Ladies, I don’t know about you, but when summer rolls around, my toes start clamoring for attention, begging to be painted. Not having painted toenails makes me feel somewhat naked.
I was thinking about this today because it is hot as a mother (almost 100F in the Bay Area), which made me immediately think that I should wear sandals… but my toes were bare!
Anyway, all of this got me thinking about nail polish. You are all, I’m sure, aware of the awful fumes nail polish emits. It’s all due to nasty chemicals like formaldehyde, toluene and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) - all of which have been linked to certain cancers, fertility problems and birth defects. And, oh, by the way, they’re not so great for the environment - not that this is a surprise.
When you toss your old nail polish bottles, they usually end up in your local landfill, where it will slowly breakdown over the years, and potentially leach into groundwater. NOT GOOD!
Who knows how many millions of nail polish bottles are sitting in our landfills today. I shudder at the thought.
The best solution is for you to stop wearing nail polish. If you can’t do that, then look out for “organic” nail polishes. They’re not totally chemical-free (from what I understand) but they’ll at least be a little less toxic than the standard nail polish that you can buy at your local drugstore.
If any of you have any good product suggestions, please leave a comment.
Apologies for the somewhat late posting - I don’t know how this one escaped us, but this week is Bike to Work Week! Ride your bike to work tomorrow and pat yourselves on the back for doing a great environmental deed.
Here are some environmental benefits to biking to work (courtesy of this site):
Fewer people cycle per capita in the U.S. than in many other parts of the world, and the U.S. is a leader in petroleum consumption. These high levels of consumption are leading to many negative effects on the environment, such as increased emissions of harmful gases, including:
- Carbon Dioxide
- Carbon Monoxide
- Methane
- Nitrous Oxide
- Volatile Organic Compounds
- Hydrofluorocarbon
- Perfluorocarbon
- Sulfur hexafluoride
Good stuff. I probably won’t ride my bike to work (I’m paranoid of getting hit by a car) but I’m definitely going to do my part by walking to work. Hope to see you on the road!
I wrote a couple months ago about why I hate Starbucks for promoting waste. I’m here to say that I recently made a discovery which helps Starbucks atone, if just a little, for the waste they promoted previously.
I stopped going to Starbucks a while back to both support other stores and as a way to protest Starbucks’ blatant waste. Well, last week, I had no choice as someone I was meeting with vehemently insisted on going to Starbucks. Resisting with every bone in my body, I told him that I’d meet him there, but only if we could sit outside since I would buy a drink somewhere else. (I give credit to Starbucks for not asking me to leave since I didn’t buy anything from their store).
As I was leaving, I walked through the inside of the store. Lo and behold, I saw a bin in the corner which contained free bags of used coffee grounds. Apparently, Starbucks has been offering free grounds since 2004. I think it’s a fantastic program. Used coffee grounds are great for the garden and great for composting. Adding coffee grounds to compost or ground soil increases the nitrogen balance, increases the rate of composting, and provides food for worms, which are great for gardens and plants. Here are some tips I read from an EPA article:
- Add brown leaves and grass clippings to offset the acidity of coffee grounds
- Grounds should not make up more than 25% of a compost pile
- Add one teaspoon of wood or lime for every five pounds of grounds to offset acidity levels
- Coffee grounds helps worms flourish – worms are great for your soil and garden!
- Coffee grounds can help repel pests
If you need a lot of coffee grounds, work with your local Starbucks manager. Many are more than happy to work with you on special needs. I’m still going to pass on buying coffee from Starbucks, but I won’t resist as strongly the next time someone wants to go there.
Many of my friends are smokers or were once smokers, so I say this with only the greatest of respect: stop littering you idiots!
GreenHL wrote a great post yesterday about various negative effects that producing cigarettes has, so I won’t get into it, but one point that he makes only obliquely is that the problems with cigarettes are exacerbated by the fact that most smokers seem to think that their butts somehow magically disappear from the sidewalks and roads like magic.
As this trashcan in Japan illustrates poetically, they don’t.
I had no idea that this was true, but I recently read that air pollution can cause strokes and heart attacks.
Well on top of that, there is a new study that was just published, indicating that long-term exposure to tiny particles in polluted air can also cause deep vein thrombosis - or blood clots in your legs.
This is only one study, so don’t jump to any quick conclusions. But I’m sure there will be many more… in the meantime, this only points to a further need for us to take care of our environment. By doing so, not only do our surroundings benefit, but so will our health.
Ladies, I don’t know about you, but when summer rolls around, my toes start clamoring for attention, begging to be painted. Not having painted toenails makes me feel somewhat naked.
