Photo credit: schoschie

You know there are certain ingredients that you don’t want in your cosmetic products.  But you may not know all of the name variations or even exactly why certain ingredients are harmful.

Well, leave it to Stephanie Greenwood at Bubble & Bee Organic to come up with an easy, convenient and (even) fun way to keep you in the know on toxic ingredient education.  With “Today’s Chemical” (Stephanie’s new chemical ingredient education service) you can ask a question about toxic ingredients in cosmetics, learn about chemicals and get recipes for homemade beauty products. (more…)

Photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

Okay, so the economy is bad.  And, yes, we have all had to make changes and/or sacrifices in the name of saving a buck.  But can this whole mess be put to good use?  Yes it can!  While you are already watching your spending closely, try keeping an eye on what you buy and not just how much it costs.

We can blame the big corporations for getting us into this economic mess and much of it may be deserved, but we the people are out there buying stuff up, so let’s make it count.  We are still a capitalist country and true to this is supply and demand.  We buy it, they keep making it.  If we buy cheaply made, toxic-laden products, that is what the big companies will make.  If we purchase nontoxic, safe products made with pure ingredients, the makers of these products will keep making them.  Not only that, but the producers of organic, wild-crafted and natural ingredients will have to make more of them which is not only good for us but for the planet as a whole. (more…)

Photo credit: gcardinal

With everyone going green these days it is often hard for consumers to distinguish a product that is truly safe from one that is just making that claim.  It is perfectly legal, and often practiced, to use terms like safe, natural and organic on a cosmetics product label.  So how can you tell if you are buying a safe product?

First, “natural” simply means that one or more of a product’s ingredients have been derived from a natural source.  This is really no big deal if it is also full of harmful chemical ingredients.  And as for using “organic” on a cosmetics label; Organic = 95% of the ingredients must be organically grown, the remaining 5% may be non-organically produced ingredients, and Made with Organic Ingredients = must be made with at least 70% organic ingredients, the remaining 30% may be non-organically produced ingredients.  That remaining 5%-30% is the dangerous gray area where cosmetics manufacturers can use nearly any ingredient of there choosing.  The U.S. government does restrict the use of certain ingredients, but they are not many. (more…)

Apple recently released their new line of MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, which are mainly made from aluminium. They say that they are their greenest latops ever and claims that they are “highly recyclable and even more energy efficient”, and that they are “designed with the environment in mind”.

But really, how green are the new laptops?

Greenpeace, who is running a hard and successful campaign for greener electronics, says that the new laptops are “not quite the breakthrough” they “were hoping for”:

“A check of the full specs revealed the MacBook Pro, MacBook and MacBook Air – as well as the LED Cinema Display will now have internal cables free of PVC and will have internal components containing no BFRs. Not quite the breakthrough we were hoping for. These new MacBooks are currently on a similar level of toxics reduction to the Sony Viao laptop series on PVC, and the Lenovo Think Vision in monitors. The BFR free internal components represent an improvement from the bar set by the Vaio line.”

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Soil covers most of the surface of the Earth’s land. It occurred after the erosion of rocks, due to strong winds, water, ice and due to the activity of living organisms. Soil is usually suitable for plants and small organisms to grow and live. However, human activities have altered the natural soil environment of many areas, making it hostile to organisms.

Humanity deposits many toxic substances under the ground. Most of those are radioactive materials, pesticides, heavy metals and other kind of poisonous wastes. Even if they are first deposited in lakes, rivers or the sea, waters transfer most of them in the soil, when the latter absorbs water. It happens the other way round as well, as chemicals within soil are transferred with the rain into marine ecosystems.

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Despite the ban in 1994, radioactive depositions still reach the seas. In french pipes of nuclear facilities Greenpeace’s divers found the waters to have 17.000.000 times more intense radioactivity than clean waters. In Norway, crabs and seaweeds have been polluted by the radioactive substance technetium. Scientists found it comes from old british facilities for nuclear fuels. However, american geologists are thinking of burying under the seabed radioactive materials.

Since 1959 enormous quantities of radioactive waste have been thrown into the Arctic Ocean, including nuclear reactors, while another million of chemical weapons decay onto the sea floor in 400-4500 metres depth. Moreover, Spain has stored 100.000 barrels containing slight radiocative waste, from scientific laboratories. Plutonium from the nuclear trials is detected in the southern seas of the Atlantic ocean. Britain has recorded 57.435 shipwrecks, including nuclear submarines.

The highly dangerous poison DDT harms the marine organisms more than the others, and thanks to the marine currents it is transfered to all seas, affecting every organism. PBDE, a substance used for computer and television construction, has been detected in whales’ fat!

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