Tag: bathroom

Big Perks for Tiny Houses?

  • Gregory Johnson's teeny tiny house - 140 square feet in all. (Photo by Gregory Johnson)

New homes in America keep getting bigger and bigger. The average new
American home is about 2400 square feet. Moving up to a bigger house
can seem like a sign of success… or it might feel necessary for a
growing family. But in the face of pressure to buy big… some people
are choosing to downsize their homes… way, way down. Rebecca
Williams visits some of the tiniest houses on the block:

Transcript

New homes in America keep getting bigger and bigger. The average new
American home is about 2400 square feet. Moving up to a bigger house
can seem like a sign of success… or it might feel necessary for a
growing family. But in the face of pressure to buy big… some people
are choosing to downsize their homes… way, way down. Rebecca
Williams visits some of the tiniest houses on the block:


(Sound of door opening)


“C’mon in!”


Andru Bemis lives in a little house on a corner.


“Here it is, you’ve just about seen it. You’re standing looking at the
kitchen, you’re standing in the living room, there’s a study, and
there’s a bathroom behind that wall and somewhere above the bathroom there’s a
bed.”


It takes a hop, skip and a jump to cross from one end to the other.
That’s because his house is 300 square feet. Total.


Andru Bemis says a little house is better:


“I’m not owned by it, that’s one of the biggest things. I’ve only got
one sink I’ve gotta keep running, I’ve only got one of anything, don’t have an entire house to
take care of. I also leave town a lot and don’t have to leave an
entire house and worry about it.”


Bemis is a musician. His love of music explains the 5,000 records
lining one wall of his house and taking up precious space.


Of course he also makes room for his banjo.


(Sound of strumming)


You just don’t see tiny houses that much any more. Some, like Andru
Bemis’, are remnants from the early 20th century. His tiny house is in a sleepy
neighborhood that used to be the factory district. He’s seen other
little houses like his get torn down to build bigger new ones.


“Bigger is better, I guess. Bigger means you’ve achieved a lot more.
But as far as I’m concerned bigger generally means you’re working a
whole lot harder.”


That’s one reason people are choosing to live small. They’re after a
simpler life with less stuff. A smaller house costs less to buy and
maintain. And some people argue smaller homes make better use of
resources because they just use less of everything.


Jay Shafer says building small is the greenest thing you can do with a
new home. He owns the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. He designs and
builds super small houses. He started with his own home. It was
really tiny – 70 square feet. That’s 7 feet by 10 feet.


“It’s a huge challenge – it’s much harder than designing a large house.
There’s just no room for error. And if you want to do it well and get
the proportioning right you have to consider everything as part of
everything else.”


Shafer says to live in a tiny house, you have to figure out how much
elbow room you need. Turns out, 70 square feet was a tad too small for
Jay Shafer. So he traded up to 100 square feet.


Shafer says tiny houses are a tough sell for most Americans. But some
people just love small little spaces. Shafer calls himself a
claustrophile. He’s built 10 tiny houses and sold dozens more plans.


Gregory Johnson is one of Shafer’s converts. He’s a computer
consultant in Iowa City. He lives in one of Jay Shafer’s high tech
tiny houses. It’s just 140 square feet. But with a little bit of
magic, one room turns into three.


(Sound of sliding panels)


“You can take what was an office and in about 20 seconds it converts into
a dining area with a sink off to our right because that’s the kitchen.”


Gregory Johnson says his tiny house has changed him. He says he had
his doubts at first, like the time he visited Jay Shafer at the construction
site:


“He showed this little hole I was supposed to crawl through, the
passageway to the upstairs to the loft and I thought I might have to
lose some weight to get up in there (laughs).”


Johnson says he started really scaling back. He realized if he had a
refrigerator, he’d just fill it up with ice cream and pizza. Things he
really didn’t need. So to save energy, he doesn’t have a fridge at
all. He started eating nuts and grains and fruit. By shrinking his
life down to match his house he lost 100 pounds.


Johnson says tiny spaces don’t work for everyone. But he says he has a
fulfilling life with a whole lot less stuff and space to put it in.


Many tiny house owners such as Andru Bemis want their miniature homes
to make a statement: size does matter.


(Andru Bemis song: “my house is a very small house it’s the littlest
house there is/it’s bigger than yours”)


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Phthalate Concerns Cause Company Makeovers

  • Women marching on behalf of a campaign to remove phthalates and other chemicals from cosmetics. (Photo courtesy of the Breast Cancer Fund)

There are new concerns that products we use every day to keep us clean and make us beautiful may contain toxic chemicals. The targets are things like shampoos, deodorants, hair dyes and cosmetics. Some companies are taking these concerns seriously and giving themselves a makeover. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert has this story:

Transcript

There are new concerns that products we use every day to keep us clean and make us beautiful may contain toxic chemicals. The targets are things like shampoos, deodorants, hair dyes and cosmetics. Some companies are taking these concerns seriously and giving themselves a makeover. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert has this story:


(Sound of woman and child talking)


Teri Olle is playing dress-up with her two-year-old daughter, Natalie, in the family’s bathroom. Teri is applying lotions to her daughter’s chubby cheeks, while Natalie puts lipstick on her mother.


Little girls like Natalie have been playing dress-up for generations. But Natalie’s game is slightly different. She’s using nail polish, lipsticks and creams made without man-made chemicals.


That’s because her mother is an environmental activist who lobbies against toxic chemical use. With cosmetics, her biggest fear is a group of chemicals called phthalates. Phthalates increase the flexibility of plastic and keep nail polish from chipping.


“Phthalates are testosterone-suppressing synthetic hormones, essentially. And they’ve been linked with all sorts of developmental problems, including, most dramatically, a set of male genital defects that show themselves as birth defects in infant boys.”


Last month, scientists released the first study on male babies. They found a strong link between high levels of phthalates exposure in pregnant women and damage to their sons’ reproductive tract. Studies like this, and others on lab animals showing possible links to reproductive problems, prompted the European Union this past March to ban two types of phthalates from all products sold in Europe. The states of California, New York and Massachusetts are also considering similar plans.


Olle is five months pregnant with her second child. She doesn’t know if she’s carrying a boy, but she says chemicals in cosmetics could be risky for any fetus. So she’s not taking any chances.


“For me, as a person, if someone said to me, ‘You can either use this product that may cause a genital defect in your baby boy or not’, I would think most people would go, ‘Really, we probably shouldn’t be using these products.'”


And it’s not just phthalates that could be a problem. Environmentalists say that the ingredients in cosmetics haven’t been evaluated for health or safety effects. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t do that kind of testing. And in 60 years, it’s banned only nine ingredients. So there are other chemicals, like coal tars used in hair dyes and formaldehyde used in nail polish, that might cause health problems as they’re absorbed by the skin into the bloodstream.


Because of these concerns, a group of environmentalists called the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has convinced 136 natural cosmetics companies to sign a pledge to check for potentially toxic chemicals and eliminate them.


One of those companies is Avalon Organics. Over the past year, Avalon’s spent two and a half million dollars to reformulate their products and switch to more natural alternatives. Gil Pritchard is the company’s President and CEO. He says the jury’s out on whether these chemicals definitely cause harm. Even so, he didn’t hesitate to make the investment.


“It’s convincing enough for me and our company to exercise what we call a precautionary principle – to adopt it and say look, we may not have direct scientific evidence, but there’s enough evidence here to say whoa, I can feel the heat from the stove. I don’t need to put my finger on and burn myself to know that that’s one of the likely outcomes.”


But not all companies feel this way. Procter & Gamble, in Cincinnati, Ohio, has not signed the pledge. Nor have any other major cosmetic companies. Tim Long is a company spokesman. He says environmentalists are blowing this issue way out of proportion.


“The amounts of most of these ingredients that the activists have concerns about are, in fact, extremely small and at the doses used in our products, there’s no scientific evidence to support that they’re resulting in any harm to consumers.”


Long says Procter & Gamble complied with the EU directive and took the banned phthalates out of all of its products both in Europe and the U.S. But he says that wasn’t necessary, since phthalates, along with all other cosmetic ingredients, simply aren’t dangerous. He says his company wouldn’t be using them if they were. And the FDA says that these cosmetics are safe.


Environmentalists say that more research needs to be done to better understand the effect of chemicals used in cosmetics on the body. But Teri Olle says that with so many natural alternatives available, it makes sense to be careful.


“When I became pregnant, I definitely became more conscious of what I was putting on my body. I mean, if you’re supposed to avoid soft cheeses and cake batter, it certainly can’t be good for you to be spraying petrochemicals on your body. That definitely can’t be good for the baby.”


So when the baby’s born this September, instead of using products with man-made chemicals, Teri Olle will be spreading diaper rash ointment with beeswax and apricot oil on her newborn baby.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Halpert.

Related Links

Dry Urinals Aim to Save Water

  • "Look! No handle." Jim Fashbaugh shows off one of the waterless urinals Michigan State University is installing in new buildings. It uses no water. (Photo by Lester Graham)

There’s a change happening in certain restrooms across the country. With growing concerns about wasting water, companies have been looking at ways to use less water to flush… and now a new product uses no water at all. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

There’s a change happening in certain restrooms across the country. With growing concerns about wasting water, companies have been looking at ways to use less water to flush… and now a new product uses no water at all. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Alright… this is a story for the guys. I mean, you women might be interested, but this is really a guy thing. They’re taking the flush away from us. You’ve probably noticed that urinals have been changing from manual flush to some kind of automatic or motion-detecting sensor flush. Now a few companies are producing urinals with no handle, no button, no sensor. Companies such as Sloan Valve Company, Waterless Company and Falcon Waterfree Technologies are making urinals without flushers.


Bruce Fleisher is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Falcon Waterfree Technologies.


Fleisher: “Literally there is zero water consumption with the use of this urinal product.”


Graham: “Well how do you flush it?”


Fleisher: “Well, in fact, it’s the no-flush urinal.”


No flush. No water. The urine just goes down the drain, past a sealant and it’s trapped there. All the no-water urinal companies use similar technology.


“Because it’s a dry surface, that prevents the urine from breeding bacteria rather quickly. And, as a result, you have no odor.”


Hold it. What did he just say?


(sound of rewinding tape)


“And, as a result, you have no odor.”


Now, I couldn’t let that one go… so I asked Mr. Fleisher to explain how that works.


“The odor that people would typically experience in a urinal derives from the combination of the urine and the water creating a breeding ground for bacteria. Bacteria then generates ammonia gas. Ammonia gas is what most people are picking up. That’s what smells.”


I remember from some high school science class that urine, when it’s expelled, is sterile. So, it kinda makes sense. But hey, this guy’s in charge of sales. So I called up a nephrologist. Nephrologists study kidneys so they know something about urine. Dr. Akinolu Ojo is the director of nephrology outpatient services at the University of Michigan. He explained why urine smells.


Ojo: “The odor that one gets from the urine comes from exposure to atmospheric air and water moisture. As that happens there is decomposition of some of the compounds in the urine. One of the by-products is ammonia. And so you get at that point an ammonia smell.”


Graham: “So, this mixture with water, it becomes a better breeding ground for bacteria?”


Ojo: “That’s correct.”


Graham: “And then the chemical reaction in addition to that also could cause some odor?”


Ojo: “You are correct.”


Glad we got that cleared up. In fact, when I went to see the Assistant Manager of the Physical Plant and Maintenance Services at Michigan State Univesity, Jim Fashbaugh said an odor problem with flush urinals is what prompted that univeristy’s first experiment with no-flush urinals.


“We’d heard about the waterless urinals. We thought we’d give them a chance to see how they would work. And we installed it and it took care of the odor problem, but we also realized we were saving water at that point, so we thought we’d take a look at other applications.”


So, they had one installed in the bathroom in the building where the top maintenance guys work.


(sound of men’s room door opening)


We took a peek at it.


Fashbaugh: “It’s one of the first ones that we ended up trying out. That’s basically it.”


Graham: “It looks like it’s broken, like there’s-”


(sound of laughing)


Fashbaugh: “Yeah. As you see, there’s no flush valve. There’s no- anything else happning. It just goes down through the ports there and there’s a blue liquid that allows the urine to go through and it separates it out. Frankly, we have hard water here at MSU; we’ve got those deep water wells. And it eliminates that lime buildup and whatever that we had to clean up before. So it saves us on products to have to do that issue too.”


Fashbaugh says the janitors love them. Instead of disinfectant, water and a lot of scrubbing, it’s more of a spray and wipe procedure. The no-flush, no-water urinals have been around in Europe for a long time, and they became popular in the drier areas of the American Southwest a few years ago. Now, universities, stadiums, and airports among others all across the country are installing them.


Guys… it could be that this sound…


(sound of flushing)


…might soon be flushed down the drain of water-wasting history.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham


(sound of restroom door opening)


Fashbaugh: “Do a lot of interviews in restrooms?”


Graham: “Uh, not – I think that might be a first for me.”


Fashbaugh: “Yeah, really. I was glad we didn’t have to do a demonstration.”


(sound of laughing)

Related Links

Low-Flush Toilets Make a Splash

It’s one of the most private, intimate parts of our lives — in fact, most people talk more readily about sex than they do about what goes on in the bathroom. But now, toilet talk is heating up over a federal mandate requiring all new toilets to flush with no more than one-point-six gallons of water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson has the story: