Happy Mothers Day

Tips for Environmentally Friendly Living

1. Don't use colored facial tissues, paper towels or toilet paper. The paper dissolves properly in water, but the dye lingers on.

2. If you accumulate coat hangers, don't junk them; return them to the cleaner. Boycott a cleaner who won't accept them.

3. Use containers that disintegrate readily. Glass bottles don't decompose. Bottles made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) give off lethal hydrochloric acid when incinerated. (That's the soft plastic many liquid household cleaners, shampoos, and mouthwashes come in. Don't confuse it with the stiffer polystyrene plastic, used mainly for powders.) The Food and Drug Administration has now approved PVC for food packaging, too. Don't buy it. Use decomposable or "biodegradable" pasteboard, cardboard and paper containers instead. If you can't, at least reuse non-decomposable bottles; don't junk them after one use.

4. Don't buy non-returnable containers. Hold aluminum can purchases to a minimum. 

5. At the gas station, don't let the attendant "top off" your gas tank; this means waste and polluting spillage. The pump should shut off automatically at the proper amount. (True, too, for motorboats.)

6. If you smoke filter-tip cigarettes, don't flush them down the john. They'll ruin your plumbing and clog up pumps at the sewage treatment plant. They're practically indestructible. Put them in the garbage.

7. Stop smoking.

8. Stop littering. Now. If you see a litterer, object very politely (e.g. "Excuse me, sir, I think you dropped something").

9. If you're a home gardener, make sure fertilizer is worked deep into the soil — don't hose it off into the water system. Phosphates (a key ingredient) cause lake and river algae to proliferate wildly.

10. To reduce noise, buy a heavy-duty plastic garbage can instead of a metal one. Or sturdy plastic bags, if you can afford them. They're odor-proof, neater, lighter.

11. When you see a junked car, report it to your local sanitation department. If they don't care, scream till someone does.

12. If you don't really need a car, don't buy a car. Motor vehicles contribute a good half of this country's air pollution. Better, walk or bicycle. Better for you, too.

13. If you have to car — commute, don't chug exhaust into the air just for yourself. Form a car pool. Four people in one car put out a quarter the carbon monoxide of four cars.

14. Better yet, take a bus to work. Or a train. Per passenger mile, they pollute air much less than cars. Support mass transit.

15. If you still think you need a car of your own, make sure it burns fuel efficiently (i.e., rates high in mpg). Get a low-horsepower mini-machine for the city, a monster only for lots of freeway driving.

16. If bagged garbage overflows your trash cans, shake it out of bags directly into the can and tromp it down to compact it.

17. If you have a fireplace, burn wood — not murky cannel coal.

18. Burning leaves or garbage is already illegal in many towns. Don't do it. Dispose of such material in some other way.

19. If you see any oily, sulfurous black smoke coming out of chimneys, report it to the sanitation department or air pollution board.

20. There's only so much water. Don't leave it running. If it has to be recycled too fast, treatment plants can't purify it properly.

21. Measure detergents carefully. If you follow manufacturers' instructions, you'll help cut a third of all detergent water pollution.

22. Since the prime offender in detergent pollution is not suds but phosphates (which encourage algae growth), demand to know how much phosphate is in the detergent you're buying. Write the manufacturer, newspaper, congressmen, the FDA. Until they let you know, use an unphosphated — nondetergent — soap. (Bubble baths, you may be happy to know, do not cause detergent pollution.)

23. Never flush away what you can put in the garbage. Especially unsuspected organic cloggers like cooking fat (give it to the birds), coffee grounds or tea leaves (gardeners dote on them).

24. Drain oil from power lawwww.freakingbloggalert.com1n mowers or snowplows into a container and dispose of it; don't hose it into the sewer system.