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Believe it or not, most companies that manufacture cleaning supplies, and similar chemical-based products, are not bound by the laws of the land to disclose the ingredients that make their “wonder” products so wonderful.

In a country where coffee cups now come with disclaimers about the damage their contents can do, this seems incredible

For many folks learning about it for the first time, there is a better word for this lack of oversight - appalling.  

Like so many perplexing problems that seem to defy common sense, the reason for this state of affairs is as American as apple pie.

It’s all about money.

Since the chemical revolution following World War II, the corporations that have whipped up so many of the toxic cleaning products we take for granted have made billions peddling compounds that certainly will make your kitchen counters shine, but what else do they do?

At the risk of repeating previous blog posts, the chemicals in your laundry soap or dishwashing detergent can, and have, caused all sorts of damage to people and the Planet since their introduction.

As any honorable chemist will tell you, the stuff that lifts months of grime off your oven’s interior is capable of doing similar damage to your insides should it find its way into your bloodstream.

While most cleaning products obviously warn us not to consume them directly, they almost all fall short of telling us what is actually in the bottle we keep under our kitchen sink.

Somewhere along the way, the titan’s of cleaning products decided that they would lobby their buddies in Congress to grant them an exemption from having to put their products ingredients on the containers they sold.

The reason for this lack of disclosure is one of corporate America’s lamest excuses ever – trade secrets.

These guys actually got millions of people to believe that if they told us what was in their products, their competitors would rush out and copy the formula, damaging their business and thus denying the world of hormone mimicking shampoos and conditioners.

At first glance, this reasoning might make sense, to a third grader.

At second glance the holes in this deceptive reasoning are big enough to pilot a cargo ship through.

Patent and trademark laws exist in this country to protect innovative ideas and brands from being copied. All the detergent executives need to do to protect their precious poisons is to hire a good lawyer, and believe me, they already have.

The other ridiculous aspect of this “protection” claim is that every chemical company on the planet employs teams of engineers who have the diagnostic tools at their disposal to easily determine what is in their competitor’s laundry soap.

 Just knowing the ingredients, of course, doesn’t guarantee you can copy your rival’s product. You still have to know how and when to combine the ingredients to get the results you want.

However, if Coca-Cola can list their ingredients on each can of soda with fearing imminent doom, why can’t the chemical companies?

Maybe they are afraid that consumers might not want to expose their families to all the nasty stuff that goes into making their whites whiter or whatever it is they claim?

Luckily, the tide appears to be shifting in this decades old policy of deception.

Several high profile companies, including the SC Johnson company, Clorox, and others have recently taken some baby steps towards full disclosure by listing some of their product’s contents online.

Whether this is a preemptive step taken on the advice of their lawyers – “We told the world what was in this stuff, see our website” – or a genuine move in the right direction, it needs to go further, PUT IT ON THE BOTTLE!

At greenboatstuff we only carry cleaning products that tell us, and our customers, what they contain. They work great, and you know what they are. How easy is that?

We know organic soap and some of the other stuff we carry isn’t for everybody, but for folks who want to keep using chemical cleansers, we encourage you to demand more from your detergent or shampoo maker.

Tell them, in no uncertain terms to get with the program and PUT IT ON THE BOTTLE.

Posted by greenboatblog at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alternatives to Traditional Plastic Trash Bags.

Anyone who has spent time on or near the water lately has almost certainly come across a plastic bag? Whether they are floating by your stern, dancing down the beach, or wrapped around a tree branch, this junk is everywhere. As if it were not enough that we have to look at this garbage dump we have created, we must also recognize that it will be here in one form or another for countless generations to come.

You see, as cheap and convenient as plastic bags are, they come with a much higher true cost to the environment. Mass produced in the industrial boom of post-World War II, every plastic bag ever created is still out there today, either in its original form, or in smaller pieces. Hailed as a “wonder” product by the marketing gurus, the only thing “wonderful” about disposable plastic is that it exposes how short sighted and selfish mankind has become.

Without getting too technical, the bottom line is that plastic bags never really go away. Created from chemicals, primarily petroleum, the modern plastic bag cannot be broken down into biodegradable compounds.  Just to name a few, all the plastic bags in use today - grocery bags, food storage bags, small and large trash bags, pet waste bags, etc…etc… will persist in the environment forever.

Plastic bags can certainly change form.  Given enough time and sunlight, plastic can “degrade” into smaller and smaller pieces, but the same amount of unnatural material still exists, just in pieces. Bury it in an oxygen free landfall and it might shrink a little, but that’s it. Burn it and plastic turns into a glob of goo, releasing most of its toxic components into the atmosphere.

The only hope that plastic bags will ever disappear lies several hundred thousand years in the future.  By then it is possible bacteria will have evolved capable of consuming this stuff and converting it back into its elemental form.  Anybody really care to wait a few thousand centuries?

Unfortunately, most bags just end up literally floating around. Cruise through any metropolitan marina and plastic is in the water. Running an Internet search on the effects of plastic on marine life will reveal facts and images that even the worst litterbug would be ashamed of.  Casualties of the plastic bag include sea birds, marine mammals, fish, and more. 

One of the greatest victims is the peaceful sea turtle. After making it through the last 100 million years or so just fine, these majestic creatures are on the fast track to extinction these days. To be fair to the plastic merchants, fishermen and egg poachers have done most of the damage to the turtles, but a plastic bag adrift at sea looks remarkably similar to a jelly fish, one of the turtle’s favorite foods. For any skeptics out there, try swallowing a few grocery bags and see how you feel.

The gruesome particulars of the damage done include intestinal blockages, suffocation, and the particularly cruel one- starvation. You see as the belly of sea creatures fill up with non-biodegradable plastic there is less and less room for real food, leading to weakness, sickness, and death.

How did we get here - to this point in our development as a species where we are willing to sacrifice one of the most noble, gentle, and harmless creatures ever created so we can stuff more junk in a sack?

So what are we to do?

It’s simple really, stop using traditional plastic.

Viable alternatives exist.

First, get some reusable shopping bags and use them at the store. Organic cotton, hemp, and other natural fabrics are your best choices, but any fabric is better than plastic.

Here is a link to some examples

http://www.greenboatstuff.com/bagscases.html 

Just avoid polyester or recycled plastic bags if you can. Sure, you can argue that the tough bags made from these synthetics are better than disposable bags, after all they are using recycled materials right? While there is some truth to this argument it doesn’t solve the problem of eliminating disposable synthetics in the first place, it only shuffles them around some.  The only way we can break the cycle is to stop using synthetics in the first place.

To quote someone with tremendous insight –

“In Nature no synthetic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.” – Barry Commoner

If you must choose between paper or plastic in the checkout line go with paper. Many valid environmental issues surround paper production, but trees grow and paper can biodegrade. As in many green choices there is often a choice between the lesser of two evils. In my opinion paper bags do less harm.

Second, consider biodegradable, vegetable based plastic bags. Yes they do exist now.  Plan on paying more for biobags than you would regular plastic, but when you measure the true cost of both options, biobags are a bargain. Made from corn, biobags will breakdown harmlessly given some oxygen and sunshine, both readily available in any ocean, lake, or river. Available in several sizes, from small to large, and several in between.  

One thing to be wary of are the new plastic bags that advertise themselves as "degradable." There is quite a difference between biodegradable and degradable. Biodegradable bags break down into natural compounds and return their contents to the Earth. Degradable plastic simply falls apart with time, converting one big piece of eternal plastic into countless smaller pieces.

For more details follow this link

http://www.greenboatstuff.com/bitrba.html

Third, replace your sandwich bags and plastic wrap with bleach free waxed paper bags and food wrap. Renewable, recyclable, and biodegradable, waxed paper is a very green alternative.  

One more link

http://www.greenboatstuff.com/wabothcucofo.html

Once again, green alternatives to damaging products exist, work well, and are affordable too; all it takes is a little effort on all our parts to do the right thing.

Posted by greenboatblog at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Having found this blog, it should come as no surprise that a good part of our discussion will center on the many evils of modern day cleaning products. If there is one element of the green movement that is gaining more momentum than any other it is probably this area alone. That industrial strength clean smell we all grew up with is quite literally poisoning our bodies and destroying our environment.