Revealing the relationship between the natural world and the everyday lives of people
The cosmetics industry is bracing for some changes under the new Congress and the Obama administration. Julie Grant reports that makeup and perfumes could come under greater government scrutiny.
(sound of a store)
Claudia Lamancusa has been selling high end cosmetics at the mall for more than thirty years.
She says they recently started making a line of more natural powders, blushes and eye liners – because it’s what customers want.
“Well, I think they’re asking for them. They see it a lot on television and so the trend is going toward more mineral-based and natural products.”
And now the cosmetics industry is expecting the government ask more questions about what’s in makeup and perfumes.
Cosmetics makers already have to test products to make sure they’re safe for people to use. But they don’t have to test the environmental impacts of the chemicals in their products.
Industry officials expect that to change if Congress overhauls the Toxic Substances Control Act. They say that would mean makeup makers will have to start reporting to a new, tougher Environmental Protection Agency.
For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.
Most people probably don’t enjoy
cleaning. But we’ve all got to do it.
And if you’ve ever looked at the household
cleaner aisle in the grocery store, you
know there can be some pretty strong
chemicals involved. Karen Kelly reports
on a cheaper, chemical-free alternative:
(sound of store)
I’ve just arrived at my neighborhood grocery store with a plan: to find what I
need to make my own household cleaners.
I head over to the cleaning aisle and pull out a list of ingredients I got off the
internet.
I see borax and
washing soda on the shelf.
They`re both made from naturally-occuring minerals and cost about five bucks
each for a 4 to 5 pound box.
I look around for soap flakes – to make my own dish soap – and find a big bar I
can grate myself.
The only thing missing is castile soap. It’s a biodegradable soap used in a lot of
these recipes.
I’ll grab that next at the natural foods store.
To be honest, I never paid that much attention to the ingredients in household
cleaner – until I used something with dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride on
my bathtub. It comes with warnings.
I rinsed it and took a bath. My 4-year-old also took a bath.
And we both ended up with a very itchy skin rash.
That convinced me. I had to find a safer way to clean the tub that, number one,
worked. And number two, wasn’t too expensive.
Which pretty much meant I’d have to make it myself.
We decided to start with the all-purpose cleaner.
Karen Kelly: “Okay. We need borax, which we have, castile soap, hot water.”
Child: “We have that! We can just turn on the sink and make hot water!”
Kelly: “And vinegar.”
Child: “We have, do we have vinegar?”
Kelly: “Yes.”
Child: “And Mom, we have hot water.”
We mix up a recipe I found on the David Suzuki Foundation’s website.
(sound of stirring and banging)
They’ve got a whole bunch of do-it-yourself recipes for bathtub scrubbers,
laundry soap, furniture polish, you name it.
Lindsay Coulter is the person who devised these concoctions.
She says a lot of people forget that you don’t need fancy products to get your
house clean.
“You know, if you talk to your grandmothers or your great-aunts, you’ll find that
they too used things like washing soda, baking soda, white vinegar, and a basic
castile soap. Things like vinegar – it’s acidic and helps lift grease and
deodorizes. A lot of the things you’re cooking with anyways, so you probably
already have it in your kitchen. And the benefit? Just peace of mind that you
know what goes into it.”
But does it work? It’s time to find out.
(sound of spraying)
We spray. We wipe. The bathroom sink shines.
Next, we try the bath tub scrubber. It’s a mix of castile soap, vinegar – which is
a natural disinfectant – baking soda, and water.
(sound of cleaning the tub)
The tub looks great, actually. And you know what? This is a lot cheaper.
Brand name all-purpose cleaning sprays are about 4 bucks a bottle where I live.
It cost me just a dollar – and about 5 minutes – to fill that same bottle with my
own mix.
So it’s cheap, it’s easy to make, and, best of all, I don’t have to worry about chemical reaction after a soak
in the tub.
For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.
Child: “Is it recording? Okay.”
The Environmental Protection
Agency is late in setting standards
for some smokestack emissions. Lester
Graham reports:
Maybe you’ve never seen a cement kiln. That’s where limestone and other materials
are baked using coal to make cement, used in concrete.
Later this year the Environmental Protection Agency is going to set court-ordered
standards for mercury pollution from cement kilns.
“It’s about time, isn’t it? I mean, the standards were due more than ten years
ago.”
That’s Eric Scheaffer. He’s with the Environmental Integrity Project.
The EPA had relied on self-reported estimates on mercury pollution from the cement
kilns. Turns out, after the EPA actually checked a few of the kilns, a lot of those
mercury pollution estimates were a little low.
“They’re now saying about 23,000 pounds a year. And that’s double the
previous estimates from EPA. So, the numbers are growing.”
Most states have issued advisories about mercury contamination of fish. Mercury
can cause neurological and developmental problems with fetuses and young
children.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Trash is usually out of sight, out of mind, but occasionally garbage grabs attention – especially when it starts costing a lot. Landfill fees are rising, and with higher costs to ship or truck garbage, a lot of communities are scrounging for alternatives to landfills. Reporter Shawn Allee found one community that hopes a trendy fuel might solve its garbage problem:
For most of us, there’s nothing less sexy than trash. But in part of Indiana, that’s changing.
“One second.”
“Take your time.”
I’m waiting for Jeff Langbehn. He heads a solid waste district in Northwest Indiana.
Lately, Langbehn’s phone is ringing off the hook – from reporters and colleagues. And why are they calling? Basically, it’s because Langbehn’s county is leaning toward doing something new with garbage – something that intrigues trash bureaucrats, maybe even the one in your town.
You see, Lake County Indiana is this close to letting companies convert most of its garbage into ethanol, you know, to run cars. Langbehn says his landfill costs are rising quickly. In his case, that would be 42 dollars per ton.
“The two garbage to ethanol providers were for $17.50 ton. Those savings alone made our board say, hey, we have to pay attention to this.”
And so Lake County Indiana sat down with the ethanol operators.
“And we asked the hard questions like, ‘are there any of these things operating in the country?’ All the standard questions you would ask.”
Shawn Allee: “Wait a minute, when you asked who else has done this and they said, no one, what did you think?”
“Well, the fact of the matter is that the components are being used, and have been used for a very, very long time.”
Sure, some components of garbage-to-ethanol technology have been around for a while. But, if you ask ethanol producers where they actually turn trash into ethanol, they say they can do it in labs, or in test facilities. That’s got some folks in the trash biz nervous.
“I guess I’d say I’m cautious and wary of using any new technology to process solid waste.”
Jeremy O’Brien researches trash for the Solid Waste Association of North America – a trade group. He’s seen landfill alternatives come and go.
“Early on in the 1970s we tried a number of technologies including composting the waste stream, anaerobic digestion, and then we also tried incineration.”
Of those, only incineration survived, but early incinerators had a nasty habit of spewing toxic pollutants, stuff like dioxin, out their smokestacks. O’Brien says incinerators are now cleaner.
His point, though, is that it takes time to improve technology. He worries some communities bent on turning garbage into ethanol could end up holding the bag.
“The facility could fail early on and they’d be stuck without having a place to put their waste.”
Indiana’s Jeff Langbehn says that won’t happen to his county. He says the ethanol companies will cover their own financing, and the county will have insurance as a backup. But speaking of backups, there already is another landfill alternative, right?
Shawn Allee: “Why can’t we just recycle all this and make it into stuff people buy again?”
“There are a number of people out there that could give a rat’s patoot about recycling. And that’s the waste stream we’re having to deal with. The other reality is, recycling is expensive, so I don’t believe it’s a realistic possibility for us to recycle everything, both from a cost standpoint and a societal standpoint.”
So, Langbehn says recycling helps, but ethanol might do more. He says he kind of wishes someone else would try trash-to-ethanol technology first, but it’s worth testing out.
And he says it might be so cheap he won’t even have to hold his nose.
For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.