Where indoor toxic chemicals live

For many of us it’s hard to believe that there are toxic chemicals offgasing every day into our office environments. The reason is that they live in, around and under the things that are all around us. So where are they?

Indoor toxic chemicals exist in,

- Building Adhesives (Think formica counter tops)
- Paints and finishes (Walls, furniture desks)
- Carpet and fabrics (Office floors and drapes)
- Engineered Wood Products (Partical board desks, bookcases, tables)
- Pesticides (Ant spray, bug traps)
- Cleaners (Counter Cleaners, Window Cleaners)
- Humidity (Mold)
- Pets (Pet Flea Shampoo’s or Oils)

How to “green” the air inside your office

There are three main ways to “green” the air inside your office, Elimination, Ventilation and Filtration.

Elimination

This is pretty straight forward, remove or replace any component that is harmful. What this means is paint with low VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) paints, remove offgasing carpet and replace with recycled organic carpeting or flooring, trade out particle board furniture with metal or organic wood substitutions, use organic cleaners and ask pet owners to use organic pet spray’s.

Ventilation

Increasing air flow can be tricky. If your office doesn’t have any windows there is only so much that you can do. If you do have a window or door that can occasionally be left open, that would be ideal. Possibly have fans placed in certain areas that move the fresh air from the source throughout the office. If you don’t have any fresh air ventilation options, then focus on Filtration.

Filtration

There is a great article by Matt Thomas who works for Automattic, makers of WordPress, where he describes in great detail how he “grows fresh air” in his home office. He points to a fantastic video on TED by Kamal Meattle, who describes how growing fresh air in his office in New Delhi has prolonged his and all of his employee’s lives. This is a must watch, here is the video.

Adding plants into any office creates a much more inspiring and motivated office. The plants that Kamal mentions above are,

Areca Palm – 4 shoulder high plants, per person
Mother-in-laws tongue – 6 to 8 waist high, per person
Money Plant – Removes formaldehyde and other volatile chemicals

Maintaining these plants can be a daunting task, so consider hiring an indoor plant service service and negotiating a price. Though many employers may think of this as an added expense, offsetting increased healthcare costs and loss of productivity due to absences, may well be worth the investment.

There is also a great book called How to Grow Fresh Air, by Bill Wolverton (Affiliate Link) that Matt mentions above, which highlights 50 other air filtering plants that are great for the home or office.

If moving offices or modifying your office to increase the quality of your indoor air is a problem, work with your landlord to see what options you have. They may have some experience on the issue or may pay for some of the modifications you are needing. In the end following through on each of these ways will significantly improve air quality, reduce the number of sick days by employees and improve overall health and well being of the office.

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Today when we dropped her off, it was a little chaotic. Parents everywhere with video camera’s, posing for pictures and people crying. My daughter showed us around, we went yesterday to meet the teacher, played on the playground and endured our multiple photo shoots. She was calm.

We said our goodbyes and told her I would pick her up later and that I loved her. She said okay and jumped in line to go to her classroom. As she approached the room, there was one last turn, a wave and she was gone. I couldn’t help but feel a moment had gone by. I knew this was the first of many “firsts” that we were going to encounter over the next several years with her.

Reflecting on the moment I realized that my daughter appeared to take it all in as a new adventure. She enjoyed the moment, didn’t cry and was having fun! It also came to my attention that my wife and I worried more about what might happen. I think that’s natural when you have kids. There is always so much emotion involved when raising kids. The trick is to not get too caught up in making up stories.

I have a lot of friends and clients that are going through many “firsts” right now. They are starting new careers, moving into new homes or contemplating big bold moves. The natural reaction is to be a little bit scared. The truth is that there is nothing more liberating than creating a new direction for yourself and following that path. It’s truly living.

We have many opportunities in life to create something new in our lives. Re-invent our careers, our lives or even who we are. Don’t like your job? Create your own business. Want a new body? Workout at a real gym. Want to live healthier? Go green!

As we move through our lives we can learn from other peoples “firsts” and realize that they can be opportunities. My daughter taught me today that she can embrace her new adventures and I’m confident she’ll be ready for the next one.

What “Firsts” are you doing now?

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A couple of years ago I started thinking about all of the things we are throwing away. I had known about composting, but never really had a great example to follow. The pictures and video information that I found were incomplete and would show just pieces of what to do.

I made this video about Easy Home Composting to try and provide some practical examples of what I do, how we compost daily and what we do with our compost.

What do you think about composting?

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Over the last couple of years, I’ve realized that everyone needs to find out what green means to them. As with life, one of our many goals is to find out who we are. It’s an interesting question. What do you like or don’t like? What do you believe in or don’t believe in? What’s your passion? What motivates you? What do you stand for? These are all fascinating questions. One of the benefits as we get older, is that these life questions slowly get answered one by one. There is a huge sense of freedom knowing who you are. It’s moving.

For me, being green was an opportunity to take inventory. My life has progressed so quickly that I just tried to keep up. Life can sometimes get overwhelming and I would tell my nieces, “you don’t have to be the best, you just have to keep up!” Sure there is some truth to that, but what does “best” really mean? The best ever or the best you can do? I believe it’s the best you can do at the time. If you want to improve on it, come back later and take it to the next step, otherwise move on to the next thing.

To go green, the first thing I did was to start reading, a lot. I read every article, book and magazine I could get my hands on. I became a Certified Green Building Professional from Build It Green. I went to conferences, networking events and visited businesses. I really wanted to know what it meant to “be green.” I started getting overwhelmed with the thought of how people were going to be green. I thought, “no one is going to do this. No one is going to completely stop buying one product that they have used for generations and start buying another.” The truth is, yes they will. What worked for me, was to not do it all at once. I just did a little at a time, when I had the money. My biggest “aha moment” was composting. It really made me realize how much we throw away. My composting has grown from one composting unit to three. I almost never put anything in the green trash can anymore and the rest goes into the compost bin or is turned into mulch.

I now do rainwater harvesting, planted a garden, am switching old no-so-healthy plants out with edibles, like fruit trees and herbs, switched out my shower heads to 1.5 GPM, self recycle all of our bottles and cans and every time a lightbulb goes out, I replace it with a fluorescent bulb. This has all happened within a year. It’s been a lot of fun to see this grow. I have never imposed on my family any of these ideas and just told them what I was doing. Slowly but surely my wife and daughter have gotten on board. All of our detergents have been switched out with greener options, we buy more fresh food and produce, we all recycle and everyone uses the composting container in the kitchen. I guess the lead by example thing is working.

It’s not only about saving the planet, it’s personal

I’ve been working as a web developer for over 12 years now. It’s truly been a magical ride. I feel very privileged to see history unfolding right before my eyes. When working in this industry you more often than nought, work with startups. It’s a very interesting social experiment. These companies usually have a lot of money or they are bootstrapping it. Typically, the entrepreneurial spirit is high and dreams of being the next Internet millionaire are thick. It’s exciting and energy is high. Ego’s are at their peak and everyone is working at 200% capacity. You have to move fast, make good decisions and go the distance. That’s how make it or that’s what everyone tells you how it’s made. The sad result is that these companies rarely make it. They either die a quick and painless death, the company dissolves and shuts the doors or they lay off most of the company and slowly dies a public and painful death. Lives are ruined, friends become enemies and reputations are destroyed. Then they do it all over again.

It is a lot of fun and you learn a lot, but after years of this you learn what works and what doesn’t. You see your family grow and change and you start to think about what you want your life to be like. Friends and family confide in you about their lives and you see that your experiences with startups isn’t that unique. This seems to be the workforce of today in general. People want balance. They want part of their life back.

What’s happening is that people’s lives have changed and the working environment is slow to catch up. They want flexibility and they want to be a part of something great. They want their work to not just be the place where they exist for eight hours a day. They want to change the world. They want meaning.

Green has become a metaphor for sustainability and sustainability has become a metaphor for how we work and live. If we have to be more sustainable with how we live, we most definitely have to be more sustainable with how we work. It can’t just be at home. It has to be everything. Businesses need to learn to become sustainable in how they operate daily and in the future. This is the time for businesses to re-invent themselves and stop the bad habits of the past. The survivors will be the ones that embrace these sustainable changes and implement them quickly. The result will be leaner greener businesses that are profitable, scaleable and treat their employees as valuable assets. This is the next chapter of being green and on Earth Day we should take a moment and ask ourselves what we want our lives to be like in the future. How has everything been going? Is it sustainable? I think we all know the answer.

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Check out the video!

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The Hard Reset

When I was young, most of our vacations were camping. We celebrated birthdays with relatives and someone would make a cake. Dinners were always at home and occasionally we would get pizza. We almost never went out and life seemed pretty good.

As I got older things started to change. Mom’s started driving nicer cars, eating out for most meals seemed normal and multiple vacations per year were standard. The bar got raised. Weekends now consisted of shuttling kids from one event to the next, while planning the adult get together that evening. Life was busy, over committed and unsustainable. Something had to give.

As we are all living through now, the economy is in a recession. The money that we had previously relied upon is gone. How we lived before is slowly eroding away and we are experiencing how to live with less. This isn’t fun, but maybe just what we needed.

Get Excited About Something New

The most common theme amongst most people that I speak with is that they want more control. Several times a week I speak to people that don’t necessarilly want to work less, but they want more flexibility. They are ready for something different. Some of the symptoms I hear that people are experiencing include anxiety, depression and even anger. Again, this is unsustainable and will rot the foundation of any relationship or employment.

Recently I listened to a great podcast where an author was interviewed about a book he wrote about depression. He made some interesting points about depression and they can be applied here. He said, time and again that peoples symptoms of depression were due to the perception that their life was in flux. They felt they lacked control, were powerless and victims of their life. They were stuck.

There is a way out. The following explanation is hard, not because it’s a lot of work, but you have to really dig deep down and decide what you want your life to be. It’s a tough decision, but has a huge payoff. What I am talking about here is “The Plan.”

Time To Plan Your Future

There is no better comfort than knowing what is going to happen tomorrow. Humans love routine. It actually helps us get things done. There is a reason why our learning institutions are set up the way they are. You get a schedule of courses, you go to them on the prescribed days, then redo it again the next semester or quarter, until you’re done. It just works. Following a plan works.

Planning is really fun, because it can be whatever you want it to be. When my wife and I were moving down to San Diego, we planned when it was going to happen, where we would live and where we wanted to work. It was like a checklist and everytime we completed an item and were able to check it off our list, it was a huge accomplishment. Even better, is that we felt WE were in control, not our employer, not other family members, but us only. It was an incredible and empowering time.

Many of my clients are planning. They are starting their own business, reinvigorating their existing business or planning to start something in the future while still at their current job. The energy is high. New business ventures are exciting, because the possibilities are endless. Having hope and control over your future is better than money. Knowing that you only have to stay at your terrible job for just a little longer, makes it almost bearable.

So, now is the time to plan your future. It’s not going to be easy, but you are in control. You can start today and plan to be done two years from now. If other things happen along the way, that’s okay, just adjust the plan. You can be as conservative or aggressive as you want to be. Make sure your plan includes what YOU want to do, not what everyone else wants you to do. Make sure to set your goals high and create smaller goals in between, they are stepping stones to the larger goal. When those goals get completed, it’s an amazing feeling. Remember, it really is about the journey, but knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow is the best feeling of all.

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(Note: the picture is of my new dog Kona on my chemical free lawn!)  A couple years ago I really started thinking about all of the chemicals we use around the house.  From the multiple bottles in the shower, on the bathroom counter and under the sink.  Couple that with what you have in the garage and any seasonally professional bug spraying and you have quite the chemistry experiment going on.

What really hit home for me was that the second dog I have ever owned, “Bud” was diagnosed with the one of the same ailments that my first dog “Tanner” died from the year before, it was a tumor on his spleen.  It’s not a very fun way to die.  Typically, you bleed internally off and on until you die.  Tanner and Bud would have good days and bad days, sometimes not eating or drinking for days.  When that became more frequent, we put them down.  It was sad, but they lived long and great lives and we took them everywhere.  They were both almost 12 when they passed. Tanner was our ring-bearer in our wedding.  Yes, he was that good!

When Bud passed it really disturbed me that he died of some of the same things Tanner did.  I kept wondering if we had something to do with it.  Were their chemicals around the house that when mixed contributed to it?  I don’t know and I am definitely one of those people that scream conspiracy and shut myself from the outside world.  We did however have a 2 year old at the time and I thought we could do better.

We have been stepping into this new idea over the past year and the first thing we did was stop the professional bug spraying and moved to a more organic approach to the backyard.  I have been putting coffee grounds on my yard for a few months and it seems to be really helping to green the lawn.   I just go get the coffee grounds from the local Starbucks and dump them on the ground.  The idea here is to bring as much nitrogen to your lawn and improve your soil.  It turns out that worms love coffee too!  Worms help your lawn tremendously because their “castings” are excellent food for your lawn.  Look for a follow up article about how I am going organic in my backyard.

In my current campaign to use less chemicals and save in “twenty-ten” I ran across this article today that shows you How to Make Your Own Cleaning Products.  I have been looking for a complete list like this for awhile.  It pretty much covers all the bases, except I would like to know a few more things to do outside.  I really like the dishwasher liquid and disinfectant spray,

“To make your own dishwasher liquid use water with lemon juice. All you need is ¼ cup of lemon juice and ¾ cup of warm water.”

“To make a disinfectant spray mix a ½ cup of borax with 1 gallon of hot water”

I am definitely going to try these out and see how they work.  Let me know if you guys try this out, how they work.  Here is the link again, How to Make Your Own Cleaning Products

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Why would you want to go green?

First you have to go green in ways that it makes sense for you and your family. For me I started to realize how much we were throwing away and it just blew my mind. Also, I wanted to save money and eat better. We have achieved those goals and now I am onto new goals. Earlier this year the water company literally doubled our rates.  There really was nothing we could do.  You end up just paying the extra charges.  Our bill went from $75 to $150 per month.  That’s a pretty big jump! It forced me to look at our biggest water wasters.  Here is what the biggest water wasters our and what I have started to do to save money,

• Garden – Uses up to 50% of a households water – I now water every other day. I am adding more rain barrels around my house to catch rain water and I am in the process of changing all the planters around my house to drip systems.
• Showers – After laundry, the biggest water user inside the home – Most fairly new and 10 year old homes have shower heads that put out about 3.5 to 2.5 gallons per minute.  That’s a lot of water.  I am in the process of switching all of my shower heads out to .5 gallons per minute, to possibly the Bricor B100 Ultra Max .55GPM Showerhead
• Removing parts of my lawn – Lawns use 30% of the 50% of garden water usage – I live in California and lets face it, we may have a lot of sun to enable things to grow, but we are a desert and lawns just don’t make it out here without an incredible amount of water. There is a great book that I am reading titled, “food not lawns,” that talks about replacing much of your yard plants with edibles and stop wasting water on your lawn.

I am pretty confident that with some changes and a small investment, I can reduce my water bill back to where it was and recoup my investment, within 6 months.  Saving water is being green and if you can save yourself some money in the process, then why not?

Soon you will realize there are other areas where you can save money. Your gas bill, electric bill, food bill, transportation, entertainment, etc. The trick is to not just go out and buy a bunch of trendy green gadgets.  You hear this often, but there is a reason, first reduce your consumption or use then implement a solution.  The reason you do this first is to figure out how much you really use. For example, the biggest waste of money right now is people putting in massive solar systems on their house. The reason is that until the price comes down, it just isn’t a good investment.  People are thinking they are saving the environment by adding these systems to their homes, but they are not reducing the amount of energy they use. So they are buying larger solar systems than they actually need and that is waste. If they just conserved, changed out lighting, turned off electricity when not in use, etc., they would find that their electricity demand was not that high. That saving right there, might just be enough to wait out the purchase of a solar system altogether.

At the very least “green” is about conserving and that translates into cash.  It’s inevitable, when you take less from the planet, you put out less too.

How to understand your environmental impact: take a breath

When I was young growing up in Southern California we would have days that you couldn’t play outside.  I didn’t understand. The problem was that when you looked out the window, it looked fine.  It wasn’t raining.  The sun was shining. It wasn’t windy. It wasn’t too hot.  What was it?  Those days were called “Smog Alert” days. The air quality was so poor from the pollution that we generated, that it was dangerous to breath.

Schools kept students inside, sports activities were suspended and the elderly were to be watched. It was crazy.  As I got older, it didn’t get much better. When I taught swimming lessons, we had to keep children out of the pool.  Can you imagine dozens of children show up for a swimming lesson, suits and goggles in hand, only to be told to turnaround and go home, because the air has been poisoned? Wikipedia has this to say about smog alerts in Los Angeles, “The number of Stage 1 smog alerts has declined from over 100 per year in the 1970s to almost zero in the new millennium.” Much of this “improvement” has only occurred within the last 10 years or so and we have only begun to understand the impact of those years on the population.

Believing in “green” is not siding politically with one group or another. You don’t have to change what you wear, what you eat or who you are. What it means is understanding that everything you do has an impact and every little bit makes a difference. Down the road it will become essential that every person and every business implement green practices. At first these will start out as recommendations. Currently they are being drafted into more strict laws. Then the penalties and fines will start for those that don’t conform. You can start now by just thinking about what you do every day and making a choice to conserve. Please don’t wait until the last possible minute.

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I like the appeal of this movie for multiple reasons and can’t wait to go see it.  First, I love the discipline this guy has.  To be able to endure 12 months of cold turkey getting rid of many habits in your life to save the environment is nothing short of a major accomplishment.  Second, this is a great look into how a person who is living in the city and not on some farm can make a difference.  This documentary is a lot like the rest of us who live in urban areas and are trying to figure out what we can do to make a difference.  Though this is an extreme example, its a humble example of how we can all do more.  Check here to see if there are any theaters showing it near you, www.noimpactman.com

It starts with one green person in the family

I can’t help but relate to this movie.  I have always been a project guy, but when I started doing green projects around the house, it definitely took my family some getting used to.  At first we started recycling…like everything.  I was digging through the trash for all the recyclables and going behind people and picking the stuff out of the trash when they put it in the wrong container.  I then bought a 3 bin trash can so people could do it themselves.  A year ago I started composting and that was actually a pretty easy transition.  Putting all of our vegetable scraps and egg shells in coffee containers and then me dumping it out in the bin out back a couple times a week.  Rainwater harvesting was no issue at all, except for removing a rose bush that was in the way, my wife wasn’t happy.  We are doing more, changing lightbulbs, limiting A/C and mostly trying to conserve first.  My wife and daughter have really been supportive and actually think its fun.  Sure, you get “looks” now and again from family, but you have to start somewhere. I’m curious to see if I take my family to go see this movie if they will be inspired to do more.  Hopefully it will!

Get the book

Today, the No Impact Man book is for sale.  I will be buying this book and he has constructed the book in the most low impact manner.  You can buy it here, No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process

The No Impact Man Trailer

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