(6 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Okay I admit it. I don’t get it. Sorry.
I saw this group get a quick mention on GMA this morning and it seems to be making the rounds, this idea. Spearheaded by matter of trust dot org, they have flyers,posters, and a youtube, along with this announcement:
GULF OIL SPILL HAIR BOOMS
IF YOU WANT TO HELP THE GULF COAST DURING THIS OIL SPILL
Everyone can!
No matter where you are. No matter if you’re a salon or groomer or if you’re a volunteer.
First, please SIGN UP to our Excess Access program. It’s FREE and FAST.
It is our mass donation matching database system.
Apparently its all the rage…
Now at the Gulf Coast, people are stuffing booms. Hair and fur coming in from our thousands of member salons and groomers into recycled nylons coming in from all 50 states and around the world! Salons and beachlovers all over the Gulf Coast are organizing Boom making parties – They’re calling them BOOM B QUE’s – We love the South!
Uhm…. Okay. I’m sorry, I really kinda just don’t get it.
I mean, good on them, I guess, but… huh? In fact, I wondered the same thing this person did:
What do they do with the oil soaked hair…afterwards?
by {redacted} on Wed May 05, 2010 at 12:27:12 AM CDT
so… the diarist replied with:
Dug further on their site. It gets even better… (9+ / 0-)
Matter of Trust is the fiscal sponsor for Thomas Azwell & Ryan Carney’s treatability study of hazardous waste oil collected by mats made from human hair clippings then detoxified by thermophilic compost of greenwaste. Finally, the mass is reduced by worms. After a few months the end result is a rich worm castings fertilizer. This project is a practical, hands on study to further the cause of efficient closed loop systems for oil spill clean up. Conventionally oil spill waste is incinerated. This vermiculture method took 2 years outdoors at the Presidio, and there was a control study done at Norman Terry’s Lab at UC Berkeley.
http://matteroftrust.org/… [scroll down a bit]
Not perfect, obviously, but that’s an incredible post-use conversion!by HoosierDeb on Wed May 05, 2010 at 12:47:46 AM CDT
Okay, whatever.
NOTE: according to some… these booms wont help much.
“In open turbulent water, you can’t catch the oil,” said Robert Bea, a former oil tanker captain turned professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. “There is intense wave action out there most of the time. To expect that you can trap oil on the surface in open water conditions, I’d say, ‘Prove it.’
In the face of the BP Gulf Gusher, its just hard to think about helping by sending off my…. Hair. because, well, Ive been reading and listening and thinking quite a bit, and that, as they say, can be dangerous. Heh.
I mean recycling is good, and its great that there’s been huge progress made on this, my city just added me to the curbside pick up which is GREAT but…. it’s not enough in terms of solutions. When I was in the grocery store yesterday, I had a mild epiphany.
So they’re telling us to “Send them your hair.” Right. Sorta reminds me of “Go shopping.” But… wait a second. What about… ? Its not just the packaging of these products, it’s what’s actually in the products themselves too.
Found this, 2006 article:
Look around you. What do you see? A computer screen, the print on this page, a pen, your shirt. Chances are there’s petroleum in all of it. Petroleum-based substances are in everything from lipstick to laundry detergents, clothes to computers to chocolate bars – even fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. Petroleum for nonfuel use made up just over 5 percent of total oil consumption in the United States last year, according to the Department of Energy.
Five percent may not seem like a lot, but it’s still 1 million barrels a day, more or less. That’s enough to demand the attention of a new generation of industry and academic scientists who are working to find natural, nontoxic alternatives to petroleum for consumer products. They have dubbed their field “green chemistry.”
“The way we’ve always dealt with environmental issues in the past is that we take products and processes, and if there’s problems, then we try to clean it up afterwards,” says Paul Anastas, a former EPA executive and director of the Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. “Green chemistry tries to do it from the design stage.”
Those designs try to replace oil-derived ingredients with substitutes made from plant material such as corn, potatoes, biomass, or flower and vegetable oils.
“The industry wants drop-in technologies,” says John Warner, director of America’s only doctoral program in green chemistry at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “The product has to be something that in every way looks and feels the same – so that’s the challenge.”
And this is another one, not all that new either, but still valid.
If we don’t want our government waging war in the pursuit of petroleum for the petroleum industry owners, we must stop wanting and pursuing petroleum ourselves. If we don’t want the deleterious effects of petroleum and petroleum derived products, and instead we want benign alternatives, we must live our lives differently.
First, commit to creating a world in which all processes are healthy and sustainable. Release the (brainwashed?) idea/belief that it is impossible to do so (that we ‘need’ petroleum), and restore a (realistic) faith in the incredible power, ingenuity, caring, and capability of human beings.
Here’s a partial list of ideas (use the web and other resources to get more ideas)
– Let go of what you don’t really need.
– The more local the product, the less petroleum was used in it’s transport.
– Reduce energy use and increase energy and efficiency
– Re-use and fix rather than buy new. There’s a great deal of petroleum used in the manufacture and delivery of a new item. Share items with others. Buy used and reconditioned.
– Carpool, take public transportation, ride a bike.
– Support those working for petroleum-free, benign alternatives.
– Avoid the purchase and use of as many of the items listed above that you can. There are petroleum-free (and benign) alternatives to almost all of the items and processes listed above. Learn about, and use them as needed. (ex: alternative transportation, organic fertilizers and pesticides, non-toxic paints, natural cosmetics, natural fiber clothing, etc.)
– Consider the following: if you make filtered/purified water your primary beverage (from a reusable container), you eliminate all the petroleum and associated toxicity that went into the plastic container, the paint, the manufacture of, and the transporting of a beverage such as soda or coffee. (And itís better for you too. And cheaper 😉
Change your aesthetic, looking deeper at things. While something may have superficial appeal, if in it ís manufacture (or the manufacture of its components) it resulted in much harm, it has great ugliness about it too. There is great beauty to it if it is benign through and through.
Peace to all.
There’s an important message in this. It’s not just the cars we drive, but our thinking.
Change your aesthetic, look deeper at things.
Read the ingredients. Be on alert. Pay attention. (as usual I’m more talking to myself than trying to preach at you). It’s inconvienient and complicated, at times. But… do it.
Look it up. How hard can that be? Ha. What I’ve found mostly focuses on personal health hazards, so I guess Ill keep looking. But there are some with search tools.
And here http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.c…
Major gaps in public health laws allow cosmetics companies to use almost any ingredient they choose in everything from sunscreen and mascara to deodorant and baby shampoo, with no restrictions and no requirement for safety testing. To help you navigate your store’s aisles, Environmental Working Group researchers have scoured thousands of ingredient labels to bring you our top recommendations for what not to buy – products with worrisome or downright dangerous ingredients that don’t belong in your shopping cart or on your skin.
…8. Petroleum by-products: Used to make emollients for face cream, petroleum byproducts-made by the same factories that make gas for your car-also contain cancer-containing impurities. Ingredients include carcinogens in baby shampoo called 1,4-dioxane and coal tar in scalp-treatment shampoos.
Environmental Working Group Cosmetics Database
Hmmm. There must be a better way. (I’ll have to work on this & update with whatever I find.) Here’s the search result at the EWGCD for one random product. Scroll down for the Eco rating.
Ingreds list from EWG ecobase for L’O Vive:
Ingredients from packaging: Aqua Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, PPG-5-Ceteth-20, Cocamide MIPA, Disodium Cocoamphodipropionate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Sodium Chloride, Parfum Fragrance, Octylacrylamide/Acrylates/Butylaminoethyl Methacry, Methylparaben, Polyquaternium-10, DMDM Hydantoin, Lecithin, Hexyl Cinnamal, Methyl Cocoate, Benzyl Salicylate, Butylphenyl Methylpropional, Linalool, Sodium Cocoate, Hydroxycitronellal, Limonene.
Ecotoxicology
*This table includes all possible ecotoxicology concerns for the ingredients used by this manufacturer. Some categorizations depend on how the product is used or formulated.
type of concern product conditions ingredient(s)
Wildlife and environmental toxicity LIMONENE
Sigh. I mean…. do you have to consult Translator/Pique the Geek to decide your beauty regimen? Nah. 🙂 One of my favorites is Aubrey lets me, heres a conditioner for dry hair ingreds list from them. Ill take it.
INGREDIENTS: Coconut Fatty Acid Cream Base, Organic Aloe Vera, White Camellia Oil, Wheat Germ Oil; Extracts of Fennel, Hops, Balm Mint, Mistletoe, Camomile and Yarrow; Organic Geranium Oil, Organic Rosemary Oil, Organic Sage Oil, Carrot Oil, Aubrey’s Preservative (Citrus Seed Extract, Vitamins A, C and E).
Anyway…if people want to send their nylons, hair trimmings and dog grooming discards off to this effort, fine. Have a halo. But read up on “greenwashing” a bit too, and consider your consumer choices in the overall. If I get the dishes done energized, maybe I’ll try to essay on that.
Meanwhile… go see the video and transcripts at Democracy Now, another great segment: BP Funnels Millions into Lobbying to Influence Regulation and Re-Brand Image, or this one at Mother Jones: BP’s Slick Greenwashing.
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go right ahead.
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ha!! what would I do without edger!!! thanks.
Converting electrical energy back to fuel energy, even moreso. When you’re doing this conversion several times, most or much of the original energy in the power source is lost.
The most efficient thing that ever convinced me is an electron-based economy. And even more efficient than that is an energy utilization strategy that consumes electrons as they are produced.
It just amazes me, the things we try to do with energy consumption — conservation and using less is great, by the way!
But, one thing we could do would be to restructure things such that it is easier to both produce electrons at the right time and transport them to the people who need them without having to convert them to some kind of storage and back again .. that would save hugely on overall consumption. You can’t get away from fuel with things like planes .. but cars are another matter.
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if anybody can point me to a site that might have a searchable database or something… that one I found is okay, but Im still looking.
Heres this…Greenwash of the Week
and more plastic. how come everything has to be wrapped and shrinked in plastic. We can all do our part but as long as the world thinks that this is the way things have to be were screwed. Better Living through chemistry? what a con. My 92 years year olsd neighbor asn old school Democrat said that after the was (World War 2) they had all this gas and so they started making everything out of it. It’s just a greasy goob of goo.. pumping and drilling makes no sense if you really think about it. Why do we think we will perish without it. Hair doesn’t like it you body and the earth reject it what is the problem there are plenty of other things besides the dinosaurs goo we could and should make stuff out of.
I do my part I recycle carry bags o cloth walk and do all the stuff to reduce my carbon footprint but none of it will count in the end if we believe and support the fuckers who say we cannot do without it. It’s a lie, we cannot sustain the industries of now without it, and we do nothing to replace or stop them they are what gives our government power. We can stop them but we need to let go of thinking that better living through chemistry unhinged from reality is the answer pr that this brave new world is progress. The answer is starting anew as to our awareness of what progress and better living are, and this is not it. Zoom Zoom. Also their is more then one way to skin a cat and depleting resources from extinct ‘too big’s’ is not the answer we are smarter then that, we are starlight and weve got to get ourselves back to the garden. That is where we find an answer that is where the truth and power lies. We are more then plastic or oil were stardust.
…In addition to good information, it’s funny and well written. Good on ya!
I dunno, with two dogs and a wolf, I could mat a whole rivelet in the estuary … of course the wolf hair would keep away bunnies and deer like it does in my garden…
Probably make an eco-backfire!
Elegant solutions to energy problems and elegant solution to living our lives is what we ought to aim at. Aesthetics is very important in our lives–as you say, we have to go deeper.