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Would you Consider Re-usable Menstrual Items?

How Women Can Bleed Green

By Eunice Wong, Truthdig. Posted January 26, 2009.

Re-Printed from the alternet news site. I highly recommend it.

Hey ladies, you may not be able to afford solar panels or a biodiesel vehicle. Maybe you're not ready for a compost toilet. But you can do this.

Hello ladies.Would you consider reusable menstrual items?
Please stay with me.

I do not sell these items, nor am I connected to the companies that make them. I'm a mom who's been cloth-diapering her baby for six months, to save money, my son's health and the environment. Only recently did I realize that while I've been feeling ecologically virtuous, I've also been throwing out tampons and pads every month for more than 20 years of my life, and have another 20-plus years to do so.

I did some research and was appalled. I claim, like most people, to be concerned about the desperate state of the planet, yet I never challenged the disposable monolith we live in. A sampling:

There are 85 million women of menstruating age in North America. Conservative estimates are that the average woman disposes of between 10,000 and 15,000 tampons, pads and applicators in her lifetime1. That's about 250 to 300 pounds of waste per woman.

In 1999, about 2.5 million tampons, 1.4 million pads, and 700,000 pantiliners were flushed away daily2.

Waste consultant Franklin Associates reports that 13.5 billion pads and 6.5 billion tampons, plus their packaging, ended up in landfills or sewage systems in 19983. In the United States and Canada alone, more than 12 billion pads and tampons are tossed annually4.

Disposable pads are made with polyethylene plastic. Producing polyethylene contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone, while emitting sulfur and nitrogen oxides, which add to acidification5.

Read the rest of this story and many others at this link

http:/www.alternet.org

Perhaps Some of the Most Amazing Water Photos Ever Taken

Perhaps some of the most amazing water photos ever taken. I have posted to remind everyone how important it is to preserve our environment.

Microsoft Powerpoint required to view Slide Show.

CLICK HERE

Saving a Bears Life

Well this is as green as it gets! They built a new bridge in Golden B.C, 250 feet above the ground. A bear got scared off the bridge by the traffic and nearly fell. Managed to grab on to the cement base underneath and hang on, See the pictures CLICK HERE.

Six Tricks For Organic Gardening

Organic gardening is the way of growing vegetables and fruits with the use of things only found in nature.

Why would one want to indulge in organic gardening?

1.One can easily make compost from garden and kitchen waste. Though this is a bit more time-consuming than buying prepared chemical pesticides and fertilizers, it certainly helps to put garbage to good use and so saves the environment.

2. Organic farming does not use chemicals that may have an adverse affect on your health. This is especially important when growing vegetables. Chemical companies tell us that the chemicals we use are safe if used according to direction, but research shows that even tiny amounts of poisons absorbed through the skin can cause such things as cancer, especially in children.

On the average, a child ingests four to five times more cancer-causing pesticides from foods than an adult. This can lead to various diseases later on in the child's life. With organic gardening, these incidents are lessened.

Remember, pesticides contain toxins that have only one purpose - to kill living things.

3. Less harm to the environment. Poisons are often washed into our waterways, causing death to the native fish and polluting their habitat.

4.Organic farming practices help prevent the loss of topsoil through erosion.
The Soil Conservation Service says that an estimated 30 - 32 billion tons of soil erodes from United States farmlands every year.

4. Cost savings. One does not need to buy costly chemical fertilizers and pesticides with organic gardening. Many organic recipes for the control of pest and disease come straight from the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes other plants can be grown as companions to the main crop. An example of this is the marigold, which helps to repel aphids from vegetables.

Mixing 1 tablespoon of liquid dishwashing soap and 1 cup of cooking oil can make a cheap garden pest spray. Put 3 tablespoons of this mixture in 1 quart of water and spray on plants.

5.A simple mulch of pine needles will help to suppress the growth of weeds as well as keeping the moisture in.

6. Organic gardening practices help to keep the environment safe for future generations.

Stay posted to this website by subscribing to newsletter for more info on this important subject.

Soap that Grows on Trees

The all Natural Soapberry

Can you imagine soap that grows on trees?

I didn't believe when I heard about this one. It is true soapberries grow on trees, we have tested them and really do clean your clothes.
Soapberries allow you to return to nature.

Soapberries are the dried fruit of the Chinese and Indian Soapberry tree.
They contain saponin, a natural cleaner used for thousands of years to clean clothes, just like the plants used by Native Americans for washing.

Simply put a few Soap Nuts into a small cotton sack and drop it in your laundry. Your clothes come out clean, vibrant, and soft.(they can be used up to 3 or 4 times then composted and returned to the earth)
Soapberries are safe for washing silk, woolens and other delicate fabrics.

Soapberries are used by Indian and Indonesian jewelers to remove the tarnish from gold, silver, and other precious metals.

They can be used in different ways for cleaning different things even yourself! (methods to be posted)

The main drawback I see they have to imported from India or China. Is it environmentally friendly to bring soap half way around the world? I think as long as we buy in bulk they come by ship and will save our waterways from being polluted by millions of tons of toxic chemical soaps.
They are somewhat bulky so we have to watch the shipping cost. It would be best to form a Co-Op and have different people in different cities receive a bulk shipment then have people come and pick up their own supply.

As always with this web site it will up to members to decide if we should import and use this product.

Mike Hepburn

Global Warming

I consider the health of our planet a natural health cure. If the earth becomes to hot, how do we grow crops, herbs
prevent our precious water from evaporating etc.?
Is Global Warming real? Indeed some believe Global Warming is a lot of hot air. We all know of the doom and gloom predictions of Global Warming and Climate Change with rising sea levels, super storms and it all sound like a lot of hot water we will be in?

Receding glaciers, rising sea levels, dying coral reefs, migrating plants and animals, reduced daily temperature fluctuations, and more pronounced and frequent "extreme precipitation events” (a large amount of precipitation in a short amount of time) are all suggested by today’s climate models as a consequence of global warming.

Perhaps global warming is caused by ordinary, natural climatic cycles. (like the hot dry dust bowl dirty 30's) we can't afford to take a chance, in 20 to 50 years it will be to late. “We cannot say for certain how much the planet may be warming, how much is due to human activities versus natural cycles, or whether these changes in global temperature would be mostly good or mostly bad for the majority of people,” I believe that mankind’s activities are causing the planet to warm, in combination with the planets ability to warm and cool all by itself over periods of hundreds and thousands of years due to all sorts of interrelated cycles and patters. We simply can't afford to wait and see what's natural and what's created by us.

In order to control and avoid the effects of global warming we must first agree with a fact that it is occurring, and take some measures to end or even reduce it. We should be worried, as an escalating Middle-East war, even where not (yet) fought over energy or water, may give us an even shorter time than we have already to marshal resources to deal with the great threat of global warming. That makes sense, so rather than beating my head against the Global Warming Alarmists Walls, I would rather use them to serve my will and/or adapt to, without disruption any sudden change, whether from a man-made caused war or Mother Nature.

We must all believe that the way we drive, shop insulate our homes can have an remarkable impact on the environment and global warming. We must all apply pressure on politicians to make the required changes on a large scale (like the burning of coal) I often wonder if technological advancements are held back by big oil in particular because they are of course making big money! Technology cooperation is an innovation that does,can and will help the international community to deal with the problem of global warming and keeping our planet hospitable.

Please do your part.
Mike Hepburn
www.youralternativehealthnetwork.org