Here’s to a green year, but what’s changed?

Hello all,

As you can see I have sorely neglected my blog and I am now hoping to get back on track with it.  My goal is to deliver on a regular basis.  What I have to say may be small, but I want to show you, the reader, something new as often as possible.

Unfortunately, my first post of the now old new year is going to be a bummer.  After some unexpected research, I have discovered that one of my beloved cleaning ingredients has been implicated in health problems and now takes its place in the pantheon of things to avoid.  That ingredient is BORAX.  I found the article at www.motherearthnews.com which then led me to an environmental health blog along with a liberal helping of site user comments on both.  Disappointing yes, devastating, no.  I went to my cleaning supplies and dumped out my bottles of all-purpose cleaner and made an experimental substitute.  Instead of Borax I used baking soda, this could be a problem since the baking soda and vinegar in in my recipe are going to react with each other, but we shall see.

This problem brings me to another thought.  Much of the “green” culture is based in a fear of the things we don’t want in our lives and fear of the things we used to do.  You can’t just throw anything you don’t want in the garbage.  You can’t use most of the cleaning and hygiene supplies for fear of industrial chemicals.  The foods we eat are genetically altered or covered in pesticides and pumped with hormones.  While I will always agree that you should be educated about your world, at a certain point the perspective needs to change.  If what we know about our world is true, then how do we prefer to live?  How do I buy/grow/support food I want to eat?  What should I clean with?  How do I want to organize my recycling?  Education and understanding can quickly lead to negativism and paranoia because it can be almost too easy find whats wrong.  Changing my own lifestyle and in hopeful extension others’ lifestyles, is what interests me most.  This recent borax discovery emphasizes the need to focus on finding the positive alternatives as we educate ourselves about what we use and depend on.

This was a wordy post, I hope to get down to nuts-and-bolts in posts to come!!