How To Go Green with Cleaning

Green Home Cleaning Tips

First Published Date: Feb 21 2010

Did you know that homes today have more chemicals in them than chemical labs did 100 years ago? Did you know that homes have 70 times the chemical levels inside than are found outside? These are alarming statistics. Another alarming statistic is that housewives/husbands have a 55 percent greater risk of contracting cancer than others, and this is most likely due to the high levels of chemicals in our home. Another scary statistic is that our homes usually contain 150 chemicals that are known to cause cancer. Where do these chemicals come from? They come from the cleaning products we use to keep our homes clean. Well, you do not need to have any harmful cleaning products in your home because of the big three of green cleaning; vinegar, baking soda and lemon juice.

Vinegar

Vinegar is one of the best cleaning products you can have. Some of the things that you can use vinegar for include:

·    Vinegar can be used as paint thinner.

·    Vinegar can be used to clean your oven without using harmful oven cleaners.

·    Vinegar can be used to clean off counters.

·    If you take half vinegar and half water and put it into a spray bottle, you create a great all purpose spray.

·    You can boil vinegar and then pour it down a drain to remove any clogs. Make sure you don’t breathe in the fumes, they are not harmful but they will smell pretty bad.

Baking Soda

One of the best cleaning products available for you is baking soda. Baking soda can clean nearly anything. Some ideas include:

·    Baking soda can be used to clean soap scum and mildew.

·    You can clean most stains off the counters and bathtubs with just a bit of baking soda.

·    If you combine baking soda and vinegar in a drain, the combination will clear out your drain without harmful chemicals.

·    You can use baking soda to deodorize your entire home.

Lemon Juice

Lemon juice is very popular because it smells good and it’s acidic, which is very important in cleaning.

·    Put some lemon juice in a bowl and leave it in a room. This will deodorize the room completely.

·    Mix lemon juice and water together to create a good all-purpose spray that also smells good.

·    You can put lemon juice on your counters and other places to help sanitize the areas to remove germs.

Cleaning your home is important but many people have gone way overboard with cleaning. We need germs in our home to help keep our immune systems strong, but we surround ourselves with products that remove all germs. Then, these products cause us to become sick because of the harsh chemicals in them. This is why it is important to remove these harsh chemicals from your home. You can easily clean your home in an excellent way by using just vinegar, baking soda and lemon juice. These are the big three of green cleaning.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Feb 21, 2010.

Plastics Break Down Quickly In The Ocean

Plastics Pose A Threat To Sea Life Right Now

First Published Date: August 23, 2009

It has long been held that plastic waste, when dumped in the sea, posed more of a risk to careless swimmers as a bludgeoning hazard than it did to aquatic life as a pollutant. The received wisdom was that plastics were hardy materials likely to release their contaminants over time. Now, according to new research from scientists presenting to the American Chemical Society (ACS), it seems that that is not the case. It may well be, in fact, that plastics break down with ease and speed in our oceans, and are posing a threat to sea life right now.

It is well known by anyone who has seen footage of “Beaches from Hell” that often waste thrown in the ocean will wash up on the beach. This may not be desirable, but the fact that it was at least visible brought some strange comfort, at least to those of us who could ignore that the beach itself was an ecosystem all of its own. However, it is fair to say that a more than significant amount of plastic waste thrown into the sea never finds its way to the shore. Some stays in the ocean and interferes with marine life directly – as anyone who has ever tried to free a fish or a seagull from a plastic bag can attest – and a lot of it, we can now say without fear of contradiction, breaks down while in the ocean, releasing toxins that do their own brand of harm to the marine population.

Famously, the expanse of water between Hawaii and California has become known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. What is less well-known is a little statistic which states that the area is twice the size of Texas. Think of how much marine life finds its home in that area, and consider then that the water is not just polluted by bottles, bags and other detritus, but by the component parts of that detritus. Although not as viscerally horrible as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, this is a major problem and will require attention. While we have always assumed plastic in the ocean to be undesirable, now we find the true extent of how much this is the case.

It emerges that plastic when thrown into the ocean reacts extremely badly as it is exposed to the rain and the sun while already weakened by the saltwater in the ocean. The contamination caused by this has an immediately obvious negative effect – poisoning marine life – but the secondary effects it can have by entering the food chain are no less concerning. At the moment we do not know what shape the effects could take, but previous studies in animals have demonstrated that Bisphenol A – a major constituent of many plastics – can disrupt animal hormone systems. Although it would be unwise and unhelpful to become too apocalyptic in our vision of the effects this could have, it bears attention and reminds us that vigilance is vitally important. The consequences of ignorance could yet be very damaging.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Aug 23, 2009.

Is The Kyoto Protocol Dead?

The Kyoto Protocol: Twelve Years On

Published Date : Sep 22, 2009

With the majority of the world’s governments set to have representatives at the Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, at the end of this year, there is naturally a great deal of interest and desire that the parties present will be able to get a deal in place whereby the world works at bringing down the carbon emissions on a country-by-country basis. This is, after all, the mood that was taken into a similar meeting in Kyoto, Japan twelve years ago. At the end of that conference there was a deal on the table – but slowly it became clear that the deal was not on the terms that many of the signatories found desirable. The very reason that the parties concerned are due to meet in Copenhagen is the failure to set terms at Kyoto that were fitting for each country.

Famously the United States, although a signatory to the protocol laid down in the agreement made at Kyoto, has never ratified nor withdrawn from the agreement, but it has been clear since early this decade that they wished to renegotiate what was laid down in the Kyoto bill. Critics of the agreement felt that it singled out the United States as a country which had to do more than others, and that attempting to live up to the provisions laid down in the bill would seriously and negatively affect the viability of the US economy. Indeed, the most skeptical commentators felt that the entire bill was slanted in favour of persuading the US to bend over backwards to do more than anyone else, and was an anti-American document per se.

In the light of these feelings, it became impossible to see how the United States would ever ratify Kyoto’s protocol, especially when it elected the notorious climate change skeptic George W Bush to two terms in office as President. Many people’s hopes for a move at the Copenhagen conference lean on the fact that Barack Obama is seen as more amenable to Green politics, and although there is evidence to support this it remains to be seen whether first of all Mr Obama is prepared to sign up to terms which will suit the other signatories to the bill, and secondly whether he will be able to carry with him a Congress which has become more partisan than ever in recent times, with the President having endless difficulties steering through a healthcare bill that carries no elements which would give the majority of other countries much pause for thought.

It is largely accepted that the Kyoto protocol are to all intents and purposes dead in the water. While countries have independently gone about meeting their requirements as set out in the document, it was a document that depended upon the agreement of all signatories if it was to meet its own requirements. Any bill now agreed may well be the son of the requirements set out at Kyoto, but the fact remains that without some quite searching negotiation, Copenhagen may well not be the endgame in the battle against climate change

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Sep 22, 2009.

The Great Pyramids of Giza | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 2 (Part 16) 01D19

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Giza Pyramids & Sphinx, Sakkara Tombs, TiTi Pyramids, Steps Pyramids

Giza Pyramid Complex

We were circling the Great Pyramid to see what’s around and behind. The problem was lots of local guides or possibly random people trying to make money off tourists were bombarding us to help take pictures, for horse rides, or explaining history.

Our tour guide told us to ignore any help at any cost, so we were just ignoring everyone coming to us. I saw lots of ancient debris, broken pieces of ancient sites here and there.

I saw a desert and caravans in the desert, which looked very picturesque. Some camels resting in the sand were very curious upon seeing us and came close, observing us and to extend friendship.

The Sphinx

The Great Sphinx of Giza is located close to the Great Pyramids. The giant 4,500-year-old limestone statue is 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high.

The guide told us the Great Sphinx was there even before the pyramids and no one really knew why or how it was there, although there are many theories regarding the origin of the Sphinx.

The Sphinx has the body of a lion and the head of a human. I saw that the face was badly damaged on one side, especially the nose. It looked like the Sphinx even has a tail or the remnant of a tail. 

I saw some restoration works in progress for the Sphinx and I took a stroll around it. However, I wasn’t able to see one side close up because walking around it would cover a lot of ground.

We were to visit Sakkara (Saqqarah) next, where there are several tombs and pyramid complexes located. We will concentrate on the TiTi Pyramids and the Steps Pyramids.

India and China Oppose Global Warming Initiatives from the West

India, China, and Global Warming

First Published Date: Nov 28, 2009

You may want to call it a strange cohabitation of convenience but whatever name you give to it, there seems to be a resolve among these two neighbouring giants that are India and China that the west is not going to dictate them at all, no matter who is going to suffer the consequences. These two Asian neighbours have decided to hold firm ground in their resistance to sign the protocol that is going to bind them toward the reduction of green house gases that are believed to be the cause of global warming, a subject the whole wide world seems to be pre-occupied with. They simply will not budge in the bid to have them commit to afford even limited reductions as the world looks or other measures that could bear more fruit on the same.

The China and India partnership is viewed by some as the major element that has lately brought together a group of close to 37 developing nations who have proposed an amendment to the renowned Kyoto Protocol, and they have come up with their own figures which they feel should be the basic greenhouse gas emission levels to be undertaken by especially those countries they consider the main contributors to the problem of greenhouse gases.

It appears to be almost apparent here that this is a case of tow bulls fighting because the developed nations themselves have their own set of assessments and they laid claim that the new targets are actually causing a confusion which according to them is simply impractical. You wonder who then is going to suffer as these two opposing sides continue to flex their muscles, with none of the sides considering ceding any grounds whatsoever. Talk about having vested interest and you have a real case scenario here.

The G-77 group of nations has stuck to their guns regarding the original targets of trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% and they feel this must be enforced. They are looking to move forward to the second phase of the plan which is envisaged to take place between 2013 and 2020 which according to them will see a reduction from countries such as Japan, Russia, UK and the United States playing their major roles in saving the planet from the affects of global warming, which we have started to feel all over the planet currently.

The current trend of climate talks seem to be headed to a stalemate again with India insisting during a recent forum that no one was going to force anything down their throat since it was still at the negotiating stage. All the analyses according to the delegates who attended the meeting are subject to debate and open to discussion. It remains to be seen what the results are going to be, but according to many, the insistence of the Asian sisterhood of India and China that the west must lead by example since they are the major contributors to the problem, is going to be a hard nut to crack and only time will tell how far the resolve of the bullies from the west is going to push them.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Nov 28, 2009.