packaging tape

 
#1 environmental choice for packaging tape:

I just picked up a roll of paper packaging tape made in the US from just kraft paper and starch based adhesive. it's easiest to repulp, recycle, and biodegrade. the starch comes from plants, potato, corn, etc.

it's a water activated adhesive, as in you have to wet it to get it to stick.
the roll doesn't stick to itself.

these are usually known as gummed paper tape,
the adhesives could be made from starch, or animal, or who knows what else if the company doesn't specify.

intertape brand (which also makes central brand) was one of the only brands i found that could specify starch based adhesive, and makes it in the US.
dick blick art supply was the only store i could find that carried this line of intertape.

it was $4.99 + tax for a 2" wide x 600' long roll. 

other notes:
kraft paper is the general name for the brown paper used, not specific to anything else about the tape.
kraft paper is also sold in rolls for packaging wrapping or padding.

packing houses that use water activated tapes have a dispenser that wets the tape as it'd dispensed.
for home office use, it's a tiny inconvenience, a water spray bottle or bowl of water to dip fingers in, works.

most packaging tapes these days are the clear petroleum plastic kind. the tape industry is making a move towards less chemical and plastic options. they're looking into different technologies, but what also makes sense is looking back to what was used before plastic and petrochemicals. 

click here to expand post, to see self adhesive and cellulose tape info.

PHOTO PRINTING

researched and explained.
this is the result of figuring out way too many options for photo printing in 2011,
in terms of quality, photography tradition, and the environment. 

SUMMARY

I'm backing ARCHIVAL INKJET printing for various reasons:
1) it has more color dynamic range than digital C prints,
2) it's slightly more archival than C prints.
3) it involves less toxic chemistry, the inks are water based.
4) it gives the option to print on 100% cotton paper.
5) cotton paper is stronger and naturally acid free and lignin free.
6) it's made from a biproduct of cotton textile production.
I'd also pick a paper that's made in the US without optical brighteners,
and that isn't resin coated (polyethylene, petroleum)

the brands and paper lines
that meet these requirements are:

museo
silver rag (glossy, slight texture?)
portfolio rag (matte, extra smooth)
museo max (matte)

moab (by legion)
entrada rag natural (not entrada rag bright) (matte)
I havent had a chance to see samples yet.


RESEARCH LEADING TO DECISION:
click here to expand post

staying cool without AC

air conditioning is way overused.
aside from taking hella electricity, driving up bills,
i dont trust the chemicals in them,
or the exhaust from them.

window box fans work great.

and one of the best methods for staying cool that i remember reading about,
is the egyptian method.
which is basically dampening your bed.

to sleep cool, before going to bed, take a shower.
obviously not hot, but not cold either, your body would react to the cold and heat up.
so take a medium temp shower.
then don't towel dry, go to bed wet.
your skin will feel cool when wet, the sheets will absorb water and feel cool as well.
it's really comfortable.

another method for cool sleeping is using a straw or bamboo mat, like a beach mat.
most other sleeping pads, foam pads, and mattresses, insulate a lot of heat.
just lay a cheap clean straw beach mat down and sleep on it.
maybe put 1 sheet over it, it'll still breathe.
i put these straight ont he mattress, and then the fitted sheet over it.

4th st. food coop

4th st. food coop is the jam!
http://www.4thstreetfoodcoop.org/
4th st. b/t 2nd and 3rd ave in manhattan.
anyone can shop, discounts are available for working and non working members.
open til 10pm almost everyday, key for those that can't make it to a farmers market that closes at 3pm or 6pm.

i've been shopping in this bodega size store for at least a year, and am still constantly finding new products.

they find things as local as organic as possible.
though some things i think could be more local.

but i'm repeatedly impressed with their selection of food available in bulk, as in without packaging.

some more obvious stuff like rices from down south, beans from ny state, flours, nuts, cereals, produce.

but also honey, sucanat and raw cane sugars, ny maple syrup, ny tofu, northeast pickles, ny soy sauce, miso, olive oil, dry pasta, teas, spices, the list goes on.

also a variety of natural liquid and bar soaps available w/o packaging, including dr. bronner's.

all these things can be taken home in reusable compostable biobags, glass jars, and fair trade organic cotton bags, that they sell at very reasonable prices. pretty much everything in there is reasonably priced.

there are more packaging free products than park slope food coop, which is a full grocery store size, and requires a working membership.

electronics recycling

http://www.macsupportstore.com/
this store will take your electronics for electronics recycling any time they're open,

weekdays 9am - 6pm
saturdays 10am - 4pm

that's pretty impressive. the only other way i know how to recycle electronics is to wait until new york city has electronics recycling collection events, once every few months, and it's not even that easy to find info on it on their website.

The Mac Support Store
168 7th Street, @ 3rd ave, 2nd Floor
Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY 11215
map
718-312-8341
support@macsupportstore.com

if not disposed of properly, all our disposed electronics, ipods, ipads, phones, laptops, which are made of heavy metals and toxic plastics, designed for obsolescence and disposal every year or two, end up in the ocean, landfills, leaking various carcinogenic toxins, or in 3rd world countries where they're piled up endlessly in villages, being stripped apart for copper, also leaking toxins. actual printed paper isn't quite so bad.

this is definitely not the only media coverage of this type of stuff, but this photo slide show on nytimes.com is amazing.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/08/04/magazine/20100815-dump.html

the image above is from the series, there more photos are on the website of the photographer, pieter hugo.
http://www.pieterhugo.com/

there are various youtube videos covering the issue.

wendy's natural cut fries with sea salt

happened to see this while passing by the wendy's at south street seaport.
corporate fast food and sea salt.
baby steps.
click for a free coupon.

ocean garbage

i just watched this on vbs.tv, about all the toxic plastic floating around the ocean.
this youtube clip is the 1st 6 minutes of the 1st of 3 parts.
each part is actually around 20min long, and can only be watched on vbs.tv

this also led me to this photo series, of birds full of plastic.
http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24

rooftop farms

catching up on rooftop farms, the grange and eagle st. farm are growing hella food in queens and brooklyn!
eagle st. has chickens? and rooftop yoga?

see their respective websites and facebook pages for photos and info!

eagle street rooftop farm's personal facebook page

http://rooftopfarms.org/ - eagle street farm's website

eagle street farm's facebook business page

http://brooklyngrangefarm.com/ - 1 acre rooftop farm that's actually in queens

brooklyn grange's facebook page

 photo from the eagle street rooftop farm, october 2009

fluorides

this is what i know about fluorides:

fluorides were also used by the nazis to keep their prisoners docile.

now it's unnecessarily added to tap water, because it prevents tooth decay.
but so does regular brushing.
ovreall dental hygiene awareness and practices have improved over the years.
some countries have stopped fluoridating their water, and have shown no decrease in dental health.

it's a mass medication with questionable adverse affects.
a lot of bottled water companies also add it, or they just use tap that has it.

boiling water doesn't get it out,
you have to use some sort of reverse osmosis filter, or distillation.
those filters aren't that cheap, but possibly not too expensive in the long run.
i still drink tap water daily, but i opt for toothpaste without it.

some of what i know about water fluoridation is from wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_water_fluoridation

quotes from wiki, which have other sources noted:
"Continental Europe does not practice water fluoridation"
"Tooth decay has dropped at the same rate in countries with, and without, water fluoridation"
"Fluoridation can be viewed as a violation of ethical or legal rules that prohibit medical treatment without medical supervision or informed consent, and that prohibit administration of unlicensed medical substances."

sodium lauryl sulfate

top reasons for avoiding sls:

it enters and damages your body, all major organs, inside and out, like your brain, heart, lungs, skin, liver.

companies that care more about money than the well being of their customers(basically all of 'em) use it cause it's a cheap detergent.

it's in nearly all cleaning products,
shampoos, toothpaste, laundry detergents, liquid soaps/body wash/hand/car washsoap, anything considered a soap.
even a lot of eco green natural claiming ones.
(natural frugal is here to help you find the ones without them)

it's not natural,
it takes too much science, and even more harmful chemicals, to create.

sodium laureth sulfate, ammonium lauryl sulfate, sodium coco sulfate, any sulfates, same deal.

enough said.

if you want more information, google it.
i found this link by googling, "how bad is sodium lauryl sulfate"

http://www.jasoncosmetics.com/sodium_lauryl_sulfate.html

it has the very good information, in a legible format, with sources noted.

good guide beta

wow,
i don't know when this site launched,
but it's very similar to what i'm going for here.
but without the localized price comparison and options on this site.
they do have what looks like a great and growing database of info,
organized and presented in a well functioning manner.

http://www.goodguide.com/


it is still in beta as it says, and has some bugs, and slowness,
and i'm not sure if i agree with all their picks,
but it does have lists of ingredients to avoid in each category, and info about them.

links - bpa in tin can lining

BPA Danger may be greater from Tin Cans than Water Bottles
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/bpa-danger-from-cans.php




this site has done some research into which organic brand's cans have BPA
http://organicgrace.com/node/316




 

In general, plastics that are marked with recycle codes 1, 2, and 5, are very unlikely to contain BPA.
Avoid plastics 3, 6, or 7.

what does organic mean?

posted april 29, 2010



i’ve never seen a practical explanation of the term organic,
which explains why i hear a lot of misunderstanding about it.
i haven’t watched any of the documentaries or read any of the books about the food industry,
and i’m sure a lot of non organic people haven’t either.
but it doesn’t take much logical sense to figure it out.
a lot of people that are turned off by organic, i was for a while as well, and i didn’t even know what it was about.
the price markup is the first turn off,
and misuse of the word in marketing can take away some of the credibility.
but now that i understand the significance, it raises a lot of consciousness about eating, and other aspects of modern life.

summary
i'm into things being natural, as in how they occurred in nature,
or before industrialization and commercialization.

to me organic means food was produced without:
unnatural pesticides,
antibiotics,
added growth hormones,
chemical fertilizers,
hydroponics,
artificial lighting,
genetically modified organisms (gmo),
irradiation,

and with
natural sunlight,
farming methods that don’t ruin the land and water,
so that you can keep farming, (duh?) like rotating crops,
which people figured out in prehistoric times.

all those unnatural things added have negative affects on the food, our bodies, and the earth. 

price markup
the utilization of these harsh methods, along with government subsidies encouraging them, allowed for producing large amount of shit quality food at a lower price. this resulted in a culture of waste and over consumption, putting higher demands on farmers.
these methods also have long term side affects, which make it hard for food to grow the natural way.
if land wasn’t ruined you wouldn’t need fertilizers. if animals were raised naturally, they’d be healthy, not get sick, get strange futuristic flus, bacterias, and other diseases, and not need extra antibiotics, or to be irradiated. it’s a vicious cycle.
the extra price or organic is a result of the problems created by non organic methods,
and the extra effort now needed to counter them.
if non organic methods are eventually phased out, food production can go back to being natural, not having a price markup, and government could subsidize organic farming tom maintain long term food production.

further explanation
the term "organic" was created as a reaction to these unnatural, industrialized methods of growing and producing food.

up to a certain point in history, everything would probably be considered organic,
but there was no need to invent a separate word for it.
it was just the normal, natural process, for thousands of years.

with industrialization, and scientific advance, we started having the processes listed above.
i mean come on,
destroying land so we can’t eat again?
plants growing indoor without soil?
what is life without the sun?
radioactive cleaning?
changing DNA?
chemicals that make things grow?
starts to sound like mutagen from the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

these things destroy the integrity of naturally occurring things.
who knows what other strange processes are utilized out there,
turning things like corn into sugar after breaking it down a number of times.

why take all the excess effort to produce things that aren’t as good?
it’s only logical that things that came from nature, are better for people, and the planet.
our bodies and planet aren’t made to handle things that have taken a lot of science to create.

this industrialization became the norm.

with the term organic, came “conventional.”
to me this is backwards. the word “conventional” usually means the simple traditional method,
which would be the pre-industrialized method.

the “organic” label should really be “conventional,” or even “natural,”
and what’s now labeled “conventional,” should be labeled something like, “scientifically treated.”

this is only the tip of the iceberg.
USDA certified organic may not be perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction, towards preindustrialized and natural.
3rd party certification also helps keep regulations on food producing methods.
every time you buy something, you’re voting on it,
and hopefully more people are voting for what i would just consider logical sense.