by Umbra Fisk
Send your question to Umbra!
Q. Dear Umbra,
I’ve recently moved to Tahoe and,
in an energy-saving effort, am trying to keep the heat down in my house. The
problem is that now it gets to be around 50 degrees in the bedroom at night,
and we need some serious warmth in the blankets! I’d like to get a huge, puffy,
and wondrously warm down comforter, but I’m not sure if there are any ethical
or environmental problems with getting real goose down and generally eschew
synthetic alternatives to anything. A little help?
Mila
Kings Beach, Calif.
A. Dearest
Mila,
I wore out my VHS of Mary
Poppins. One of my favorite scenes involves Uncle Albert, whose laughter has
caused him to levitate. He needs a sad story to bring him off his high, so Bert
pipes up with a story about his granddad chewing his pillow to bits.
“In the morning, I says, ‘How you feel, Granddad?’ He says, ‘Oh,
not bad. A little down in the mouth,’”
Bert says. “I always say there’s nothing like a good joke.”
“And that was nothing like a good joke,” Uncle Albert says.
You know what else is no joke? How goose and duck down, the
soft layer of feathers on the birds’ chests, is obtained. So props to you, Mila,
for caring enough to ask (and for braving the bedroom chill to keep the
thermostat low).
It would be nice to think there’s just a flock of quiet
farmers who wait patiently for the down to fall out on its own. However, here’s
the real deal, according to the USDA:
When the birds are slaughtered, they are first stunned electrically. After
their throats are cut and the birds are bled, they are scalded to facilitate
removal of large feathers. To remove fine pinfeathers, the birds are dipped in
paraffin wax. Down and feathers are then sorted.
Gosh, that doesn’t sound comfy at all. According to PETA, some
countries still practice the painful method of live-plucking on geese from
breeding flocks or those raised for meat or foie gras (another nasty can of worms
entirely). And in the case of eider ducks, a protected species that lines its
nests with feathers, farmers swipe the feathers for bedding and clothing,
removing insulation the little eider eggs need to hatch. Not cool.
So what’s a more ethical, still-warm eco-alternative?
Organic cotton, humanely harvested wool, or even an electric blanket, which
isn’t nearly as big an energy-suck as keeping that thermostat turned up (check
out this Treehugger
forum piece on what to look for in an electric blanket).
If you’re still into the idea of down but not the ethical
ramifications, you could always shop secondhand stores for used down comforters,
so at least no additional geese or ducks would be plucked of their feathers for
your warmth. After all, our bird friends don’t have the option of an electric
blankie—or of not getting tazed if someone wants their feathers.
Supercalifragilistically,
Umbra
Q. Dear Umbra,
My apartment
has no dishwasher, so my roommates and I are constantly creating a lot of
“gray water.” I know the eco-choice here is to collect the dirty
rinse water and hydrate the plants, but will the soap hurt them? Will any of
the food scraps? We don’t use biodegradable soap, but I don’t know what else to
do with it!
Erika
Chicago
A. Dearest Erika,
Why no biodegradable soap? Do you work for a non-biodegradable soap company
that gives you a sweet discount on its product?
Whatever the
discount is, I say blow it off. Invite your roommates to help you scrounge
between the sofa cushions and under the coin-op washing machine for spare
change to purchase some more eco-friendly dish suds, because the stuff you’re
using now probably isn’t great for your plants. Or for the fish and other
creatures who eventually meet it in our waterways. As I’ve suggested before, look for a dish soap without
sodium, chlorine, or boron (which is, alas, a major ingredient in the handy
cleanser Borax). These are either immediately harmful to plants or will become
so over time as they accumulate in the soil.
As for the
food waste, scrape what you can off the plates into the composting bin (yes,
you can compost in your apartment), except for meat, fish, dairy,
and grease. Whatever bits are left in the water post-washing are fine for your
plant friends and can even be nutritious, especially when filtered through mulch.
Happy
washing and watering! And thanks for not letting it all go down the drain.
Bubbly,
Umbra
I recently visited the
topic of BPA in canned foods, and readers MBP1111 and Rachel W. had this to add
in the comments section of the column:
MBP1111: Come on
Umbra! Just because a reader found her own answer doesn’t mean you shouldn’t
check her work. This site has much more extensive information on which brands have BPA in their
cans.
As it turns out, Eden is not all BPA-free
(its tomato cans have BPA), and there are other brands that have some BPA-free
canned goods (like Trader Joe’s).
Rachel W.: I’ve done
a fair amount of research into BPA in can liners, and I have not been able to
find any brand of canned tomatoes that is BPA-free (including Eden and Trader
Joe’s). My sense is that this has something to do with the high level of acidity
in tomatoes (relative to, say, beans or other vegetables).
A. Dearest MBP and Rachel,
Thank you, my attentive readers. Indeed, I was remiss in not
going into further detail about canned tomatoes specifically. It is true that, due
to the acidity of tomatoes, Eden Foods’ canned tomato products, as well as all
others that are commercially canned in the United States, contain some BPA.
“The FDA hasn’t approved any other type of can lining
for highly acidic foods,” says Mike Potter, founder and president of Eden
Foods, on the company’s website, though the company also says independent laboratory
tests have shown that the amount is in the “non-detectable” range.
So, as best I can tell, if you truly want to avoid the
potential of BPA exposure when it comes to tomatoes, the solution is opting for
fresh ones, as even the glass jars of tomatoes I found have plastic-lined lids.
However, in a canning class I attended recently, the instructor was able to
forage her decades-old supplies to find a few porcelain-lined lids—which
apparently haven’t been produced since the ‘50s. Time for a comeback?
Lycopenely,
Umbra
Related Links:
Garden Girl TV: indoor gardening, part three
EPA stands by as polluters ignore the Clean Water Act
