GreenDesic Clean Green Products

Clothing - Most of us don’t fully understand the environmental impact of our clothes. From the production, to the materials that make them, all the way to transportation and washing, clothes can make quite a dent on the environment.

The true facts about our apparel

55 million pounds of pesticides are sprayed on clothing yearly. Conventional cotton is one of most pesticide-poisoned crops in existence (most likely second only to corn).
According to UNICEF, there is an estimated 158 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labor worldwide, excluding child domestic labor.
The process of dyeing fabrics generates the largest proportion of waste water produced by the textile industry.
According to the U.S. EPA Office of Solid Waste, Americans still throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year.
80 percent of the energy our clothes consume is used when we wash them. Roughly 26 billion gallons of water are used each day in the U.S., 4.5 billion of which go to operate washing machines.

What damage are we doing to ourselves and the earth?

The EPA considers 7 of the top 15 of these pesticides used on cotton in the US as “possible,” “likely,” “probable” or “know” to cause cancer in humans.
According to the EPA, children receive 50% of their lifetime cancer risks in the first two years of life!The EPA warns that chemicals are up to ten times more toxic to children than adults.
Dyeing alone can account for most of the water used in producing a garment. Then the unfixed dye often washes out of garments, and can end up coloring the rivers, as treatment plants fail to remove them from the water. Dye fixatives also end up in sewers and then rivers.
Clothing and other textiles represent about 4% of the municipal solid waste stream.
The manufacturing of nylon emits nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with a carbon footprint 310 times that of carbon dioxide.

How can I change my habits?

Do your homework; don’t just accept that an item is organic without doing some research.
Buy clothes with “natural” colors.
Purchase secondhand.
If you must have fur, purchase synthetic.
Support your local designers who source their material locally.
Look for shoes made from recycled material.
When you do wash your clothes, wash them in cold water and line-dry in the spring and summer instead of using the dryer.
Be creative; invent new ways to wear old designs.

What are the benefits in changing my ways?

The purchase of one T-shirt and one pair of jeans made from 100% organic cotton eliminates at least 150 grams of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides from the environment.
If everyone chose one pair of pants that were not dyed it would save enough dye to cover the entire city of Chicago with an inch of liquid.
If just 1 of the 48 average American clothing purchases were purchased secondhand, the energy equivalent of more than half a gallon of gasoline could be saved, because of all the energy used to manufacture and transport new clothes.
If just 10% of the real fur garments sold in the US each year were replace by an alternative nonfur garment, and average of 5 million gallons of oil and 5 million animals could be saved.
If every American household purchased just one pair of shoes made from recycled material, the savings could total more than two hundred million lbs of waste abstracted from our landfills.
Washing clothes in cold water can cut CO2 emissions by 100 pounds and save you up to $64 per year on your energy bill.
Line-drying your clothes will keep 700 pounds of carbon dioxide from making their way into the environment.

Garden

The true facts about the food we eat

According to the EPA food leftovers are the single-largest component of the waste stream by weight in the United States. Americans throw away more than 25 percent of the food we prepare, about 96 billion pounds of food waste each year.
Diet sodas contain aspartame. There is now irrefutable evidence that this substance causes cancer.
Ninety percent of Americans' household food budget is spent on processed foods, the majority of which are filled with additives and stripped of nutrients.
According to EWG, almost all canned foods sold in the United States have a BPA-based epoxy liner that leaches BPA into the food. EWG tested 97 canned foods and found detectable levels of BPA in more than half of the foods.
"Natural flavoring" can be just about anything, from the cells of yeast extract and nucleic acid from cell chromosomes, to waste bi-products from cattle. Some reports suggest that the ingredients in so-called "natural colors" have been known to contain products as unlikely as monkey intestines; others note that some "artificial flavors" are comprised of ingredients as unappealing as minced cat.

What damage are we doing to ourselves and the earth?

According to Dr Russell Blaylock, a former brain surgeon who has witnessed firsthand what chemicals can do to the brain, aspartame breaks down into formaldehyde and formic acid, which attaches to DNA and then causes multiple breaks in DNA.
According to EWG, a recent study links BPA exposures in adults to heart disease and diabetes.
The decomposition of food and other waste under anaerobic (without oxygen) conditions in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas (GHG) 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
When industrialized agriculture (union farms) arrive in farming communities, many farmers are forced out of business. Great expanses of farm land are swallowed up and a way of life that has sustained humans for centuries vanishes.
The adverse health effects of pesticide use for workers farming intensive crops such as cotton have long been established, with links to cancers and nerve damage.

How can I change my habits?

Grow your own organic garden
Add compost to your garden
Buy locally
Shop organic
Eliminate processed foods
Read labels, if you don’t know what the ingredient is, it’s probably not good for you.

What are the benefits in changing my ways?

Growing your own garden saves money! You have the initial investment of getting it started, but after that it’s savings you can count on.
Not only are you getting nutrients and vitamins from your new garden, you will also improve your health from the exercise involved in maintaining the garden.
Organic farmers use less energy, less water resources, and NO pesticides. Organic farmers rarely have to burn their fields, because their soil stays rich in content, moisture and nutrients due to careful management of land and using only natural organic matter to cultivate and grow their crops.
When you consume organic foods, you are not taking in any dangerous chemicals that are typically used to grow inorganic foods. Also, organic foods contain a greater amount of vitamins and minerals in them as compared to inorganic products.

Gifts

The true facts
What damage are we doing to ourselves and the earth?
How can I change my habits?
What are the benefits in changing my ways?

Home

The true facts

There are about 1.6 billion homes in the world, about 100 million in the US alone. This is where you use the most energy and water and create the most amount of waste.
On average you create about 4.5 pounds of trash ever day.
Americans use at least twice as much water and energy per person as anyone else in the world.
40% of the drinking water supplied to homes is flushed down the toilet.

What damage are we doing to ourselves and the earth?

How can I change my habits?

Take a shorter shower
Keep the refrigerator door closed – it is the single biggest energy-consuming kitchen appliance.
Turn off the water when brushing your teeth.
Recycle your junk mail, or register with the Mail Preference Service to reduce the amount you receive.
Wrap your water heater in an insulating blanket to store heat.
Clean you dryer lint screen, and don’t overload.

What are the benefits in changing my ways?

Every two minutes you save on your shower can conserve more than ten gallons of water.
If everyone in the US separated the paper, plastic, glass and aluminum products from the trash and recycled them, we could decrease the amount of waste sent to landfills by 75%.
Just by adjusting your thermostat one degree higher for air-conditioning and one degree lower for heating, you could save $100 a year on your utility bill.
If everyone in the US turned off the water when brushing their teeth, the daily savings would be 1.5 billion gallons of water.
If everyone in the US recycled their junk mail, $370 million in landfill dumping fees could be saved each year.

Baby

The true facts about our babies and their supplies

The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that babies have 12.5 times more BPA exposure than adults, and EWG is concerned that FDA has seriously underestimates exposures for many babies.
Of all toys purchased in the US, 80% are made overseas, and 71% are mad in China, where environmental laws are weak.
Americans buy 3.6 billion toys per year, and in some cases the packaging volume for a single toy can be more than 10 times the size of the actual toy.
Disposable Diapers are the third largest consumer product in landfills, only behind newspapers and bottles.

Damage our baby supplies are causing

Children’s bath products are often marketed as safe and gentle. However, laboratory tests commissioned by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found these products are commonly contaminated with formaldehyde or 1,4-dioxane – and, in many cases, both. These two chemicals, linked to cancer and skin allergies, are anything but safe and gentle and are completely unregulated in children’s bath products.
If all the waste generated from used disposable diapers in the United States were put on barges (each holding 3,000 tons), there would be over 1,352 full barges of garbage every year! That’s 26 barges each WEEK!
Many plastic toys are made from PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, the manufacture of which contaminates our air and water with potent carcinogens called dioxins [2], or phthalates, which also pose risks to the environment and children’s health.

What can we do about this?

Use glass bottles; avoid clear, hard plastic bottles marked with a 7 or “PC.”
Do not use plastic bottle liners. The soft plastic liners may leach chemicals into formula and breast milk, especially when heated.
Breast milk is the best source of nutrition for babies, and contains essential fatty acids that help bolster babies' bodies against the impacts of toxic chemicals.
Choose bottle nipples made from silicon.
Choose cloth diapers (preferably organic) over plastic.

What are the benefits in changing my ways?

If every year just 1% of if baby food jars were saved and reused, the weight saved in glass would be around 680,000 pounds, about as much as a Boeing 747!
If cloth diapers were used by just an additional 1% of parents, the reduction in waste would be as if 14,200 households completely stopped producing garbage for an entire year.
If every child born in the US today received a single stroller that could work throughout toddlerhood, the money saved could run 25,625 night-lights for 50 years.
If every child under 12 received just one alternative-to-plastic birthday gift this year, not only could an estimated 25 million pounds of plastic toys be diverted from landfills, but the total energy savings could bake 31 million birthday cakes.

Personal Care

The true facts

The FDA doesn't require companies to test their own personal care products for safety!!
The healthy and beauty industry is $160 billion-a-year business and isn’t particularly interested in the toxins in their products.
“Natural” skin care products need only 1% natural ingredients in order to be called “natural”.
Americans spend 7 times more money per year on beauty products than the federal government spends on education.
Each of us consumes about 200 pounds of plastic each year and about 60 pounds of it is packaging that we just throw away.

What damage are we doing to ourselves and the earth?

You absorb up to 60% of any substance applied to your skin, so you could absorb up to 4.4 pounds of man-made chemicals through your body every year.
More than 50 million pounds of used toothbrushes and more than 2 billion disposable razors end up in landfills every year.

How can I change my habits?

Buy a quality razor with refillable blades.
When you buy deodorant, try to avoid antiperspirants which use aluminum salts.
Consider using two-in-one shampoo
Buy eyeliner pencils encased in wood instead of plastic.
Buy concentrated bobble bath or salts.
Choose baby oil from seeds of fruits and nuts instead of the refinement of petroleum.
If you choose to buy shaving gel, avoid aerosol.

What are the benefits in changing my ways?

If 1 in 7 US households replaced its shampoo and conditioner purchase with a single two-in-one bottle, the amount of plastic saved per year could fill a football field 27 stories high.
If 5% of adults switched from antiperspirants for good, the value of the annual energy savings could buy 250 new computers for US classrooms every year.
If 1 in 20 eyeliner users switched from using plastic-encased pencils to wooden ones, nearly ten thousand pounds of plastic could be saved.
If every US household replaced a bottle of body wash with a bar of soap, roughly 2.5 million pounds of plastic containers could be diverted from the waste stream.

Pets

The true facts about our pets and daily activities

Sixty-three percent of Americans own at least one pet, and they are virtually unprotected from toxic chemicals.
In America there are 8 times more companion dogs and cats than there are children under five. Seventy percent more households have dogs or cats than children of any age.

Are we harming ourselves or our pets our pets with daily?

Environmental Working Group found that American pets are polluted with even higher levels of many of the same synthetic industrial chemicals that researchers have recently found in people, including newborns.
Pets face chemical exposures that in some ways are similar to those of infants and toddlers, who have limited diets and play close to the floor and put their hands and household objects in their mouths far more often than adults.
Dogs and cats often eat food processing and packaging chemicals that contaminate their food, day after day and year after year, resulting in cumulative exposures with unknown health risks.
Chew toys might contain plastic softeners, foam beds might be infused or coated with fire retardants and stain-proofing chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects, and plastic water bowls might leach hormone disruptors.

How can I change my habits?

Choose organic or free-range pet foods. Check labels to avoid the chemical preservatives butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), and ethoxyquin, and switch your cat’s food regularly to limit the exposure to mercury in seafood.
Give your pet the same filtered water that you enjoy.
Use baby shampoo on your dog. Pet products are not required to list potentially harmful ingredients on labels.
Flea collars are generally ineffective and contain lots of chemicals. Ask your vet about safer treatments and repellents.
Use a vacuum with a HEPA filter, and take off your shoes at the door to minimize your pets’ exposure to toxic chemicals in the house that have been introduced from the outside.
If you suspect that your backyard deck was made with arsenic-treated wood, treat it with a sealant every six months, and don’t let pets play or sleep underneath it. Wash it with mild soap and water, but never power wash it.
Buy recycled pet toys and beds

What are the benefits in changing my ways?

If one in every twenty dog owners purchased a bed made from recycled materials, the fiber savings would total nearly 3,200 tons and fill 400 garbage trucks.
If every dog in the US ate vegetarian just one day a month, the energy savings per year would be equivalent of 190 million gallons of gasoline.
If all pet toys purchased each year were 100% recycled, the virgin materials saved could make a Frisbee nearly 2.5 miles in diameter.
If only 10% of all dog and cat owners purchased treats in recyclable packaging, more than 58,000 cubic yards of waste would be eliminated annually.