Chemicals and Fear Mongering

Cosmetics just in the morning... so many ingredients.

The minute you wake up, how many chemicals are you  really using?  Between the shampoos, toothpastes, and preservatives in your breakfasts - the amount of chemicals used in just one morning is astounding.  However, they have been getting a bad reputation recently.  This past week I've taken the time to try and understand where exactly all of this fear of chemicals and preservatives was coming from.  Many sustainability websites and health websites have been painting certain chemicals as "dangerous" or "unhealthy" for humans.  Although I agree it would be nice to stop producing certain synthetic chemicals for the environmental reasons - I have come to the conclusion that in terms of your health most chemicals are just fine.

When you hear the word chemical what do you think? Poisonous? Toxic? Harmful? Unfortunately our language has given this word a very bad connotation which sometimes scares people away from the truth that chemicals are a necessary component to life.  We humans are made of many different chemicals one of the main ones being carbon.  They are natural pieces to our existence and we should be opening our eyes to the truth instead of associating it to sickness, poisoning, and death.

The first question this caused me to ask was the question of a set of chemicals called parabens.  This past summer France has made it their mission to rid the shelves and hotels of products containing certain parabens in fear of possible problems caused to their ability to mimic certain hormones.  After reading the government recall of these products I was shocked and horrified that my own country wasn't doing anything about these products that were supposedly so dangerous... that was until I did my own research into the chemicals real properties.

So many chemicals, such small text...

In my own bathroom out of the 16 products I used 10 contained parabens.  Before I used a single product again I decided to do some research in some trustworthy places.  I was taking the word of people in the green community without any evidence of true experiments to back it up.  As reputable as these websites and government policies are - it is always better in my opinion to have a check of the facts yourself or else you can be roped into believing falsehoods.

After reading many medical papers published on the topic of parabens and its ability to change into a similar form of a hormone, it has been ruled as safe for use.  I did my research using the website for the US National Library of Medicine which has databases of peer reviewed medical journals (Human biological monitoring of suspected endocrine-disrupting compounds).  If you are curious for yourself if your products are safe or you simply want to understand each chemical on the back of your cosmetics I highly suggest doing research on such a site.  The fear mongering needs to come to an end because it is only making people more afraid and distrusting of the FDA which in my opinion is more of a danger than a benefit.

I am always open to changing my mind about these ideas if factual arguments are presented, but I want the end of fear mongering within my communities because it is doing more harm than good.  Maybe not in the way of cosmetics as we don't need them necessarily to survive but this is a continual trend with food, and many other life saving products.  We cannot live in fear because sometimes there is some chance that something bad can happen - just do your research and learn more about things you feel unsure about.  Don't forget the well known saying "Knowledge is power", and continue using your shampoos and cosmetics, they are well researched.

What exactly are you spending? Money? Think again...

The other night I was watching a very interesting video recommended by a friend called Human Extended Version Volume 1. Although this is a very powerful video and had many important messages and questions for us as human beings, there was one line that struck me the hardest.  Near the end of the video there was a man who really got me thinking about life and society in itself.  He was speaking generally about the economy but the human condition in itself.  He ever so thoughtfully posed the question: What exactly is money itself?  A seemingly basic question when you were brought up in a society who never questioned its origin - however I wanted to dive deeper.

He explained that money is not just a device we use to purchase materials, it was not simply a valuable stone, coin, or gold backed piece of paper.  In fact he realized that money was nothing more than a quantity of time.  This takes the idea of money back to the source - work.  When you work you are spending time helping others (bosses, managers, customers), and in compensation for your time they give you something called money that you can exchange with others who share their time to help you.  It seems simple, and not very important as it is just the "middle man" so to speak.  That basically by buying certain products we are giving parts of our lives away to obtain them.

Take for instance if I was working a minimum wage job at around 8 dollars an hour.  When I needed to buy a new shirt which on average from a typical shop is around 20 dollars - that means this shirt is worth around 3.8 hours of my life.  How much did you spend on your closet?  Time is not something you can earn or get back like money, so why do we treat employees as if they are only worth 2 or 3 shirts per day?

Using time to buy products makes me ask why certain people's time is worth much more than others.  If this is how we are to value each other in society how is it that someone who scrubs the floor all day is worth exponentially less than the boss who manages all of the housekeepers?  I do understand that certain positions need more or less experience, education, and skill to obtain and thus should be compensated greater amounts, but how many times more is too much?

When it comes to being socially responsible I want to ensure equality among those who spend their lives working for what seems to be very unequal wages and thus also must unequally spend their lives continually working for the basics instead of the luxuries.  For instance in a relatively moderate company such as a hotel the general manager typically makes over 2 times more than their hourly employees such as front desk workers or bellboys.  If you were to take this to a larger extreme such as a large shopping outlet like JCPenny, the CEO was making more than 1795 times more money than their workers for the same amount of time (David Herris Gershon, retrieved from  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/27/1251041/-JC-Penney-CEO-Makes-1-795-More-Than-Workers-Largest-Gap-in-U-S-as-Company-Loses-73-Value).

Overall, to be socially responsible one must think of what money really represents before deciding what employees deserve to earn.  Of course different jobs require different amounts of compensation but the effects of a wage 1000 times higher than employees can send not only the wrong message to the customers but it undervalues the lives of the employees since to earn this money they are giving up their time.  Awareness is always the start to making changes.

Small change, big rewards: Showers

You stand in the hot shower still trying to wake up from the alarm clock at 6 AM trying to get ready for work in your still sleep deprived state.  You turn the faucet on and wait for it to heat up, and then you step in and groggily let the water pour over you as if the water is your batch of morning coffee - opening  your eyes slowly.  Finally you shower up and before you know it you've been in there for a good 15 minutes.  You've only just started your day and you have already used 33 gallons of water. That's more water than is suggested to drink in 4 days.

Personal Background

Sadly to say, when I first began tracking my water, electricity, and fuel use last month this is what I found.  I was astonished how wasteful I was being with all of this potable water going down the drain.  I started creating this environmental calculator to create my baseline levels, but after 12 days of seeing how much water I was wasting I was determined to put it to a stop.  I decided to make a small change, which in turn created a large change.

Steps to Saving Water - The Easy Way

#1:

Instead of sitting in the shower with the water running when I don't necessarily use it, I simply flipped the switch and turned it off for those periods.  Its crazy how simple it is.  The bathroom is already heated from the water that was running to wet your hair and get the soap all lathered that when its time to actually shampoo you don't need it to keep you warm.  Also, the amount of water that you save during that time turns your 15 minute showers into more of 5 minute showers - which are just as comfortable.

Don't get me wrong, I still spend about 15 minutes IN the shower, I just don't need the water running the entire time.  I work in the hospitality industry thus I need to be as presentable as possible; but why not try to have a smaller impact on the environment?

#2:

Repeat #1 for the entire month.  I made sure to make it a point to turn off the water.  Some days I accidentally reverted to my old ways - it is fun to take a nice hot steamy shower once in a while, but I was determined to change my unsustainable ways.  

#3:

See how much you are saving, and use that as motivation to continue.  I have tracked my entire month worth of water use.  I am shocked to see the results of my small change.  On my Shower Water Usage graph you can see that within the first 12 days of the month (before I made my changes) I was using over 64% of the shower water I used for the entire month! That's only 2/5th's of the month with over 3/5th's of the water use.

Overall Findings

In the end of my month long experiment with water, I found that I don't want this to be the end.  I have even made predictions for the future.  If I changed my average shower use from an average of 13.3 minutes (29.5 gallons per shower) to 5.7 minutes (12.7 gallons of water)  I would be able to save 16.6 gallons per day.  At the end of the year that puts me at a saving of 6082 gallons.  That is enough drinking water for the entire country of Tuvalu for a day.  Granted its small - about 11,000 residents, but still enough water to drink for an entire COUNTRY would be going down my drain in just a year had I not changed my ways.

I am not saying that you should be unreasonable when trying to save the planet, you and I are both people with typical habits that are hard to change.  However, the way we take our showers is such an easy change that it leaves me asking WHY NOT?  Why not help change the world, put the water on hold and see how much you can save!