When I bought my townhome, one of the first things I did was paint. I was like a crazy and obsessed woman, trying to find the perfect hues to compliment my furniture, while solving for a cohesive color scheme. Despite all my “research”, I overlooked the fact that there are indoor house paints that are environmentally friendly.
Standard paints contain solvents called VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. These solvents are released into the air and contribute to smog and pollution. With eco-friendly paints, these solvents are essentially reduced or eliminated, and therefore less toxic to the environment.
While you may feel good about using eco-friendly paints, there are several drawbacks.
- They are generally more expensive than standard paints – on average, $3 more per gallon
- They dry quickly, making it difficult for an even application
- They are less durable and should not be used in high-traffic areas
- Color selection is limited compared to standard latex paints
Federal law caps VOC content in paints to 250 g/L, and many states and cities have enacted their own regulations: for example, beginning July, California will ban paints with over 50 g/L of VOCs. With these tighter regulations, manufacturers are sure to focus more of their attention on eco-friendly paints, which will hopefully reduce or eliminate many of their drawbacks.
Have any of you used eco-friendly paints? If so, please tell us about your experiences!
What are you doing next Saturday?
April 14, 2007 marks the National Day of Climate Action. 1,307 rallies will be taking place in each of the 50 states with a common goal to tell Congress to “STEP IT UP! Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050.”
Let’s present a unified voice and tell our legislators that we are serious!
To find the nearest Action or to start one of your own, visit this site: http://events.stepitup2007.org/
See you all there!
The Appalachian Mountains are being destroyed. Mountains are literally being blown up for the purposes of mining coal.
As you can imagine, the repercussions of this are grave. Here are just a few, which I found on ilovemountains.org:
- More than 7 percent of Appalachian forests have been cut down and more than 1,200 miles of streams across the region have been buried or polluted between 1985 and 2001.
- Over 1000 miles of streams have been permitted to be buried in valley fills. (For scale, this is a greater distance than the length of the entire Ohio River).
- Mountaintop removal mining, if it continues unabated, will cause a projected loss of more than 1.4 million acres by the end of the decade—an area the size of Delaware—with a concomitant severe impact on fish, wildlife, and bird species, not to mention a devastating effect on many neighboring communities.
- 800+ square miles of mountains are estimated to be already destroyed. (this is equal to a one-quarter mile wide swath of destruction from New York to San Francisco – it is also significantly underestimated).
To see the devastation for yourself, download Google Earth. Look for “Appalachian Mountaintop Removal” under the “Global Awareness” folder of the “Layers” sidebar. Click here for more instructions.
To learn more about mountain top removal and its myriad environmental impacts, visit Appalachian Voices and I Love Mountains, or check out this video. More importantly, take action and stop these atrocities. Send an email to your local representative - it’s quick and easy with this form. Don’t forget to spread the word to your friends and family.
So today I decided I’m going to spend a bit of time writing letters to my representatives, asking them to support better federal regulations of greenhouse gasses. It’s something (writing letters to politicians, that is) I haven’t done since elementary school - these days we sign eletronic petitions or send emails, but I’m thinking that there’s still something significant and impactful about receiving a paper letter. So here goes.
Step 1: Figure out who my representatives are:
- Since I live in California, and since I’m not totally out of touch, I know that my Senators are Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. But sadly, I have no idea who my congressman is. Thankfully, you can easily find out who your representatives are here: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml. Apparently my congressman is Tom Lantos. Good to know! So I’ll be sending letters to:
- President George Bush
- Senator Barbara Boxer
- Senator Diane Feinstein
- Congressman Tom Lantos
Step 2: Write something:
- Enviornmental Action Defense Fund has written a petition asking congress to support “The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act” (read more about it here). I decided to use their template as a starting point since it addresses legislation that is currently in play.
- I don’t know if they read these letters, but because I think that the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act doesn’t go far enough, I’ve sauced up the letter with some references to the recommendations that Al Gore made in his testimony before congress. ‘
- Here’s what the letter I’m sending looks like: Paul’s letter.
Step 3: Mail and wait
- Now that the letters are in the mail, let’s see what happens. When I was a little kid, and we wrote to Ronald Reagan after he was shot by John Hinkley, he wrote back a letter, so let’s see what happens with these!
