Ecomania

One day last week, I was home sick with a head cold, so I had more time that day to waste on the computer. I decided to look up more eco-friendly tips on the Green Your web site.

As I mentioned in my last post, I saw a couple stories about cleaning and beauty products containing high amounts of toxins that aren't good for you or the environment. I wanted to read up on that further, mainly because I'm a skin care products junkie. What I saw really depressed me. It said most products contain petroleum-based derivatives. I don't want a nonrenewable resource in my skin care products. It also said many products contain parabens, which contaminate water and soil. I got out my bottle of lemon and sage soapy sap from Bliss Spas. Sure enough, it had four different kinds of parabens. Where was the lemon and the sage? This stuff costs $35 a bottle! I felt duped by all those Bliss catalogs I got in the mail, insinuating that if you don't use its products, I'm going to get fat and wrinkly very quickly. It fails to mention the potentional carcinogenics that I'm self-preserving myself with. I promised from then on to never buy beauty products that I don't know what's in.

I moved on to the cleaning products section. Once again, I was floored with what I read. All I used to care about was getting stains out clothes, and used lots of toxic chemicals, such as chlorine bleach, to do so. I never realized that after these chemicals left my washing machine, they entered our ground water, polluting our waterways. I vowed to buy biodegradable detergent and cleaners. The problem is, thanks to Costco, I have a stockpile of toxic laundry detergents and house-cleaning products that I don't know what to do with.

I realize that the only person this information is groundbreaking to is me. In fact, I've heard some of this stuff before, but my protected suburban life kept me from taking it very seriously. I go to a park and it's green with lots of trees and flowers. Where's all the dead, deformed wildlife, and murky, smelly streams and ponds? But after eight years of being lied to by our current administration, I've lost a lot of faith in government, as well as corporate America. I agree with Michael Moore, who said in an email this today: "... I can't stand one more friggin' minute of this administration and the permanent, irreversible damage it has done to our people and to this world. I'm almost at the point where I don't care if the Democrats don't have a backbone or a kneebone or a thought in their dizzy little heads. Just as long as their name ain't "Bush" and the word "Republican" is not beside theirs on the ballot, then that's good enough for me. "

Amen, Michael!! For me, I can't reverse this horrible war that our fearless leader has gotten us into. All I can do is eliminate the use of petrochemical products as much as possible out of my life. I also can make my own private stand against harming the environment and all that depends on it.