the plastics and pain near you all emit fumes, too. I wouldn't mind my own clean room.

Staff writer Christina Chapman wrote about the massive Kraft Foods plant in Morris' Prologis Park for today's Business section.
The behemoth is actually green.
It's been LEED certified. That means, according to the U.S. Green Building Council, that an "independent, third-party" has verified the "building project is environmentally responsible, profitable and a healthy place to live and work."
That means that Kraft cheese you're eating may well be green.
Lest you think it's just lip service, one of the e-mails sent to Chapman was from a Kraft official whose title is "director of sustainability." No wonder sustainable building is happening.
Still not convinced? Under the Kraft official's e-mail signature, a green line of text reads, "Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail." That's a big official who is still looking out for the little things when it comes to the planet.
Thanks, Kraft!

Consumer Reports Greener Choices
Consumer Reports, the go-to source, for reliable info before you make a big purchase, has increased their value with their Greener Choices Web site.
Companies looking to make a little more green seem to stick "green" on every product they make now. Are they telling the truth?
I trust Consumer Reports. They have no reason to fib or show bias.
And now they're helping us determine what's really eco-friendly, from appliances and cars, to foods and products. There are even calculators to see just how well you're doing in cutting your carbon.
In the Eco-Label Center, you can type in the claims on a product, like "certified organic" and find out what it really means and whether anyone is enforcing these claims.
Pretty sweet way to stop yourself from wasting green on useless claims.

Think you're alone with your creepy crawlies? Think you're the only one on the block doing battle with multilegged nasties?
You're not alone, and the fastest way to find out is to admit it. Tell someone at work. With relief, they'll gasp and tell you what horrible thing has taken up residence in their basement.
In addition to the feeling of camaraderie, you can trade tales of what works and what doesn't, and maybe save yourself (and Ma Nature) the trouble of spreading poison where it doesn't belong.
Another nice side effect of your co-workers' tales of insect intruders? You may just find out that you have the lesser of evils, bugwise, and that you just might be able to live alongside the little buggers, and forego the risk of poison altogether.

I like nature, but not that much.
Spring brought centipedes to our bathroom.
I'm freaking out.
Technically, I understand it could be worse. Centipedes don't hurt our things, rarely bite humans and are a green form of pest control - well, control of other pests.
But my initial instinct is to burn the house down and call it a day.
When two of the horrifying bugs scrambled toward the toilet for cover, I turned to my husband and said, "Screw nontoxic. These guys have got to go. Call an exterminator."
Mother Nature foiled my attempt to send some poison her way. Seems there's little that exterminators can really do to stop centipedes. All we can do is cut their water source, seal up the house better and, well, pray for divine intervention.
My husband added insulation to the sweaty toilet tank, sealed the windows and bathroom seams with silicone, and directed the downspouts even further from our house.
As an added measure, we spread borax around the bathroom floor. There's no proof they'll lick if off their legs and croak, but I have high hopes. As far as attempted insecticides go, borax is pretty harmless for us and the environment. They even put the stuff in caviar in France.

Is there anything better than line-dried sheets?
Apparently not, according to some detractors. Check out today's story about clothesline laws on our main page at www.heraldnewsonline.com.
State Rep. Careen Gordon, of Morris, is backing a law that would make it impossible for homeowners associations to stop people from using, well, green technology, including clotheslines and solar panels. Hurrah to that!

Detractors say clotheslines can be an eyesore with clothes left out for days.
Some people leave broken-down cars in their yards. Should we outlaw cars? No, because most people use them correctly. Same with clotheslines.
Someone quoted in our story says would-be homebuyers might fear that their future neighbors can't afford a dryer.
By that rationale, what if they see us grilling? They'll think we can't afford a stove. What if they see us riding bikes? They'll think we can't afford cars.
Line-drying leaves clothes feeling good and smelling good, and they do their part for Mother Nature, too.
Do you use a clothesline? Are you opposed to the alleged eyesores? Are you my neighbor and are wondering why all of my sheets are the color of a cup of coffee with two creams?

Citizens Against Ruining the Environment are hosting an Earth Day event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at Dellwood Park, Illinois 171 and Woods Drive, in Lockport. That's May 18, nearly a month after the real Earth Day, April 22, but better late the never. (Check out staff writer Tony Graf's story for more details.) I guess "better late the never" is also true about people caring about what we're doing to our planet.
Sunday's event sounds cool and the weather should be better than it was in April.
On April 26, my husband and I went to an Earth Day event at Eaton Preserve in Plainfield. That was the cold, miserable, windy day after the week of warmth. As a result, there weren't a ton of vendors and visitors weren't lingering too long. But god bless the Eaton Preservationist and the Friends of the Plainfield Park District for setting it up. People were looking at native plants, recycling old electronics, considering greener cleaning products and donating money to held the Eaton barn and prairie restoration.
A packet from Will County's land use department turned out to be a godsend. It's got local recycling options for everything under the sun, Web sites for recycled products and even green dry cleaners.
Hawking granola bars for the Eaton Preservationists, a kid asked us how many we wanted. Just two as long as he had change for a $10, we told him.
"Well, how much change you get depends on how much you want to donate. So how much do you want back?" he asked.
Wily, that one. Thank god he's working on the side of preservation. If he were working for the developers, he'd have every bit of open space paved by the time he was 14.
Needless to say, we ended up forking over some dough.
Well done, kid.

During an all-too-brief warm spell in late April, my poor husband spent a few hours peeling up grass from a well-lit spot in our yard.
We're planning a garden. Our first.
My husband's father is basically the cactus whisperer, and my mother's green thumb has resulted in tons of produce every year. We should have the genes for this, right?
We know it's a green choice. If we grow our own food, we don't need fume-spewing trucks to use up fossil fuels getting tomatoes to the store; we don't have to wash the food-grade wax from our green peppers; and a commercial farmer can skip spraying pesticides on our groceries, thank you very much.
The seedlings are safely growing indoors, and the seed packets are at the ready for the plants that can start outside. Now we just need the weather.
We're going to try to go the extra step and do this with as few chemicals as humanly possible. Bringing up grass, my husband discovered a ton of June bugs and future-June-bug grubby things.
We could have reached for the insecticide. Instead, we let the robins do their thing. My husband took frequent breaks after exposing new soil to allow the birds to feast on all the bugs they could eat. There was a buffet from the birds' point of view - or a blood bath in the June bugs' opinion.
We avoided chemicals. Better for the land and water, and better for the food we will grow there. And, even better, this organic option was free and less work than pulling out some bug death spray.
Is anyone else, whether newbie or green thumb, planning a garden this year? Are my husband and I going to lose all of our tomatoes to June bug grubs? Green or not, chemical-free isn't a winning proposition if we end up with no vegetables. We'll let you know how it turns out.

It used to be that if you heard about someone who was into the environment, it was some girl who legally changed her name to Orchid Sky, decided to live in a tree, subsisted on granola and refused to shave her legs, in "like, protest for, like, the earth, you know?"
But now going green is the new black. Home and garden shows are pushing sustainable living, mainstream manufacturers are cutting chemicals in their products, and Oprah is teaching her Oprah-bots about composting.
But going a little green doesn't have to involve garbage-eating worms or replacing everything in your house with bamboo. And it doesn't have to cost more money or take more time. Sometimes, it's simple choices that improve your quality of life as well as that of future generations.
My husband and I are in the midst of exploring some eco options as we make changes in our home, yard and diet. We're still learning, and I bet a lot of you know some great tips and good products. So be prepared to jump into the discussion, because we're going to need some help along the way.